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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #63102 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/63102)
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-Project Gutenberg's Two years in the French West Indies, by Lafcadio Hearn
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
-other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
-whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
-the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
-www.gutenberg.org.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
-to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
-
-Title: Two years in the French West Indies
-
-Author: Lafcadio Hearn
-
-Illustrator: Arthur W. Rushmore
-
-Release Date: September 2, 2020 [EBook #63102]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: UTF-8
-
-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TWO YEARS IN THE FRENCH WEST INDIES ***
-
-
-
-
-Produced by Laura Natal Rodrigues at Free Literature (Images
-generously made available by Hathi Trust.)
-
-
-
-
-
-
-TWO YEARS
-IN THE
-FRENCH WEST INDIES
-
-BY
-
-LAFCADIO HEARN
-
-_AUTHOR OF "CHITA" ETC._
-
-WITH MANY ILLUSTRATIONS FROM
-PHOTOGRAPHS BY ARTHUR W. RUSHMORE
-AND DRAWINGS BY MARIE ROYLE
-
-HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
-
-NEW YORK AND LONDON
-
-1923
-
-
-[Illustration: LA MONTAGNE PELÉE
-"..._Its slopes undulating against the north sky,--and
-the strange jagging of its ridges,... an extravaganza
-of lava-shapes overpitching and cascading into sea
-and plain._"]
-
-
-À MON CHER AMI
-
-LÉOPOLD ARNOUX
-
-NOTAIRE À SAINT PIERRE, MARTINIQUE
-
-
-
-
-_Souvenir de not promenades,--de nos voyages,--de nos causeries,--des
-sympathies échangées,--de tout le charme d'une amitié
-inaltérable et inoubliable,--de tout ce qui parle à
-l'âme au doux Pays des Revenants._
-
-
-[Illustration]
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-CONTENTS
-
-A Midsummer Trip to the Tropics
-Martinique Sketches:--
-I. Les Porteuses
-II. La Grande Anse
-III. Un Revenant
-IV. La Guiablesse
-V. La Vérette
-VI. Les Blanchisseuses
-VII. La Pelée
-VIII. "Ti Canotié
-IX. La Fille de Couleur
-X. Bête-ni-pié
-XI. Ma Bonne
-XII. "Pa combiné, chè!"
-XIII. Yé
-XIV. Lys
-XV. Appendix:--Some Creole Melodies
-
-
-[Illustration]
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-ILLUSTRATIONS
-
-La Montagne Pelée
-Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas
-Old Sugar Mill, St. Kitts
-Belle Fontaine, Martinique
-St. Pierre To-day
-Suzanne
-Cimetière du Mouillage, St. Pierre
-Road to Morne Rouge
-St. Pierre--Street Among the Ruins
-The Empress Josephine
-The Quay, Bridgetown
-Bridgetown, Barbadoes
-Country Road, Barbadoes
-The Lion or Gun Hill, Barbadoes
-The Devil's Door, Martinique
-The Road to St. Pierre
-Fort-de-France
-Les Porteuses
-Cathedral, Fort-de-France
-Home from Market, St. Pierre
-Le Calvaire
-A Wayside Shrine
-Pitons du Carbet
-Fort-de-France
-Les Blanchisseuses
-La Pelée
-The Cathedral, St. Pierre
-Ruins, St. Pierre
-Armistice Day, Fort-de-France
-Market, Fort-de-France
-Creole Women
-Didier Springs
-
-
-
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-FOREWORD
-
-
-"CA-ARMINE! Carmine!"
-
-"Oui, madame!"
-
-"Petit garçon, venez donc!"
-
-The high piping quaver of Madame Hardy's voice followed by the soft
-padding sound of bare feet on the tile flagging, the cooing of pigeons
-in the cote in the court below, the ever-present cool gurgling sound of
-the fountain splashing in the pool, are the only sounds that break the
-somnolence of midday in Le Grand Hotel de la Paix. The soft caress of
-the trade winds that careen the palm crests bears the breath of the
-vanilla blossoms and bougainvillea that festoon the rail of the balcony.
-A pair of lizards, flashes of green flame, chase each other in the white
-noon sunshine, or freeze into immobility in a moment of alarm. The shops
-are closed for siesta and the whole town dozes away the golden hours
-from eleven till two. There is no hurry. To-morrow will be time enough.
-_Le bon Dieu_ is prodigal with his sunshine and rain. Food is to be had
-for the picking. A thatch is shelter enough and clothes are but a
-convention, not a necessity. Surely there is no hurry! _Mais non,
-missie!_
-
-So we found life in Fort-de-France, Martinique. The same childlike,
-care-free, laughing spirit that so wholly captivated the artist soul of
-Hearn four decades since weaves its spell about the traveler of to-day.
-
-Since those happy days a generation ago that he described with such
-lyric grace the world at large has changed, become smaller, more
-disillusioned, and in the island itself an occasional hurricane and the
-terrible disaster of St. Pierre in 1902 have wrought havoc unspeakable;
-yet the buoyant hearts of these Creole folk sing as of yore, among the
-flower-decked ruins of the city that Hearn loved so well, the new St.
-Pierre that lies under the brooding shadow of Mt. Pelée.
-
-Change comes slowly in the tropics. Nature's prodigality is no great
-incentive to ambition and one finds in this wrinkled emerald of an
-island set in a sparkling sapphire sea welcome relief from the stress of
-our northern life with its insistent activity. It is as though one were
-in a great greenhouse; the crowding mountain sides are rank with
-exuberant greenery. Every ravine has its bounding rivulet of crystal
-water gleaming like a silver thread woven into the rich pattern of
-verdure. Constant breezes temper the heat and frequent short showers
-wash the air free of dust. The atmosphere is brilliant, as Hearn painted
-it.
-
-The same people are there--French, Madagascans, Caribs, Senegalese,
-Chinese, Portuguese--all mingled in a Creole type different from any and
-bearing qualities of all. Tall, slim, graceful, especially the women,
-with lovely heads, thin lipped and deep eyed, with skins of every
-conceivable shade of white, yellow, brown, and red. Long waving raven
-hair tied smartly in their bright "madrases," with little clothing to
-hamper them, they are the picture of grace. They still wear the
-"Josephine" gown, the vast flowing skirts of which they gather up and
-tuck under their arms to-day exactly as Hearn described.
-
-We visited again and again the grim ruin of St. Pierre, now overgrown
-with a rank growth of flowers and vines, a sorry spectacle. High on the
-cliff above the town, dominating the scene of ruin, stands the lovely
-marble statue of the Virgin, all that remained intact in the great
-cathedral that fateful day.
-
-The peculiar nature of the devastating wave of steam and red-hot gas
-which wiped out thirty thousand people in a few minutes, left the front
-and rear walls standing and crushed and demolished the side walls of the
-stone buildings which made up the greater portion of the city. These
-walls, battered and crumbling, still stand, mute evidence of the city's
-size and former beauty. Within these standing walk new homes are
-springing up, giving a weird effect as though in this fecund climate the
-very houses were coming back to life.
-
-The roads which thread the island like a net are constantly cared for.
-Winding in and out and ever upward to dizzy heights, they lead through
-impenetrable jungle, thickets of bamboo and giant tree ferns, affording
-from occasional open spaces glimpses of shadowy ravines and bounding
-torrents hemmed in by farther peaks in serried ranks that beggar
-description, descending again toward the western side through mile upon
-mile of soft gray-green waving cane, till one comes at last to the blue
-Atlantic beating itself into froth upon the sands at Trinité.
-
-French k the only language--a Creole French different from any on earth,
-sweet and musical to listen to. The innate courtesy one meets
-everywhere, even in the interior where strangers are rare, is most
-delightful. One shakes hands with everyone one meets, though it be a
-half dozen times in a forenoon, and even the smallest purchase cannot be
-made without an exchange of courtesies that would do credit to a
-diplomat. Along the country roads the women carriers with huge panniers
-on their heads will always greet you in their soft, high-keyed voices
-with, "Bon jou', missie," that lingers like a sweet savor and prejudices
-one forever in favor of these pleasant folk.
-
-The numerous illustrations and thumbnail sketches in the present volume
-are from photographs taken during our wanderings in Martinique and other
-islands of the Antilles. They give some hint of the alluring beauty that
-greets one on every hand. The passing years seem powerless to change the
-simple character of these ease-loving Creole folk or the green islets of
-which they are so justly proud.
-
-We sailed away eventually with our minds and hearts full of many new and
-delightful friendships and a great yearning to stay, or at least to some
-day be a "revenant" and come back to this lovely island that Hearn has
-immortalized in the pages that follow.
-
-
-ARTHUR W. RUSHMORE.
-
-FORT-DE-FRANCE
-Martinique, F. W. I.
-_December, 1922_
-
-
-
-
-PREFACE
-
-
-During a trip to the Lesser Antilles in the summer of 1887, the writer
-of the following pages, landing at Martinique, fell under the influence
-of that singular spell which the island has always exercised upon
-strangers, and by which it has earned its poetic name,--_Le Pays des
-Revenants._ Even as many another before him, he left its charmed shores
-only to know himself haunted by that irresistible regret,--unlike any
-other,--which is the enchantment of the land upon all who wander away
-from it. So he returned, intending to remain some months; but the
-bewitchment prevailed, and he remained two years.
-
-Some of the literary results of that sojourn form the bulk of the
-present volume. Several, or portions of several, papers have been
-published in HARPER'S MAGAZINE; but the majority of the sketches now
-appear in print for the first time.
-
-The introductory paper, entitled "A Midsummer Trip to the Tropics,"
-consists for the most part of notes taken upon a voyage of nearly three
-thousand miles, accomplished in less than two months. During such hasty
-journeying it is scarcely possible for a writer to attempt anything more
-serious than a mere reflection of the personal experiences undergone;
-and, in spite of sundry justifiable departures from simple note-making,
-this paper is offered only as an effort to record the visual and
-emotional impressions of the moment.
-
-My thanks are due to Mr. William Lawless, British Consul at St. Pierre,
-for several beautiful photographs, taken by himself, which have been
-used in the preparation of the illustrations.
-
-L.H.
-
-_Philadelphia, 1889._
-
-
-
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-A TRIP TO
-THE TROPICS
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-[Illustration: Sketch Map showing
-the places mentioned,
-in TWO YEARS IN THE
-FRENCH WEST INDIES
-by Lafcadio Hearn]
-
-
-
-
-A MIDSUMMER TRIP TO
-THE TROPICS
-
-
-I
-
-
-A long, narrow, graceful steel steamer, with two masts and an orange-yellow
-chimney,--taking on cargo at Pier 49 East River. Through her yawning
-hatchways a mountainous piling up of barrels is visible below;--there is
-much rumbling and rattling of steam-winches, creaking of derrick-booms,
-groaning of pulleys as the freight is being lowered in. A breezeless July
-morning, and a dead heat,--87° already.
-
-The saloon-deck gives one suggestion of past and of coming voyages.
-Under the white awnings long lounge-chairs sprawl here and there,--each
-with an occupant, smoking in silence, or dozing with head drooping to
-one side. A young man, awaking as I pass to my cabin, turns upon me a
-pair of peculiarly luminous black eyes,--creole eyes. Evidently a West
-Indian....
-
-The morning is still gray, but the sun is dissolving the haze. Gradually
-the gray vanishes, and a beautiful, pale, vapory blue--a spiritualized
-Northern blue--colors water and sky. A cannon-shot suddenly shakes the
-heavy air: it is our farewell to the American shore;--we move. Back
-floats the wharf, and becomes vapory with a bluish tinge. Diaphanous
-mists seem to have caught the sky color; and even the great red
-storehouses take a faint blue tint as they recede. The horizon now has a
-greenish glow. Everywhere else the effect is that of looking through
-very light-blue glasses....
-
-We steam under the colossal span of the mighty bridge; then for a little
-while Liberty towers above our passing,--seeming first to turn towards
-us, then to turn away from us, the solemn beauty of her passionless face
-of bronze. Tints brighten:--the heaven is growing a little bluer. A
-breeze springs up....
-
-Then the water takes on another hue: pale-green lights play through it.
-It has begun to sound. Little waves lift up their heads as though to
-look at us,--patting the flanks of the vessel, and whispering to one
-another.
-
-Far off the surface begins to show quick white flashes here and there,
-and the steamer begins to swing.... We are hearing Atlantic waters. The
-sun is high up now, almost overhead: there are a few thin clouds in the
-tender-colored sky,--flossy, long-drawn-out, white things. The horizon
-has lost its greenish glow: it is a spectral blue. Masts, spars,
-rigging,--the white boats and the orange chimney,--the bright
-deck-lines, and the snowy rail,--cut against the colored light in almost
-dazzling relief. Though the sun shines hot the wind is cold: its strong
-irregular blowing fans one into drowsiness. Also the somnolent chant of
-the engines--_do-do, hey! do-do, hey!_--lulls to sleep.
-
-... Towards evening the glaucous sea-tint vanishes,--the water becomes
-blue. It is full of great flashes, as of seams opening and reclosing
-over a white surface. It spits spray in a ceaseless drizzle. Sometimes
-it reaches up and slaps the side of the steamer with a sound as of a
-great naked hand. The wind waxes boisterous. Swinging ends of cordage
-crack like whips. There is an immense humming that drowns speech,--a
-humming made up of many sounds: whining of pulleys, whistling of
-riggings, flapping and fluttering of canvas, roar of nettings in the
-wind. And this sonorous medley, ever growing louder, has rhythm,--a
-_crescendo_ and _diminuendo_ timed by the steamer's regular swinging:
-like a great Voice crying out, "Whoh-oh-oh! whoh-oh-oh!" We are nearing
-the life-centres of winds and currents. One can hardly walk on deck
-against the ever-increasing breath;--yet now the whole world is
-blue,--not the least cloud is visible; and the perfect transparency and
-voidness about us make the immense power of this invisible medium seem
-something ghostly and awful.... The log, at every revolution, whines
-exactly like a little puppy;--one can hear it through all the roar fully
-forty feet away.
-
-... It is nearly sunset. Across the whole circle of the Day we have been
-steaming south. Now the horizon is gold green. All about the falling
-sun, this gold-green light takes vast expansion.... Right on the edge of
-the sea is a tall, gracious ship, sailing sunset ward. Catching the
-vapory fire, she seems to become a phantom,--a ship of gold mist: all
-her spars and sails are luminous, and look like things seen in dreams.
-
-Crimsoning more and more, the sun drops to the sea. The phantom ship
-approaches him,--touches the curve of his glowing face, sails right
-athwart it! Oh, the spectral splendor of that vision! The whole great
-ship in full sail instantly makes an acute silhouette against the
-monstrous disk,--rests there in the very middle of the vermilion sun.
-His face crimsons high above her top-masts,--broadens far beyond helm
-and bowsprit. Against this weird magnificence, her whole shape changes
-color: hull, masts, and sails turn black--a greenish black.
-
-Sun and ship vanish together in another minute. Violet the night comes;
-and the rigging of the foremast cuts a cross upon the face of the moon.
-
-
-
-
-II
-
-
-Morning: the second day. The sea is an extraordinary blue,--looks to me
-something like violet ink. Close by the ship, where the foam-clouds are,
-it is beautifully mottled,--looks like blue marble with exquisite
-veinings and nebulosities... Tepid wind, and cottony white
-clouds,--cirri climbing up over the edge of the sea all around. The sky
-is still pale blue, and the horizon is full of a whitish haze.
-
-... A nice old French gentleman from Guadeloupe presumes to say this is
-not blue water;--he declares it greenish (_verdâtre_). Because I cannot
-discern the green, he tells me I do not yet know what blue water is.
-_Attendez un peu!_...
-
-... The sky tone deepens as the sun ascends,--deepens deliciously. The
-warm wind proves soporific. I drop asleep with the blue light in my
-face,--the strong bright blue of the noonday sky. As I doze it seems to
-burn like a cold fire right through my eyelids. Waking up with a start,
-I fancy that everything is turning blue, myself included. "Do you not
-call this the real tropical blue?" I cry to my French fellow-traveller.
-"_Mon Dieu! non_," he exclaims, as in astonishment at the
-question;--"this is not blue!"... What can be his idea of blue, I
-wonder!
-
-Clots of sargasso float by,--light-yellow sea-weed. We are nearing the
-Sargasso-sea,--entering the path of the trade-winds. There is a long
-ground-swell, the steamer rocks and rolls, and the tumbling water always
-seems to me growing bluer; but my friend from Guadeloupe says that this
-color "which I call blue" is only darkness--only the shadow of
-prodigious depth.
-
-Nothing now but blue sky and what I persist in calling blue sea. The
-clouds have melted away in the bright glow. There is no sign of life in
-the azure gulf above, nor in the abyss beneath;--there are no wings or
-fins to be seen. Towards evening, under the slanting gold light, the
-color of the sea deepens into ultramarine; then the sun sinks down
-behind a bank of copper-colored cloud.
-
-
-
-
-III
-
-
-Morning of the third day. Same mild, warm wind. Bright blue sky, with
-some very thin clouds in the horizon,--like puffs of steam. The glow of
-the sea-light through the open ports of my cabin makes them seem filled
-with thick blue glass... It is becoming too warm for New York
-clothing...
-
-Certainly the sea has become much bluer. It gives one the idea of
-liquefied sky: the foam might be formed of cirrus clouds compressed,--so
-extravagantly white it looks to-day, like snow in the sun. Nevertheless,
-the old gentleman from Guadeloupe still maintains this is not the true
-blue of the tropics!
-
-... The sky does not deepen its hue to-day: it brightens it;--the blue
-glows as if it were taking fire throughout. Perhaps the sea may deepen
-its hue;--I do not believe it can take more luminous color without being
-set aflame... I ask the ship's doctor whether it is really true that the
-West Indian waters are any bluer than these. He looks a moment at the
-sea, and replies, "yes!" There is such a tone of surprise in his "oh" as
-might indicate that I had asked a very foolish question; and his look
-seems to express doubt whether I am quite in earnest... I think,
-nevertheless, that this water is extravagantly, nonsensically blue!
-
-... I read for an hour or two; fall asleep in the chair; wake up
-suddenly; look at the sea,--and cry out! This sea is impossibly blue!
-The painter who should try to paint it would be denounced as a
-lunatic... Yet it is transparent; the foam-clouds, as they sink down,
-turn sky-blue,--a sky-blue which now looks white by contrast with the
-strange and violent splendor of the sea color. It seems as if one were
-looking into an immeasurable dyeing vat, or as though the whole ocean
-had been thickened with indigo. To say this is a mere reflection of the
-sky is nonsense!--the sky is too pale by a hundred shades for that! This
-must be the natural color of the water,--a blazing azure,--magnificent,
-impossible to describe.
-
-The French passenger from Guadeloupe observes that the sea is "beginning
-to become blue."
-
-
-
-
-IV
-
-
-And the fourth day. One awakens unspeakably lazy;--this must be the West
-Indian languor. Same sky, with a few more bright clouds than
-yesterday;--always the warm wind blowing. There is a long swell. Under
-this trade-breeze, warm like a human breath, the ocean seems to
-pulse,--to rise and fall as with a vast inspiration and expiration.
-Alternately its blue circle lifts and falls before us and behind us;--we
-rise very high; we sink very low,--but always with a slow long motion.
-Nevertheless the water looks smooth, perfectly smooth; the billowings
-which lift us cannot be seen;--it is because the summits of these swells
-are mile-broad,--too broad to be discerned from the level of our deck.
-
-... Ten A.M.--Under the sun the sea is a flaming, dazzling lazulite. My
-French friend from Guadeloupe kindly confesses this is _almost_ the
-color of tropical water.... Weeds floating by, a little below the
-surface, are azured. But the Guadeloupe gentleman says he has seen water
-still more blue. I am sorry,--I cannot believe him.
-
-Mid-day.--The splendor of the sky is weird! No clouds above--only blue
-fire! Up from the warm deep color of the sea-circle the edge of the
-heaven glows as if bathed in greenish flame. The swaying circle of the
-resplendent sea seems to flash its jewel-color to the zenith.
-
-Clothing feels now almost too heavy to endure; and the warm wind brings
-a languor with it as of temptation.... One feels an irresistible desire
-to drowse on deck;--the rushing speech of waves, the long rocking of the
-ship, the lukewarm caress of the wind, urge to slumber;--but the light
-is too vast to permit of sleep. Its blue power compels wakefulness. And
-the brain is wearied at last by this duplicated azure splendor of sky
-and sea. How gratefully comes the evening to us,--with its violet glooms
-and promises of coolness!
-
-All this sensuous blending of warmth and force in winds and waters more
-and more suggests an idea of the spiritualism of elements--a sense of
-world-life. In all these soft sleepy swayings, these caresses of wind
-and sobbing of waters, Nature seems to confess some passional mood.
-Passengers converse of pleasant tempting things,--tropical fruits,
-tropical beverages, tropical mountain-breezes, tropical women.... It is
-a time for dreams--those day-dreams that come gently as a mist with
-ghostly realization of hopes, desires, ambitions.... Men sailing to the
-mines of Guiana dream of gold.
-
-The wind seems to grow continually warmer; the spray feels warm like
-blood. Awnings have to be clewed up, and wind-sails taken in;--still,
-there are no whitecaps,--only the enormous swells, too broad to see, as
-the ocean falls and rises like a dreamer's breast....
-
-The sunset comes with a great burning yellow glow, fading up through
-faint greens to lose itself in violet light;--there is no gloaming. The
-days have already become shorter.... Through the open ports, as we lie
-down to sleep, comes a great whispering,--the whispering of the seas:
-sounds as of articulate speech under the breath,--as of women telling
-secrets....
-
-
-
-
-V
-
-
-Fifth day out. Trade-winds from the south-east; a huge tumbling of
-mountain-purple waves;--the steamer careens under a full spread of
-canvas. There is a sense of spring in the wind to-day,--something that
-makes one think of the bourgeoning of Northern woods, when naked trees
-first cover themselves with a mist of tender green,--something that
-recalls the first bird-songs, the first climbings of sap to sun, and
-gives a sense of vital plenitude.
-
-... Evening fills the west with aureate woolly clouds,--the wool of the
-Fleece of Gold. Then Hesperus beams like another moon, and the stars
-burn very brightly. Still the ship bends under the even pressure of the
-warm wind in her sails; and her wake becomes a trail of fire. Large
-sparks dash up through it continuously, like an effervescence of
-flame;--and queer broad clouds of pale fire swirl by. Far out, where the
-water is black as pitch, there are no lights: it seems as if the steamer
-were only grinding out sparks with her keel, striking fire with her
-propeller.
-
-
-
-
-VI
-
-
-Sixth day out. Wind tepid and still stronger, but sky very clear. An
-indigo sea, with beautiful white-caps. The ocean color is deepening: it
-is very rich now, but I think less wonderful than before;--it is an
-opulent pansy hue. Close by the ship it looks black-blue,--the color
-that bewitches in certain Celtic eyes.
-
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-There is a feverishness in the air;--the heat is growing heavy; the
-least exertion provokes perspiration; below-decks the air is like the
-air of an oven. Above-deck, however, the effect of all this light and
-heat is not altogether disagreeable;--one feels that vast elemental
-powers are near at hand, and that the blood is already aware of their
-approach.
-
-All day the pure sky, the deepening of sea-color, the lukewarm wind.
-Then comes a superb sunset! There is a painting in the west wrought of
-cloud-colors,--a dream of high carmine cliffs and rocks outlying in a
-green sea, which lashes their bases with a foam of gold....
-
-Even after dark the touch of the wind has the warmth of flesh. There is
-no moon; the sea-circle is black as Acheron; and our phosphor wake
-reappears quivering across it,--seeming to reach back to the very
-horizon. It is brighter to-night,--looks like another _Via
-Lactea_,--with points breaking through it like stars in a nebula. From
-our prow ripples rimmed with fire keep fleeing away to right and left
-into the night,--brightening as they run, then vanishing suddenly as if
-they had passed over a precipice. Crests of swells seem to burst into
-showers of sparks, and great patches of spume catch flame, smoulder
-through, and disappear.... The Southern Cross is visible,--sloping
-backward and sidewise, as if propped against the vault of the sky: it is
-not readily discovered by the unfamiliarized eye; it is only after if
-has been well pointed out to you that you discern its position. Then you
-find it is only the _suggestion_ of a cross--four stars set almost
-quadrangularly, some brighter than others.
-
-For two days there has been little conversation on board. It may be due
-in part to the somnolent influence of the warm wind,--in part to the
-ceaseless booming of waters and roar of rigging, which drown men's
-voices; but I fancy it is much more due to the impressions of space and
-depth and vastness,--the impressions of sea and sky, which compel
-something akin to awe.
-
-
-
-
-VII
-
-
-Morning over the Caribbean Sea,--a calm, extremely dark-blue sea. There
-are lands in sight,--high lands, with sharp, peaked, unfamiliar
-outlines.
-
-We passed other lands in the darkness: they no doubt resembled the
-shapes towering up around us now; for these are evidently volcanic
-creations,--jagged, coned, truncated, eccentric. Far off they first
-looked a very pale gray; now, as the light increases, they change hue a
-little,--showing misty greens and smoky blues. They rise very sharply
-from the sea to great heights--the highest point always with a cloud
-upon it;--they thrust out singular long spurs, push up mountain shapes
-that have an odd scooped-out look. Some, extremely far away, seem, as
-they catch the sun, to be made of gold vapor; others have a madderish
-tone: these are colors of clouds. The closer we approach them, the more
-do tints of green make themselves visible. Purplish or bluish masses of
-coast slowly develop green surfaces; folds and wrinkles of land turn
-brightly verdant. Still, the color gleams as through a thin fog.
-
-... The first tropical visitor has just boarded our ship: a wonderful
-fly, shaped like a common fly, but at least five times larger. His body
-is a beautiful shining black; his wings seem ribbed and jointed with
-silver, his head is jewel-green, with exquisitely cut emeralds for eyes.
-
-Islands pass and disappear behind us. The sun has now risen well; the
-sky is a rich blue, and the tardy moon still hangs in it. Lilac tones
-show through the water. In the south there are a few straggling small
-white clouds,--like a long flight of birds. A great gray mountain shape
-looms up before us. We are steaming on Santa Cruz.
-
-The island has a true volcanic outline, sharp and high: the cliffs sheer
-down almost perpendicularly. The shape is still vapory, varying in
-coloring from purplish to bright gray; but wherever peaks and spurs
-fully catch the sun they edge themselves with a beautiful green glow,
-while interlying ravines seem filled with foggy blue.
-
-As we approach, sunlighted surfaces come out still more luminously
-green. Glens and sheltered valleys still hold blues and grays; but
-points fairly illuminated by the solar glow show just such a fiery green
-as burns in the plumage of certain humming-birds. And just as the
-lustrous colors of these birds shift according to changes of light, so
-the island shifts colors here and there,--from emerald to blue, and blue
-to gray.... But now we are near: it shows us a lovely heaping of high
-bright hills in front,--with a further coast-line very low and long and
-verdant, fringed with a white beach, and tufted with spidery
-palm-crests. Immediately opposite, other palms are poised; their trunks
-look like pillars of unpolished silver, their leaves shimmer like
-bronze.
-
-... The water of the harbor is transparent and pale green. One can see
-many fish, and some small sharks. White butterflies are fluttering about
-us in the blue air. Naked black boys are bathing on the beach;--they
-swim well, but will not venture out far because of the sharks. A boat
-puts off to bring colored girls on board. They are tall, and not
-uncomely, although very dark;--they coax us, with all sorts of endearing
-words, to purchase bay rum, fruits, Florida water.... We go ashore in
-boats. The water of the harbor has a slightly fetid odor.
-
-
-
-
-VIII
-
-
-Viewed from the bay, under the green shadow of the hills overlooking it,
-Frederiksted has the appearance of a beautiful Spanish town, with its
-Romanesque piazzas, churches, many arched buildings peeping through
-breaks in a line of mahogany, bread-fruit, mango, tamarind, and palm
-trees,--an irregular mass of at least fifty different tints, from a
-fiery emerald to a sombre bluish-green. But on entering the streets the
-illusion of beauty passes: you find yourself in a crumbling, decaying
-town, with buildings only two stories high. The lower part, of arched
-Spanish design, is usually of lava rock or of brick, painted a light,
-warm yellow; the upper stories are most commonly left unpainted, and are
-rudely constructed of light timber. There are many heavy arcades and
-courts opening on the streets with large archways. Lava blocks have been
-used in paving as well as in building; and more than one of the narrow
-streets, as it slopes up the hill through the great light, is seen to
-cut its way through craggy masses of volcanic stone.
-
-
-[Illustration 07: CHARLOTTE AMALIE, ST. THOMAS
-_All red and white against the green hillside; reflected
-as in a mirror by the azure sea._]
-
-
-But all the buildings look dilapidated; the stucco and paint are falling
-or peeling everywhere; there are fissures in the walls, crumbling
-façades, tumbling roofs. The first stories, built with solidity worthy
-of an earthquake region, seem extravagantly heavy by contrast with the
-frail wooden superstructures. One reason may be that the city was burned
-and sacked during a negro revolt in 1878;--the Spanish basements
-resisted the fire well, and it was found necessary to rebuild only the
-second stories of the buildings; but the work was done cheaply and
-flimsily, not massively and enduringly, as by the first colonial
-builders.
-
-There is great wealth of verdure. Cabbage and cocoa-palms overlook all
-the streets, bending above almost every structure, whether hut or public
-building;--everywhere you see the splitted green of banana leaves. In
-the court-yards you may occasionally catch sight of some splendid palm
-with silver-gray stem so barred as to look jointed, like the body of an
-annelid.
-
-In the market-place--a broad paved square, crossed by two rows of
-tamarind-trees, and bounded on one side by a Spanish piazza--you can
-study a spectacle of savage picturesqueness. There are no benches, no
-stalls, no booths; the dealers stand, sit, or squat upon the ground
-under the sun, or upon the steps of the neighboring arcade. Their wares
-are piled up at their feet, for the most part. Some few have little
-tables, but as a rule the eatables are simply laid on the dusty ground
-or heaped upon the steps of the piazza--reddish-yellow mangoes, that
-look like great apples squeezed out of shape, bunches of bananas,
-pyramids of bright-green cocoanuts, immense golden-green oranges, and
-various other fruits and vegetables totally unfamiliar to Northern
-eyes.... It is no use to ask questions--the black dealers speak no
-dialect comprehensible outside of the Antilles: it is a negro-English
-that sounds like some African tongue,--a rolling current of vowels and
-consonants, pouring so rapidly that the inexperienced ear cannot detach
-one intelligible word. A friendly white coming up enabled me to learn
-one phrase: "Massa, youwancocknerfoobuy?" (Master, do you want to buy a
-cocoanut?)
-
-The market is quite crowded,--full of bright color under the tremendous
-noon light. Buyers and dealers are generally black;--very few yellow or
-brown people are visible in the gathering. The greater number present
-are women; they are very simply, almost savagely, garbed--only a skirt
-or petticoat, over which is worn a sort of calico short dress, which
-scarcely descends two inches below the hips, and is confined about the
-waist with a belt or a string. The skirt bells out like the skirt of a
-dancer, leaving the feet and bare legs well exposed; and the head is
-covered with a white handkerchief, twisted so as to look like a turban.
-Multitudes of these barelegged black women are walking past
-us,--carrying bundles or baskets upon their heads, and smoking very long
-cigars.
-
-They are generally short and thick-set, and walk with surprising
-erectness, and with long, firm steps, carrying the bosom well forward.
-Their limbs are strong and finely rounded. Whether walking or standing,
-their poise is admirable,--might be called graceful, were it not for the
-absence of real grace of form in such compact, powerful little figures.
-All wear brightly colored cottonade stuffs, and the general effect of
-the costume in a large gathering is very agreeable, the dominant hues
-being pink, white, and blue. Half the women are smoking. All chatter
-loudly, speaking their English jargon with a pitch of voice totally
-unlike the English timbre: it sometimes sounds as if they were trying to
-pronounce English rapidly according to French pronunciation and pitch of
-voice.
-
-These green oranges have a delicious scent and amazing juiciness.
-Feeling one of them is sufficient to perfume the skin of the hands for
-the rest of the day, however often one may use soap and water.... We
-smoke Porto Rico cigars, and drink West Indian lemonades, strongly
-flavored with rum. The tobacco has a rich, sweet taste; the rum is
-velvety, sugary, with a pleasant, soothing effect: both have a rich
-aroma. There is a wholesome originality about the flavor of these
-products, a uniqueness which certifies to their _naïf_ purity:
-something as opulent and frank as the juices and odors of tropical
-fruits and flowers.
-
-The streets leading from the plaza glare violently in the strong
-sunlight;--the ground, almost dead-white, dazzles the eyes.... There are
-few comely faces visible,--in the streets all are black who pass. But
-through open shop-doors one occasionally catches glimpses of a pretty
-quadroon face,--with immense black eyes,--a face yellow like a ripe
-banana.
-
-... It is now after mid-day. Looking up to the hills, or along sloping
-streets towards the shore, wonderful variations of foliage-color meet
-the eye: gold-greens, sap-greens, bluish and metallic greens of many
-tints, reddish-greens, yellowish-greens. The cane-fields are broad
-sheets of beautiful gold-green; and nearly as bright are the masses of
-_pomme-cannelle_ frondescence, the groves of lemon and orange; while
-tamarind and mahoganies are heavily sombre. Everywhere palm-crests soar
-above the wood-lines, and tremble with a metallic shimmering in the blue
-light. Up through a ponderous thickness of tamarind arises the spire of
-the church; a skeleton of open stone-work, without glasses or lattices
-or shutters of any sort for its naked apertures: it is all open to the
-winds of heaven; it seems to be gasping with all its granite mouths for
-breath--panting in this azure heat. In the bay the water looks greener
-than ever: it is so clear that the light passes under every boat and
-ship to the very bottom; the vessels cast only very thin green
-shadows,--so transparent that fish can be distinctly seen passing
-through from sunlight to sunlight.
-
-The sunset offers a splendid spectacle of pure color; there is only an
-immense yellow glow in the west,--a lemon-colored blaze; but when it
-melts into the blue there is an exquisite green fight.... We leave
-to-morrow.
-
-... Morning: the green hills are looming in a bluish vapor: the long
-faint-yellow slope of beach to the left of the town, under the mangoes
-and tamarinds, is already thronged with bathers,--all men or boys, and
-all naked: black, brown, yellow, and white. The white bathers are Danish
-soldiers from the barracks; the Northern brightness of their skins forms
-an almost startling contrast with the deep colors of the nature about
-them, and with the dark complexions of the natives. Some very slender,
-graceful brown lads are bathing with them,--lightly built as deer: these
-are probably creoles. Some of the black bathers are clumsy-looking, and
-have astonishingly long legs.... Then little boys come down, leading
-horses;--they strip, leap naked on the animals' backs, and ride into the
-sea,--yelling, screaming, splashing, in the morning light. Some are a
-fine brown color, like old bronze. Nothing could be more statuesque than
-the unconscious attitudes of these bronze bodies in leaping, wrestling,
-running, pitching shells. Their simple grace is in admirable harmony
-with that of Nature's green creations about them,--rhymes faultlessly
-with the perfect self-balance of the palms that poise along the
-shore....
-
-Boom! and a thunder-rolling of echoes. We move slowly out of the harbor,
-then swiftly towards the southeast.... The island seems to turn slowly
-half round; then to retreat from us. Across our way appears a long band
-of green light, reaching over the sea like a thin protraction of color
-from the extended spur of verdure in which the western wind of the
-island terminates. That is a sunken reef, and a dangerous one. Lying
-high upon it, in very sharp relief against the blue light, is a wrecked
-vessel on her beam-ends,--the carcass of a brig. Her decks have been
-broken in; the roofs of her cabins are gone; her masts are splintered
-off short; her empty hold yawns naked to the sun; all her upper parts
-have taken a yellowish-white color,--the color of sun-bleached bone.
-
-Behind us the mountains still float back. Their shining green has
-changed to a less vivid hue; they are taking bluish tones here and
-there; but their outlines are still sharp, and along their high soft
-slopes there are white specklings, which are villages and towns. These
-white specks diminish swiftly,--dwindle to the dimensions of
-salt-grains,--finally vanish. Then the island grows uniformly bluish; it
-becomes cloudy, vague as a dream of mountains;--it turns at last gray as
-smoke, and then melts into the horizon-light like a mirage.
-
-Another yellow sunset, made weird by extraordinary black, dense,
-fantastic shapes of cloud. Night darkens, and again the Southern Cross
-glimmers before our prow, and the two Milky Ways reveal
-themselves,--that of the Cosmos and that ghostlier one which stretches
-over the black deep behind us. This alternately broadens and narrows at
-regular intervals, concomitantly with the rhythmical swing of the
-steamer. Before us the bows spout fire; behind us there is a flaming and
-roaring as of Phlegethon; and the voices of wind and sea become so loud
-that we cannot talk to one another,--cannot make our words heard even by
-shouting.
-
-
-
-
-IX
-
-
-Early morning: the eighth day. Moored in another blue harbor,--a great
-semicircular basin, bounded by a high billowing of hills all green from
-the fringe of yellow beach up to their loftiest clouded summit. The land
-has that up-tossed look which tells a volcanic origin. There are
-curiously scalloped heights, which, though emerald from base to crest,
-still retain all the physiognomy of volcanoes: their ribbed sides must
-be lava under that verdure. Out of sight westward--in successions of
-bright green, pale green, bluish-green, and vapory gray--stretches a
-long chain of crater shapes. Truncated, jagged, or rounded, all these
-elevations are interunited by their curving hollows of land or by
-filaments,--very low valleys. And as they grade away in varying color
-through distance, these hill-chains take a curious segmented, jointed
-appearance, like insect forms, enormous ant-bodies.... This is St.
-Kitt's.
-
-We row ashore over a tossing dark-blue water, and leaving the long
-wharf, pass under a great arch and over a sort of bridge into the town
-of Basse-Terre, through a concourse of brown and black people.
-
-It is very tropical-looking; but more sombre than Frederiksted. There
-are palms everywhere,--cocoa, fan, and cabbage palms; many bread-fruit
-trees, tamarinds, bananas, Indian fig-trees, mangoes, and unfamiliar
-things the negroes call by incomprehensible names,--"sapsaps,
-dhool-dhools." But there is less color, less reflection of light than in
-Santa Cruz; there is less quaintness; no Spanish buildings, no
-canary-colored arcades. All the narrow streets are gray or
-neutral-tinted; the ground has a dark ashen tone. Most of the dwellings
-are timber, resting on brick props, or elevated upon blocks of lava
-rock. It seems almost as if some breath from the enormous and always
-clouded mountain overlooking the town had begrimed everything, darkening
-even the colors of vegetation.
-
-The population is not picturesque. The costumes are commonplace; the
-tints of the women's attire are dull. Browns and sombre blues and grays
-are commoner than pinks, yellows, and violets. Occasionally you observe
-a fine half-breed type--some tall brown girl walking by with a swaying
-grace like that of a sloop at sea;--but such spectacles are not
-frequent. Most of those you meet are black or a blackish brown. Many
-stores are kept by yellowmen with intensely black hair and eyes,--men
-who do not smile. These are Portuguese. There are some few fine
-buildings; but the most pleasing sight the little town can offer the
-visitors is the pretty Botanical Garden, with its banyans and its palms,
-its monstrous lilies and extraordinary fruit-trees, and its beautiful
-little fountains. From some of these trees a peculiar tillandsia streams
-down, much like our Spanish moss,--but it is black!
-
-... As we move away southwardly, the receding outlines of the island
-look more and more volcanic. A chain of hills and cones, all very green,
-and connected by strips of valley-land so low that the edge of the
-sea-circle on the other side of the island can be seen through the gaps.
-We steam past truncated hills, past heights that have the look of the
-stumps of peaks cut half down,--ancient fire-mouths choked by tropical
-verdure.
-
-Southward, above and beyond the deep-green chain, tower other volcanic
-forms,--very far away, and so pale-gray as to seem like clouds. Those
-are the heights of Nevis,--another creation of the subterranean fires.
-
-It draws nearer, floats steadily into definition: a great mountain
-flanked by two small ones; three summits; the loftiest, with clouds
-packed high upon it, still seems to smoke;--the second highest displays
-the most symmetrical crater-form I have yet seen. All are still
-grayish-blue or gray. Gradually through the blues break long high gleams
-of green.
-
-As we steam closer, the island becomes all verdant from flood to sky;
-the great dead crater shows its immense wreath of perennial green. On
-the lower slopes little settlements are sprinkled in white, red, and
-brown: houses, windmills, sugar-factories, high chimneys are
-distinguishable;--cane-plantations unfold gold-green surfaces.
-
-
-[Illustration: OLD SUGAR MILL, ST. KITTS
-_As the steamer threads its way among the islands one
-sees these old mills dotting the cane fields like abandoned
-watchtowers._]
-
-
-We pass away. The island does not seem to sink behind us, but to become
-a ghost. All its outlines grow shadowy. For a little while it continues
-green;--but it is a hazy, spectral green, as of colored vapor. The sea
-to-day looks almost black: the south-west wind has filled the day with
-luminous mist; and the phantom of Nevis melts in the vast glow,
-dissolves utterly.... Once more we are out of sight of land,--in the
-centre of a blue-black circle of sea. The water-line cuts blackly
-against the immense light of the horizon,--a huge white glory that
-flames up very high before it fades and melts into the eternal blue.
-
-
-
-
-X
-
-
-Then a high white shape like a cloud appears before us,--on the
-purplish-dark edge of the sea. The cloud-shape enlarges, heightens
-without changing contour. It is not a cloud, but an island! Its outlines
-begin to sharpen,--with faintest pencillings of color. Shadowy valleys
-appear, spectral hollows, phantom slopes of pallid blue or green. The
-apparition is so like a mirage that it is difficult to persuade oneself
-one is looking at real land,--that it is not a dream. It seems to have
-shaped itself all suddenly out of the glowing haze. We pass many miles
-beyond it; and it vanishes into mist again.
-
-... Another and a larger ghost; but we steam straight upon it until it
-materializes,--Montserrat. It bears a family likeness to the islands we
-have already passed--one dominant height, with massing of bright crater
-shapes about it, and ranges of green hills linked together by low
-valleys. About its highest summit also hovers a flock of clouds. At the
-foot of the vast hill nestles the little white and red town of Plymouth.
-The single salute of our gun is answered by a stupendous broadside of
-echoes.
-
-Plymouth is more than half hidden in the rich foliage that fringes the
-wonderfully wrinkled green of the hills at their base;--it has a curtain
-of palms before it. Approaching, you discern only one or two façades
-above the sea-wall, and the long wharf projecting through an opening in
-the masonry, over which young palms stand thick as canes on a sugar
-plantation. But on reaching the street that descends towards the heavily
-bowldered shore you find yourself in a delightfully drowsy little
-burgh,--a miniature tropical town,--with very narrow paved ways,--steep,
-irregular, full of odd curves and angles,--and likewise of tiny courts
-everywhere sending up jets of palm-plumes, or displaying above their
-stone enclosures great candelabra-shapes of cacti. All is old-fashioned
-and quiet and queer and small. Even the palms are diminutive,--slim and
-delicate; there is a something in their poise and slenderness like the
-charm of young girls who have not yet ceased to be children, though soon
-to become women....
-
-There is a glorious sunset,--a fervid orange splendor, shading starward
-into delicate roses and greens. Then black boatmen come astern and
-quarrel furiously for the privilege of carrying one passenger ashore;
-and as they scream and gesticulate, half naked, their silhouettes
-against the sunset seem forms of great black apes.
-
-... Under steam and sail we are making south again, with a warm wind
-blowing south-east,--a wind very moist, very powerful, and soporific.
-Facing it, one feels almost cool; but the moment one is sheltered from
-it profuse perspiration bursts out. The ship rocks over immense swells;
-night falls very blackly; and there are surprising displays of
-phosphorescence.
-
-
-
-
-XI
-
-
-... Morning. A gold sunrise over an indigo sea. The wind is a great warm
-caress; the sky a spotless blue. We are steaming on Dominica,--the
-loftiest of the lesser Antilles. While the silhouette is yet all violet
-in distance, nothing more solemnly beautiful can well be imagined: a
-vast cathedral shape, whose spires are mountain peaks, towering in the
-horizon, sheer up from the sea.
-
-We stay at Roseau only long enough to land the mails, and wonder at the
-loveliness of the island. A beautifully wrinkled mass of green and blue
-and gray;--a strangely abrupt peaking and heaping of the land. Behind
-the green heights loom the blues; behind these the grays--all pinnacled
-against the sky-glow--thrusting up through gaps or behind promontories.
-Indescribably exquisite the foldings and hollowings of the emerald
-coast. In glen and vale the color of cane-fields shines like a pooling
-of fluid bronze, as if the luminous essence of the hill tints had been
-dripping down and clarifying there. Far to our left, a bright green spur
-pierces into the now turquoise sea; and beyond it, a beautiful mountain
-form, blue and curved like a hip, slopes seaward, showing lighted
-wrinkles here and there, of green. And from the foreground, against the
-blue of the softly outlined shape, cocoa-palms are curving,--all sharp
-and shining in the sun.
-
-... Another hour; and Martinique looms before us. At first it appears
-all gray, a vapory gray; then it becomes bluish-gray; then all green.
-
-It is another of the beautiful volcanic family: it owns the same hill
-shapes with which we have already become acquainted; its uppermost
-height is hooded with the familiar cloud; we see the same gold-yellow
-plains, the same wonderful varieties of verdancy, the same long green
-spins reaching out into the sea,--doubtless formed by old lava torrents.
-But all this is now repeated for us more imposingly, more
-grandiosely;--it is wrought upon a larger scale than anything we have
-yet seen. The semicircular sweep of the harbor, dominated by the
-eternally veiled summit of the Montagne Pelée (misnamed, since it is
-green to the very clouds), from which the land slopes down on either
-hand to the sea by gigantic undulations, is one of the fairest sights
-that human eye can gaze upon. Thus viewed, the whole island shape is a
-mass of green, with purplish streaks and shadowings here and there:
-glooms of forest-hollows, or moving umbrages of cloud. The city of St.
-Pierre, on the edge of the land, looks as if it had slid down the hill
-behind it, so strangely do the streets come tumbling to the port in
-cascades of masonry,--with a red billowing of tiled roofs over all, and
-enormous palms poking up through it,--higher even than the creamy white
-twin towers of its cathedral.
-
-We anchor in limpid blue water; the cannon-shot is answered by a
-prolonged thunder-dapping of mountain echo.
-
-
-[Illustration: BELLE FONTAINE, MARTINIQUE
-_In every cove tiny villages nestle. Nets ere drying
-in the sun. There is no sound. Utter peace broods
-in the shadows._]
-
-
-Then from the shore a curious flotilla bears down upon us. There is one
-boat, two or three canoes; but the bulk of the craft are simply wooden
-frames,--flat-bottomed structures, made from shipping-cases or
-lard-boxes, with triangular ends. In these sit naked boys,--boys between
-ten and fourteen years of age,--varying in color from a fine clear
-yellow to a deep reddish-brown or chocolate tint. They row with two
-little square, flat pieces of wood for paddles, clutched in each hand;
-and these lid-shaped things are dipped into the water on either side
-with absolute precision, in perfect time,--all the pairs of little naked
-arms seeming moved by a single impulse. There is much unconscious grace
-in this paddling, as well as skill. Then all about the ship these
-ridiculous little boats begin to describe circles,--crossing and
-intercrossing so closely as almost to bring them into collision, yet
-never touching. The boys have simply come out to dive for coins they
-expect passengers to fling to them. All are chattering creole, laughing
-and screaming shrilly; every eye, quick and bright as a bird's, watches
-the faces of the passengers on deck. "'Tention-là!" shriek a dozen
-soprani. Some passenger's fingers have entered his vest-pocket, and the
-boys are on the alert. Through the air, twirling and glittering, tumbles
-an English shilling, and drops into the deep water beyond the little
-fleet. Instantly all the lads leap, scramble, topple headforemost out of
-their little tubs, and dive in pursuit. In the blue water their lithe
-figures look perfectly red,--all but the soles of their upturned feet,
-which show nearly white. Almost immediately they all rise again: one
-holds up at arm's length above the water the recovered coin, and then
-puts it into his mouth for safe-keeping. Coin after coin is thrown in,
-and as speedily brought up; a shower of small silver follows, and not a
-piece is lost. These lads move through the water without apparent
-effort, with the suppleness of fishes. Most are decidedly fine-looking
-boys, with admirably rounded limbs, delicately formed extremities. The
-best diver and swiftest swimmer, however, is a red lad;--his face is
-rather commonplace, but his slim body has the grace of an antique
-bronze.
-
-
-... We are ashore in St. Pierre, the quaintest, queerest, and the
-prettiest withal, among West Indian cities: all stone-built and
-stone-flagged, with very narrow streets, wooden or zinc awnings, and
-peaked roofs of red tile, pierced by gabled dormers. Most of the
-buildings are painted in a clear yellow tone, which contrasts
-delightfully with the burning blue ribbon of tropical sky above; and no
-street is absolutely level; nearly all of them climb hills, descend into
-hollows, curve, twist, describe sudden angles. There is everywhere a
-loud murmur of running Water,--pouring through the deep gutters
-contrived between the paved thoroughfare and the absurd little
-sidewalks, varying in width from one to three feet. The architecture is
-quite old: it is seventeenth century, probably; and it reminds one a
-great deal of that characterizing the antiquated French quarter of New
-Orleans. All the tints, the forms, the vistas, would seem to have been
-especially selected or designed for aquarelle studies,--just to please
-the whim of some extravagant artist. The windows are frameless openings
-without glass; some have iron bars; all have heavy wooden shutters with
-movable slats, through which light and air can enter as through Venetian
-blinds. These are usually painted green or bright bluish-gray.
-
-So steep are the streets descending to the harbor,--by flights of old
-mossy stone steps,--that looking down them to the azure water you have
-the sensation of gazing from a cliff. From certain openings in the main
-street--the Rue Victor Hugo--you can get something like a bird's-eye
-view of the harbor with its shipping. The roofs of the street below are
-under your feet, and other streets are rising behind you to meet the
-mountain roads. They climb at a very steep angle, occasionally breaking
-into stairs of lava rock, all grass-tufted and moss-lined.
-
-The town has an aspect of great solidity: it is a creation of
-crag--looks almost as if it had been hewn out of one mountain fragment,
-instead of having been constructed stone by stone. Although commonly
-consisting of two stories and an attic only, the dwellings have walls
-three feet in thickness;--on one street, facing the sea, they are even
-heavier, and slope outward like ramparts, so that the perpendicular
-recesses of windows and doors have the appearance of being opened
-between buttresses. It may have been partly as a precaution against
-earthquakes, and partly for the sake of coolness, that the early
-colonial architects built thus;--giving the city a physiognomy so well
-worthy of its name,--the name of the Saint of the Rock.
-
-And everywhere rushes mountain water,--cool and crystal clear, washing
-the streets;--from time to time you come to some public fountain
-flinging a silvery column to the sun, or showering bright spray over a
-group of black bronze tritons or bronze swarms. The Tritons on the Place
-Bertin you will not readily forget;--their curving torsos might have
-been modelled from the forms of those ebon men who toil there tirelessly
-all day in the great heat, rolling hogsheads of sugar or casks of rum.
-And often you will note, in the course of a walk, little
-drinking-fountains contrived at the angle of a building, or in the thick
-walls bordering the bulwarks or enclosing public squares: glittering
-threads of water spurting through lion-lips of stone. Some mountain
-torrent, skilfully directed and divided, is thus perpetually refreshing
-the city,--supplying its fountains and cooling its courts.... This is
-called the Gouyave water: it is not the same stream which sweeps and
-purifies the streets.
-
-
-[Illustration: ST. PIERRE--THE CUT TO-DAY
-_The new town is slowly growing in the sinister shadow
-of La Montagne, which seems innocent enough in its
-cap of clouds._]
-
-
-Picturesqueness and color: these are the particular and the unrivalled
-charms of St. Pierre. As you pursue the Grande Rue, or Rue Victor
-Hugo,--which traverses the town through all its length, undulating over
-hill-slopes and into hollows and over a bridge,--you become more and
-more enchanted by the contrast of the yellow-glowing walls to right and
-left with the jagged strip of gentian-blue sky overhead. Charming also
-it is to watch the cross-streets climbing up to the fiery green of the
-mountains behind the town. On the lower side of the main thoroughfare
-other streets open in wonderful bursts of blue--warm blue of horizon
-and sea. The steps by which these ways descend towards the bay are black
-with age, and slightly mossed close to the wall on either side: they
-have an alarming steepness,--one might easily stumble from the upper
-into the lower street. Looking towards the water through these openings
-from the Grande Rue, you will notice that the sea-line cuts across the
-blue space just at the level of the upper story of the house on the
-lower street-corner. Sometimes, a hundred feet below, you see a ship
-resting in the azure aperture,--seemingly suspended there in sky-color,
-floating in blue light. And everywhere and always, through sunshine or
-shadow, comes to you the scent of the city,--the characteristic odor of
-St. Pierre;--a compound odor suggesting the intermingling of sugar and
-garlic in those strange tropical dishes which creoles love....
-
-
-
-
-XII
-
-
-... A population fantastic, astonishing,--a population of the Arabian
-Nights. It is many-colored; but the general dominant tint is yellow,
-like that of the town itself--yellow in the interblending of all the
-hues characterizing _mulâtresse, capresse, griffe, quarteronne,
-métisse, chabine_,--a general effect of rich brownish yellow. You are
-among a people of half-breeds,--the finest mixed race of the West
-Indies.
-
-Straight as palms, and supple and tall, these colored women and men
-impress one powerfully by their dignified carriage and easy elegance of
-movement. They walk without swinging of the shoulders;--the perfectly
-set torso seems to remain rigid; yet the step is a long full stride, and
-the whole weight is springily poised on the very tip of the bare foot.
-All, or nearly all, are without shoes: the treading of many naked feet
-over the heated pavement makes a continuous whispering sound.
-
-... Perhaps the most novel impression of all is that produced by the
-singularity and brilliancy of certain of the women's costumes. These
-developed, at least a hundred years ago, by some curious sumptuary law
-regulating the dress of slaves and colored people of free condition,--a
-law which allowed considerable liberty as to material and tint,
-prescribing chiefly form. But some of these fashions suggest the Orient:
-they offer beautiful audacities of color contrast; and the full-dress
-coiffure, above all, is so strikingly Eastern that one might be tempted
-to believe it was first introduced into the colony by some Mohammedan
-slave. It is merely an immense Madras handkerchief, which is folded
-about the head with admirable art, like a turban;--one bright end pushed
-through at the top in front, being left sticking up like a plume. Then
-this turban, always full of bright canary-color, is fastened with golden
-brooches,--one in front and one at either side. As for the remainder of
-the dress, it is simple enough: an embroidered, low-cut chemise with
-sleeves; a skirt or jupe, very long behind, but caught up and fastened
-in front below the breasts so as to bring the hem everywhere to a level
-with the end of the long chemise; and finally a _foulard_, or silken
-kerchief, thrown over the shoulders. These _jupes_ and _foulards_,
-however, are exquisite in pattern and color: bright crimson, bright
-yellow, bright blue, bright green,--lilac, violet, rose,--sometimes
-mingled in plaidings or checkerings or stripings: black with orange,
-sky-blue with purple. And whatever be the colors of the costume, which
-vary astonishingly, the coiffure must be yellow--brilliant, flashing
-yellow: the turban is certain to have yellow stripes or yellow squares.
-To this display add the effect of costly and curious jewellry: immense
-ear-rings, each pendant being formed of five gold cylinders joined
-together (cylinders sometimes two inches long, and an inch at least in
-circumference);--a necklace of double, triple, quadruple, or quintuple
-rows of large hollow gold beads (sometimes smooth, but generally
-graven)--the wonderful _collier-choux._ Now, this glowing jewellry is
-not a mere imitation of pure metal: the ear-rings are worth one hundred
-and seventy-five francs a pair; the necklace of a Martinique quadroon
-may cost five hundred or even one thousand francs.... It may be the gift
-of her lover, her _doudoux_; but such articles are usually purchased
-either on time by small payments, or bead by bead singly until the
-requisite number is made up.
-
-But few are thus richly attired: the greater number of the women
-carrying burdens on their heads,--peddling vegetables, cakes, fruit,
-ready-cooked food, from door to door,--are very simply dressed in a
-single plain robe of vivid colors ( douillette) reaching from neck to
-feet, and made with a train, but generally girded well up so as to sit
-dose to the figure and leave the lower limbs partly bare and perfectly
-free. These women can walk all day long up and down hill in the hot sun,
-without shoes, carrying loads of from one hundred to one hundred and
-fifty pounds on their heads; and if their little stock sometimes fails
-to come up to the accustomed weight stones are added to make it heavy
-enough. Doubtless the habit of carrying everything in this way from
-childhood has much to do with the remarkable vigor and erectness of the
-population.... I have seen a grand-piano carried on the heads of four
-men. With the women the load is very seldom steadied with the hand after
-having been once placed in position. The head remains almost motionless;
-but the black, quick, piercing eyes flash into every window and door-way
-to watch for a customer's signal. And the creole street-cries, uttered
-in a sonorous, far-reaching high key, interblend and produce random
-harmonies very pleasant to hear.
-
-... "_Çé moune-là, ça qui lè bel mango?_" Her basket of mangoes
-certainly weighs as much as herself.... "_Ça qui lè bel avocat?_" The
-alligator-pear--cuts and tastes like beautiful green cheese.... "_Ça
-qui lè escargot?_" Call her, if you like snails.... "_Ça qui lè
-titiri?_" Minuscule fish, of which a thousand would scarcely fill a
-teacup;--one of the most delicate of Martinique dishes.... "_Ça qui lè
-cannà?--Ça qui lè charbon?--Ça qui lè di pain aubè?_" (Who wants
-ducks, charcoal, or pretty little loaves shaped like cucumbers?)...
-"_Ça qui lè pain-mi?_" A sweet maize cake in the form of a tiny
-sugar-loaf, wrapped in a piece of banana leaf.... "_Ça qui lè
-fromassé_" (_pharmacie_) "_lapotécai créole?_" She deals in creole
-roots and herbs, and all the leaves that make tisanes or poultices or
-medicines: _matriquin, feuill-corossol, balai-doux, manioc-chapelle,
-Marie-Perrine, graine-enba-feuill, zhèbe-gras, bonnet-carré,
-zhèbe-codeinne, zhèbe-à-femme, zhèbe-à-châtte, canne-dleau, poque,
-fleu-papillon, laleigne_, and a score of others you never saw or heard
-of before.... "_Ça qui lè dicaments?_" (overalls for laboring-men)....
-"_Çé moune-là, si ou pa lè acheté canari-à dans lanmain main, moin
-ké crazé y._" The vender of red clay cooking-pots;--she has only one
-left, if you do not buy it she will break it!
-
-"_Hé! zenfants-lal--en deho'!_" Run out to meet her, little children,
-if you like the sweet rice-cakes.... "_Hé! gens pa' enho', gens pa'
-enbas, gens di galtas, moin ni bel gououôs poisson!_" Ho! people
-up-stairs, people down-stairs, and all ye good folks who dwell in the
-attics,--know that she has very big and very beautiful fish to sell!...
-"_Hé! ça qui lé mangé yonne?_"--those are "akras,"--flat
-yellow-brown cakes, made of pounded codfish, or beans, or both, seasoned
-with pepper and fried in butter.... And then comes the pastry-seller,
-black as ebony, but dressed all in white, and white-aproned and
-white-capped like a French cook, and chanting half in French, half in
-creole, with a voice like clarinet:
-
-
-"C'est louvouier de la pâtisserie qui passe,
-Qui té ka veillé pou' gagner son existence,
-Toujours content,
-Toujours joyeux.
-Oh, qu'ils sont bons!--
-Oh, qu'ils sont doux!"
-
-
-It is the pastryman passing by, who has been up all night to gain his
-livelihood,--always content,--always happy.... Oh, how good they are
-(the pies)!--Oh, how sweet they are!
-
-... The quaint stores bordering both sides of the street bear no names
-and no signs over their huge arched doors;--you must look well inside to
-know what business is being done. Even then you will scarcely be able to
-satisfy yourself as to the nature of the commerce;--for they are selling
-gridirons and frying-pans in the dry goods stores, holy images and
-rosaries in the notion stores, sweet-cakes and confectionery in the
-crockery stores, coffee and stationery in the millinery stores, cigars
-and tobacco in the china stores, cravats and laces and ribbons in the
-jewellry stores, sugar and guava jelly in the tobacco stores! But of
-all the objects exposed for sale the most attractive, because the most
-exotic, is a doll,--the Martinique _poupée._ There are two kinds,--the
-_poupée-capresse_, of which the body is covered with smooth
-reddish-brown leather, to imitate the tint of the _capresse_ race; and
-the _poupée-négresse_, covered with black leather. When dressed, these
-dolls range in price from eleven to thirty-five francs,--some, dressed
-to order, may cost even more; and a good _poupée-capresse_ is a
-delightful curiosity. Both varieties of dolls are attired in the costume
-of the people; but the _négresse_ is usually dressed the more simply.
-Each doll has a broidered chemise, a tastefully arranged _jupe_ of
-bright hues, a silk _foulard_, a _collier-choux_, ear-rings of five
-cylinders (_zanneaux-à-clous_), and a charming little yellow-banded
-Madras turban. Such a doll is a perfect costume-model,--a perfect
-miniature of Martinique fashions, to the smallest details of material
-and color: it is almost too artistic for a toy.
-
-
-These old costume-colors of Martinique--always relieved by brilliant
-yellow stripings or checkerings, except in the special violet dresses
-worn on certain religious occasions--have an indescribable
-luminosity,--a wonderful power of bringing out the fine warm tints of
-this tropical flesh. Such are the hues of those rich costumes Nature
-gives to her nearest of kin and her dearest,--her honey-lovers--her
-insects: these are wasp-colors. I do not know whether the fact ever
-occurred to the childish fancy of this strange race; but there is a
-creole expression which first suggested it to me;--in the patois,
-_pouend guêpe_, "to catch a wasp," signifies making love to a pretty
-colored girl.... And the more one observes these costumes, the more one
-feels that only Nature could have taught such rare comprehension of
-powers and harmonies among colors,--such knowledge of chromatic
-witchcrafts and chromatic laws.
-
-
-... This evening, as I write, La Pelée is more heavily coiffed than is
-her wont. Of purple and lilac cloud the coiffure is,--a magnificent
-Madras, yellow-banded by the sinking sun. La Pelée is in _costume de
-fête_, like a _capresse_ attired for a baptism or a ball; and in her
-phantom turban one great star glimmers for a brooch.
-
-
-
-
-XIII
-
-
-Following the Rue Victor Hugo in the direction of the Fort,--crossing
-the Rivière Roxelane, or Rivière des Blanchisseuses, whose rocky bed
-is white with unsoaped linen far as the eye can reach,--you descend
-through some tortuous narrow streets into the principal market-place.[1]
-A square--well paved and well shaded--with a fountain in the midst. Here
-the dealers are seated in rows;--one half of the market is devoted to
-fruits and vegetables; the other to the sale of fresh fish and meats. On
-first entering you are confused by the press and deafened by the storm
-of creole chatter;--then you begin to discern some order in this chaos,
-and to observe curious things.
-
-In the middle of the paved square, about the market fountain, are lying
-boats filled with fish, which have been carried up from the water upon
-men's shoulders,--or, if very heavy, conveyed on rollers.... Such
-fish!--blue, rosy, green, lilac, scarlet, gold: no spectral tints these,
-but luminous and strong like fire. Here also you see heaps of long thin
-fish looking like piled bars of silver,--absolutely dazzling,--of almost
-equal thickness from head to tail;--near by are heaps of flat pink
-creatures;--beyond these, again, a mass of azure backs and golden
-bellies. Among the stalls you can study the monsters,--twelve or fifteen
-feet long,--the shark, the _vierge_, the sword-fish, the _tonne_;--or
-the eccentricities. Some are very thin round disks, with long,
-brilliant, wormy feelers in lieu of fins, flickering in all directions
-like a moving pendant silver fringe;--others bristle with
-spines;--others, serpent-bodied, are so speckled as to resemble shapes
-of red polished granite. These are _moringues._ The _balaou, coulio,
-macriau, tazard, tcha-tcha, bonnique_, and _zorphi_ severally represent
-almost all possible tints of blue and violet. The _souri_ is rose-color
-and yellow; the _cirurgien_ is black, with yellow and red stripes; the
-_patate_, black and yellow; the _gros-zié_ is vermilion; the
-_couronné_, red and black. Their names are not less unfamiliar than
-their shapes and tints;--the _aiguille-de-mer_, or sea-needle, long and
-thin as a pencil;--the _Bon-Dié-manié-moin_ ("the Good-God handled
-me"), which has something like finger-marks upon it;--the _lambi_, a
-huge sea-snail;--the _pisquette_, the _laline_ (the Moon);--the
-_crapaud-de-mer_, or sea-toad, with a dangerous dorsal fin;--the
-_vermeil_, the _jacquot_, the _chaponne_, and fifty others.... As the
-sun gets higher, banana or balisier leaves are laid over the fish.
-
-Even more puzzling, perhaps, are the astonishing varieties of green,
-yellow, and parti-colored vegetables,--and fruits of all hues and
-forms,--out of which display you retain only a confused general memory
-of sweet smells and luscious colors. But there are some oddities which
-impress the recollection in a particular way. One is a great cylindrical
-ivory-colored thing,--shaped like an elephant's tusk, except that it is
-not curved: this is the head of the cabbage-palm, or palmiste,--the
-brain of one of the noblest trees in the tropics, which must be totally
-destroyed to obtain it. Raw or cooked, it is eaten in a great variety of
-ways,--in salads, stews, fritters, or _akras._ Soon after this compact
-cylinder of young germinating leaves has been removed, large worms begin
-to appear in the hollow of the dead tree,--the _vers-palmiste._ You may
-see these for sale in the market, crawling about in bowls or cans: they
-are said, when fried alive, to taste like almonds, and are esteemed as a
-great luxury.
-
-
-[Illustration: SUZANNE
-_A creole type, pretty, graceful, raven haired, with
-lovely olive golden skin and wholly likable._]
-
-
-... Then you begin to look about you at the faces of the black, brown,
-and yellow people who are watching you curiously from beneath their
-Madras turbans, or from under the shade of mushroom-shaped hats as large
-as umbrellas. And as you observe the bare backs, bare shoulders, bare
-legs and arms and feet, you will find that the colors of flesh are even
-more varied and surprising than the colors of fruit. Nevertheless, it is
-only with fruit-colors that many of these skin-tints can be correctly
-compared: the only terms of comparison used by the colored people
-themselves being terms of this kind,--such as _peau-chapotille_,
-"sapota-skin." The _sapota_ or _sapotille_ is a juicy brown fruit with a
-rind satiny like a human cuticle, and just the color, when flushed and
-ripe, of certain half-breed skins. But among the brighter half-breeds,
-the colors, I think, are much more fruit-like;--there are banana-tints,
-lemon-tones, orange-hues, with sometimes such a mingling of ruddiness as
-in the pink ripening of a mango. Agreeable to the eye the darker skins
-certainly are, and often very remarkable--all clear tones of bronze
-being represented; but the brighter tints are absolutely beautiful.
-Standing perfectly naked at door-ways, or playing naked in the sun,
-astonishing children may sometimes be seen,--banana-colored or orange
-babies. There is one rare race-type, totally unlike the rest: the skin
-has a perfect gold-tone, an exquisite metallic yellow; the eyes are
-long, and have long silky lashes;--the hair is a mass of thick, rich,
-glossy curls that show blue lights in the sun. What mingling of races
-produced this beautiful type?--there is some strange blood in the
-blending,--not of coolie, nor of African, nor of Chinese, although there
-are Chinese types here of indubitable beauty.[2]
-
-... All this population is vigorous, graceful, healthy: all you see
-passing by are well made--there are no sickly faces, ho scrawny limbs.
-If by some rare chance you encounter a person who has lost an arm or a
-leg, you can be almost certain you are looking at a victim of the
-fer-de-lance,--the serpent whose venom putrefies living tissue....
-Without fear of exaggerating facts, I can venture to say that the
-muscular development of the working-men here is something which must be
-seen in order to be believed;--to study fine displays of it, one should
-watch the blacks and half-breeds working naked to the waist,--on the
-landings, in the gas-houses and slaughter-houses, or on the nearest
-plantations. They are not generally large men, perhaps not
-extraordinarily powerful; but they have the aspect of sculptural or even
-of anatomical models; they seem absolutely devoid of adipose tissue;
-their muscles stand out with a saliency that astonishes the eye. At a
-tanning-yard, while I was watching a dozen blacks at work, a young
-mulatto with the mischievous face of a faun walked by, wearing nothing
-but a clout (_lantcho_) about his loins; and never, not even in bronze,
-did I see so beautiful a play of muscles. A demonstrator of anatomy
-could have used him for a class-model;--a sculptor wishing to shape a
-fine Mercury would have been satisfied to take a cast of such a body
-without thinking of making one modification from neck to heel. "Frugal
-diet is the cause of this physical condition," a young French professor
-assures me; "all these men," he says, "live upon salt codfish and
-fruit." But frugal living alone could new produce such symmetry and
-saliency of muscles: race-crossing, climate, perpetual exercise, healthy
-labor--many conditions must have combined to cause it. Also it is
-certain that this tropical sun has a tendency to dissolve spare flesh,
-to melt away all superfluous tissue, leaving the muscular fibre dense
-and solid as mahogany.
-
-
-At the _mouillage_, below a green _morne_, is the bathing-place. A rocky
-beach rounding away under heights of tropical wood;--palms curving out
-above the sand, or bending half-way across it. Ships at anchor in blue
-water, against golden-yellow horizon. A vast blue glow. Water clear as
-diamond, and lukewarm.
-
-It is about one hour after sunrise; and the higher parts of Montagne
-Pelée are still misty blue. Under the palms and among the lava rocks,
-and also in little cabins farther up the slope, bathers are dressing or
-undressing: the water is also dotted with heads of swimmers. Women and
-girls enter it well robed from feet to shoulders;--men go in very
-sparsely clad;--there are lads wearing nothing. Young boys--yellow and
-brown little fellows--run in naked, and swim out to pointed rocks that
-jut up black above the bright water. They climb up one at a time to dive
-down. Poised for the leap upon the black lava crag, and against the blue
-light of the sky, each lithe figure, gilded by the morning sun, has a
-statuesqueness and a luminosity impossible to paint in words. These
-bodies seem to radiate color; and the azure light intensifies the hue:
-it is idyllic, incredible;--Coomans used paler colors in his Pompeiian
-studies, and his figures were never so symmetrical. This flesh does not
-look like flesh, but like fruit-pulp....
-
-
-[Footnote 1: Since this was written the market has been removed to the
-Savane,--to allow of the erection of a large new market-building on the
-old rite; and the beautiful trees have been cut down.]
-
-[Footnote 2: I subsequently learned the mystery of this very strange and
-beautiful mixed race,--many fine specimens of which may also be seen in
-Trinidad. Three widely diverse elements have combined to form it:
-European, negro, and Indian,--but, strange to say, it is the most savage
-of these three bloods which creates the peculiar charm.... I cannot
-speak of this comely and extraordinary type without translating a
-passage from Dr. J. J. J. Cornilliac, an eminent Martinique physician,
-who recently published a most valuable series of studies upon the
-ethnology, climatology, and history of the Antilles. In these he writes:
-
-... "When, among the populations of the Antilles, we first notice those
-remarkable _métis_ whose olive skins, elegant and slender figures, fine
-straight profiles, and regular features remind us of the inhabitants of
-Madras or Pondicherry,--we ask ourselves in wonder, while looking at
-their long eyes, full of a strange and gentle melancholy (especially
-among the women), and at the black, rich, silky-gleaming hair curling in
-abundance over the temples and falling in profusion over the neck,--to
-what human race can belong this singular variety,--in which there is a
-dominant characteristic that seems indelible, and always shows more and
-more strongly in proportion as the type is further removed from the
-African element. It is the Carib blood,--blended with blood of Europeans
-and of blacks,--which in spite of all subsequent crossings, and in spite
-of the fact that it has not been renewed for more than two hundred
-years, still conserves as markedly as at the time of the first
-interblending, the race-characteristic that invariably reveals its
-presence in the blood of every being through whose veins it
-flows."--"Recherches chronologiques et historiques sur l'Origine et la
-Propagation de la Fièvre Jaune aux Antilles." Par J. J. J. Cornilliac.
-Fort-de-France: Imprimerie du Gouvernement. 1886.
-
-But I do not think the term "olive" always indicates the color of these
-skins, which seemed to me exactly the tint of gold; and the hair flashes
-with bluish lights, like the plumage of certain black birds.]
-
-
-
-
-XIV
-
-
-... Everywhere crosses, little shrines, wayside chapels, statues of
-saints. You will see crucifixes and statuettes even in the forks or
-hollows of trees shadowing the high-roads. As you ascend these towards
-the interior you will see, every mile or half-mile, some chapel, or a
-cross erected upon a pedestal of masonry, or some little niche contrived
-in a wall, closed by a wire grating, through which the image of a Christ
-or a Madonna is visible. Lamps are kept burning all night before these
-figures. But the village of Morne Rouge--some two thousand feet above
-the sea, and about an hour's drive from St. Pierre--is chiefly
-remarkable for such displays: it is a place of pilgrimage as well as a
-health resort. Above the village, upon the steep slope of a higher
-morne, one may note a singular succession of little edifices ascending
-to the summit,--fourteen little tabernacles, each containing a _relievo_
-representing some incident of Christ's Passion. This is called _Le
-Calvaire_: it requires more than a feeble piety to perform the religious
-exercise of climbing the height, and saying a prayer before each little
-shrine on the way. From the porch of the crowning structure the village
-of Morne Rouge appears so far below that it makes one almost dizzy to
-look at it; but even for the profane one ascent is well worth making,
-for the sake of the beautiful view. On all the neighboring heights
-around are votive chapels or great crucifixes.
-
-St. Pierre is less peopled with images than Morne Rouge; but it has
-several colossal ones, which may be seen from any part of the harbor. On
-the heights above the middle quarter, or _Centre_, a gigantic Christ
-overlooks the bay; and from the Morne d'Orange, which bounds the city on
-the south, a great white Virgin--Notre Dame de la Garde, patron of
-mariners--watches above the ships at anchor in the mouillage.
-
-... Thrice daily, from the towers of the white cathedral, a superb chime
-of bells rolls its _carillon_ through the town. On great holidays the
-bells are wonderfully rung;--the ringers are African, and something of
-African feeling is observable in their impressive but incantatory manner
-of ringing. The bourdon must have cost a fortune. When it is made to
-speak, the effect is startling: all the city vibrates to a weird sound
-difficult to describe,--an abysmal, quivering moan, producing unfamiliar
-harmonies as the voices of the smaller bells are seized and interblended
-by it.... One will not easily forget the ringing of a bel-midi.
-
-... Behind the cathedral, above the peaked city roofs, and at the foot
-of the wood-clad Morne d'Orange, is the _Cimetière du Mouillage_.... It
-is full of beauty,--this strange tropical cemetery. Most of the low
-tombs are covered with small square black and white tiles, set exactly
-after the fashion of the squares on a chess-board; at the foot of each
-grave stands a black cross, bearing at its centre a little white plaque,
-on which the name is graven in delicate and tasteful lettering. So
-pretty these little tombs are, that you might almost believe yourself in
-a toy cemetery. Here and there, again, are miniature marble chapels
-built over the dead,--containing white Madonnas and Christs and little
-angels,--while flowering creepers climb and twine about the pillars.
-Death seems so luminous here that one thinks of it unconsciously as a
-soft rising from this soft green earth,--like a vapor invisible,--to
-melt into the prodigious day. Everything is bright and neat and
-beautiful; the air is sleepy with jasmine scent and odor of white
-lilies; and the palm--emblem of immortality--lifts its head a hundred
-feet into the blue light. There are rows of these majestic and symbolic
-trees;--two enormous ones guard the entrance;--the others rise from
-among the tombs,--white-stemmed, out-spreading their huge parasols of
-verdure higher than the cathedral towers.
-
-Behind all this, the dumb green life of the morne seems striving to
-descend, to invade the rest of the dead. It thrusts green hands over the
-wall,--pushes strong roots underneath;--it attacks every joint of the
-stonework, patiently, imperceptibly, yet almost irresistibly.
-
-
-[Illustration: CIMETIÈRE DU MOUILLAGE, ST. PIERRE
-_Under the shadow of the mountain the dead sleep as
-peacefully as though nothing had happened._]
-
-
-... Some day there may be a great change in the little city of St.
-Pierre;--there may be less money and less zeal and less remembrance of
-the lost. Then from the morne, over the bulwark, the green host will
-move down unopposed;--creepers will prepare the way, dislocating the
-pretty tombs, pulling away the checkered tiling;--then will come the
-giants, rooting deeper,--feeling for the dust of hearts, groping among
-the bones;--and all that love has hidden away shall be restored to
-Nature,--absorbed into the rich juices of her verdure,--revitalized in
-her bursts of color,--resurrected in her upliftings of emerald and gold
-to the great sun....
-
-
-
-
-XV
-
-
-Seen from the bay, the little red-white-and-yellow city forms but one
-multicolored streak against the burning green of the lofty island. There
-is no naked soil, no bare rock: the chains of the mountains, rising by
-successive ridges towards the interior, are still covered with
-forests;--tropical woods ascend the peaks to the height of four and five
-thousand feet. To describe the beauty of these woods--even of those
-covering the mornes in the immediate vicinity of St. Pierre--seems to me
-almost impossible;--there are forms and colors which appear to demand
-the creation of new words to express. Especially is this true in regard
-to hue;--the green of a tropical forest is something which one familiar
-only with the tones of Northern vegetation can form no just conception
-of: it is a color that conveys the idea of green fire.
-
-You have only to follow the high-road leading out of St. Pierre by way
-of the Savane du Fort to find yourself, after twenty minutes' walk, in
-front of the Morne Parnasse, and before the verge of a high
-wood,--remnant of the enormous growth once covering all the island. What
-a tropical forest is, as seen from without, you will then begin to feel,
-with a sort of awe, while you watch that beautiful upclimbing of green
-shapes to the height of perhaps a thousand feet overhead. It presents
-one seemingly solid surface of vivid color,--rugose like a cliff. You do
-not readily distinguish whole trees in the mass;--you only perceive
-suggestions, dreams of trees, Doresqueries. Shapes that seem to be
-staggering under weight of creepers rise a hundred feet above
-you;--others, equally huge, are towering above these;--and still higher,
-a legion of monstrosities are nodding, bending, tossing up green arms,
-pushing out great knees, projecting curves as of backs and shoulders,
-intertwining mockeries of limbs. No distinct head appears except where
-some palm pushes up its crest in the general fight for sun. All else
-looks as if under a veil,--hidden and half smothered by heavy drooping
-things. Blazing green vines cover every branch and stem;--they form
-draperies and tapestries and curtains and motionless cascades--pouring
-down over all projections like a thick silent flood: an amazing
-inundation of parasitic life.... It is a weird and awful beauty that you
-gaze upon; and yet the spectacle is imperfect. These woods have been
-decimated;--the finest trees have been cut down: you see only a ruin of
-what was. To see the true primeval forest, you must ride well into the
-interior.
-
-The absolutism of green does not, however, always prevail in these
-woods. During a brief season, corresponding to some of our winter
-months, the forests suddenly break into a very conflagration of color,
-caused by the blossoming of the lianas--crimson, canary-yellow, blue,
-and white. There are other flowerings, indeed; but that of the lianas
-alone has chromatic force enough to change the aspect of a landscape.
-
-
-
-
-XVI
-
-
-... If it is possible for a West Indian forest to be described at all,
-it could not be described more powerfully than it has been by Dr. E.
-Rufz, a creole of Martinique, from one of whose works I venture to
-translate the following remarkable pages:
-
-... "The sea alone, because it is the most colossal of earthly
-spectacles,--only the sea can afford us any term of comparison for the
-attempt to describe a _grand-bois_;--but even then one must imagine the
-sea on a day of storm, suddenly immobilized in the expression of its
-mightiest fury. For the summits of these vast woods repeat all the
-inequalities of the land they cover; and these inequalities are
-mountains from 4200 to 4800 feet in height, and valleys of corresponding
-profundity. All this is hidden, blended together, smoothed over by
-verdure, in soft and enormous undulations,--in immense billowings of
-foliage. Only, instead of a blue line at the horizon, you have a green
-line; instead of flashings of blue, you have flashings of green,--and in
-all the tints, in all the combinations of which green is capable: deep
-green, light green, yellow-green, black-green.
-
-"When your eyes grow weary--if it indeed be possible for them to
-weary--of contemplating the exterior of these tremendous woods, try to
-penetrate a little into their interior. What an inextricable chaos it
-is! The sands of a sea are not more closely pressed together than the
-trees are here: some straight, some curved, some upright, some
-toppling,--fallen, or leaning against one another, or heaped high upon
-each other. Climbing lianas, which cross from one tree to the other,
-like ropes passing from mast to mast, help to fill up all the gaps in
-this treillage; and parasites--not timid parasites like ivy or like
-moss, but parasites which are trees self-grafted upon trees--dominate
-the primitive trunks, overwhelm them, usurp the place of their foliage,
-and fall back to the ground, forming factitious weeping-willows. You do
-not find here, as in the great forests of the North, the eternal
-monotony of birch and fir: this is the kingdom of infinite
-variety;--species the most diverse elbow each other, interlace, strangle
-and devour each other: all ranks and orders are confounded, as in a
-human mob. The soft and tender _balisier_ opens its parasol of leaves
-beside the _gommier_, which is the cedar of the colonies;--you see the
-_acomat_, the _courbaril_, the mahogany, the _tendre-à-caillou_, the
-iron-wood... but as well enumerate by name all the soldiers of an army!
-Our oak, the balata, forces the palm to lengthen itself prodigiously in
-order to get a few thin beams of sunlight; for it is as difficult here
-for the poor trees to obtain one glance from this King of the world, as
-for us, subjects of a monarchy, to obtain one look from our monarch. As
-for the soil, it is needless to think of looking at it: it lies as far
-below us probably as the bottom of the sea;--it disappeared, ever so
-long ago, under the heaping of débris,--under a sort of manure that has
-been accumulating there since the creation: you sink into it as into
-slime; you walk upon putrefied trunks, in a dust that has no name! Here
-indeed it is that one can get some comprehension of what vegetable
-antiquity signifies;--a lurid light (_lurida lux_), greenish, as wan at
-noon as the light of the moon at midnight, confuses forms and lends them
-a vague and fantastic aspect; a mephitic humidity exhales from all
-parts; an odor of death prevails; and a calm which is not silence (for
-the ear fancies it can hear the great movement of composition and of
-decomposition perpetually going on) tends to inspire you with that old
-mysterious horror which the ancients felt in the primitive forests of
-Germany and of Gaul:"
-
-"'Arboribus suus horror inest.'"[3]
-
-
-[Footnote 3: "Enquête sur le Serpent de la Martinique (Vipère Fer-de-Lance,
-Bothrops Lancéolé, etc.)." Par le Docteur E. Rufs. 2 ed. 1859 Paris:
-Germer-Ballière, pp. 55-57 (note).]
-
-
-
-
-XVII
-
-
-But the sense of awe inspired by a tropic forest is certainly greater
-than the mystic fear which any wooded wilderness of the North could ever
-have created. The brilliancy of colors that seem almost preternatural;
-the vastness of the ocean of frondage, and the violet blackness of rare
-gaps, revealing its inconceived profundity; and the million mysterious
-sounds which make up its perpetual murmur,--compel the idea of a
-creative force that almost terrifies. Man feels here like an
-insect,--fears like an insect on the alert for merciless enemies: and
-the fear is not unfounded. To enter these green abysses without a guide
-were folly: even with the best of guides there is peril. Nature is
-dangerous here: the powers that build are also the powers that putrefy;
-here life and death are perpetually interchanging office in the
-never-ceasing transformation of forces,--melting down and reshaping
-living substance simultaneously within the same vast crucible. There are
-trees distilling venom, there are plants that have fangs, there are
-perfumes that affect the brain, there are cold green creepers whose
-touch blisters flesh like fire; while in all the recesses and the
-shadows is a swarming of unfamiliar life, beautiful or hideous,--insect,
-reptile, bird,--inter-warring, devouring, preying.... But the great
-peril of the forest--the danger which deters even the naturalist--is
-the presence of the terrible fer-de-lance (_trigonocephalus
-lanceolatus,--bothrops lanceolatus,--craspodecephalus_),--deadliest of
-the Occidental thanatophidia, and probably one of the deadliest serpents
-of the known world.
-
-... There are no less than eight varieties of it,--the most common being
-the dark gray, speckled with black--precisely the color that enables the
-creature to hide itself among the protruding roots of the trees, by
-simply coiling about them, and concealing its triangular head. Sometimes
-the snake is a clear bright yellow: then it is difficult to distinguish
-it from the bunch of bananas among which it conceals itself. Or the
-creature may be a dark yellow,--or a yellowish brown,--or the color of
-wine-lees, speckled pink and black,--or dead black with a yellow
-belly,--or black with a pink belly: all hues of tropical forest-mould,
-of old bark, of decomposing trees.... The iris of the eye is
-orange,--with red flashes: it glows at night like burning charcoal.
-
-And the fer-de-lance reigns absolute king over the mountains and the
-ravines; he is lord of the forest and the solitudes by day, and by night
-he extends his dominion over the public roads, the familiar paths, the
-parks, the pleasure resorts. People must remain at home after dark,
-unless they dwell in the city itself: if you happen to be out visiting
-after sunset, only a mile from town, your friends will caution you
-anxiously not to follow the boulevard as you go back, and to keep as
-closely as possible to the very centre of the path. Even in the
-brightest noon you cannot venture to enter the woods without an
-experienced escort; you cannot trust your eyes to detect danger: at any
-moment a seeming branch, a knot of lianas, a pink or gray root, a clump
-of pendent yellow fruit may suddenly take life, writhe, stretch, spring,
-strike.... Then you will need aid indeed, and most quickly; for within
-the span of a few heart-beats the wounded flesh chills, tumefies,
-softens. Soon it changes color, and begins to spot violaceously; while
-an icy coldness creeps through all the blood. If the _panseur_ or the
-physician arrives in time, and no vein has been pierced, there is hope;
-but it more often happens that the blow is received directly on a vein
-of the foot or ankle,--in which case nothing can save the victim. Even
-when life is saved the danger is not over. Necrosis of the tissues is
-likely to set in: the flesh corrupts, falls from the bone sometimes in
-tatters; and the colors of its putrefaction simulate the hues of
-vegetable decay,--the ghastly grays and pinks and yellows of trunks
-rotting down into the dark soil which gave them birth. The human victim
-moulders as the trees moulder,--crumbles and dissolves as crumbles the
-substance of the dead palms and balatas: the Death-of-the-Woods is upon
-him.
-
-To-day a fer-de-lance is seldom found exceeding six feet in length; but
-the dimensions of the reptile, at least, would seem to have been
-decreased considerably by man's warring upon it since the time of Père
-Labat, who mentions having seen a fer-de-lance nine feet long and five
-inches in diameter. He also speaks of a _couresse_--a beautiful and
-harmless serpent said to kill the fer-de-lance--over ten feet long and
-thick as a man's leg; but a large couresse is now seldom seen. The negro
-woodsmen kill both creatures indiscriminately; and as the older reptiles
-are the least likely to escape observation, the chances for the survival
-of extraordinary individuals lessen with the yearly decrease of
-forest-area.
-
-... But it may be doubted whether the number of deadly snakes has been
-greatly lessened since the early colonial period. Each female produces
-viviparously from forty to sixty young at a birth. The favorite haunts
-of the fer-de-lance are to a large extent either inaccessible or
-unexplored, and its multiplication is prodigious. It is really only the
-surplus of its swarming that over-pours into the cane-fields, and makes
-the public roads dangerous after dark;--yet more than three hundred
-snakes have been killed in twelve months on a single plantation. The
-introduction of the Indian mongoose, or _mangouste_ (ichneumon), proved
-futile as a means of repressing the evil. The mangouste kills the
-fer-de-lance when it has a chance; but it also kills fowls and sucks
-their eggs, which condemns it irrevocably with the country negroes, who
-live to a considerable extent by raising and selling chickens.
-
-... Domestic animals are generally able to discern the presence of their
-deadly enemy long before a human eye can perceive it. If your horse
-rears and plunges in the darkness, trembles and sweats, do not try to
-ride on until you are assured the way is clear. Or your dog may come
-running back, whining, shivering: you will do well to accept his
-warning. The animals kept about country residences usually try to fight
-for their lives; the hen battles for her chickens; the bull endeavors to
-gore and stamp his supple enemy; the pig gives more successful combat;
-but the creature who fears the monster least is the brave cat. Seeing a
-snake, she at once carries her kittens to a place of safety, then boldly
-advances to the encounter. She will walk to the very limit of the
-serpent's striking range, and begin to feint,--teasing him, startling
-him, trying to draw his blow. How the emerald and the topazine eyes glow
-then!--they are flames! A moment more and the triangular head, hissing
-from the coil, flashes swift as if moved by wings. But swifter still the
-stroke of the armed paw that dashes the horror aside, flinging it
-mangled in the dust. Nevertheless, pussy does not yet dare to
-spring;--the enemy, still active, has almost instantly reformed his
-coil;--but she is again in front of him, watching,--vertical pupil
-against vertical pupil. Again the lashing stroke; again the beautiful
-countering;--again the living death is hurled aside; and now the scaled
-skin is deeply torn,--one eye socket has ceased to flame. Once more the
-stroke of the serpent; once more the light, quick, cutting blow. But the
-trigonocephalus is blind, is stupefied;--before he can attempt to coil
-pussy has leaped upon him,--nailing the horrible flat head fast to the
-ground with her two sinewy paws. Now let him lash, writhe, twine, strive
-to strangle her!--in vain! he will never lift his head: an instant more,
-and he lies still:--the keen white teeth of the cat have severed the
-vertebra just behind the triangular skull!...
-
-
-
-
-XVIII
-
-
-The Jardin des Plantes is not absolutely secure from the visits of the
-serpent; for the trigonocephalus goes everywhere,--mounting to the very
-summits of the cocoa-palms, swimming rivers, ascending walls, hiding in
-palm-thatched roofs, breeding in bagasse heaps. But, despite what has
-been printed to the contrary, this reptile fears man and hates light: it
-rarely shows itself voluntarily during the day. Therefore, if you desire
-to obtain some conception of the magnificence of Martinique vegetation,
-without incurring the risk of entering the high woods, you can do so by
-visiting the Jardin des Plantes,--only taking care to use your eyes well
-while climbing over fallen trees, or picking your way through dead
-branches. The garden is less than a mile from the city, on the slopes of
-the Morne Parnasse; and the primitive forest itself has been utilized in
-the formation of it,--so that the greater part of the garden is a
-primitive growth. Nature has accomplished here infinitely more than art
-of man (though such art has done much to lend the place its charm),--and
-until within a very recent time the result might have been deemed,
-without exaggeration, one of the wonders of the world.
-
-A moment after passing the gate you are in twilight, though the sun may
-be blinding on the white road without. All about you is a green
-gloaming, up through which you see immense trunks rising. Follow the
-first path that slopes up on your left as you proceed, if you wish to
-obtain the best general view of the place in the shortest possible time.
-As you proceed, the garden on your right deepens more and more into a
-sort of ravine;--on your left rises a sort of foliage-shrouded cliff;
-and all this in a beautiful crepuscular dimness, made by the foliage of
-great trees meeting overhead. Palms rooted a hundred feet below you hold
-their heads a hundred feet above you; yet they can barely reach the
-light.... Farther on the ravine widens to frame in two tiny lakes,
-dotted with artificial islands, which are miniatures of Martinique,
-Guadeloupe, and Dominica: these are covered with tropical plants, many
-of which are total strangers even here: they are natives of India,
-Senegambia, Algeria, and the most eastern East. Arborescent ferns of
-unfamiliar elegance curve up from path-verge or lake-brink; and the
-great _arbre-du-voyageur_ outspreads its colossal fan. Giant lianas
-droop down over the way in loops and festoons; tapering green cords,
-which are creepers descending to take root, hang everywhere; and
-parasites with stems thick as cables coil about the trees like boas.
-Trunks shooting up out of sight, into the green wilderness above,
-display no bark; you cannot guess what sort of trees they are; they are
-so thickly wrapped in creepers as to seem pillars of leaves. Between you
-and the sky, where everything is fighting for sun, there is an almost
-unbroken vault of leaves, a cloudy green confusion in which nothing
-particular is distinguishable.
-
-
-[Illustration: ROAD TO MORNE ROUGE
-_A riot of green fading off into distant grays, and
-nearly always a glint of blue ocean in the distance._]
-
-
-You come to breaks now and then in the green steep to your
-left,--openings created for cascades pouring down from one mossed basin
-of brown stone to another,--or gaps occupied by flights of stone steps,
-green with mosses, and chocolate-colored by age. These steps lead to
-loftier paths; and all the stone-work,--the grottos, bridges, basins,
-terraces, steps,--are darkened by time and velveted with mossy
-things.... It is of another century, this garden: special ordinances
-were passed concerning it during the French Revolution (_An. II._);--it
-is very quaint; it suggests an art spirit as old as Versailles, or
-older; but it is indescribably beautiful even now.
-
-... At last you near the end, to hear the roar of falling water;--there
-is a break in the vault of green above the bed of a river below you; and
-at a sudden turn you come in sight of the cascade. Before you is the
-Morne itself; and against the burst of descending light you discern a
-precipice-verge. Over it, down one green furrow in its brow, tumbles the
-rolling foam of a cataract, like falling smoke, to be caught below in a
-succession of moss-covered basins. The first dear leap of the water is
-nearly seventy feet.... Did Josephine ever rest upon that shadowed bench
-near by?... She knew all these paths by heart: surely they must have
-haunted her dreams in the after-time!
-
-Returning by another path, you may have a view of other cascades--though
-none so imposing. But they are beautiful; and you will not soon forget
-the effect of one,--flanked at its summit by white-stemmed palms which
-lift their leaves so high into the light that the loftiness of them
-gives the sensation of vertigo.... Dizzy also the magnificence of the
-great colonnade of palmistes and angelins, two hundred feet high,
-through which you pass if you follow the river-path from the
-cascade,--the famed _Allée des duels_....
-
-The vast height, the pillared solemnity of the ancient trees in the
-green dimness, the solitude, the strangeness of shapes but half
-seen,--suggesting fancies of silent aspiration, or triumph, or
-despair,--all combine to produce a singular impression of awe.... You
-are alone; you hear no human voice,--no sounds but the rushing of the
-river over its volcanic rocks, and the creeping of millions of lizards
-and tree-frogs and little toads. You see no human face; but you see all
-around you the labor of man being gnawed and devoured by nature,--broken
-bridges, sliding steps, fallen arches, strangled fountains with empty
-basins;--and everywhere arises the pungent odor of decay. This
-omnipresent odor affects one unpleasantly;--it never ceases to remind
-you that where Nature is most puissant to charm, there also is she
-mightiest to destroy.
-
-The beautiful garden is now little more than a wreck of what it once
-was: since the fall of the Empire it has been shamefully abused and
-neglected. Some _agronome_ sent out to take charge of it by the
-Republic, began its destruction by cutting down acres of enormous and
-magnificent trees,--including a superb alley of palms,--for the purpose
-of experimenting with roses. But the rose-trees would not be cultivated
-there; and the serpents avenged the demolition by making the
-experimental garden unsafe to enter;--they always swarm into underbrush
-and shrubbery after forest-trees have been cleared away.... Subsequently
-the garden was greatly damaged by storms and torrential rains; the
-mountain river overflowed, carrying bridges away and demolishing
-stone-work. No attempt was made to repair these destructions; but
-neglect alone would not have ruined the loveliness of the
-place;--barbarism was necessary! Under the present negro-radical régime
-orders have been given for the wanton destruction of trees older than
-the colony itself;--and marvels that could not be replaced in a hundred
-generations were cut down and converted into charcoal for the use of
-public institutions.
-
-
-
-
-XIX
-
-
-... How gray seem the words of poets in the presence of this Nature!...
-The enormous silent poem of color and light--(you who know only the
-North do not know color, do not know light!)--of sea and sky, of the
-woods and the peaks, so far surpasses imagination as to paralyze
-it--mocking the language of admiration, defyingall power of expression.
-That is before you which never can be painted or chanted, because there
-is no cunning of art or speech able to reflect it. Nature realizes your
-most hopeless ideals of beauty, even as one gives toys to a child. And
-the sight of this supreme terrestrial expression of creative magic numbs
-thought. In the great centres of civilization we admire and study only
-the results of mind,--the products of human endeavor: here one views
-only the work of Nature,--but Nature in all her primeval power, as in
-the legendary frostless morning of creation. Man here seems to bear
-scarcely more relation to the green life about him than the insect; and
-the results of human effort seem impotent by comparison with the
-operation of those vast blind forces which clothe the peaks and crown
-the dead craters with impenetrable forest. The air itself seems inimical
-to thought,--soporific, and yet pregnant with activities of dissolution
-so powerful that the mightiest tree begins to melt like wax from the
-moment it has ceased to live. For man merely to exist is an effort; and
-doubtless in the perpetual struggle of the blood to preserve itself from
-fermentation, there is such an expenditure of vital energy as leaves
-little surplus for mental exertion.
-
-... Scarcely less than poet or philosopher, the artist, I fancy, would
-feel his helplessness. In the city he may find wonderful picturesqueness
-to invite his pencil, but when he stands face to face alone with Nature
-he will discover that he has no colors! The luminosities of tropic
-foliage could only be imitated in fire. He who desires to paint a West
-Indian forest,--a West Indian landscape,--must take his view from some
-great height, through which the colors come to his eye softened and
-subdued by distance,--toned with blues or purples by the astonishing
-atmosphere.
-
-
-[Illustration: ST. PIERRE-STREET AMONG THE RUINS
-_Exuberant vegetation has claimed the ruins and invaded
-the beautiful stone-paved streets of the former
-capital._]
-
-
-... It is sunset as I write these lines, and there are witchcrafts of
-color. Looking down the narrow, steep street opening to the bay, I see
-the motionless silhouette of the steamer on a perfectly green
-sea,--under a lilac sky,--against a prodigious orange light.
-
-
-
-
-XX
-
-
-In these tropic latitudes Night does not seem "to fall,"--to descend
-over the many-peaked land: it appears to rise up, like an exhalation,
-from the ground. The coast-lines darken first;--then the slopes and the
-lower hills and valleys become shadowed;--then, very swiftly, the gloom
-mounts to the heights, whose very loftiest peak may remain glowing like
-a volcano at its tip for several minutes after the rest of the island is
-veiled in blackness and all the stars are out....
-
-... Tropical nights have a splendor that seems strange to northern eyes.
-The sky does not look so high--so far away as in the North; but the
-stars are larger, and the luminosity greater.
-
-With the rising of the moon all the violet of the sky flushes;--there is
-almost such a rose-color as heralds northern dawn.
-
-Then the moon appears over the mornes, very large, very bright--brighter
-certainly than many a befogged sun one sees in northern Novembers; and
-it seems to have a weird magnetism--this tropical moon. Night-birds,
-insects, frogs,--everything that can sing,--all sing very low on the
-nights of great moons. Tropical wood-life begins with dark: in the
-immense white light of a full moon this nocturnal life seems afraid to
-cry out as usual. Also, this moon has a singular effect on the nerves.
-It is very difficult to sleep on such bright nights: you feel such a
-vague uneasiness as the coming of a great storm gives....
-
-
-
-
-XXI
-
-
-You reach Fort-de-France, the capital of Martinique, by steamer from St.
-Pierre, in about an hour and a half.... There is an overland route--_La
-Trace_; but it is a twenty-five-mile ride, and a weary one in such a
-climate, notwithstanding the indescribable beauty of the landscapes
-which the lofty road commands.
-
-... Rebuilt in wood after the almost total destruction by an earthquake
-of its once picturesque streets of stone, Fort-de-France (formerly
-Fort-Royal) has little of outward interest by comparison with St.
-Pierre. It lies in a low, moist plain, and has few remarkable buildings:
-you can walk all over the little town in about half an hour. But the
-Savane,--the great green public square, with its grand tamarinds and
-_sabliers_,--would be worth the visit alone, even were it not made
-romantic by the marble memory of Josephine.
-
-I went to look at the white dream of her there, a creation of
-master-sculptors.... It seemed to me absolutely lovely.
-
-Sea winds have bitten it; tropical rains have streaked it: some
-microscopic growth has darkened the exquisite hollow of the throat. And
-yet such is the human charm of the figure that you almost fancy you are
-gazing at a living presence.... Perhaps the profile is less artistically
-real,--statuesque to the point of betraying the chisel; but when you
-look straight up into the sweet creole face, you can believe she lives:
-all the wonderful West Indian charm of the woman is there.
-
-
-[Illustration: THE EMPRESS JOSEPHINE
-"_I went to look at the white dream of her there a
-creation of master-sculptors.... It seems to me absolutely
-lovely._"]
-
-
-She is standing just in the centre of the Savane, robed in the fashion
-of the First Empire, with gracious arms and shoulders bare: one hand
-leans upon a medallion bearing the eagle profile of Napoleon.... Seven
-tall palms stand in a circle around her, lifting their comely heads into
-the blue glory of the tropic day. Within their enchanted circle you feel
-that you tread holy ground,--the sacred soil of artist and poet;--here
-the recollections of memoir-writers vanish away; the gossip of history
-is hushed for you; you no longer care to know how rumor has it that she
-spoke or smiled or wept: only the bewitchment of her lives under the
-thin, soft, swaying shadows of those feminine palms.... Over violet
-space of summer sea, through the vast splendor of azure light, she is
-looking back to the place of her birth, back to beautiful drowsy
-Trois-Islets,--and always with the same half-dreaming, half-plaintive
-smile,--unutterably touching....
-
-
-
-
-XXII
-
-
-One leaves Martinique with regret, even after so brief a stay: the old
-colonial life itself, not less than the revelation of tropic nature,
-having in this island a quality of uniqueness, a special charm, unlike
-anything previously seen.... We steam directly for Barbadoes;--the
-vessel will touch at the intervening islands only on her homeward route.
-
-... Against a hot wind south,--under a sky always deepening in beauty.
-Towards evening dark clouds begin to rise before us; and by nightfall
-they spread into one pitch-blackness over all the sky. Then comes a wind
-in immense sweeps, lifting the water,--but a wind that is still
-strangely warm. The ship rolls heavily in the dark for an hour or
-more;--then torrents of tepid rain make the sea smooth again; the clouds
-pass, and the violet transparency of tropical night reappears,--ablaze
-with stars.
-
-At early morning a long low land appears on the horizon,--totally unlike
-the others we have seen; it has no visible volcanic forms. That is
-Barbadoes,--a level burning coral coast,--a streak of green,
-white-edged, on the verge of the sea. But hours pass before the green
-line begins to show outlines of foliage.
-
-... As we approach the harbor an overhanging black cloud suddenly bursts
-down in illuminated rain,--through which the shapes of moored ships seem
-magnified as through a golden fog. It ceases as suddenly as it began;
-the cloud vanishes utterly; and the azure is revealed unflecked,
-dazzling, wondrous.... It is a sight worth the whole journey,--the
-splendor of this noon sky at Barbadoes;--the horizon glow is almost
-blinding, the sea-line sharp as a razor-edge; and motionless upon the
-sapphire water nearly a hundred ships lie,--masts, spars, booms,
-cordage, cutting against the amazing magnificence of blue.... Meanwhile
-the island coast has clearly brought out all its beauties: first you
-note the long white winding thread-line of beach--coral and bright
-sand;--then the deep green fringe of vegetation through which roofs and
-spires project here and there, and quivering feathery heads of palms
-with white trunks. The general tone of this verdure is sombre green,
-though it is full of lustre: there is a glimmer in it as of metal.
-Beyond all this coast-front long undulations of misty pale green are
-visible,--far slopes of low hill and plain; the highest curving line,
-the ridge of the island, bears a row of cocoa-palms. They are so far
-that their stems diminish almost to invisibility: only the crests are
-clearly distinguishable,--like spiders hanging between land and sky. But
-there are no forests: the land is a naked unshadowed green far as the
-eye can reach beyond the coast-line. There is no waste space in
-Barbadoes: it is perhaps one of the most densely-peopled places on the
-globe--(one thousand and thirty-five inhabitants to the square
-mile);--and it sends black laborers by thousands to the other British
-colonies every year,--the surplus of its population.
-
-
-[Illustration: THE QUAY, BRIDGETOWN
-_The bustling, busy air of Barba does is in marked contrast
-to the sleepy indifference of the other islands._]
-
-
-... The city of Bridgetown disappoints the stranger who expects to find
-any exotic features of architecture or custom,--disappoints more,
-perhaps, than any other tropical port in this respect. Its principal
-streets give you the impression of walking through an English town,--not
-an old-time town, but a new one, plain almost to commonplaceness, in
-spite of Nelson's monument. Even the palms are powerless to lend the
-place a redly tropical look;--the streets are narrow without being
-picturesque, white as lime roads and full of glare;--the manners, the
-costumes, the style of living, the system of business are thoroughly
-English;--the population lacks visible originality; and its
-extraordinary activity, so oddly at variance with the quiet indolence of
-other West Indian peoples, seems almost unnatural. Pressure of numbers
-has largely contributed to this characteristic; but Barbadoes would be
-in any event, by reason of position alone, a busy colony. As the most
-windward of the West Indies it has naturally become not only the chief
-port, but also the chief emporium of the Antilles. It has railroads,
-telephones, street-cars, fire and life insurance companies, good hotels,
-libraries and reading-rooms, and excellent public schools. Its annual
-export trade figures for nearly $6,000,000.
-
-The fact which seems most curious to the stranger, on his first
-acquaintance with the city, is that most of this business activity is
-represented by black men--black merchants, shopkeepers, clerks. Indeed,
-the Barbadian population, as a mass, strikes one as the darkest in the
-West Indies. Black regiments march through the street to the sound of
-English music,--uniformed as Zouaves; black police, in white helmets and
-white duck uniforms, maintain order; black postmen distribute the mails;
-black cabmen wait for customers at a shilling an hour. It is by no means
-an attractive population, physically,--rather the reverse, and frankly
-brutal as well--different as possible from the colored race of
-Martinique; but it has immense energy, and speaks excellent English. One
-is almost startled on hearing Barbadian negroes speaking English with a
-strong Old Country accent. Without seeing the speaker, you could
-scarcely believe such English uttered by black lips; and the commonest
-negro laborer about the port pronounces as well as a Londoner. The
-purity of Barbadian English is partly due, no doubt, to the fact that,
-unlike most of the other islands, Barbadoes has always remained in the
-possession of Great Britain. Even as far back as 1676 Barbadoes was in a
-very different condition of prosperity from that of the other colonies,
-and offered a totally different social aspect--having a white population
-of 50,000. At that time the island could muster 20,000 infantry and
-3,000 horse; there were 80,000 slaves; there were 1500 houses in
-Bridgetown and an immense number of shops; and not less than two hundred
-ships were required to export the annual sugar crop alone.
-
-
-[Illustration: BRIDGETOWN, BARBADOES
-_A picture of lights and shadows, the glare of coral
-roads relieved by the green palms and the blue and
-violet and yellow houses._]
-
-
-But Barbadoes differs also from most of the Antilles geologically; and
-there can be no question that the nature of its soil has considerably
-influenced the physical character of its inhabitants. Although Barbadoes
-is now known to be also of volcanic origin,--a fact which its low
-undulating surface could enable no unscientific observer to suppose,--it
-is superficially a calcareous formation; and the remarkable effect of
-limestone soil upon the bodily development of a people is not less
-marked in this latitude than elsewhere. In most of the Antilles the
-white race degenerates and dwarfs under the influence of climate and
-environment; but the Barbadian creole--tall, muscular, large of
-bone--preserves and perpetuates in the tropics the strength and
-sturdiness of his English forefathers.
-
-
-
-
-XXIII
-
-
-... Night: steaming for British Guiana;--we shall touch at no port
-before reaching Demerara.... A strong warm gale, that compels the taking
-in of every awning and wind-sail. Driving tepid rain; and an intense
-darkness, broken only by the phosphorescence of the sea, which to-night
-displays extraordinary radiance.
-
-The steamer's wake is a great broad, seething river of fire,--white like
-strong moonshine: the glow is bright enough to read by. At its centre
-the trail is brightest;--towards either edge it pales off
-cloudily,--curling like smoke of phosphorus. Great sharp lights burst up
-momentarily through it like meteors. Weirder than this strange wake are
-the long slow fires that keep burning about us at a distance, out in the
-dark. Nebulous incandescences mount up from the depths, change form, and
-pass;--serpentine flames wriggle by;--there are long billowing crests
-of fire. These seem to be formed of millions of tiny sparks, that light
-all at the same time, glow for a while, disappear, reappear, and swirl
-away in a prolonged smouldering.
-
-There are warm gales and heavy rain each night,--it is the hurricane
-season;--and it seems these become more violent the farther south we
-sail. But we are nearing those equinoctial regions where the calm of
-nature is never disturbed by storms.
-
-... Morning: still steaming south, through a vast blue day. The azure of
-the heaven always seems to be growing deeper. There is a bluish-white
-glow in the horizon,--almost too bright to look at. An indigo sea....
-There are no clouds; and the splendor endures until sunset.
-
-Then another night, very luminous and calm. The Southern constellations
-burn whitely.... We are nearing the great shallows of the South American
-coast.
-
-
-
-
-XXIV
-
-
-... It is the morning of the third day since we left Barbadoes, and for
-the first time since entering tropic waters all things seem changed. The
-atmosphere is heavy with strange mists; and the light of an
-orange-colored sun, immensely magnified by vapors, illuminates a
-greenish-yellow sea,--foul and opaque, as if stagnant.... I remember
-just such a sunrise over the Louisiana gulf-coast.
-
-We are in the shallows, moving very slowly. The line-caster keeps
-calling, at regular intervals: "Quarter less five, sir! And a half four,
-sir!"... There is little variation in his soundings--a quarter of a
-fathom or half a fathom difference. The warm air has a sickly heaviness,
-like the air of a swamp; the water shows olive and ochreous tones
-alternately;--the foam is yellow in our wake. These might be the colors
-of a fresh-water inundation....
-
-A fellow-traveller tells me, as we lean over the rail, that this same
-viscous, glaucous sea washes the great penal colony of Cayenne--which he
-visited. When a convict dies there, the corpse, sewn up in a sack, is
-borne to the water, and a great bell tolled. Then the still surface is
-suddenly broken by fins innumerable,--black fins of sharks rushing to
-the hideous funeral: they know the Bell!...
-
-There is land in sight--very low land,--a thin dark line suggesting
-marshiness; and the nauseous color of the water always deepens.
-
-As the land draws near, it reveals a beautiful tropical appearance. The
-sombre green line brightens color, sharpens into a splendid fringe of
-fantastic evergreen fronds, bristling with palm crests. Then a mossy
-sea-wall comes into sight--dull gray stone-work, green-lined at all its
-joints. There is a fort. The steamer's whistle is exactly mocked by a
-queer echo, and the cannon-shot once reverberated--only once: there are
-no mountains here to multiply a sound. And all the while the water
-becomes a thicker and more turbid green; the wake looks more and more
-ochreous, the foam ropier and yellower. Vessels becalmed everywhere
-speck the glass-level of the sea, like insects sticking upon a mirror.
-It begins, all of a sudden, to rain torrentially; and through the white
-storm of falling drops nothing is discernible.
-
-
-
-
-XXV
-
-
-At Georgetown, steamers entering the river can lie close to the
-wharf;--we can enter the Government warehouses without getting wet. In
-fifteen minutes the shower ceases; and we leave the warehouses to find
-ourselves in a broad, palm-bordered street illuminated by the most
-prodigious day that yet shone upon our voyage. The rain has cleared the
-air and dissolved the mists; and the light is wondrous.
-
-My own memory of Demerara will always be a memory of enormous light. The
-radiance has an indescribable dazzling force that conveys the idea of
-electric fire;--the horizon blinds like a motionless sheet of lightning;
-and you dare not look at the zenith.... The brightest summer-day in the
-North is a gloaming to this. Men walk only under umbrellas, or with
-their eyes down; and the pavements, already dry, flare almost
-unbearably.
-
-... Georgetown has an exotic aspect peculiar to itself,--different from
-that of any West Indian city we have seen; and this is chiefly due to
-the presence of palm-trees. For the edifices, the plan, the general idea
-of the town are modern; the white streets, laid out very broad to the
-sweep of the sea-breeze, and drained by canals running through their
-centres, with bridges at cross-streets, display the value of
-nineteenth-century knowledge regarding house-building with a view to
-coolness as well as to beauty. The architecture might be described as a
-tropicalized Swiss style--Swiss eaves are developed into veranda roofs,
-and Swiss porches prolonged and lengthened into beautiful piazzas and
-balconies. The men who devised these large cool halls, these admirably
-ventilated rooms, these latticed windows opening to the ceiling, may
-have lived in India; but the physiognomy of the town also reveals a fine
-sense of beauty in the designers: all that is strange and beautiful in
-the vegetation of the tropics has had a place contrived for it, a home
-prepared for it. Each dwelling has its garden; each garden blazes with
-singular and lovely color; but everywhere and always tower the palms.
-There are colonnades of palms, clumps of palms, groves of palms--sago
-and cabbage and cocoa and fan palms. You can see that the palm is
-cherished here, is loved for its beauty, like a woman. Everywhere you
-find palms, in all stages of development, from the first sheaf of tender
-green plumes rising above the soil to the wonderful colossus that holds
-its head a hundred feet above the roofs; palms border the garden walks
-in colonnades; they are grouped in exquisite poise about the basins of
-fountains; they stand like magnificent pillars at either side of gates;
-they look into the highest windows of public buildings and hotels.
-
-... For miles and miles and miles we drive along avenues of
-palms--avenues leading to opulent cane-fields, traversing queer coolie
-villages. Rising on either side of the road to the same level, the palms
-present the vista of a long unbroken double colonnade of dead-silver
-trunks, shining tall pillars with deep green plume-tufted summits,
-almost touching, almost forming something like the dream of an
-interminable Moresque arcade. Sometimes for a full mile the trees are
-only about thirty or forty feet high; then, turning into an older alley,
-we drive for half a league between giants nearly a hundred feet in
-altitude. The double perspective lines of their crests, meeting before
-us and behind us in a bronze-green darkness, betray only at long
-intervals any variation of color, where some dead leaf droops like an
-immense yellow feather.
-
-
-
-
-XXVI
-
-
-In the marvellous light, which brings out all the rings of their bark,
-these palms sometimes produce a singular impression of subtle, fleshy,
-sentient life,--seem to move with a slowly stealthy motion as you ride
-or drive past them. The longer you watch them, the stronger this idea
-becomes,--the more they seem alive,--the more their long silver-gray
-articulated bodies seem to poise, undulate, stretch.... Certainly the
-palms of a Demerara country-road evoke no such real emotion as that
-produced by the stupendous palms of the Jardin des Plantes in
-Martinique. That beautiful, solemn, silent life upreaching through
-tropical forest to the sun for warmth, for color, for power,--filled me,
-I remember, with a sensation of awe different from anything which I had
-ever experienced.... But even here in Guiana, standing alone under the
-sky, the palm still seems a creature rather than a tree,--gives you the
-idea of personality;--you could almost believe each lithe shape animated
-by a thinking force,--believe that all are watching you with such
-passionless calm as legend lends to beings supernatural.... And I wonder
-if some kindred fancy might not have inspired the name given by the
-French colonists to the male palmiste,--_angelin_....
-
-
-Very wonderful is the botanical garden here. It is new; and there are no
-groves, no heavy timber, no shade; but the finely laid-out
-grounds,--alternations of lawn and flower-bed,--offer everywhere
-surprising sights. You observe curious orange-colored shrubs; plants
-speckled with four different colors; plants that look like wigs of green
-hair; plants with enormous broad leaves that seem made of colored
-crystal; plants that do not look like natural growths, but like
-idealizations of plants,--those beautiful fantasticalities imagined by
-sculptors. All these we see in glimpses from a carriage-window,--yellow,
-indigo, black, and crimson plants.... We draw rein only to observe in
-the ponds the green navies of the Victoria Regia,--the monster among
-water-lilies. It covers all the ponds and many of the canals. Close to
-shore the leaves are not extraordinarily large; but they increase in
-breadth as they float farther out, as if gaining bulk proportionately to
-the depth of water. A few yards off, they are large as soup-plates;
-farther out, they are broad as dinner-trays; in the centre of the pond
-or canal they have surface large as tea-tables. And all have an upturned
-edge, a perpendicular rim. Here and there you see the imperial
-flower,--towering above the leaves.... Perhaps, if your hired driver be
-a good guide, he will show you the snake-nut,--the fruit of an
-extraordinary tree native to the Guiana forests. This swart nut--shaped
-almost like a clam-shell, and halving in the same way along its sharp
-edges--encloses something almost incredible. There is a pale envelope
-about the kernel; remove it, and you find between your fingers a little
-viper, triangular-headed, coiled thrice upon itself, perfect in every
-detail of form from head to tail. Was this marvellous mockery evolved
-for a protective end? It is no eccentricity: in every nut the
-serpent-kernel lies coiled the same.
-
-... Yet in spite of a hundred such novel impressions, what a delight it
-is to turn again cityward through the avenues of palms, and to feel once
-more the sensation of being watched, without love or hate, by all those
-lithe, tall, silent, gracious shapes!
-
-
-
-
-XXVII
-
-
-Hindoos; coolies; men, women, and children--standing, walking, or
-sitting in the sun, under the shadowing of the palms. Men squatting,
-with hands clasped over their black knees, are watching us from under
-their white turbans--very steadily, with a slight scowl. All these
-Indian faces have the same set, stem expression, the same knitting of
-the brows; and the keen gaze is not altogether pleasant. It borders upon
-hostility; it is the look of measurement--measurement physical and
-moral. In the mighty swarming of India these have learned the full
-meaning and force of life's law as we Occidentals rarely learn it. Under
-the dark fixed frown the eye glitters like a serpent's.
-
-Nearly all wear the same Indian dress; the thickly folded turban,
-usually white, white drawers reaching but half-way down the thigh,
-leaving the knees and the legs bare, and white jacket. A few don long
-blue robes, and wear a colored head-dress: these are babagees--priests.
-Most of the men look tall; they are slender and small-boned, but the
-limbs are well turned. They are grave--talk in low tones, and seldom
-smile. Those you see with heavy black beards are probably Mussulmans: I
-am told they have their mosques here, and that the muezzin's call to
-prayer is chanted three times daily on many plantations. Others shave,
-but the Mohammedans allow all the beard to grow.... Very comely some of
-the women are in their close-clinging soft brief robes and tantalizing
-veils--a costume leaving shoulders, arms, and ankles bare. The dark arm
-is always tapered and rounded; the silver-circled ankle always elegantly
-knit to the light straight foot. Many slim girls, whether standing or
-walking or in repose, offer remarkable studies of grace; their attitude
-when erect always suggests lightness and suppleness, like the poise of a
-dancer.
-
-... A coolie mother passes, carrying at her hip a very pretty naked
-baby. It has exquisite delicacy of limb: its tiny ankles are circled by
-thin bright silver rings; it looks like a little bronze statuette, a
-statuette of Kama, the Indian Eros. The mother's arms are covered from
-elbow to wrist with silver bracelets,--some flat and decorated; others
-coarse, round, smooth, with ends hammered into the form of viper-heads.
-She has large flowers of gold in her ears, a small gold flower in her
-very delicate little nose. This nose ornament does not seem absurd; on
-these dark skins the effect is almost as pleasing as it is bizarre. This
-jewellry is pure metal;--it is thus the coolies carry their
-savings,--melting down silver or gold coin, and recasting it into
-bracelets, ear-rings, and nose ornaments.
-
-... Evening is brief: all this time the days have been growing shorter:
-it will be black at 6 P.M. One does not regret it;--the glory of such a
-tropical day as this--is almost too much to endure for twelve hours. The
-sun is already low, and yellow with a tinge of orange: as he falls
-between the palms his stare colors the world with a strange hue--such a
-phantasmal light as might be given by a nearly burnt-out sun. The air is
-full of unfamiliar odors. We pass a flame-colored bush; and an
-extraordinary perfume--strange, rich, sweet--envelops us like a
-caress: the soul of a red jasmine....
-
-... What a tropical sunset is this--within two days' steam-journey of
-the equator! Almost to the zenith the sky flames up from the sea,--one
-tremendous orange incandescence, rapidly deepening to vermilion as the
-sim dips. The indescribable intensity of this mighty burning makes one
-totally unprepared for the spectacle of its sudden passing: a seeming
-drawing down behind the sea of the whole vast flare of light....
-Instantly the world becomes indigo. The air grows humid, weighty with
-vapor; frogs commence to make a queer bubbling noise; and some unknown
-creature begins in the trees a singular music, not trilling, like the
-note of our cricket, but one continuous shrill tone, high, keen, as of a
-thin jet of steam leaking through a valve. Strong vegetal scents,
-aromatic and novel, rise up. Under the trees of our hotel I hear a
-continuous dripping sound; the drops fall heavily, like bodies of clumsy
-insects. But it is not dew, nor insects; it is a thick, transparent
-jelly--a fleshy liquor that falls in immense drops.... The night grows
-chill with dews, with vegetable breath; and we sleep with windows nearly
-closed.
-
-
-
-
-XXVIII
-
-
-... Another sunset like the conflagration of a world, as we steam away
-from Guiana;--another unclouded night; and morning brings back to us
-that bright blue in the sea-water which we missed for the first time on
-our approach to the main-land. There is a long swell all day, and tepid
-winds. But towards evening the water once more shifts its hue--takes
-olive tint--the mighty flood of the Orinoco is near.
-
-
-[Illustration: COUNTRY ROAD, BARBADOES
-_One rides for miles between walls of waving cane.
-The white glare of the coral roads is blinding._]
-
-
-Over the rim of the sea rise shapes faint pink, faint gray--misty shapes
-that grow and lengthen as we advance. We are nearing Trinidad.
-
-It first takes definite form as a prolonged, undulating, pale gray
-mountain chain,--the outline of a sierra. Approaching nearer, we discern
-other hill summits rounding up and shouldering away behind the chain
-itself. Then the nearest heights begin to turn faint green--very slowly.
-Right before the outermost spur of cliff, fantastic shapes of rock are
-rising sheer from the water: partly green, partly reddish-gray where the
-surface remains unclothed by creepers and shrubs. Between them the sea
-leaps and whitens.
-
-... And we begin to steam along a magnificent tropical coast,--before a
-billowing of hills wrapped in forest from sea to summit,--astonishing
-forest, dense, sombre, impervious to sun--every gap a blackness as of
-ink. Giant palms here and there overtop the dense, foliage; and queer
-monster trees rise above the forest-level against the blue,--spreading
-out huge flat crests from which masses of lianas stream down. This
-forest-front has the apparent solidity of a wall, and forty-five miles
-of it undulate uninterruptedly by us--rising by terraces, or projecting
-like turret-lines, or shooting up into semblance of cathedral forms or
-suggestions of castellated architecture.... But the secrets of these
-woods have not been unexplored;--one of the noblest writers of our time
-has so beautifully and fully written of them as to leave little for any
-one else to say. He who knows Charles Kingsley's "At Last" probably
-knows the woods of Trinidad far better than many who pass them daily.
-
-
-Even as observed from the steamer's deck, the mountains and forests of
-Trinidad have an aspect very different from those of the other
-Antilles. The heights are less lofty,--less jagged and abrupt,--with
-rounded summits; the peaks of Martinique or Dominica rise fully
-two thousand feet higher. The land itself is a totally different
-formation,--anciently being a portion of the continent; and its flora
-and fauna are of South America.
-
-... There comes a great cool whiff of wind,--another and another;--then
-a mighty breath begins to blow steadily upon us,--the breath of the
-Orinoco.... It grows dark before we pass through the Ape's Mouth, to
-anchor in one of the calmest harbors in the world,--never disturbed by
-hurricanes. Over unruffled water the lights of Port-of-Spain shoot long
-still yellow beams.... The night grows chill;--the air is made frigid by
-the breath of the enormous river and the vapors of the great woods.
-
-
-
-
-XXIX
-
-
-... Sunrise: a morning of supernal beauty,--the sky of a fairy
-tale,--the sea of a love-poem.
-
-Under a heaven of exquisitely tender blue, the whole smooth sea has a
-perfect luminous dove-color,--the horizon being filled to a great height
-with greenish-golden haze,--a mist of unspeakably sweet tint, a hue
-that, imitated in any aquarelle, would be cried out against as an
-impossibility. As yet the hills are nearly all gray, the forests also
-inwrapping them are gray and ghostly, for the sun has just risen above
-them, and vapors hang like a veil between. Then, over the glassy level
-of the flood, bands of purple and violet and pale blue and fluid gold
-begin to shoot and quiver and broaden; these are the currents of the
-morning, catching varying color with the deepening of the day and the
-lifting of the tide.
-
-Then, as the sun rises higher, green masses begin to glimmer among the
-grays; the outlines of the forest summits commence to define themselves
-through the vapory light, to left and right of the great glow. Only the
-city still remains invisible; it lies exactly between us and the
-downpour of solar splendor, and the mists there have caught such
-radiance that the place seems hidden by a fog of fire. Gradually the
-gold-green of the horizon changes to a pure yellow; the hills take soft,
-rich, sensuous colors. One of the more remote has turned a marvellous
-tone--a seemingly diaphanous aureate color, the very ghost of gold. But
-at last all of them sharpen bluely, show bright folds and ribbings of
-green through their haze. The valleys remain awhile clouded, as if
-filled with something like blue smoke; but the projecting masses of
-cliff and slope swiftly change their misty green to a warmer hue. All
-these tints and colors have a spectral charm, a preternatural
-loveliness; everything seems subdued, softened, semi-vaporized,--the
-only very sharply defined silhouettes being those of the little becalmed
-ships sprinkling the western water, all spreading colored wings to catch
-the morning breeze.
-
-The more the sun ascends, the more rapid the development of the
-landscape out of vapory blue; the hills all become green-faced, reveal
-the details of frondage. The wind fills the waiting sails--white, red,
-yellow,--ripples the water, and turns it green. Little fish begin to
-leap; they spring and fall in glittering showers like opalescent blown
-spray. And at last, through the fading vapor, dew-glittering red-tiled
-roofs reveal themselves: the city is unveiled--a city full of color,
-somewhat quaint, somewhat Spanish-looking--a little like St. Pierre, a
-little like New Orleans in the old quarter; everywhere fine tall palms.
-
-
-
-
-XXX
-
-
-Ashore, through a black swarming and a great hum of creole chatter....
-Warm yellow narrow streets under a burning blue day;--a confused
-impression of long vistas, of low pretty houses and cottages, more or
-less quaint, bathed in sun and yellow-wash,---and avenues of
-shade-trees,--and low garden-walls overtopped by waving banana leaves
-and fronds of palms.... A general sensation of drowsy warmth and vast
-light and exotic vegetation,--coupled with some vague disappointment at
-the absence of that picturesque humanity that delighted us in the
-streets of St. Pierre, Martinique. The bright costumes of the French
-colonies are not visible here: there is nothing like them in any of the
-English islands. Nevertheless, this wonderful Trinidad is as unique
-ethnologically as it is otherwise remarkable among all the other
-Antilles. It has three distinct creole populations,--English, Spanish,
-and French,--besides its German and Madeiran settlers. There is also a
-special black or half-breed element, corresponding to each creole race,
-and speaking the language of each: there are fifty thousand Hindoo
-coolies, and a numerous body of Chinese. Still, this extraordinary
-diversity of race elements does not make itself at once apparent to the
-stranger. Your first impression, as you pass through the black crowd
-upon the wharf, is that of being among a population as nearly African as
-that of Barbadoes; and indeed the black element dominates to such an
-extent that upon the streets white faces look strange by contrast. When
-a white face does appear, it is usually under the shadow of an Indian
-helmet, and heavily bearded, and austere: the physiognomy of one used to
-command. Against the fantastic ethnic background of all this colonial
-life, this strong, bearded English visage takes something of heroic
-relief;--one feels, in a totally novel way, the dignity of a white skin.
-
-... I hire a carriage to take me to the nearest coolie village;--a
-delightful drive.... Sometimes the smooth white road curves round the
-slope of a forest-covered mountain;--sometimes overlooks a valley
-shining with twenty different shades of surface green;--sometimes
-traverses marvellous natural arcades formed by the interweaving and
-intercrossing of bamboos fifty feet high. Rising in vast clumps, and
-spreading out sheaf-wise from the soil towards the sky, the curves of
-their beautiful jointed stems meet at such perfect angles above the way,
-and on either side of it, as to imitate almost exactly the elaborate
-Gothic arch-work of old abbey cloisters. Above the road, shadowing the
-slopes of lofty hills, forests beetle in dizzy precipices of verdure.
-They are green--burning, flashing green--covered with parasitic green
-creepers and vines; they show enormous forms, or rather dreams of form,
-fetichistic and startling. Banana leaves flicker and flutter along the
-way-side; palms shoot up to vast altitudes, like pillars of white metal;
-and there is a perpetual shifting of foliage color, from yellow-green to
-orange, from reddish-green to purple, from emerald-green to black-green.
-But the background color, the dominant tone, is like the plumage of a
-green parrot.
-
-... We drive into the coolie village, along a narrower way, lined with
-plantain-trees, bananas, flamboyants, and unfamiliar shrubs with large
-broad leaves. Here and there are cocoa-palms. Beyond the little ditches
-on either side, occupying openings in the natural hedge, are the
-dwellings--wooden cabins, widely separated from each other. The narrow
-lanes that enter the road are also lined with habitations, half hidden
-by banana-trees. There is a prodigious glare, an intense heat. Around,
-above the trees and the roofs, rise the far hill shapes, some brightly
-verdant, some cloudy blue, some gray. The road and the lanes are almost
-deserted; there is little shade; only at intervals some slender brown
-girl or naked baby appears at a door-way. The carriage halts before a
-shed built against a wall--a simple roof of palm thatch supported upon
-jointed posts of bamboo.
-
-It is a little coolie temple. A few weary Indian laborers slumber in its
-shadow; pretty naked children, with silver rings round their ankles, are
-playing there with a white dog. Painted over the wall surface, in red,
-yellow, brown, blue, and green designs upon a white ground, are
-extraordinary figures of gods and goddesses. They have several pairs of
-arms, brandishing mysterious things,--they seem to dance, gesticulate,
-threaten; but they are all very naif,--remind one of the first efforts
-of a child with the first box of paints. While I am looking at these
-things, one coolie after another wakes up (these men sleep lightly) and
-begins to observe me almost as curiously, and I fear much less kindly,
-than I have been observing the gods. "Where is your babagee?" I inquire.
-No one seems to comprehend my question; the gravity of each dark face
-remains unrelaxed. Yet I would have liked to make an offering unto Siva.
-
-
-... Outside the Indian goldsmith's cabin, palm shadows are crawling
-slowly to and fro in the white glare, like shapes of tarantulas. Inside,
-the heat is augmented by the tiny charcoal furnace which glows beside a
-ridiculous little anvil set into a wooden block buried level with the
-soil. Through a rear door come odors of unknown flowers and the cool
-brilliant green of banana leaves.... A minute of waiting in the hot
-silence;--then, noiselessly as a phantom, the nude-limbed smith enters
-by a rear door,--squats down, without a word, on his little mat beside
-his little anvil,--and turns towards me, inquiringly, a face half veiled
-by a black beard,--a turbaned Indian face, sharp, severe, and slightly
-unpleasant in expression. "_Vlé béras!_" explains my creole driver,
-pointing to his client. The smith opens his lips to utter in the tone of
-a call the single syllable "_Ra!_" then folds his arms.
-
-Almost immediately a young Hindoo woman enters, squats down on the
-earthen floor at the end of the bench which forms the only furniture of
-the shop, and turns upon me a pair of the finest black eyes I have ever
-seen,--like the eyes of a fawn. She is very simply clad in a coolie robe
-leaving arms and ankles bare, and clinging about the figure in gracious
-folds; her color is a clear bright brown--new bronze; her face a fine
-oval, and charmingly aquiline. I perceive a little silver ring, in the
-form of a twisted snake, upon the slender second toe of each bare foot;
-upon each arm she has at least ten heavy silver rings; there are also
-large silver rings about her ankles; a gold flower is fixed by a little
-hook in one nostril, and two immense silver circles, shaped like new
-moons, shimmer in her ears. The smith mutters something to her in his
-Indian tongue. She rises, and seating herself on the bench beside me, in
-an attitude of perfect grace, holds out one beautiful brown arm to me
-that I may choose a ring.
-
-The arm is much more worthy of attention than the rings: it has the
-tint, the smoothness, the symmetry, of a fine statuary's work in
-metal;--the upper arm, tattooed with a bluish circle of arabesques, is
-otherwise unadorned; all the bracelets are on the fore-arm. Very clumsy
-and coarse they prove to be on closer examination: it was the fine dark
-skin which by color contrast made them look so pretty. I choose the
-outer one, a round ring with terminations shaped like viper heads;--the
-smith inserts a pair of tongs between these ends, presses outward slowly
-and strongly, and the ring is off. It has a faint musky odor, not
-unpleasant, the perfume of the tropical flesh it clung to. I would have
-taken it thus; but the smith snatches it from me, heats it red in his
-little charcoal furnace, hammers it into a nearly perfect circle again,
-slakes it, and burnishes it.
-
-Then I ask for children's _béras_, or bracelets; and the young mother
-brings in her own baby girl,--a little darling just able to walk. She
-has extraordinary eyes;--the mother's eyes magnified (the father's are
-small and fierce). I bargain for the single pair of thin rings on her
-little wrists;--while the smith is taking them off, the child keeps her
-wonderful gaze fixed on my face. Then I observe that the peculiarity of
-the eye is the size of the iris rather than the size of the ball. These
-eyes are not soft like the mother's, after all; they are ungentle,
-beautiful as they are; they have the dark and splendid flame of the eyes
-of a great bird--a bird of prey.
-
-
-... She will grow up, this little maid, into a slender, graceful woman,
-very beautiful, no doubt; perhaps a little dangerous. She will marry, of
-course: probably she is betrothed even now, according to Indian
-custom,--pledged to some brown boy, the son of a friend. It will not be
-so many years before the day of their noisy wedding: girls shoot up
-under this sun with as swift a growth as those broad-leaved beautiful
-shapes which fill the open door-way with quivering emerald. And she will
-know the witchcraft of those eyes, will feel the temptation to use
-them,--perhaps to smile one of those smiles which have power over life
-and death.
-
-And then the old coolie story! One day, in the yellowing cane-fields,
-among the swarm of veiled and turbaned workers, a word is overheard, a
-side glance intercepted;--there is the swirling flash of a cutlass
-blade; a shrieking gathering of women about a headless corpse in the
-sun; and passing cityward, between armed and helmeted men, the vision of
-an Indian prisoner, blood-crimsoned, walking very steadily, very erect,
-with the solemnity of a judge, the dry bright gaze of an idol....
-
-
-
-
-XXXI
-
-
-... We steam very slowly into the harbor of St. George, Grenada, in dead
-silence. No cannon-signal allowed here.... Some one suggests that the
-violence of the echoes in this harbor renders the firing of cannon
-dangerous; somebody else says the town is in so ruinous a condition that
-the report of a gun would shake it down.
-
-... There are heavy damp smells in the warm air as of mould, or of wet
-clay freshly upturned.
-
-This harbor is a deep clear basin, surrounded and shadowed by immense
-volcanic hills, all green. The opening by which we entered is cut off
-from sight by a promontory, and hill shapes beyond the promontory;--we
-seem to be in the innermost ring of a double crater. There is a
-continuous shimmering and plashing of leaping fish in the shadow of the
-loftiest height, which reaches half across the water.
-
-As it climbs up the base of the huge hill at a precipitous angle, the
-city can be seen from the steamer's deck almost as in a bird's-eye view.
-A senescent city; mostly antiquated Spanish architecture,--ponderous
-archways and earthquake-proof walls. The yellow buildings fronting us
-beyond the wharf seem half decayed; they are strangely streaked with
-green, look as if they had been long under water. We row ashore, land in
-a crowd of lazy-looking, silent blacks.
-
-... What a quaint, dawdling, sleepy place it is! All these narrow
-streets are falling into ruin; everywhere the same green stains upon the
-walls, as of slime left by a flood; everywhere disjointed brickwork,
-crumbling roofs, pungent odors of mould. Yet this Spanish architecture
-was built to endure; those yellow, blue, or green walls were constructed
-with the solidity of fortress-work; the very stairs are stone; the
-balustrades and the railings were made of good wrought iron. In a
-Northern clime such edifices would resist the wear and tear of five
-hundred years. But here the powers of disintegration are extraordinary,
-and the very air would seem to have the devouring force of an acid. All
-surfaces and angles are yielding to the attacks of time, weather, and
-microscopic organisms; paint peels, stucco falls, tiles tumble, stones
-slip out of place, and in every chink tiny green things nestle,
-propagating themselves through the jointures and dislocating the
-masonry. There is an appalling mouldiness, an exaggerated mossiness--the
-mystery and the melancholy of a city deserted. Old warehouses without
-signs, huge and void, are opened regularly every day for so many hours;
-yet the business of the aged merchants within seems to be a
-problem;--you might fancy those gray men were always waiting for ships
-that sailed away a generation ago, and will never return. You see no
-customers entering the stores, but only a black mendicant from time to
-time. And high above all this, overlooking streets too steep for any
-vehicle, slope the red walls of the mouldering fort, patched with the
-viridescence of ruin.
-
-
-By a road leading up beyond the city, you reach the cemetery. The
-staggering iron gates by which you enter it are almost rusted from their
-hinges, and the low wall enclosing it is nearly all verdant. Within, you
-see a wilderness of strange weeds, vines, creepers, fantastic shrubs run
-mad, with a few palms mounting above the green confusion;--only here and
-there a gleam of slabs with inscriptions half erased. Such as you can
-read are epitaphs of seamen, dating back to the years 1800, 1802, 1812.
-Over these lizards are running; undulations in the weeds warn you to
-beware of snakes; toads leap away as you proceed; and you observe
-everywhere, crickets perched--grass-colored creatures with two ruby
-specks for eyes. They make a sound shrill as the scream of machinery
-bevelling marble. At the farther end of the cemetery is a heavy ruin
-that would seem to have once been part of a church: it is so covered
-with creeping weeds now that you only distinguish the masonry on close
-approach, and high trees are growing within it.
-
-There is something in tropical ruin peculiarly and terribly impressive:
-this luxuriant, evergreen, ever-splendid Nature consumes the results of
-human endeavor so swiftly, buries memories so profoundly, distorts the
-labors of generations so grotesquely, that one feels here, as nowhere
-else, how ephemeral man is, how intense and how tireless the effort
-necessary to preserve his frail creations even a little while from the
-vast unconscious forces antagonistic to all stability, to all factitious
-equilibrium.
-
-
-... A gloomy road winds high around one cliff overlooking the hollow of
-the bay. Following it, you pass under extraordinarily dark shadows of
-foliage, and over a blackish soil strewn with pretty bright green fruit
-that has fallen from above. Do not touch them even with the tip of your
-finger! Those are manchineel apples; with their milky juice the old
-Caribs were wont to poison the barbs of their parrot-feathered arrows.
-Over the mould, swarming among the venomous fruit, innumerable crabs
-make a sound almost like the murmuring of water. Some are very large,
-with prodigious stalked eyes, and claws white as ivory, and a red
-cuirass; others, very small and very swift in their movements, are
-raspberry-colored; others, again, are apple-green, with queer mottlings
-of black and white. There is an unpleasant odor of decay in the
-air--vegetable decay.
-
-Emerging from the shadow of the manchineel-trees, you may follow the
-road up, up, up, under beetling cliffs of plutonian rock that seem about
-to topple down upon the path-way. The rock is naked and black near the
-road; higher, it is veiled by a heavy green drapery of lianas, curling
-creepers, unfamiliar vines. All around you are sounds of crawling, dull
-echoes of dropping; the thick growths far up waver in the breathless air
-as if something were moving sinuously through them. And always the odor
-of humid decomposition. Farther on, the road looks wilder, sloping
-between black rocks, through strange vaultings of foliage and
-night-black shadows. Its lonesomeness oppresses; one returns without
-regret, by rusting gate-ways and tottering walls, back to the old West
-Indian city rotting in the sun.
-
-... Yet Grenada, despite the dilapidation of her capital and the seeming
-desolation of its environs, is not the least prosperous of the Antilles.
-Other islands have been less fortunate: the era of depression has almost
-passed for Grenada; through the rapid development of her secondary
-cultures--coffee and cocoa--she hopes with good reason to repair some of
-the vast losses involved by the decay of the sugar industry.
-
-Still, in this silence of mouldering streets, this melancholy of
-abandoned dwellings, this invasion of vegetation, there is a suggestion
-of what any West Indian port might become when the resources of the
-island had been exhausted, and its commerce ruined. After all persons of
-means and energy enough to seek other fields of industry and enterprise
-had taken their departure, and the plantations had been abandoned, and
-the warehouses closed up forever, and the voiceless wharves left to rot
-down into the green water, Nature would soon so veil the place as to
-obliterate every outward visible sign of the past. In scarcely more than
-a generation from the time that the last merchant steamer had taken her
-departure some traveller might look for the once populous and busy mart
-in vain: vegetation would have devoured it.
-
-... In the mixed English and creole speech of the black population one
-can discern evidence of a linguistic transition. The original French
-patois is being rapidly forgotten or transformed irrecognizably.
-
-Now, in almost every island the negro idiom is different. So often have
-some of the Antilles changed owners, moreover, that in them the negro
-has never been able to form a true _patois._ He had scarcely acquired
-some idea of the language of his first masters, when other rulers and
-another tongue were thrust upon him,--and this may have occurred three
-or four times! The result is a totally incoherent agglomeration of
-speech-forms--a _baragouin_ fantastic and unintelligible beyond the
-power of any one to imagine who has not heard it....
-
-
-
-
-XXXII
-
-
-... A beautiful fantastic shape floats to us through the morning light;
-first cloudy gold like the horizon, then pearly gray, then varying blue,
-with growing green lights;--Saint Lucia. Most strangely formed of all
-this volcanic family;--everywhere mountainings sharp as broken crystals.
-Far off the Pitons--twin peaks of the high coast--show softer contours,
-like two black breasts pointing against the sky....
-
-... As we enter the harbor of Castries, the lines of the land seem no
-less exquisitely odd, in spite of their rich verdure, than when viewed
-afar off;--they have a particular pitch of angle.... Other of these
-islands show more or less family resemblance;--you might readily mistake
-one silhouette for another as seen at a distance, even after several
-West Indian journeys. But Saint Lucia at once impresses you by its
-eccentricity.
-
-Castries, drowsing under palm leaves at the edge of its curving
-harbor,--perhaps an ancient crater,--seems more of a village than a
-town: streets of low cottages and little tropic gardens. It has a
-handsome half-breed population: the old French colonial manners have
-been less changed here by English influence than in Saint Kitt's and
-elsewhere;--the creole _patois_ is still spoken, though the costumes
-have changed.... A more beautiful situation could scarcely be
-imagined,--even in this tropic world. In the massing of green heights
-about the little town are gaps showing groves of palm beyond; but the
-peak summits catch the clouds. Behind us the harbor mouth seems spanned
-by steel-blue bars: these are lines of currents. Away, on either hand,
-volcanic hills are billowing to vapory distance; and in their nearer
-hollows are beautiful deepenings of color: ponded shades of diaphanous
-blue or purplish tone.... I first remarked this extraordinary coloring
-of shadows in Martinique, where it exists to a degree that tempts one to
-believe the island has a special atmosphere of its own.... A friend
-tells me the phenomenon is probably due to inorganic substances floating
-in the air,--each substance in diffusion having its own index of
-refraction. Substances so held in suspension by vapors would vary
-according to the nature of soil in different islands, and might thus
-produce special local effects of atmospheric tinting.
-
-... We remain but half an hour at Castries; then steam along the coast
-to take in freight at another port. Always the same delicious
-color-effects as we proceed, with new and surprising visions of hills.
-The near slopes descending to the sea are a radiant green, with streaks
-and specklings of darker verdure;--the farther-rising hills faint blue,
-with green saliencies catching the sun;--and beyond these are upheavals
-of luminous gray--pearl-gray--sharpened in the silver glow of the
-horizon.... The general impression of the whole landscape is one of
-motion suddenly petrified,--of an earthquake surging and tossing
-suddenly arrested and fixed: a raging of cones and peaks and monstrous
-truncated shapes.... We approach the Pitons.
-
-Seen afar off, they first appeared twin mammiform peaks,--naked and dark
-against the sky; but now they begin to brighten a little and show
-color,--also to change form. They take a lilaceous hue, broken by gray
-and green fights; and as we draw yet nearer they prove dissimilar in
-both shape and tint.... Now they separate before us, throwing long
-pyramidal shadows across the steamer's path. Then, as they open to our
-coming, between them a sea bay is revealed--a very lovely curving bay,
-bounded by hollow cliffs of fiery green. At either side of the gap the
-Pitons rise like monster pylônes. And a charming little settlement, a
-beautiful sugar-plantation, is nestling there between them, on the very
-edge of the bay.
-
-Out of a bright sea of verdure, speckled with oases of darker foliage,
-these Pitons from the land side tower in sombre vegetation. Very high
-up, on the nearer one, amid the wooded slopes, you can see houses
-perched; and there are bright breaks in the color there--tiny mountain
-pastures that look like patches of green silk velvet.
-
-
-... We pass the Pitons, and enter another little craterine harbor, to
-cast anchor before the village of Choiseul. It lies on a ledge above the
-beach and under high hills: we land through a surf, running the boat
-high up on soft yellowish sand. A delicious saline scent of sea-weed.
-
-It is disappointing, the village: it is merely one cross of brief
-streets, lined with blackening wooden dwellings; there are no buildings
-worth looking at, except the queer old French church, steep-roofed and
-bristling with points that look like extinguishers. Over broad reaches
-of lava rock a shallow river flows by the village to the sea, gurgling
-under shadows of tamarind foliage. It passes beside the market-place--a
-market-place without stalls, benches, sheds, or pavements: meats,
-fruits, and vegetables are simply fastened to the trees. Women are
-washing and naked children bathing in the stream; they are
-bronze-skinned, a fine dark color with a faint tint of red in it....
-There is little else to look at: steep wooded hills cut off the view
-towards the interior.
-
-But over the verge of the sea there is something strange growing
-visible, looming up like a beautiful yellow cloud. It is an island, so
-lofty, so luminous, so phantom-like, that it seems a vision of the
-Island of the Seven Cities. It is only the form of St. Vincent, bathed
-in vapory gold by the sun.
-
-
-... Evening at La Soufrière: still another semicircular bay in a hollow
-of green hills. Glens hold bluish shadows. The color of the heights is
-very tender; but there are long streaks and patches of dark green,
-marking watercourses and very abrupt surfaces. From the western side
-immense shadows are pitched brokenly across the valley and over half the
-roofs of the palmy town. There is a little river flowing down to the bay
-on the left; and west of it a walled cemetery's visible, out of which
-one monumental palm rises to a sublime height: its crest still bathes in
-the sun, above the invading shadow. Night approaches; the shade of the
-bills inundates all the landscape, rises even over the palm-crest. Then,
-black-towering into the golden glow of sunset, the land loses all its
-color, all its charm; forms of frondage, variations of tint, become
-invisible. Saint Lucia is only a monstrous silhouette; all its billowing
-hills, its volcanic bays, its amphitheatrical valleys, turn black as
-ebony.
-
-And you behold before you a geological dream, a vision of the primeval
-sea: the apparition of the land as first brought forth, all peak-tossed
-and fissured and naked and grim, in the tremendous birth of an
-archipelago.
-
-
-
-
-XXXIII
-
-
-Homeward bound.
-
-Again the enormous poem of azure and emerald unrolls before us, but in
-order inverse; again is the island-Litany of the Saints repeated for us,
-but now backward. All the bright familiar harbors once more open to
-receive us;--each lovely Shape floats to us again, first golden yellow,
-then vapory gray, then ghostly blue, but always sharply radiant at last,
-symmetrically exquisite, as if chiselled out of amethyst and emerald and
-sapphire. We review the same wondrous wrinkling of volcanic hills, the
-cities that sit in extinct craters, the woods that tower to heaven, the
-peaks perpetually wearing that luminous cloud which seems the breathing
-of each island-life,--its vital manifestation....
-
-
-[Illustration: THE LION OF GUN HILL, BARBADOES
-_A heroic statue carved in the native rock by a
-British army officer._]
-
-
-... Only now do the long succession of exotic and unfamiliar impressions
-received begin to group and blend, to form homogeneous results,--general
-ideas or convictions. Strongest among these is the belief that the white
-race is disappearing from these islands, acquired and held at so vast a
-cost of blood and treasure. Reasons almost beyond enumeration have been
-advanced--economical, climatic, ethnical, political--all of which
-contain truth, yet no single one of which can wholly explain the fact.
-Already the white West Indian populations are diminishing at a rate that
-almost staggers credibility. In the island paradise of Martinique in
-1848 there were 12,000 whites; now, against more than 160,000 blacks and
-half-breeds, there are perhaps 5000 whites left to maintain the ethnic
-struggle, and the number of these latter is annually growing less. Many
-of the British islands have been almost deserted by their former
-cultivators: St. Vincent is becoming desolate: Tobago is a ruin; St.
-Martin lies half abandoned; St. Christopher is crumbling; Grenada has
-lost more than half her whites; St. Thomas, once the most prosperous,
-the most active, the most cosmopolitan of West Indian ports, is in full
-decadence. And while the white element is disappearing, the dark races
-are multiplying as never before;--the increase of the negro and
-half-breed populations has been everywhere one of the startling results
-of emancipation. The general belief among the creole whites, of the
-Lesser Antilles would seem to confirm the old prediction that the slave
-races of the past must become the masters of the future. Here and there
-the struggle may be greatly prolonged, but everywhere the ultimate
-result must be the same, unless the present conditions of commerce and
-production become marvellously changed. The exterminated Indian peoples
-of the Antilles have already been replaced by populations equally fitted
-to cope with the forces of the nature about them,--that splendid and
-terrible Nature of the tropics which consumes the energies of the races
-of the North, which devours all that has been accomplished by their
-heroism or their crimes,--effacing their cities, rejecting their
-civilization. To those peoples physiologically in harmony with this
-Nature belong all the chances of victory in the contest--already
-begun--for racial supremacy.
-
-But with the disappearance of the white populations the ethnical problem
-would be still unsettled. Between the black and mixed peoples prevail
-hatreds more enduring and more intense than any race prejudices between
-whites and freedmen in the past;--a new struggle for supremacy could not
-fail to begin, with the perpetual augmentation of numbers, the
-ever-increasing competition for existence. And the true black element,
-more numerically powerful, more fertile, more cunning, better adapted to
-pyrogenic climate and tropical environment, would surely win. All these
-mixed races, all these beautiful fruit-colored populations, seem doomed
-to extinction: the future tendency must be to universal blackness, if
-existing conditions continue--perhaps to universal savagery. Everywhere
-the sins of the past have borne the same bruit, have furnished the
-colonies with social enigmas that mock the wisdom of legislators,--a
-dragon-crop of problems that no modern political science has yet proved
-competent to deal with. Can it even be hoped that future sociologists
-will be able to answer them, after Nature--who never forgives--shall
-have exacted the utmost possible retribution for all the crimes and
-follies of three hundred years?
-
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-MARTINIQUE
-SKETCHES
-
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-LES PORTEUSES
-
-
-I
-
-
-When you find yourself for the first time, upon some unshadowed day, in
-the delightful West Indian city of St. Pierre,--supposing that you own
-the sense of poetry, the recollections of a student,--there is apt to
-steal upon your fancy an impression of having seen it all before, ever
-so long ago,--you cannot tell where. The sensation of some happy dream
-you cannot wholly recall might be compared to this feeling. In the
-simplicity and solidity of the quaint architecture,--in the eccentricity
-of bright narrow streets, all aglow with warm coloring,--in the tints of
-roof and wall, antiquated by streakings and patchings of mould greens
-and grays,--in the startling absence of window-sashes, glass, gas
-lamps, and chimneys,--in the blossom-tenderness of the blue heaven, the
-splendor of tropic light, and the warmth of the tropic wind,--you find
-less the impression of a scene of to-day than the sensation of something
-that was and is not. Slowly this feeling strengthens with your pleasure
-in the colorific radiance of costume,--the semi-nudity of passing
-figures,--the puissant shapeliness of torsos ruddily swart like statue
-metal,--the rounded outline of limbs yellow as tropic fruit,--the grace
-of attitudes,--the unconscious harmony of groupings,--the gathering and
-folding and falling of light robes that oscillate with swaying of free
-hips,--the sculptural symmetry of unshod feet. You look up and down the
-lemon-tinted streets,--down to the dazzling azure brightness of meeting
-sky and sea; up to the perpetual verdure of mountain woods--wondering at
-the mellowness of tones, the sharpness of lines in the light, the
-diaphaneity of colored shadows; always asking memory: "When?... where
-did I see all this... long ago?"...
-
-Then, perhaps, your gaze is suddenly riveted by the vast and
-solemn beauty of the verdant violet-shaded mass of the dead
-Volcano,--high-towering above the town, visible from all its ways, and
-umbraged, maybe, with thinnest curlings of cloud,--like spectres of its
-ancient smoking to heaven. And all at once the secret of your dream is
-revealed, with the rising of many a luminous memory,--dreams of the
-Idyllists, flowers of old Sicilian song, fancies limned upon Pompeiian
-walls. For a moment the illusion is delicious: you comprehend as never
-before the charm of a vanished world,--the antique life, the story of
-terra-cottas and graven stones and gracious things exhumed: even the sun
-is not of to-day, but of twenty centuries gone;--thus, and under such a
-light, walked the women of the elder world. You know the fancy
-absurd;--that the power of the orb has visibly abated nothing in all the
-eras of man,--that millions are the ages of his almighty glory; but for
-one instant of reverie he seemeth larger,--even that sun impossible who
-coloreth the words, coloreth the works of artist-lovers of the past,
-with the gold light of dreams.
-
-Too soon the hallucination is broken by modern sounds, dissipated by
-modern sights,--rough trolling of sailors descending to their
-boats,--the heavy boom of a packet's signal-gun,--the passing of an
-American buggy. Instantly you become aware that the melodious tongue
-spoken by the passing throng is neither Hellenic nor Roman: only the
-beautiful childish speech of French slaves.
-
-
-
-
-II
-
-
-But what slaves were the fathers of this free generation? Your
-anthropologists, your ethnologists, seem at fault here: the African
-traits have become transformed; the African characteristics have been so
-modified within little more than two hundred years--by interblending of
-blood, by habit, by soil and sun and all those natural powers which
-shape the mould of races,--that you may look in vain for verification of
-ethnological assertions.... No: the heel does _not_ protrude;--the foot
-is _not_ flat, but finely arched;--the extremities are not large;--all
-the limbs taper, all the muscles are developed; and prognathism has
-become so rare that months of research may not yield a single striking
-case of it.... No: this is a special race, peculiar to the island as are
-the shapes of its peaks,--a mountain race; and mountain races are
-comely.... Compare it with the population of black Barbadoes, where the
-apish grossness of African coast types has been perpetuated
-unchanged;--and the contrast may well astonish!...
-
-
-
-
-III
-
-
-The erect carriage and steady swift walk of the women who bear burdens
-is especially likely to impress the artistic observer: it is the sight
-of such passers-by which gives, above all, the antique tone and color to
-his first sensations;--and the larger part of the female population of
-mixed race are practised carriers. Nearly all the transportation of
-light merchandise, as well as of meats, fruits, vegetables, and food
-stuffs,--to and from the interior,--is effected upon human heads. At
-some of the ports the regular local packets are loaded and unloaded by
-women and girls,--able to carry any trunk or box to its destination. At
-Fort-de-France the great steamers of the Compagnie Générale
-Transatlantique, are entirely coaled by women, who carry the coal on
-their heads, singing as they come and go in processions of hundreds; and
-the work is done with incredible rapidity. Now, the creole _porteuse_,
-or female carrier, is certainly one of the most remarkable physical
-types in the world; and whatever artistic enthusiasm her graceful port,
-lithe walk, or half-savage beauty may inspire you with, you can form no
-idea, if a total stranger, what a really wonderful being she is.... Let
-me tell you something about that highest type of professional female
-carrier, which is to the _charbonnière_, or coaling-girl, what the
-thorough-bred racer is to the draught-horse,--the type of porteuse
-selected for swiftness and endurance to distribute goods in the interior
-parishes, or to sell on commission at long distances. To the same class
-naturally belong those country carriers able to act as porteuses of
-plantation produce, fruits, or vegetables,--between the nearer ports and
-their own interior parishes.... Those who believe that great physical
-endurance and physical energy cannot exist in the tropics do not know
-the creole carrier-girl.
-
-
-
-
-IV
-
-
-At a very early age--perhaps at five years--she learns to carry small
-articles upon her head,--a bowl of rice,--a _dobanne_, or red earthen
-decanter, full of water--even an orange on a plate; and before long she
-is able to balance these perfectly without using her hands to steady
-them. (I have often seen children actually run with cans of water upon
-their heads, and never spill a drop.) At nine or ten she is able to
-carry thus a tolerably heavy basket, or a trait (a wooden tray with deep
-outward sloping sides) containing a weight of from twenty to thirty
-pounds; and is able to accompany her mother, sister, or cousin on long
-peddling journeys,--walking barefoot twelve and fifteen miles a day. At
-sixteen or seventeen she is a tall robust girl,--lithe, vigorous,
-tough,--all tendon and hard flesh;--she carries a tray or a basket of
-the largest size, and a burden of one hundred and twenty to one hundred
-and fifty pounds weight;--she can now earn about thirty francs (about
-six dollars) a month, _by walking fifty miles a day_, as an itinerant
-seller.
-
-Among her class there are figures to make you dream of Atlanta;--and
-all, whether ugly or attractive as to feature, are finely shapen as to
-body and limb. Brought into existence by extraordinary necessities of
-environment, the type is a peculiarly local one,--a type of human
-thorough-bred representing the true secret of grace: economy of force.
-There are no corpulent porteuses for the long interior routes; all are
-built lightly and firmly as racers. There are no old porteuses;--to do
-the work even at forty signifies a constitution of astounding solidity.
-After the full force of youth and health is spent, the poor carrier must
-seek lighter labor;--she can no longer compete with the girls. For in
-this calling the young body is taxed to its utmost capacity of strength,
-endurance, and rapid motion.
-
-As a general rule, the weight is such that no well-freighted porteuse
-can, unassisted, either "load" or "unload" (_châgé_ or _déchâgé_,
-in creole phrase); the effort to do so would burst a blood-vessel,
-wrench a nerve, rupture a muscle. She cannot even sit down under her
-burden without risk of breaking her neck: absolute perfection of the
-balance is necessary for self-preservation. A case came under my own
-observation of a woman rupturing a muscle in her arm through careless
-haste in the mere act of aiding another to unload.
-
-And no one not a brute will ever refuse to aid a woman to lift or to
-relieve herself of her burden;--you may see the wealthiest merchant, the
-proudest planter, gladly do it;--the meanness of refusing, or of making
-any conditions for the performance of this little kindness has only been
-imagined in those strange Stories of Devils wherewith the oral and
-uncollected literature of the creole abounds.[4]
-
-
-[Footnote 4: _Extract from the "Story of Marie," as written from
-dictation_:
-
-... Manman-à té ni yon goûte jà à caïe-li. Jà-la té touôp lou'de
-pou Marie. Cé té li menm manman là qui té kallé pouend dileau.
-Yon jou y pouend jà-la pou y té allé pouend dileau. Lhè manman-à
-rivé bé la fontaine, y pa trouvé pésonne pou châgé y. Y rété; y ka crié,
-"Toutt bon Chritien, vini châgé moin!"
-
-... This mamma had a great jar in her house. The jar was too
-heavy for Marie. It was this mamma herself who used to go for
-water. One day she took that jar to go for water. When this
-mamma had got to the fountain, she could not find any one to load
-her. She stood there, crying out, "Any good Christian, come load
-me!"
-
-... Lhè manman rété y ouè pa té ni piess bon Chritien pou châgé
-y. Y rété; y crié: "Pouloss, si pa ni bon Chritien» ni mauvais
-Chritien! toutt mauvais Chritien vini châgé moin!"
-
-
-Lhè y fini di ça, y ouè yon diabe qui ka vini, ka di conm ça, "Pou
-moin châgé ou ça ou ké baill moin?" Manman-là di,—y réponne,
-"Moin pa ni arien!" Diabe-la réponne y, "Y fau ba moin
-Marie pou moin pé châgé ou."
-
-... As the mamma stood there she saw there was not a single
-good Christian to help her load. She stood there, and cried out:
-"Well, then, if there are no good Christians, there are bad Christians.
-Any bad Christian, come and load me!"
-
-The moment she said that, she saw a devil coming, who said to
-her, "If I load you what will you give me?" This mamma answered,
-and said, "I have nothing!" The devil answered her, "Must give me
-Marie if you want me to load you."]
-
-
-
-
-V
-
-
-Preparing for her journey, the young _màchanne_ (marchande) puts on
-the poorest and briefest chemise in her possession, and the most worn of
-her light calico robes. These are all she wears. The robe is drawn
-upward and forward, so as to reach a little below the knee, and is
-confined thus by a waist-string, or a long kerchief bound tightly round
-the loins. Instead of a Madras or painted turban-kerchief, she binds a
-plain _mouchoir_ neatly and closely about her head; and if her hair be
-long, it is combed back and gathered into a loop behind. Then, with a
-second mouchoir of coarser quality she makes a pad, or, as she calls it,
-_tòche_, by winding the kerchief round her fingers as you would coil up
-a piece of string;--and the soft mass, flattened with a patting of the
-hand, is placed upon her head, over the coiffure. On this the great
-loaded trait is poised.
-
-She wears no shoes! To wear shoes and do her work swiftly and well in
-such a land of mountains would be impossible. She must climb thousands
-and descend thousands of feet every day,--march up and down slopes so
-steep that the horses of the country all break down after a few years of
-similar journeying. The girl invariably outlasts the horse,--though
-carrying an equal weight. Shoes, unless extraordinarily well made, would
-shift place a little with every change from ascent to descent, or the
-reverse, during the march,--would yield and loosen with the ever-varying
-strain,--would compress the toes,--produce corns, bunions, raw places by
-rubbing, and soon cripple the porteuse. Remember, she has to walk
-perhaps fifty miles between dawn and dark, under a sun to which a single
-hour's exposure, without the protection of an umbrella, is perilous to
-any European or American--the terrible sun of the tropics! Sandals are
-the only conceivable foot-gear suited to such a calling as hers; but she
-needs no sandals: the soles of her feet are toughened so as to feel no
-asperities, and present to sharp pebbles a surface at once yielding and
-resisting, like a cushion of solid caoutchouc.
-
-Besides her load, she carries only a canvas purse tied to her girdle on
-the right side, and on the left a very small bottle of rum, or white
-tafia,--usually the latter, because it is so cheap.... For she may not
-always find the Gouyave water to drink,--the cold clear pure stream
-conveyed to the fountains of St. Pierre from the highest mountains by a
-beautiful and marvellous plan of hydraulic engineering: she will have to
-drink betimes the common spring-water of the bamboo-fountains on the
-remoter high-roads; and this may cause dysentery if swallowed without a
-spoonful of spirits. Therefore she never travels without a little
-liquor.
-
-
-
-
-VI
-
-
-... So!--She is ready: "_Châgé moin, souplè, chè!_" She
-bends to lift the end of the heavy trait: some one takes the
-other,--_yon!--dè!--toua!_--it is on her head. Perhaps she winces an
-instant;--the weight is not perfectly balanced; she settles it with her
-hands,--gets it in the exact place. Then, all steady,--lithe, light,
-half naked,--away she moves with a long springy step. So even her walk
-that the burden never sways; yet so rapid her motion that however good a
-walker you may fancy yourself to be you will tire out after a sustained
-effort of fifteen minutes to follow her uphill. Fifteen minutes!--and
-she can keep up that pace without slackening--save for a minute to eat
-and drink at midday,--for at least twelve hours and fifty-six minutes,
-the extreme length of a West Indian day. She starts before dawn; tries
-to reach her resting-place by sunset: after dark, like all her people,
-she is afraid of meeting _zombis._
-
-
-[Illustration: THE DEVIL'S DOOR, MARTINIQUE
-_Each turn in the road discloses new scenes of tropical
-splendor, beetling cliffs. and verdure-covered slopes._]
-
-
-Let me give you some idea of her average speed under an average weight
-of one hundred and twenty-five pounds,--estimates based partly upon my
-own observations, partly upon the declarations of the trustworthy
-merchants who employ her, and partly on the assertion of habitants of
-the burghs or cities named--all of which statements perfectly agree.
-From St. Pierre to Basse-Pointe, by the national road, the distance is a
-trifle less than twenty-seven kilometres and three-quarters. She makes
-the transit easily in three hours and a half; and returns in the
-afternoon, after an absence of scarcely more than eight hours. From St.
-Pierre to Morne Rouge--two thousand feet up in the mountains (an ascent
-so abrupt that no one able to pay carriage-fare dreams of attempting to
-walk it)--the distance is seven kilometres and three-quarters. She makes
-it in little more than an hour. But this represents only the beginning
-of her journey. She passes on to Grande Anse, twenty-one and
-three-quarter kilometres away. But she does not rest there: she returns
-at the same pace, and reaches St. Pierre before dark. From St. Pierre to
-Gros-Morne the distance to be twice traversed by her is more than
-thirty-two kilometres. A journey of sixty-four kilometres,--daily,
-perhaps,--forty miles! And there are many màchannes who make yet longer
-trips,--trips of three or four days' duration;--these rest at villages
-upon their route.
-
-
-
-
-VII
-
-
-Such travel in such a country would be impossible but for the excellent
-national roads,--limestone highways, solid, broad, faultlessly
-graded,--that wind from town to town, from hamlet to hamlet, over
-mountains, over ravines; ascending by zigzags to heights of twenty-five
-hundred feet; traversing the primeval forests of the interior; now
-skirting the dizziest precipices, now descending into the loveliest
-valleys. There are thirty-one of these magnificent routes, with a total
-length of 488,052 metres (more than 805 miles), whereof the construction
-required engineering talent of the highest order,--the building of
-bridges beyond counting, and devices the most ingenious to provide
-against dangers of storms, floods and land-slips. Most have
-drinking-fountains along their course at almost regular
-intervals,--generally made by the negroes, who have a simple but
-excellent plan for turning the water of a spring through bamboo pipes to
-the road-way. Each road is also furnished with milestones, or rather
-kilometre-stones; and the drainage is perfect enough to assure of the
-highway becoming dry within fifteen minutes after the heaviest rain, so
-long as the surface is maintained in tolerably good condition. Well-kept
-embankments of earth (usually covered with a rich growth of mosses,
-vines, and ferns), or even solid walls of masonry, line the side that
-overhangs a dangerous depth. And all these highways pass through
-landscapes of amazing beauty,--visions of mountains so many-tinted and
-so singular of outline that they would almost seem to have been created
-for the express purpose of compelling astonishment. This tropic Nature
-appears to call into being nothing ordinary: the shapes which she evokes
-are always either gracious or odd,--and her eccentricities, her
-extravagances, have a fantastic charm, a grotesqueness as of artistic
-whim. Even where the landscape-view is cut off by high woods the forms
-of ancient trees--the infinite interwreathing of vine growths all on
-fire with violence of blossom-color,--the enormous green outbursts of
-balisiers, with leaves ten to thirteen feet long,--the columnar
-solemnity of great palmistes,--the pliant quivering exquisiteness of
-bamboo,--the furious splendor of roses run mad--more than atone for the
-loss of the horizon. Sometimes you approach a steep covered with a
-growth of what, at first glance, looks precisely like fine green fur: it
-is a first-growth of young bamboo. Or you see a hill-side covered with
-huge green feathers, all shelving down and overlapping as in the tail of
-some unutterable bird: these are baby ferns. And where the road leaps
-some deep ravine with a double or triple bridge of white stone, note
-well what delicious shapes spring up into sunshine from the black
-profundity on either hand! Palmiform you might hastily term them,--but
-no palm was ever so gracile; no palm ever bore so dainty a head of green
-plumes light as lace! These likewise are ferns (rare survivors, maybe,
-of that period of monstrous vegetation which preceded the apparition of
-man), beautiful tree-ferns, whose every young plume, unrolling in a
-spiral from the bud, at first assumes the shape of a crozier,--a crozier
-of emerald! Therefore are some of this species called "archbishop-trees"
-no doubt.... But one might write for a hundred years of the sights to be
-seen upon such a mountain road.
-
-
-
-
-VIII
-
-
-In every season, in almost every weather, the porteuse makes her
-journey,--never heeding rain;--her goods being protected by double and
-triple water-proof coverings well bound down over her trait. Yet these
-tropical rains, coming suddenly with a cold wind upon her heated and
-almost naked body, are to be feared. To any European or unacclimated
-white such a wetting, while the pores are all open during a profuse
-perspiration, would probably prove fatal: even for white natives the
-result is always a serious and protracted illness. But the porteuse
-seldom suffers in consequences: she seems proof against fevers,
-rheumatisms, and ordinary colds. When she does break down, however, the
-malady is a frightful one,--a pneumonia that carries off the victim
-within forty-eight hours. Happily, among her class, these fatalities are
-very rare.
-
-And scarcely less rare than such sudden deaths are instances of failure
-to appear on time. In one case, the employer, a St. Pierre shopkeeper,
-on finding his marchande more than an hour late, felt so certain
-something very extraordinary must have happened that he sent out
-messengers in all directions to make inquiries. It was found that the
-woman had become a mother when only half-way upon her journey home....
-The child lived and thrived;--she is now a pretty chocolate-colored girl
-of eight, who follows her mother every day from their mountain ajoupa
-down to the city, and back again,--bearing a little trait upon her head.
-
-
-[Illustration: THE ROAD TO ST. PIERRE
-"_A hillside covered with huge green feathers... tree-ferns
-whose every young plume, in a spiral from the
-hud, at first assumes the shape of a crozier,--a crozier
-of emerald!_"]
-
-
-Murder for purposes of robbery is not an unknown crime in Martinique;
-but I am told the porteuses are never molested. And yet some of these
-girls carry merchandise to the value of hundreds of francs; and all
-carry money,--the money received for goods sold, often a considerable
-sum. This immunity may be partly owing to the fact that they travel
-dining the greater part of the year only by day,--and usually in
-company. A very pretty girl is seldom suffered to journey unprotected:
-she has either a male escort or several experienced and powerful women
-with her. In the cacao season--when carriers start from Grande Anse as
-early as two o'clock in the morning, so as to reach St. Pierre by
-dawn--they travel in strong companies of twenty or twenty-five, singing
-on the way. As a general rule the younger girls at all times go two
-together,--keeping step perfectly as a pair of blooded fillies; only the
-veterans, or women selected for special work by reason of extraordinary
-physical capabilities, go alone. To the latter class belong certain
-girls employed by the great bakeries of Fort-de-France and St. Pierre:
-these are veritable caryatides. They are probably the heaviest-laden of
-all, carrying baskets of astounding size far up into the mountains
-before daylight, so as to furnish country families with fresh bread at
-an early hour; and for this labor they receive about four dollars
-(twenty francs) a month and one loaf of bread per diem.... While
-stopping at a friend's house among the hills, some two miles from
-Fort-de-France, I saw the local bread-carrier halt before our porch one
-morning, and a finer type of the race it would be difficult for a
-sculptor to imagine. Six feet tall,--strength and grace united
-throughout her whole figure from neck to heel; with that clear black
-skin which is beautiful to any but ignorant or prejudiced eyes; and the
-smooth, pleasing, solemn features of a sphinx,--she looked to me, as she
-towered there in the gold light, a symbolic statue of Africa. Seeing me
-smoking one of those long thin Martinique cigars called _bouts_, she
-begged one; and, not happening to have another, I gave her the price of
-a bunch of twenty,--ten sous. She took it without a smile, and went her
-way. About an hour and a half later she came back and asked for me,--to
-present me with the finest and largest mango I had ever seen, a monster
-mango. She said she wanted to see me eat it, and sat down on the ground
-to look on. While eating it, I learned that she had walked a whole mile
-out of her way under that sky of fire, just to bring her little gift of
-gratitude.
-
-
-
-
-IX
-
-
-Forty to fifty miles a day, always under a weight of more than a hundred
-pounds,--for when the trait has been emptied she puts in stones for
-ballast;--carrying her employer's merchandise and money over the
-mountain ranges, beyond the peaks, across the ravines, through the
-tropical forest, sometimes through by-ways haunted by the
-fer-de-lance,--and this in summer or winter, the season of rains or the
-season of heat, the time of fevers or the time of hurricanes, at a franc
-a day!... How does she live upon it?
-
-
-[Illustration: FORT-DE-FRANCE
-_View from the old fortifications. In the distance
-the bay, and beyond Trois Islets, where
-Josephine was born._]
-
-
-There are twenty sous to the franc. The girl leaves St. Pierre with her
-load at early morning. At the second village, Morne Rouge, she halts to
-buy one, two, or three biscuits at a sou apiece; and reaching
-Ajoupa-Bouillon later in the forenoon, she may buy another biscuit or
-two. Altogether she may be expected to eat five sous of biscuit or bread
-before reaching Grande Anse, where she probably has a meal waiting for
-her. This ought to cost her ten sous,--especially if there be meat in
-her ragoût: which represents a total expense of fifteen sous for
-eatables. Then there is the additional cost of the cheap liquor, which
-she must mix with her drinking-water, as it would be more than dangerous
-to swallow pure cold water in her heated condition; two or three sous
-more. This almost makes the franc. But such a hasty and really erroneous
-estimate does not include expenses of lodging and clothing;--she may
-sleep on the bare floor sometimes, and twenty francs a year may keep her
-in clothes; but she must rent the floor and pay for the clothes out of
-that franc. As a matter of fact she not only does all this upon her
-twenty sous a day, but can even economize something which will enable
-her, when her youth and force decline, to start in business for herself.
-And her economy will not seem so wonderful when I assure you that
-thousands of men here--huge men muscled like bulls and lions—-live upon
-an average expenditure of five sous a day. One sou of bread, two sous of
-manioc flour, one sou of dried codfish, one sou of tafia: such is their
-meal.
-
-There are women carriers who earn more than a franc a day,--women with a
-particular talent for selling, who are paid on commission--from ten to
-fifteen per cent. These eventually make themselves independent in many
-instances;--they continue to sell and bargain in person, but hire a
-young girl to carry the goods.
-
-
-
-
-X
-
-
-... "_Ou 'lè mâchonne!_" rings out a rich alto, resonant as the tone
-of a gong, from behind the balisiers that shut in our garden. There are
-two of them--no, three--Maiyotte, Chéchelle, and Rina. Maiyotte and
-Chéchelle have just arrived from St. Pierre;--Rina comes from
-Gros-Morne with fruits and vegetables. Suppose we call them all in, and
-see what they have got. Maiyotte and Chéchelle sell on commission; Rina
-sells for her mother, who has a little garden at Gros-Morne.
-
-... "_Bonjou', Maiyotte;--bonjou', Chéchelle! comment ou kallé, Rina,
-chè!_"... Throw open the folding-doors to let the great trays pass....
-Now all three are unloaded by old Théréza and by young Adou;--all the
-packs are on the floor, and the water-proof wrappings are being
-uncorded, while Ah-Manmzell, the adopted child, brings the rum and water
-for the tall walkers.
-
-... "Oh, what a medley, Maiyotte!"... Inkstands and wooden cows; purses
-and paper dogs and cats; dolls and cosmetics; pins and needles and soap
-and tooth-brushes; candied fruits and smoking-caps; _pelotes_ of thread,
-and tapes, and ribbons, and laces, and Madeira wine; cuffs, and collars,
-and dancing-shoes, and tobacco sachets.... But what is in that little
-flat bundle? Presents for your _guêpe_, if you have one....
-_Jesis-Maïa!_--the pretty foulards! Azure and yellow in checkerings;
-orange and crimson in stripes; rose and scarlet in plaidings; and bronze
-tints, and beetle-tints of black and green.
-
-"Chéchelle, what a _bloucoutoum_ if you should ever let that tray
-fall--_aïe yaïe yaïe!_" Here is a whole shop of crockeries and
-porcelains;--plates, dishes, cups,--earthen-ware _canaris_ and
-_dobannes_; and gift-mugs and cups bearing creole girls' names,--all
-names that end in _ine_: "Micheline, Honorine, Prospérine" [you will
-never sell that, Chéchelle: there is not a Prospérine this side of St.
-Pierre], "Azaline, Leontine, Zéphyrine, Albertine, Chrysaline, Florine,
-Coralline, Alexandrine."... And knives and forks, and cheap spoons, and
-tin coffee-pots, and tin rattles for babies, and tin flutes for horrid
-little boys,--and pencils and note-paper and envelopes!...
-
-... "Oh, Rina, what superb oranges!--fully twelve inches round!...
-and these, which look something like our mandarins, what do
-you call them? Zorange-macaque!" (monkey-oranges). And here are
-avocados--beauties!--guavas of three different kinds,--tropical cherries
-(which have four seeds instead of one),--tropical raspberries, whereof
-the entire eatable portion comes off in one elastic piece, lined with
-something like white silk.... Here are fresh nutmegs: the thick green
-case splits in equal halves at a touch; and see the beautiful heart
-within,--deep dark glossy red, all wrapped in a bright net-work of flat
-blood-colored fibre, spun over it like branching veins.... This big
-heavy red-and-yellow thing is a _pomme-cythère_: the smooth cuticle,
-bitter as gall, covers a sweet juicy pulp, interwoven with something
-that seems like cotton thread.... Here is a _pomme-cannelle_: inside its
-scaly covering is the most delicious yellow custard conceivable with
-little black seeds floating in it. This larger _corossol_ has almost as
-delicate an interior, only the custard is white instead of yellow....
-Here are _christophines_,--great pear-shaped things, white and green,
-according to kind, with a peel prickly and knobby as the skin of a homed
-toad; but they stew exquisitely. And _mélongènes_, or egg-plants; and
-palmiste-pith, and _chadèques_, and _pommes-d'Haïti_,--and roots that
-at first sight look all alike, but they are not: there are _camanioc_,
-and couscous, and _choux-caraïbes_, and _zignames_, and various kinds
-of patates among them. Old Théréza's magic will transform these
-shapeless muddy things, before evening, into pyramids of smoking
-gold,--into odorous porridges that will look like messes of molten amber
-and liquid pearl;--for Rina makes a good sale.
-
-Then Chéchelle manages to dispose of a tin coffee-pot and a big
-canari.... And Maiyotte makes the best sale of all; for the sight of a
-funny _biscuit_ doll has made Ah-Manmzell cry and smile so at the same
-time that I should feel unhappy for the rest of my life if I did not buy
-it for her. I know I ought to get some change out of that six
-francs;--and Maiyotte, who is black but comely as the tents of Kedar, as
-the curtains of Solomon, seems to be aware of the fact.
-
-Oh, Maiyotte, how plaintive that pretty sphinx face of yours, now turned
-in profile;--as if you knew you looked beautiful thus,--with the great
-gold circlets of your ears glittering and swaying as you bend! And why
-are you so long, so long untying that poor little canvas
-purse?--fumbling and fingering it?--is it because you want me to think
-of the weight of that trait and the sixty kilometres you must walk, and
-the heat, and dust, and all the disappointments? Ah, you are cunning,
-Maiyotte! No, I do not want the change!
-
-
-
-
-XI
-
-
-... Travelling together, the porteuses often walk in silence for hours
-at a time;--this is when they feel weary. Sometimes they sing,--most
-often when approaching their destination;--and when they chat, it is in
-a key so high-pitched that their voices can be heard to a great distance
-in this land of echoes and elevations.
-
-But she who travels alone is rarely silent: she talks to herself or to
-inanimate things;--you may hear her talking to the trees, to the
-flowers,--talking to the high clouds and the far peaks of changing
-color,--talking to the setting sun!
-
-Over the miles of the morning she sees, perchance, the mighty Piton
-Gélé, a cone of amethyst in the light; and she talks to it: "_Ou
-jojoll, oui!--moin ni envie monté assou ou, pou main ouè bien, bien!_"
-(Thou art pretty, pretty, aye!--I would I might climb thee, to see far,
-far off!)
-
-By a great grove of palms she passes;--so thickly mustered they are that
-against the sun their intermingled heads form one unbroken awning of
-green. Many rise straight as masts; some bend at beautiful angles,
-seeming to intercross their long pale single limbs in a fantastic dance;
-others curve like bows: there is one that undulates from foot to crest,
-like a monster serpent poised upon its tail. She loves to look at that
-one,--_joli pié-bois-là!_--talks to it as she goes by,--bids it
-good-day.
-
-Or, looking back as she ascends, she sees the huge blue dream of the
-sea,--the eternal haunter, that ever becomes larger as she mounts the
-road; and she talks to it: "_Mi lanmé ka gadé main!_" (There is the
-great sea looking at me!) "_Mâché toujou deïé moin, lamnè!_" (Walk
-after me, O Sea!)
-
-Or she views the clouds of Pelée, spreading gray from the invisible
-summit, to shadow against the sun; and she fears the rain, and she talks
-to it: "_Pas mouillé moin, laplie-à! Quitté moin rivé avant mouillé
-moin!_" (Do not wet me, O Rain! Let me get there before thou wettest
-me!)
-
-Sometimes a dog barks at her, menaces her bare limbs; and she talks to
-the dog. "_Chien-a, pas mòdé moin, chien--anh! Moin pa fé ou arien,
-chien, pou ou mòdé moin!_" (Do not bite me, O Dog! Never did I
-anything to thee that thou shouldst bite me, O Dog! Do not bite me,
-dear! Do not bite me, _doudoux!_)
-
-Sometimes she meets a laden sister travelling the opposite way....
-"_Coument ou yé, chè?_" she cries. (How art thou, dear?) And the other
-makes answer, "_Toutt douce, chè,--et ou?_" (All sweetly, dear,--and
-thou?) And each passes on without pausing: they have no time!
-
-... It is perhaps the last human voice she will hear for many a mile.
-After that only the whisper of the grasses--_graïe-gras,
-graïe-gras!_--and the gossip of the canes--_chououa, chououa!_--and the
-husky speech of the _pois-Angole, ka babillé conm yon vié
-fenme_,--that babbles like an old woman;--and the murmur of the
-_filao_-trees, like the murmur of the River of the Washerwomen.
-
-
-
-
-XII
-
-
-... Sundown approaches: the light has turned a rich yellow;--long black
-shapes lie across the curving road, shadows of balisier and palm,
-shadows of tamarind and Indian-reed, shadows of ceiba and giant-fern.
-And the porteuses are coming down through the lights and darknesses of
-the way horn far Grande Anse, to halt a moment in this little village.
-They are going to sit down on the road-side here, before the house of
-the baker; and there is his great black workman, Jean-Marie, looking for
-them from the door-way, waiting to relieve them of their loads....
-Jean-Marie is the strongest man in all the Champ-Flore: see what a
-torso,--as he stands there naked to the waist!... His day's work is
-done; but he likes to wait for the girls, though he is old now, and has
-sons as tall as himself. It is a habit: some say that he had a daughter
-once,--a porteuse like those coming, and used to wait for her thus at
-that very door-way until one evening that she failed to appear, and
-never returned till he carried her home in his arms dead,--striken by a
-serpent in some mountain path where there was none to aid.... The roads
-were not as good then as now.
-
-... Here they come, the girls--yellow, red, black. See the flash of the
-yellow feet where they touch the light! And what impossible tint the red
-limbs take in the changing glow!... Finotte, Pauline, Médelle,--all
-together, as usual,--with Ti-Clé trotting behind, very tired.... Never
-mind, Ti-Clé!--you will outwalk your cousins when you are a few years
-older,--pretty Ti-Clé.... Here come Cyrillia and Zabette, and Féfé
-and Dodotte and Fevriette. And behind them are coming the two
-_chabines_,--golden girls: the twin-sisters who sell silks and threads
-and foulards; always together, always wearing robes and kerchiefs of
-similar color,--so that you can never tell which is Lorrainie and which
-Édoualise.
-
-And all smile to see Jean-Marie waiting for them, and to hear his deep
-kind voice calling, "_Coument ou yé chè? coument ou kallé?_"... (How
-art thou, dear?--how goes it with thee?)
-
-And they mostly make answer, "_Toutte douce, chè,--et ou?_" (All
-sweetly, dear,--and thou?) But some, overweary, cry to him, "_Ah!
-déchâgê moin vite, chè! moin lasse, lasse!_" (Unload me quickly,
-dear; for I am very, very weary.) Then he takes off their burdens, and
-fetches bread for them, and says foolish little things to make them
-laugh. And they are pleased, and laugh, just like children, as they sit
-right down on the road there to munch their dry bread.
-
-
-... So often have I watched that scene!... Let me but close my eyes one
-moment, and it will come back to me,--through all the thousand
-miles,--over the graves of the days....
-
-Again I see the mountain road in the yellow glow, banded with umbrages
-of palm. Again I watch the light feet coming,--now in shadow, now in
-sun,--soundlessly as falling leaves. Still I can hear the voices crying,
-"_Ah! déchâgê moin vite, chè!--moin lasse!_"--and see the mighty
-arms outreach to take the burdens away.
-
-
-[Illustration: LES PORTEUSES
-"_Again I see the mountain road in the yellow glow.
-... Again I watch the light feet coming,--now in
-shadow, now in sun,--soundless as falling leaves._"]
-
-
-... Only, there is a change,--I know not what!... All vapory the road
-is, and the fronds, and the comely coming of feet of the bearers, and
-even this light of sunset,--sunset that is ever larger and nearer to us
-than dawn, even as death than birth. And the weird way appeareth a way
-whose dust is the dust of generations;--and the Shape that waits is
-never Jean-Marie, but one darker and stronger;--and these are surely
-voices of tired souls who cry to Thee, thou dear black Giver of the
-perpetual rest, "_Ah! déchâgé moin vite, chè!--moin lasse!_"
-
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-LA GRANDE ANSE
-
-
-I
-
-
-While, at the village of Morne Rouge, I was frequently impressed by the
-singular beauty of young girls from the north-east coast--all porteuses,
-who passed almost daily, on their way from Grande Anse to St. Pierre and
-back again,--a total trip of thirty-five miles.... I knew they were from
-Grande Anse, because the village baker, at whose shop they were wont to
-make brief halts, told me a good deal about them: he knew each one by
-name. Whenever a remarkably attractive girl appeared, and I would
-inquire whence she came, the invariable reply (generally preceded by
-that peculiarly intoned French "Ah!" signifying, "Why, you certainly
-ought to know!") was "Grande Anse."... _Ah! c'est de Grande Anse, ça!_
-And if any commonplace, uninteresting type showed itself, it would be
-signalled as from somewhere else--Gros-Morne, Capote, Marigot,
-perhaps,--but never from Grande Anse. The Grande Anse girls were
-distinguishable by their clear yellow or brown skins, lithe light
-figures, and a particular grace in their way of dressing. Their short
-robes were always of bright and pleasing colors, perfectly contrasting
-with the ripe fruit-tint of nude limbs and faces: I could discern a
-partiality for white stuffs with apricot-yellow stripes, for plaidings
-of blue and violet, and various patterns of pink and mauve. They had a
-graceful way of walking under their trays, with hands clasped behind
-their heads, and arms uplifted in the manner of caryatides. An artist
-would have been wild with delight for the chance to sketch some of
-them.... On the whole, they conveyed the impression that they belonged
-to a particular race, very different from that of the chief city or its
-environs.
-
-"Are they all banana-colored at Grande Anse?" I asked,--"and all as
-pretty as these?"
-
-"I was never at Grande Anse," the little baker answered, "although I
-have been forty years in Martinique; but I know there is a fine class of
-young girls there: _il y a une belle jeunesse là, mon cher!_"
-
-Then I wondered why the youth of Grande Anse should be any finer than
-the youth of other places; and it seemed to me that the baker's own
-statement of his never having been there might possibly furnish a clew.
-... Out of the thirty-five thousand inhabitants of St. Pierre and its
-suburbs, there are at least twenty thousand who never have been there,
-and most probably never will be. Few dwellers of the west coast visit
-the east coast: in fact, except among the white creoles, who represent
-but a small percentage of the total population, there are few persons to
-be met with who are familiar with all parts of their native island. It
-is so mountainous, and travelling is so wearisome, that populations may
-live and die in adjacent valleys without climbing the intervening ranges
-to look at one another. Grande Anse is only about twenty miles from the
-principal city; but it requires some considerable inducement to make the
-journey on horseback; and only the professional carrier-girls,
-plantation messengers, and colored people of peculiarly tough
-constitution attempt it on foot. Except for the transportation of sugar
-and rum, there is practically no communication by sea between the west
-and the north-east coast--the sea is too dangerous--and thus the
-populations on either side of the island are more or less isolated from
-each other, besides being further subdivided and segregated by the
-lesser mountain chains crossing their respective territories.... In view
-of all these things I wondered whether a community so secluded might not
-assume special characteristics within two hundred years--might not
-develop into a population of some yellow, red, or brown type, according
-to the predominant element of the original race-crossing.
-
-
-
-
-II
-
-
-I had long been anxious to see the city of the porteuses, when the
-opportunity afforded itself to make the trip with a friend obliged to go
-thither on some important business;--I do not think I should have ever
-felt resigned to undertake it alone. With a level road the distance
-might be covered very quickly, but over mountains the journey is slow
-and wearisome in the perpetual tropic heat. Whether made on horseback or
-in a carriage, it takes between four and five hours to go from St.
-Pierre to Grande Anse, and it requires a longer time to return, as the
-road is then nearly all uphill. The young porteuse travels almost as
-rapidly; and the barefooted black postman, who carries the mails in a
-square box at the end of a pole, is timed on leaving Morne Rouge at 4
-A.M. to reach Ajoupa-Bouillon a little after six, and leaving
-Ajoupa-Bouillon at half-past six to reach Grande Anse at half-past
-eight, including many stoppages and delays on the way.
-
-Going to Grande Anse from the chief city, one can either hire a horse or
-carriage at St. Pierre, or ascend to Morne Rouge by the public
-conveyance, and there procure a vehicle or animal, which latter is the
-cheaper and easier plan. About a mile beyond Morne Rouge, where the old
-Calebasse road enters the public highway, you reach the highest point of
-the journey,--the top of the enormous ridge dividing the north-east from
-the western coast, and cutting off the trade-winds from sultry St.
-Pierre. By climbing the little hill, with a tall stone cross on its
-summit, overlooking the Champ-Flore just here, you can perceive the sea
-on both sides of the bland at once--_lapis lazuli_ blue. From this
-elevation the road descends by a hundred windings and lessening
-undulations to the eastern shore. It sinks between monies wooded to
-their summits,--bridges a host of torrents and ravines,--passes gorges
-from whence colossal trees tower far overhead, through heavy streaming
-of lianas, to mingle their green crowns in magnificent gloom. Now and
-then you hear a low long sweet sound like the deepest tone of a silver
-flute,--a bird-call, the cry of the _siffleur-de-montagne_; then all is
-stillness. You are not like'y to see a white face again for hours, but
-at intervals a porteuse passes, walking very swiftly, or a field-hand
-heavily laden; and these salute you either by speech or a lifting of the
-hand to the head.... And it b very pleasant to hear the greetings
-and to see the smiles of those who thus pass,--the fine brown girls
-bearing trays, the dark laborers bowed under great burdens of
-bamboo-grass,--_Bonjou', Missié!_ Then you should reply, if the speaker
-be a woman and pretty, "Good-day, dear" (_bonjou', chè_), or,
-"Good-day, my daughter" (_mafi_) even if she be old; while if the
-passer-by be a man, your proper reply is, "Good-day, my son"
-(_monfi_).... They are less often uttered now than in other years, these
-kindly greetings, but they still form part of the good and true creole
-manners.
-
-The feathery beauty of the tree-ferns shadowing each brook, the grace of
-bamboo and arborescent grasses, seem to decrease as the road
-descends,--but the palms grow taller. Often the way skirts a precipice
-dominating some marvellous valley prospect; again it is walled in by
-high green banks or shrubby slopes which cut off the view; and always it
-serpentines so that you cannot see more than a few hundred feet of the
-white track before you. About the fifteenth kilometre a glorious
-landscape opens to the right, reaching to the Atlantic;--the road still
-winds very high; forests are billowing hundreds of yards below it, and
-rising miles away up the slopes of mornes, beyond which, here and there,
-loom strange shapes of mountain,--shading off from misty green to violet
-and faintest gray. And through one grand opening in this multicolored
-surging of hills and peaks you perceive the gold-yellow of cane-fields
-touching the sky-colored sea. Grande Anse lies somewhere in that
-direction.... At the eighteenth kilometre you pass a cluster of little
-country cottages, a church, and one or two large buildings framed in
-shade-trees--the hamlet of Ajoupa-Bouillon. Yet a little farther, and
-you find you have left all the woods behind you. But the road continues
-its bewildering curves around and between low monies covered with cane
-or cocoa plants: it dips down very low, rises again, dips once
-more;--and you perceive the soil is changing color; it is taking a red
-tint like that of the land of the American cotton-belt. Then you pass
-the Rivière Falaise (marked _Filasse_ upon old maps),--with its shallow
-crystal torrent flowing through a very deep and rocky channel,--and the
-Capote and other streams; and over the yellow rim of cane-hills the long
-blue bar of the sea appears, edged landward with a dazzling fringe of
-foam. The heights you have passed are no longer verdant, but purplish or
-gray,--with Pelée's cloud-wrapped enormity overtopping all. A very
-strong warm wind is blowing upon you--the trade-wind, always driving the
-clouds west: this is the sunny side of Martinique, where gray days and
-heavy rains are less frequent. Once or twice more the sea disappears and
-reappears, always over canes; and then, after passing a bridge and
-turning a last curve, the road suddenly drops down to the shore and into
-the burgh of Grande Anse.
-
-
-
-
-III
-
-
-Leaving Morne Rouge at about eight in the morning, my friend and I
-reached Grande Anse at half-past eleven. Everything had been arranged to
-make us comfortable. I was delighted with the airy comer room,
-commanding at once a view of the main street and of the sea--a very high
-room, all open to the trade-winds--which had been prepared to receive
-me. But after a long carriage ride in the heat of a tropical June day,
-one always feels the necessity of a little physical exercise. I lingered
-only a minute or two in the house, and went out to look at the little
-town and its surroundings.
-
-As seen from the high-road, the burgh of Grande Anse makes a long patch
-of darkness between the green of the coast and the azure of the water:
-it is almost wholly black and gray--suited to inspire an etching. High
-slopes of cane and meadow rise behind it and on either side, undulating
-up and away to purple and gray tips of mountain ranges. North and south,
-to left and right, the land reaches out in two high promontories, mostly
-green, and about a mile apart--the Pointe du Rochet and the Pointe de
-Séguinau, or Croche-Mort, which latter name preserves the legend of an
-insurgent slave, a man of color, shot dead upon the cliff. These
-promontories form the semicircular bay of Grande Anse. All this Grande
-Anse, or "Great Creek," valley is an immense basin of basalt; and narrow
-as it is, no less than five streams water it, including the Rivière de
-la Grande Anse.
-
-There are only three short streets in the town. The principal, or Grande
-Rue, is simply a continuation of the national road; there is a narrower
-one below, which used to be called the Rue de la Paille, because the
-cottages lining it were formerly all thatched with cane straw; and there
-is one above it, edging the cane-fields that billow away to the meeting
-of morne and sky. There is nothing of architectural interest, and all is
-sombre,--walls and roofs and pavements. But after you pass through the
-city and follow the southern route that ascends the Séguinau
-promontory, you can obtain some lovely landscape views--a grand surging
-of rounded mornes, with farther violet peaks, truncated or homed,
-pushing up their heads in the horizon above the highest flutterings of
-cane; and looking back above the town, you may see Pelée all
-unclouded,--not as you see it from the other coast, but an enormous
-ghostly silhouette, with steep sides and almost square summit, so pale as
-to seem transparent. Then if you cross the promontory southward, the
-same road will lead you into another very beautiful valley, watered by a
-broad rocky torrent,--the Valley of the Rivière du Lorrain. This clear
-stream rushes to the sea through a lofty opening in the hills; and
-looking westward between them, you will be charmed by the exquisite
-vista of green shapes piling and pushing up one behind another to reach
-a high blue ridge which forms the background--a vision of tooth-shaped
-and fantastical mountains,--part of the great central chain running
-south and north through nearly the whole island. It is over those blue
-summits that the wonderful road called _La Trace_ winds between primeval
-forest walls.
-
-But the more you become familiar with the face of the little town
-itself, the more you are impressed by the strange swarthy tone it
-preserves in all this splendid expanse of radiant tinting. There are
-only two points of visible color in it,--the church and hospital, built
-of stone, which have been painted yellow: as a mass in the landscape,
-lying between the dead-gold of the cane-clad hills and the delicious
-azure of the sea, it remains almost black under the prodigious blaze of
-light. The foundations of volcanic rock, three or four feet high, on
-which the frames of the wooden dwellings rest, are black; and the
-sea-wind appears to have the power of blackening all timber-work here
-through any coat of paint. Roofs and façades look as if they had been
-long exposed to coal-smoke, although probably no one in Grande Anse ever
-saw coal; and the pavements of pebbles and cement are of a deep
-ash-color, full of micaceous scintillation, and so hard as to feel
-disagreeable even to feet protected by good thick shoes. By-and-by you
-notice walls of black stone, bridges of black stone, and perceive that
-black forms an element of all the landscape about you. On the roads
-leading from the town you note from time to time masses of jagged rock
-or great bowlders protruding through the green of the slopes, and dark
-as ink. These black surfaces also sparkle. The beds of all the
-neighboring rivers are filled with dark gray stones; and many of these,
-broken by those violent floods which dash rocks together,--deluging the
-valleys, and strewing the soil of the bottom-lands (_fonds_) with dead
-serpents,--display black cores. Bare crags projecting from the green
-cliffs here and there are soot-colored, and the outlying rocks of the
-coast offer a similar aspect. And the sand of the beach is funereally
-black--looks almost like powdered charcoal; and as you walk over it,
-sinking three or four inches every step, you are amazed by the multitude
-and brilliancy of minute flashes in it, like a subtle silver
-effervescence.
-
-This extraordinary sand contains ninety per cent, of natural steel, and
-efforts have been made to utilize it industrially. Some years ago a
-company was formed, and a machine invented to separate the metal from
-the pure sand,--an immense revolving magnet, which, being set in motion
-under a sand shower, caught the ore upon it. When the covering thus
-formed by the adhesion of the steel became of a certain thickness, the
-simple interruption of an electric current precipitated the metal into
-appropriate receptacles. Fine bars were made from this volcanic steel,
-and excellent cutting tools manufactured from it: French metallurgists
-pronounced the product of peculiar excellence, and nevertheless the
-project of the company was abandoned. Political disorganization
-consequent upon the establishment of universal suffrage frightened
-capitalists who might have aided the undertaking under a better
-condition of affairs; and the lack of large means, coupled with the cost
-of freight to remote markets, ultimately baffled this creditable attempt
-to found a native industry.
-
-Sometimes after great storms bright brown sand is flung up from the
-sea-depths; but the heavy black sand always reappears again to make the
-universal color of the beach.
-
-
-
-
-IV
-
-
-Behind the roomy wooden house in which I occupied an apartment there was
-a small garden-plot surrounded with a hedge strengthened by bamboo
-fencing, and radiant with flowers of the _loseille-bois_--the creole
-name for a sort of begonia, whose closed bud exactly resembles a pink
-and white dainty bivalve shell, and whose open blossom imitates the form
-of a butterfly. Here and there, on the grass, were nets drying, and
-_nasses_--curious fish-traps made of split bamboos interwoven and held
-in place with _mibi_ stalks (the mibi is a liana heavy and tough as
-copper wire); and immediately behind the garden hedge appeared the white
-flashing of the surf. The most vivid recollection connected with my trip
-to Grande Anse is that of the first time that I went to the end of that
-garden, opened the little bamboo gate, and found myself overlooking the
-beach--an immense breadth of soot-black sand, with pale green patches
-and stripings here and there upon it--refuse of cane thatch, decomposing
-rubbish spread out by old tides. The one solitary boat owned in the
-community lay there before me, high and dry. It was the hot period of
-the afternoon; the town slept; there was no living creature in sight;
-and the booming of the surf drowned all other sounds; the scent of the
-warm strong sea-wind annihilated all other odors. Then, very suddenly,
-there came to me a sensation absolutely weird, while watching the
-strange wild sea roaring over its beach of black sand,--the sensation of
-seeing something unreal, looking at something that had no more tangible
-existence than a memory! Whether suggested by the first white vision of
-the surf over the bamboo hedge,--or by those old green tide-lines on the
-desolation of the black beach,--or by some tone of the speaking of the
-sea,--or something indefinable in the living touch of the wind,--or by
-all of these, I cannot say;--but slowly there became defined within me
-the thought of having beheld just such a coast very long ago, I could
-not tell where,--in those child-years of which the recollections
-gradually become indistinguishable from dreams.
-
-
-Soon as darkness comes upon Grande Anse the face of the clock in the
-church-tower is always lighted: you see it suddenly burst into yellow
-glow above the roofs and the cocoa-palms,--just like a pharos. In my
-room I could not keep the candle lighted because of the sea-wind; but it
-never occurred to me to close the shutters of the great broad
-windows,--sashless, of course, like all the glassless windows of
-Martinique;--the breeze was too delicious. It seemed full of something
-vitalizing that made one's blood warmer, and rendered one full of
-contentment--full of eagerness to believe life all sweetness. Likewise,
-I found it soporific--this pure, dry, warm wind. And I thought there
-could be no greater delight in existence than to lie down at night, with
-all the windows open,--and the Cross of the South visible from my
-pillow,--and the sea-wind pouring over the bed,--and the tumultuous
-whispering and muttering of the surf in one's ears,--dream of that
-strange sapphire sea white-bursting over its beach of black sand.
-
-
-
-
-V
-
-
-Considering that Grande Anse lies almost opposite to St. Pierre, at a
-distance of less than twenty miles even by the complicated windings of
-the national road, the differences existing in the natural conditions of
-both places are remarkable enough. Nobody in St. Pierre sees the sun
-rise, because the mountains immediately behind the city continue to
-shadow its roofs long after the eastern coast is deluged with light and
-heat. At Grande Anse, on the other hand, those tremendous sunsets which
-delight west coast dwellers are not visible at all; and during the
-briefer West Indian days Grande Anse is all wrapped in darkness as early
-as half-past four,--or nearly an hour before the orange light has ceased
-to flare up the streets of St. Pierre from the sea;--since the great
-mountain range topped by Pelée cuts off all the slanting light from the
-east valleys. And early as folks rise in St. Pierre, they rise still
-earlier at Grande Anse--before the sun emerges from the rim of the
-Atlantic: about half-past four, doors are being opened and coffee is
-ready. At St. Pierre one can enjoy a sea bath till seven or half-past
-seven o'clock, even during the time of the sun's earliest rising,
-because the shadow of the mornes still reaches out upon the bay;--but
-bathers leave the black beach of Grande Anse by six o'clock; for once
-the sun's face is up, the light, levelled straight at the eyes, becomes
-blinding. Again, at St. Pierre it rains almost every twenty-four hours
-for a brief while, during at least the greater part of the year; at
-Grande Anse it rains more moderately and less often. The atmosphere at
-St. Pierre is always more or less impregnated with vapor, and usually an
-enervating heat prevails, which makes exertion unpleasant; at Grande
-Anse the warm wind keeps the skin comparatively dry, in spite of
-considerable exercise. It is quite rare to see a heavy surf at St.
-Pierre, but it is much rarer not to see it at Grande Anse.... A curious
-fact concerning custom is that few white creoles care to bathe in front
-of the town, notwithstanding the superb beach and magnificent surf, both
-so inviting to one accustomed to the deep still water and rough pebbly
-shore of St. Pierre. The creoles really prefer their rivers as
-bathing-places; and when willing to take a sea bath, they will walk up
-and down hill for kilometres in order to reach some river mouth, so as
-to wash off in the fresh-water afterwards. They say that the effect of
-sea-salt upon the skin gives _boutons-chauds_ (what we call "prickly
-heat"). Friends took me all the way to the mouth of the Lorrain one
-morning that I might have the experience of such a double bath; but
-after leaving the tepid sea, I must confess the plunge into the river
-was something terrible--an icy shock which cured me of all further
-desire for river baths. My willingness to let the sea-water dry upon me
-was regarded as an eccentricity.
-
-
-
-
-VI
-
-
-It may be said that on all this coast the ocean, perpetually moved by
-the blowing of the trade-winds, never rests--never hushes its roar. Even
-in the streets of Grande Anse, one must in breezy weather lift one's
-voice above the natural pitch to be heard; and then the breakers come in
-lines more than a mile long, between the Pointe du Rochet and the Pointe
-de Séguinau,--every unfurling a thunder-clap. There is no travelling by
-sea. All large vessels keep well away from the dangerous coast. There is
-scarcely any fishing; and although the sea is thick with fish, fresh
-fish at Grande Anse is a rare luxury. Communication with St. Pierre is
-chiefly by way of the national road, winding over mountain ridges two
-thousand feet high; and the larger portion of merchandise is transported
-from the chief city on the heads of young women. The steepness of the
-route soon kills draught-horses and ruins the toughest mules. At one
-time the managers of a large estate at Grande Anse attempted the
-experiment of sending their sugar to St. Pierre in iron carts, drawn by
-five mules; but the animals could not endure the work. Cocoa can be
-carried to St. Pierre by the porteuses, but sugar and rum must go by
-sea, or not at all; and the risks and difficulties of shipping these
-seriously affect the prosperity of all the north and north-east coast.
-Planters have actually been ruined by inability to send their products
-to market during a protracted spell of rough weather. A railroad has
-been proposed and planned: in a more prosperous era it might be
-constructed, with the result of greatly developing all the Atlantic side
-of the island, and converting obscure villages into thriving towns.
-
-Sugar is very difficult to ship; rum and tafia can be handled with less
-risk. It is nothing less than exciting to watch a shipment of tafia from
-Grande Anse to St. Pierre.
-
-A little vessel approaches the coast with extreme caution, and anchors
-in the bay some hundred yards beyond the breakers. She is what they call
-a _pirogue_ here, but not at all what is called a pirogue in the United
-States: she has a long narrow hull, two masts, no deck; she has usually
-a crew of five, and can carry thirty barrels of tafia. One of the
-pirogue men puts a great shell to his lips and sounds a call, very
-mellow and deep, that can be heard over the roar of the waves far up
-among the hills. The shell is one of those great spiral shells, weighing
-seven or eight pounds--rolled like a scroll, fluted and scalloped about
-the edges, and pink-pearled inside,--such as are sold in America for
-mantel-piece ornaments,--the shell of a _lambi._ Here you can often see
-the lambi crawling about with its nacreous house upon its back: an
-enormous sea-snail with a yellowish back and rose-colored belly, with
-big horns and eyes in the tip of each horn--very pretty eyes, having a
-golden iris. This creature is a common article of food; but its thick
-white flesh is almost compact as cartilage, and must be pounded before
-being cooked.[5]
-
-At the sound of the blowing of the lambi-shell, wagons descend to the
-beach, accompanied by young colored men running beside the mules. Each
-wagon discharges a certain number of barrels of tafia, and
-simultaneously the young men strip. They are slight, well built, and
-generally well muscled. Each man takes a barrel of tafia, pushes it
-before him into the surf, and then begins to swim to the
-pirogue,--impelling the barrel before him. I have never seen a swimmer
-attempt to convey more than one barrel at a time; but I am told there
-are experts who manage as many as three barrels together,--pushing them
-forward in line, with the head of one against the bottom of the next. It
-really requires much dexterity and practice to handle even one barrel or
-cask. As the swimmer advances he keeps close as possible to his
-charge,--so as to be able to push it forward with all his force against
-each breaker in succession,--making it dive through. If it once glide
-well out of his reach while he is in the breakers, it becomes an enemy,
-and he must take care to keep out of its way,--for if a wave throws it
-at him, or rolls it over him, he may be seriously injured; but the
-expert seldom abandons a barrel. Under the most favorable conditions,
-man and barrel will both disappear a score of times before the clear
-swells are reached, after which the rest of the journey is not
-difficult. Men lower ropes from the pirogue, the swimmer passes them
-under his barrel, and it is hoisted aboard.
-
-... Wonderful surf-swimmers these men are;--they will go far out for
-mere sport in the roughest kind of a sea, when the waves, abnormally
-swollen by the peculiar conformation of the bay, come rolling in thirty
-and forty feet high. Sometimes, with the swift impulse of ascending a
-swell, the swimmer seems suspended in air as it passes beneath him,
-before he plunges into the trough beyond. The best swimmer is a young
-capre who cannot weigh more than a hundred and twenty pounds. Few of the
-Grande Anse men are heavily built; they do not compare for stature and
-thew with those longshoremen at St. Pierre who can be seen any busy
-afternoon on the landing, lifting heavy barrels at almost the full reach
-of their swarthy arms.
-
-... There is but one boat owned in the whole parish of Grande Anse,--a
-fact due to the continual roughness of the sea. It has a little mast and
-sail, and can hold only three men. When the water is somewhat less angry
-than usual, a colored crew take it out for a fishing expedition. There
-is always much interest in this event; a crowd gathers on the beach; and
-the professional swimmers help to bring the little craft beyond the
-breakers. When the boat returns after a disappearance of several hours,
-everybody runs down from the village to meet it. Young colored women
-twist their robes up about their hips, and wade out to welcome it: there
-is a display of limbs of all colors on such occasions, which is not
-without grace, that untaught grace which tempts an artistic pencil.
-Every bonne and every house-keeper struggles for the first chance to buy
-the fish;--young girls and children dance in the water for delight, all
-screaming, "_Rhalé bois-canot!_"... Then as the boat is pulled through
-the surf and hauled up on the sand, the pushing and screaming and crying
-become irritating and deafening; the fishermen lose patience and say
-terrible things. But nobody heeds them in the general clamoring and
-haggling and furious bidding for the _pouèsson-ououge_, the _dorades_,
-the _volants_ (beautiful purple-backed flying-fish with silver bellies,
-and fins all transparent, like the wings of dragon-flies). There is
-great bargaining even for a young shark,--which makes very nice eating
-cooked after the creole fashion. So seldom can the fishermen venture out
-that each trip makes a memorable event for the village.
-
-The St. Pierre fishermen very seldom approach the bay, but they do much
-fishing a few miles beyond it, almost in front of the Pointe du Rochet
-and the Roche à Bourgaut. There the best flying-fish are caught,--and
-besides edible creatures, many queer things are often brought up by the
-nets: monstrosities such as the _coffre_-fish, shaped almost like a box,
-of which the lid is represented by an extraordinary conformation of the
-jaws;--and the _barrique-de-vin_ ("wine cask"), with round boneless
-body, secreting in a curious vesicle a liquor precisely resembling wine
-lees;--and the "needle-fish" (_aiguille de mer_), less thick than a
-Faber lead-pencil, but more than twice as long;--and huge cuttle-fish
-and prodigious eels. One conger secured off this coast measured over
-twenty feet in length, and weighed two hundred and fifty pounds--a
-veritable sea-serpent.... But even the fresh-water inhabitants of Grande
-Anse are amazing. I have seen crawfish by actual measurement fifty
-centimetres long, but these were not considered remarkable. Many are
-said to much exceed two feet from the tail to the tip of the claws and
-horns. They are of an iron-black color, and have formidable pincers with
-serrated edges and tip-points inwardly converging, which cannot crush
-like the weapons of a lobster, but which will cut the flesh and make a
-small ugly wound. At first sight one not familiar with the crawfish of
-these regions can hardly believe he is not viewing some variety of
-gigantic lobster instead of the common fresh-water crawfish of the east
-coast. When the head, tail, legs, and cuirass have all been removed,
-after boiling, the curved trunk has still the size and weight of a large
-pork sausage.
-
-These creatures are trapped by lantern-light. Pieces of manioc root tied
-fast to large bowlders sunk in the river are the only bait;--the
-crawfish will flock to eat it upon any dark night, and then they are
-caught with scoop-nets and dropped into covered baskets.
-
-
-[Footnote 5: _Y batt li conm lambi_--"he beat him like a lambi"--is an
-expression that may often be heard in a creole court from witnesses
-testifying in a case of assault and battery. One must have seen a lambi
-pounded to appreciate the terrible picturesqueness of the phrase.]
-
-
-
-
-VII
-
-
-One whose ideas of the people of Grande Anse had been formed only by
-observing the young porteuses of the region on their way to the other
-side of the island, might expect on reaching this little town to find
-its population yellow as that of a Chinese city. But the dominant hue is
-much darker, although the mixed element is everywhere visible; and I was
-at first surprised by the scarcity of those clear bright skins I
-supposed to be so numerous. Some pretty children--notably a pair of
-twin-sisters, and perhaps a dozen school-girls from eight to ten years
-of age--displayed the same characteristics I have noted in the adult
-porteuses of Grande Anse; but within the town itself this brighter
-element is in the minority. The predominating race element of the whole
-commune is certainly colored (Grande Anse is even memorable because of
-the revolt of its _hommes de couleur_ some fifty years ago);--but the
-colored population is not concentrated in the town; it belongs rather to
-the valleys and the heights surrounding the _chef-lieu._ Most of the
-porteuses are country girls, and I found that even those living in the
-village are seldom visible on the streets except when departing upon a
-trip or returning from one. An artist wishing to study the type might,
-however, pass a day at the bridge of the Rivière Falaise to advantage,
-as all the carrier-girls pass it at certain hours of the morning and
-evening.
-
-But the best possible occasion on which to observe what my friend the
-baker called _la belle jeunesse_, is a confirmation day,--when the
-bishop drives to Grande Anse over the mountains, and all the population
-turns out in holiday garb, and the bells are tapped like tam-tams, and
-triumphal arches--most awry to behold!--span the road-way, bearing in
-clumsiest lettering the welcome. _Vive Monseigneur._ On that event, the
-long procession of young girls to be confirmed--all in white robes,
-white veils, and white satin slippers--is a numerical surprise. It is a
-moral surprise also,--to the stranger at least; for it reveals the
-struggle of a poverty extraordinary with the self-imposed obligations of
-a costly ceremonialism.
-
-
-[Illustration: CATHEDRAL, FORT-DE-FRANCE
-_Services begin at daybreak. All day long the ringing
-bells mark the joys and sorrows of creole and white
-alike._]
-
-
-No white children ever appear in these processions: there are not half a
-dozen white families in the whole urban population of about seven
-thousand souls; and those send their sons and daughters to St. Pierre or
-Morne Rouge for their religious training and education. But many of the
-colored children look very charming in their costume of
-confirmation;--you could not easily recognize one of them as the same
-little bonne who brings your morning cup of coffee, or another as the
-daughter of a plantation _commandeur_ (overseer's assistant),--a brown
-slip of a girl who will probably never wear shoes again. And many of
-those white shoes and white veils have been obtained only by the hardest
-physical labor and self-denial of poor parents and relatives: fathers,
-brothers, and mothers working with cutlass and hoe in the snake-swarming
-cane-fields;--sisters walking bare-footed every day to St. Pierre and
-back to earn a few francs a month.
-
-... While watching such a procession it seemed to me that I could
-discern in the features and figures of the young confirmants something
-of a prevailing type and tint, and I asked an old planter beside me if
-he thought my impression correct.
-
-"Partly," he answered; "there is certainly a tendency towards an
-attractive physical type here, but the tendency itself is less stable
-than you imagine; it has been changed during the last twenty years
-within my own recollection. In different parts of the island particular
-types appear and disappear with a generation. There is a sort of
-race-fermentation going on, which gives no fixed result of a positive
-sort for any great length of time. It is true that certain elements
-continue to dominate in certain communes, but the particular
-characteristics come and vanish in the most mysterious way. As to color,
-I doubt if any correct classification can be made, especially by a
-stranger. Your eyes give you general ideas about a red type, a yellow
-type, a brown type; but to the more experienced eyes of a creole,
-accustomed to live in the country districts, every individual of mixed
-race appears to have a particular color of his own. Take, for instance,
-the so-called capre type, which furnishes the finest physical examples
-of all,--you, a stranger, are at once impressed by the general red tint
-of the variety; but you do not notice the differences of that tint in
-different persons, which are more difficult to observe than
-shade-differences of yellow or brown. Now, to me, every capre or
-capresse has an individual color; and I do not believe that in all
-Martinique there are two half-breeds--not having had the same father and
-mother--in whom the tint is precisely the same."
-
-
-
-
-VIII
-
-
-I thought Grande Anse the most sleepy place I had ever visited. I
-suspect it is one of the sleepiest in the whole world. The wind, which
-tans even a creole of St. Pierre to an unnatural brown within
-forty-eight hours of his sojourn in the village, has also a peculiarly
-somnolent effect. The moment one has nothing particular to do, and
-ventures to sit down idly with the breeze in one's face, slumber comes;
-and everybody who can spare the time takes a long nap in the afternoon,
-and little naps from hour to hour. For all that, the heat of the east
-coast is not enervating, like that of St. Pierre; one can take a great
-deal of exercise in the sun without feeling much the worse. Hunting
-excursions, river fishing parties, surf-bathing, and visits to
-neighboring plantations are the only amusements; but these are enough to
-make existence very pleasant at Grande Anse. The most interesting of my
-own experiences were those of a day passed by invitation at one of the
-old colonial estates on the bills near the village.
-
-It is not easy to describe the charm of a creole interior, whether in
-the city or the country. The cool shadowy court, with its wonderful
-plants and fountain of sparkling mountain water, or the lawn, with its
-ancestral trees,--the delicious welcome of the host, whose fraternal
-easy manner immediately makes you feel at home,--the coming of the
-children to greet you, each holding up a velvety brown cheek to be
-kissed, after the old-time custom,--the romance of the unconventional
-chat, over a cool drink, under the palms and the ceibas,--the visible
-earnestness of all to please the guest, to inwrap him in a very
-atmosphere of quiet happiness,--combine to make a memory which you will
-never forget. And maybe you enjoy all this upon some exquisite site,
-some volcanic summit, overlooking slopes of a hundred greens,--mountains
-far winding in blue and pearly shadowing,--rivers singing seaward behind
-curtains of arborescent reeds and bamboos,--and, perhaps. Pelée, in the
-horizon, dreaming violet dreams under her foulard of vapors,--and,
-encircling all, the still sweep of the ocean's azure bending to the
-verge of day.
-
-... My host showed or explained to me all that he thought might interest
-a stranger. He had brought to me a nest of the _carouge_, a bird which
-suspends its home, hammock-fashion, under the leaves of the
-banana-tree;--showed me a little fer-de-lance, freshly killed by one of
-his field hands; and a field lizard (_zanoli tè_ in creole), not green
-like the lizards which haunt the roofs of St. Pierre, but of a beautiful
-brown bronze, with shifting tints; and eggs of the _zanoli_, little soft
-oval things from which the young lizards will perhaps run out alive as
-fast as you open the shells; and the _matoutou-falaise_, or spider of
-the cliffs, of two varieties, red or almost black when adult, and bluish
-silvery tint when young,--less in size than the tarantula, but equally
-hairy and venomous; and the _crabe-c'est-ma-faute_ (the
-"Through-my-fault crab"), having one very small and one very large claw,
-which latter it carries folded up against its body, so as to have
-suggested the idea of a penitent striking his bosom, and uttering the
-sacramental words of the Catholic confession, "Through my fault, through
-my fault, through my most grievous fault."... Indeed I cannot recollect
-one-half of the queer birds, queer insects, queer reptiles, and queer
-plants to which my attention was called. But speaking of plants, I was
-impressed by the profusion of the _zhèbe-moin-misé_--a little
-sensitive-plant I had rarely observed on the west coast. On the
-hill-sides of Grande Anse it prevails to such an extent as to give
-certain slopes its own peculiar greenish-brown color. It has
-many-branching leaves, only one inch and a half to two inches long, but
-which recall the form of certain common ferns; these lie almost flat
-upon the ground. They fold together upward from the central stem at the
-least touch, and the plant thus makes itself almost imperceptible;--it
-seems to live so, that you fed guilty of murder if you break off a leaf.
-It is called _Zhèbe-moin-misé_, or "Plant-did-I-amuse-myself," because
-it is supposed to tell naughty little children who play truant, or who
-delay much longer than is necessary in delivering a message, whether
-they deserve a whipping or not. The guilty child touches the plant, and
-asks, "_Ess moin amisé morn?_" (Did I amuse myself?); and if the plant
-instantly shuts its leaves up, that means, "Yes, you did!" Of course the
-leaves invariably close; but I suspect they invariably tell the truth,
-for all colored children, in Grande Anse at least, are much more
-inclined to play than work.
-
-The kind old planter likewise conducted me over the estate. He took me
-through the sugar-mill, and showed me, among other more recent
-inventions, some machinery devised nearly two centuries ago by the
-ingenious and terrible Père Labat, and still quite serviceable, in
-spite of all modern improvements in sugar-making;--took me through the
-_rhummerie_, or distillery, and made me taste some colorless rum which
-had the aroma and something of the taste of the most delicate gin;--and
-finally took me into the _cases-à-vent_, or "wind-houses,"--built as
-places of refuge during hurricanes. Hurricanes are rare, and more rare
-in this century by far than during the previous one; but this part of
-the island is particularly exposed to such visitations, and almost every
-old plantation used to have one or two cases-à-vent. They were always
-built in a hollow, either natural or artificial, below the
-land-level,--with walls of rock several feet thick, and very strong
-doors, but no windows. My host told me about the experiences of his
-family in some case-à-vent during a hurricane which he recollected. It
-was found necessary to secure the door within by means of strong ropes;
-and the mere task of holding it taxed the strength of a dozen powerful
-men: it would bulge in under the pressure of the awful wind,--swelling
-like the side of a barrel; and had not its planks been made of a wood
-tough as hickory, they would have been blown into splinters.
-
-I had long desired to examine a plantation drum, and see it played upon
-under conditions more favorable than the excitement of a holiday
-_caleinda_ in the villages, where the amusement is too often terminated
-by a _voum_ (general row) or a _goumage_ (a serious fight);--and when I
-mentioned this wish to the planter he at once sent word to his
-commandeur, the best drummer in the settlement, to come up to the house
-and bring his instrument with him. I was thus enabled to make the
-observations necessary, and also to take an instantaneous photograph of
-the drummer in the very act of playing.
-
-The old African dances, the _caleinda_ and the _bélé_ (which latter is
-accompanied by chanted improvisation) are danced on Sundays to the sound
-of the drum on almost every plantation in the island. The drum, indeed,
-is an instrument to which the country-folk are so much attached that
-they swear by it,--_Tamboul_ being the oath uttered upon all ordinary
-occasions of surprise or vexation. But the instrument is quite as often
-called _ka_, because made out of a quarter-barrel, or _quart_,--in the
-patois "ka." Both ends of the barrel having been removed, a wet hide,
-well wrapped about a couple of hoops, is driven on, and in drying the
-stretched skin obtains still further tension. The other end of the ka is
-always left open. Across the face of the skin a string is tightly
-stretched, to which are attached, at intervals of about an inch apart,
-very short thin fragments of bamboo or cut feather stems. These lend a
-certain vibration to the tones.
-
-In the time of Père Labat the negro drums had a somewhat different
-form. There were then two kinds of drums--a big tamtam and a little one,
-which used to be played together. Both consisted of skins tightly
-stretched over one end of a wooden cylinder, or a section of hollow tree
-trunk. The larger was from three to four feet long with a diameter of
-fifteen to sixteen inches; the smaller, called _baboula_,[6] was of the
-same length, but only eight or nine inches in diameter. Père Labat also
-speaks, in his West Indian travels, of another musical instrument, very
-popular among the Martinique slaves of his time--"a sort of guitar" made
-out of a half-calabash or _couï_, covered with some kind of skin. It
-had four strings of silk or catgut, and a very long neck. The tradition
-of this African instrument is said to survive in the modern "_banza_"
-(_banza nèg Guinée_).
-
-The skilful player (_bel tambouyé_) straddles his ka stripped to the
-waist, and plays upon it with the fingertips of both hands
-simultaneously,--taking care that the vibrating string occupies a
-horizontal position. Occasionally the heel of the naked foot is pressed
-lightly or vigorously against the skin, so as to produce changes of
-tone. This is called "giving heel" to the drum--_baill y talon._
-Meanwhile a boy keeps striking the drum at the uncovered end with a
-stick, so as to produce a dry clattering accompaniment. The sound
-of the drum itself, well played, has a wild power that makes and
-masters all the excitement of the dance--a complicated double roll,
-with a peculiar billowy rising and falling. The creole onomatopes,
-_b'lip-b'lib-b'lib-b'lip_, do not fully render the roll;--for each
-_b'lip_ or _b'lib_ stands really for a series of sounds too rapidly
-filliped out to be imitated by articulate speech. The tapping of a ka
-can be heard at surprising distances; and experienced players often play
-for hours at a time without exhibiting wearisomeness, or in the least
-diminishing the volume of sound produced.
-
-It seems there are many ways of playing--different measures familiar to
-all these colored people, but not easily distinguished by anybody else;
-and there are great matches sometimes between celebrated _tambouyé_ The
-same _commandè_ whose portrait I took while playing told me that he
-once figured in a contest of this kind, his rival being a drummer from
-the neighboring burgh of Marigot.... "_Aie, aïe, yaïe! mon chè!--y
-fai tambou-à pàlé!_" said the commandè, describing the execution of
-his antagonist;--"my dear, he just made that drum talk! I thought I was
-going to be beaten for sure; I was trembling all the time--_aïe,
-yaïe-yaïe!_ Then he got off that ka. I mounted it; I thought a moment;
-then I struck up the 'River-of-the-Lizard,'--_mais, mon chè, yon
-larivie-Léza toutt pi!_--such a River-of-the-Lizard, ah! just perfectly
-pure! I gave heel to that ka; I worried that ka;--I made it mad;--I made
-it crazy;--I made it talk;--I won!"
-
-During some dances a sort of chant accompanies the music--a long
-sonorous cry, uttered at intervals of seven or eight seconds, which
-perfectly times a particular measure in the drum roll. It may be the
-burden of a song, or a mere improvisation:
-
-
-"_Oh! yoïe-yoïe!"
-(Drum roll.)
-"Oh! missié-à!"
-(Drum roll.)
-"Y bel tambouyé!"
-(Drum roll.)
-"Aie, ya, yaie!"
-(Drum roll.)
-"Joli tambouyé!"
-(Drum roll.)
-"Chauffé tambou-à!"
-(Drum roll.)
-"Géné tambou-à!"
-(Drum roll.)
-"Crazé tambou-à!_" etc., etc.
-
-
-... The crieur, or chanter, is also the leader of the dance. The
-caleinda is danced by men only, all stripped to the waist, and twirling
-heavy sticks in a mock fight. Sometimes, however--especially at the
-great village gatherings, when the blood becomes overheated by
-tafia--the mock fight may become a real one; and then even cutlasses are
-brought into play.
-
-But in the old days, those improvisations which gave one form of dance
-its name, _bélé_ (from the French _bel air_), were often remarkable
-rhymeless poems, uttered with natural simple emotion, and full of
-picturesque imagery. I cite part of one, taken down from the dictation
-of a common field-hand near Fort-de-France. I offer a few lines of the
-creole first, to indicate the form of the improvisation. There is a
-dancing pause at the end of each line during the performance:
-
-
-Toutt fois lanmou vini lacase moin
-Pou pàlé moin, moin ka reponne:
-"Khé moin deja placé,"
-Moin ka crié, "Sécou! les voisinages!"
-Moin ka crié, "Sécou! la gàde royale!"
-Moin ka crié, "Sécou! la gendàmerie!
-Lanmou pouend yon poignâ pou poignadé moin!"
-
-
-The best part of the composition, which is quite long, might be
-rendered as follows:
-
-
-Each time that Love comes to my cabin
-To speak to me of love I make answer,
-"My heart is already placed,"
-I cry out, "Help, neighbors! help!"
-I cry out, "Help, _la Garde Royale!_"
-I cry out, "Help, help, gendarmes!
-Love takes a poniard to stab me;
-How can Love have a heart so hard
-To thus rob me of my health!"
-When the officer of police comes to me
-To hear me tell him the truth,
-To have him arrest my Love;--
-When I see the Garde Royale
-Coming to arrest my sweet heart,
-I fall down at the feet of the Garde Royale,--
-I pray for mercy and forgiveness.
-"Arrest me instead, but let my dear Love go!"
-How, alas! with this tender heart of mine,
-Can I bear to see such an arrest made!
-No, no! I would rather die!
-Dost not remember, when our pillows lay close together,
-How we told each to the other all that our hearts thought?
-... etc.
-
-
-The stars were all out when I bid my host good-bye;--he sent his black
-servant along with me to carry a lantern and keep a sharp watch for
-snakes along the mountain road.
-
-
-[Footnote 6: Moreau de Saint-Méry writes, describing the drums of the
-negroes of Saint Domingue: "Le plus court de ces tambours est nommé
-_Bamboula_, attendu qu'il est formé quelquefois d'un très-gros
-bambou."--"Description de la partie française de Saint Domingue," vol.
-I., p. 44.]
-
-
-
-[Illustration: HOME FROM MARKET, ST. PIERRE
-_The notion of speed and scarcity of time has not reached
-these dreamy, ease-loving islands._]
-
-
-
-
-IX
-
-
-... Assuredly the city of St. Pierre never could have seemed more
-quaintly beautiful than as I saw it on the evening of my return, while
-the shadows were reaching their longest, and sea and sky were turning
-lilac. Palm-heads were trembling and masts swaying slowly against an
-enormous orange sunset,--yet the beauty of the sight did not touch me!
-The deep level and luminous flood of the bay seemed to me for the first
-time a dead water;--I found myself wondering whether it could form a
-part of that living tide by which I had been dwelling, full of
-foam-lightnings and perpetual thunder. I wondered whether the air about
-me--heavy and hot and full of faint smells--could ever have been touched
-by the vast pure sweet breath of the wind from the sunrising. And I
-became conscious of a profound, unreasoning, absurd regret for the
-somnolent little black village of that bare east coast,--where there are
-no woods, no ships, no sunset,... only the ocean roaring forever over
-its beach of black sand.
-
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-UN REVENANT
-
-
-I
-
-
-He who first gave to Martinique its poetical name, _Le Pays des
-Revenants_, thought of his wonderful island only as "The Country of
-Comers-back," where Native's unspeakable spell bewitches wandering souls
-like the caress of a Circe,--never as the Land of Ghosts. Yet either
-translation of the name holds equal truth: a land of ghosts it is, this
-marvellous Martinique! Almost every plantation has its familiar
-spirits,--its phantoms: some may be unknown beyond the particular
-district in which fancy first gave them being;--but some belong to
-popular song and story,--to the imaginative life of the whole people.
-Almost every promontory and peak, every village and valley along the
-coast, has its special folk-lore, its particular tradition. The legend
-of Thomasseau of Perinnelle, whose body was taken out of the coffin and
-carried away by the devil through a certain window of the
-plantation-house, which cannot be closed up by human power;--the
-Demarche legend of the spectral horseman who rides up the hill on bright
-hot days to seek a friend buried more than a hundred years ago;--the
-legend of the _Habitation Dillon_, whose proprietor was one night
-mysteriously summoned from a banquet to disappear forever;--the legend
-of l'Abbé Piot, who cursed the sea with the curse of perpetual
-unrest;--the legend of Aimée Derivry of Robert, captured by Barbary
-pirates, and sold to become a Sultana-Validé--(she never existed,
-though you can find an alleged portrait in M. Sidney Darney's history of
-Martinique): these and many similar tales might be told to you even on a
-journey from St. Pierre to Fort-de-France, or from Lamentin to La
-Trinité, according as a rising of some peak into view, or the sudden
-opening of an before the vessel's approach, recalls them to a creole
-companion.
-
-And new legends are even now being made; for in this remote colony, to
-which white immigration has long ceased,--a country so mountainous that
-people are born and buried in the same valley without ever seeing towns
-but a few hours' journey beyond their native hills, and that distinct
-racial types are forming within three leagues of each other,--the memory
-of an event or of a name which has had influence enough to send one echo
-through all the forty-nine miles of peaks and craters is apt to create
-legend within a single generation. Nowhere in the world, perhaps, is
-popular imagination more oddly naïve and superstitious; nowhere are
-facts more readily exaggerated or distorted into unrecognizability; and
-the forms of any legend thus originated become furthermore specialized
-in each separate locality where it obtains a habitat. On tracing back
-such a legend or tradition to its primal source, one feels amazed at the
-variety of the metamorphoses which the simplest fact may rapidly assume
-in the childish fancy of this people.
-
-I was first incited to make an effort in this direction by hearing the
-remarkable story of "Missié Bon." No legendary expression is more
-wide-spread throughout the country than _temps coudvent Missié Bon_ (in
-the time of the big wind of Monsieur Bon). Whenever a hurricane
-threatens, you will hear colored folks expressing the hope that it may
-not be like the _coudvent Missié Bon._ And some years ago, in all the
-creole police-courts, old colored witnesses who could not tell their age
-would invariably try to give the magistrate some idea of it by referring
-to the never-to-be-forgotten _temps coudvent Missié Bon._
-
-... "_Temps coudvent Missié Bon, moin té ka tété encò_" (I was a
-child at the breast in the time of the big wind of Missié Bon); or
-"_Temps coudvent Missié Bon, moin té toutt piti manmaille,--moin ka
-souvini y pouend caïe manman moin pòté allé._" (I was a very, very
-little child in the time of the big wind of Missié Bon,--but I remember
-it blew mamma's cabin away.) The magistrates of those days knew the
-exact date of the _coudvent._
-
-But all I could learn about Missié Bon among the country-folk was this:
-Missié Bon used to be a great slave-owner and a cruel master. He was a
-very wicked man. And he treated his slaves so terribly that at last the
-Good-God (_Bon-Dié_) one day sent a great wind which blew away Missié
-Bon and Missié Bon's house and everybody in it, so that nothing was
-ever heard of them again.
-
-
-It was not without considerable research that I succeeded at last in
-finding some one able to give me the true facts in the case of Monsieur
-Bon. My informant was a charming old gentleman, who represents a New
-York company in the city of St. Pierre, and who takes more interest in
-the history of his native island than creoles usually do. He laughed at
-the legend I had found, but informed me that I could trace it, with
-slight variations, through nearly every canton of Martinique.
-
-"And now," he continued, "I can tell you the real history of 'Missié
-Bon,'--for he was an old friend of my grandfather; and my grandfather
-related it to me.
-
-"It may have been in 1809--I can give you the exact date by reference to
-some old papers if necessary--Monsieur Bon was Collector of Customs at
-St. Pierre: and my grandfather was doing business in the Grande Rue. A
-certain captain, whose vessel had been consigned to my grandfather,
-invited him and the collector to breakfast in his cabin. My grandfather
-was so busy he could not accept the invitation;--but Monsieur Bon went
-with the captain on board the bark."
-
-... "It was a morning like this; the sea was just as blue and the sky as
-clear. All of a sudden, while they were at breakfast, the sea began to
-break heavily without a wind, and clouds came up, with every sign of a
-hurricane. The captain was obliged to sacrifice his anchor; there was no
-time to land his guest: he hoisted a little jib and top-gallant, and
-made for open water, taking Monsieur Bon with him. Then the hurricane
-came; and from that day to this nothing has ever been heard of the bark
-nor of the captain nor of Monsieur Bon."[7]
-
-"But did Monsieur Bon ever do anything to deserve the reputation he has
-left among the people?" I asked.
-
-"Ah! le pauvre vieux corps!... A kind old soul who never uttered a harsh
-word to human being;--timid,--good-natured,--old-fashioned even for
-those old-fashioned days.... Never had a slave in his life!"
-
-
-[Footnote 7: What is known in the West Indies as a hurricane is happily
-rare; it blows with the force of a cyclone, but not always circularly;
-it may come from one direction, and strengthen gradually for days until
-its highest velocity and destructive force are reached. One in the time
-of Père Labat blew away the walls of a fort;--that of 1780 destroyed
-the lives of twenty-two thousand people in four islands: Martinique,
-Saint Lucia, St. Vincent, and Barbadoes.
-
-Before the approach of such a visitation animals manifest the same signs
-of terror they display prior to an earthquake. Cattle assemble together,
-stamp, and roar; sea-birds fly to the interior; fowl seek the nearest
-crevice they can hide in. Then, while the sky is yet dear, begins the
-breaking of the sea; then darkness comes, and after it the wind.]
-
-
-
-
-II
-
-
-The legend of "Missié Bon" had prepared me to hear without surprise the
-details of a still more singular tradition,--that of Father Labat.... I
-was returning from a mountain ramble with my guide, by way of the
-Ajoupa-Bouillon road;--the sun had gone down; there remained only a
-blood-red glow in the west, against which the silhouettes of the hills
-took a velvety blackness indescribably soft; and stars were beginning to
-twinkle out everywhere through the violet. Suddenly I noticed on the
-flank of a neighboring morne--which I remembered by day as an apparently
-uninhabitable wilderness of bamboos, tree-ferns, and balisiers--a
-swiftly moving point of yellow light. My guide had observed it
-simultaneously;--he crossed himself, and exclaimed:
-
-"_Moinka ka couè c'est fanal Pè Lobatt!_" (I believe it is the lantern
-of Père Labat.)
-
-"Does he live there?" I innocently inquired.
-
-"Live there?--why he has been dead hundreds of years!... _Ouill!_ you
-never heard of Pè Labatt?"...
-
-"Not the same who wrote a book about Martinique?"
-
-"Yes,--himself.... They say he comes back at night. Ask mother about
-him;--she knows."...
-
-... I questioned old Théréza as soon as we reached home; and she told
-me all she knew about "Pè Labatt." I found that the father had left a
-reputation far more wide-spread than the recollection of "Missié
-Bon,"--that his memory had created, in fact, the most impressive legend
-in all Martinique folk-lore.
-
-"Whether you really saw Pè Labatt's lantern," said old Théréza, "I do
-not know;--there are a great many queer lights to be seen after
-nightfall among these mornes. Some are zombi-fires; and some are
-lanterns carried by living men; and some are lights burning in ajoupas
-so high up that you can only see a gleam coming through the trees now
-and then. It is not everybody who sees the lantern of Pè Labatt; and it
-is not good-luck to see it.
-
-"Pè Labatt was a priest who lived here hundreds of years ago; and he
-wrote a book about what he saw. He was the first person to introduce
-slavery into Martinique; and it is thought that is why he comes back at
-night. It is his penance for having established slavery here.
-
-"They used to say, before 1848, that when slavery should be abolished,
-Pè Labatt's light would not be seen any more. But I can remember very
-well when slavery was abolished; and I saw the light many a time after.
-It used to move up the Morne d'Orange every dear night;--I could see it
-very well from my window when I lived in St. Pierre. You knew it was Pè
-Labatt, because the light passed up places where no man could walk. But
-since the statue of Notre Dame de la Garde was placed on the Morne
-d'Orange, people tell me that the light is not seen there any more.
-
-"But it is seen elsewhere; and it is not good-luck to see it. Everybody
-is afraid of seeing it.... And mothers tell their children, when the
-little ones are naughty: '_Mit main ké fai Pè Lobatt vini pouend
-ou,--oui!_' (I will make Pè Labatt come and take you away.)"...
-
-What old Théréza stated regarding the establishment of slavery in
-Martinique by Père Labat, I knew required no investigation,--inasmuch
-as slavery was a flourishing institution in the time of Père Du Tertre,
-another Dominican missionary and historian, who wrote his book,--a queer
-book in old French,[8]--before Labat was born. But it did not take me
-long to find out that such was the general belief about Père Labat's
-sin and penance, and to ascertain that his name is indeed used to
-frighten naughty children. _Eh! ti manmaille-là, moin ké fai Pè
-Labatt vini pouend ou!_--is an exclamation often heard in the vicinity
-of ajoupas just about the hour when all good little children ought to be
-in bed and asleep.
-
-... The first variation of the legend I heard was on a plantation in the
-neighborhood of Ajoupa-Bouillon. There I was informed that Père Labat
-had come to his death by the bite of a snake,--the hugest snake that
-ever was seen in Martinique. Père Labat had believed it possible to
-exterminate the fer-de-lance, and had adopted extraordinary measures for
-its destruction. On receiving his death-wound he exclaimed, "_C'est pè
-toutt sépent qui té ka mòdé moin_" (It is the Father of all Snakes
-that has bitten me); and he vowed that he would come back to destroy the
-brood, and would haunt the island until there should be not one snake
-left. And the light that moves about the peaks at night is the lantern
-of Père Labat still hunting for snakes.
-
-"_Ou pa pè suive ti limié-là press!_" continued my informant. "You
-cannot follow that little light at all;--when you first see it, it is
-perhaps only a kilometre away; the next moment it is two, three or four
-kilometres away."
-
-I was also told that the light is frequently seen near Grande Anse, on
-the other side of the island,--and on the heights of La Caravelle, the
-long fantastic promontory that reaches three leagues into the sea south
-of the harbor of La Trinité.[9] And on my return to St. Pierre I found
-a totally different version of the legend;--my informant being one
-Manm-Robert, a kind old soul who kept a little _boutique-lapacotte_ (a
-little booth where cooked food is sold) near the precipitous Street of
-the Friendships.
-
-... "_Ah! Pè Labatt, oui!_" she exclaimed, at my first question,--"Pè
-Labatt was a good priest who lived here very long ago. And they did him
-a great wrong here;--they gave him a wicked _coup d'langue_ (tongue
-wound); and the hurt given by an evil tongue is worse than a serpent's
-bite. They lied about him; they slandered him until they got him sent
-away from the country. But before the Government 'embarked' him, when he
-got to that quay, he took off his shoes and he shook the dust of his
-shoe upon that quay, and he said: 'I curse you, O Martinique!--I curse
-you! There will be food for nothing, and your people will not even be
-able to buy it! There will be clothing material for nothing, and your
-people will not be able to get so much as one dress! And the children
-will beat their mothers!... You banish me;--but I will come back
-again.'"[10]
-
-"And then what happened, Manm-Robert?"
-
-"_Eh! fouinq! chè_, all that Pè Labatt said has come true. There is
-food for almost nothing, and people are starving here in St. Pierre;
-there is clothing for almost nothing, and poor girls cannot earn enough
-to buy a dress. The pretty printed calicoes (_indiennes_) that used to
-be two francs and a half the metre, now sell at twelve sous the metre;
-but nobody has any money. And if you read our papers,--_Les Colonies, La
-Defense Coloniale_,--you will find that there are sons wicked enough to
-beat their mothers: _oui! yche ka bait maman!_ It is the malediction of
-Pè Labatt."
-
-This was all that Manm-Robert could tell me. Who had related the story
-to her? Her mother. Whence had her mother obtained it? From her
-grandmother.... Subsequently I found many persons to confirm the
-tradition of the curse,--precisely as Manm-Robert had related it.
-
-
-Only a brief while after this little interview I was invited to pass an
-afternoon at the home of a gentleman residing upon the Morne
-d'Orange,--the locality supposed to be especially haunted by Père
-Labat. The house of Monsieur M----stands on the side of the hill, fully
-five hundred feet up, and in a grove of trees: an antiquated dwelling,
-with foundations massive as the walls of a fortress, and huge broad
-balconies of stone. From one of these balconies there is a view of the
-city, the harbor, and Pelée, which I believe even those who have seen
-Naples would confess to be one of the fairest sights in the world....
-Towards evening I obtained a chance to ask my kind host some questions
-about the legend of his neighborhood.
-
-... "Ever since I was a child," observed Monsieur M----, "I heard it
-said that Père Labat haunted this mountain, and I often saw what was
-alleged to be his light. It looked very much like a lantern swinging in
-the hand of some one climbing the hill. A queer fact was that it used to
-come from the direction of Carbet, skirt the Morne d'Orange a few
-hundred feet above the road, and then move up the face of what seemed a
-sheer precipice. Of course somebody carried that light,--probably a
-negro; and perhaps the cliff is not so inaccessible as it looks: still,
-we could never discover who the individual was, nor could we imagine
-what his purpose might have been.... But the light has not been seen
-here now for years."
-
-
-[Footnote 8: "Histoire Générale des Antilles... habités par les
-Français." Par le R. P. Du Tertre, de l'Ordre des Frères Prescheurs.
-Paris: 1661-71. 4 vols. (with illustrations) in 4 to.]
-
-[Footnote 9: One of the lights seen on the Caravelle was certainly
-carried by a cattle-thief,--a colossal negro who had the reputation of
-being a sorcerer,--a _quimboiseur._ The greater part of the mountainous
-land forming La Caravelle promontory was at that time the property of a
-Monsieur Eustache, who used it merely for cattle-raising purposes. He
-allowed his animals to run wild in the hills; they multiplied
-exceedingly, and became very savage. Notwithstanding their ferocity,
-however, large numbers of them were driven away at night, and secretly
-slaughtered or sold, by somebody who used to practise the art of
-cattle-stealing with a lantern, and evidently without aid. A watch was
-set, and the thief arrested. Before the magistrate he displayed
-extraordinary assurance, asserting that he had never stolen from a poor
-man--he had stolen only from M. Eustache who could not count his own
-cattle--_yon richard, mon chè!_ "How many cows did you steal from him?"
-asked the magistrate. "_Ess main pè save?--moin té pouend yon savane
-toutt pleine_," replied the prisoner. (How can I tell?--I took a whole
-savanna-full.)... Condemned on the strength of his own confession, he
-was taken to jail. "_Moin pa ké rété la geôle_," he observed. (I
-shall not remain in prison.) They put him in irons, but on the following
-morning the irons were found lying on the floor of the cell, and the
-prisoner was gone. He was never seen in Martinique again.]
-
-[Footnote 10: Y sucoué souyé assous quai-là;--y ka di: "Moin ka maudi
-ou, Lanmatinique!--moin ka maudi ou!... Ké ni mangé pou engnien: ou pa
-ké pè menm acheté y! Ké ni touèle pou engnien: ou pa ké pè menm
-acheté yon robe! Epi yche ké batt manman.... Ou banni moin!--moin ké
-vini encò!"]
-
-
-
-
-III
-
-
-And who was Père Labat,--this strange priest whose memory, weirdly
-disguised by legend, thus lingers in the oral literature of the colored
-people? Various encyclopædians answer the question, but far less fully
-and less interestingly than Dr. Rufz, the Martinique historian, whose
-article upon him in the _Études Statistiques et Historiques_ has that
-charm of sympathetic comprehension by which a master-biographer
-sometimes reveals himself a sort of necromancer,--making us feel a
-vanished personality with the power of a living presence. Yet even the
-colorless data given by dictionaries of biography should suffice to
-convince most readers that Jean-Baptiste Labat must be ranked among the
-extraordinary men of his century.
-
-
-Nearly two hundred years ago--24th August, 1693--a traveller wearing the
-white habit of the Dominican order, partly covered by a black camlet
-overcoat, entered the city of Rochelle. He was very tall and robust,
-with one of those faces, at once grave and keen, which bespeak great
-energy and quick discernment. This was the Père Labat, a native of
-Paris, then in his thirtieth year. Half priest, half layman, one might
-have been tempted to surmise from his attire; and such a judgment would
-not have been unjust. Labat's character was too large for his
-calling,--expanded naturally beyond the fixed limits of the
-ecclesiastical life; and throughout the whole active part of his strange
-career we find in him this dual character of layman and monk. He had
-come to Rochelle to take passage for Martinique. Previously he had been
-professor of philosophy and mathematics at Nancy. While watching a
-sunset one evening from the window of his study, some one placed in his
-hands a circular issued by the Dominicans of the French West Indies,
-calling for volunteers. Death had made many wide gaps in their ranks;
-and various misfortunes had reduced their finances to such an extent
-that ruin threatened all their West Indian establishments. Labat, with
-the quick decision of a mind suffering from the restraints of a life too
-narrow for it, had at once resigned his professorship, and engaged
-himself for the missions.
-
-... In those days, communication with the West Indies was slow,
-irregular, and difficult. Labat had to wait at Rochelle six whole months
-for a ship. In the convent at Rochelle, where he stayed, there were
-others waiting for the same chance,--including several Jesuits and
-Capuchins as well as Dominicans. These unanimously elected him their
-leader,--a significant fact considering the mutual jealousy of the
-various religious orders of that period. There was something in the
-energy and frankness of Labat's character which seems to have naturally
-gained him the confidence and ready submission of others.
-
-... They sailed in November; and Labat still found himself in the
-position of a chief on board. His account of the voyage is amusing;--in
-almost everything except practical navigation, he would appear to have
-regulated the life of passengers and crew. He taught the captain
-mathematics; and invented amusements of all kinds to relieve the
-monotony of a two months' voyage.
-
-... As the ship approached Martinique from the north, Labat first beheld
-the very grimmest part of the lofty coast,--the region of Macouba; and
-the impression it made upon him was not pleasing. "The island," he
-writes, "appeared to me all one frightful mountain, broken everywhere by
-precipices: nothing about it pleased me except the verdure which
-everywhere met the eye, and which seemed to me both novel and agreeable,
-considering the time of the year."
-
-Almost immediately after his arrival he was sent by the Superior of the
-convent to Macouba, for acclimation; Macouba then being considered the
-healthiest part of the island. Whoever makes the journey on horseback
-thither from St. Pierre to-day can testify to the exactitude of Labat's
-delightful narrative of the trip. So little has that part of the island
-changed since two centuries that scarcely a line of the father's
-description would need correction to adopt it bodily for an account of a
-ride to Macouba in 1889.
-
-At Macouba everybody welcomes him, pets him,--finally becomes
-enthusiastic about him. He fascinates and dominates the little community
-almost at first sight. "There is an inexpressible charm," says
-Rufz,--commenting upon this portion of Labat's narrative,--"in the
-novelty of relations between men: no one has yet been offended, no envy
-has yet been excited;--it is scarcely possible even to guess whence that
-ill-will you must sooner or later provoke is going to come from;--there
-are no rivals;--there are no enemies. You are everybody's friend; and
-many are hoping you will continue to be only theirs."... Labat knew how
-to take legitimate advantage of this good-will;--he persuaded his
-admirers to rebuild the church at Macouba, according to designs made by
-himself.
-
-At Macouba, however, he was not permitted to sojourn as long as the good
-people of the little burgh would have deemed even reasonable: he had
-shown certain aptitudes which made his presence more than desirable at
-Saint-Jacques, the great plantation of the order on the Capesterre, or
-Windward coast. It was in debt for 700,000 pounds of sugar,--an
-appalling condition in those days,--and seemed doomed to get more
-heavily in debt every successive season. Labat inspected everything, and
-set to work for the plantation, not merely as general director, but as
-engineer, architect, machinist, inventor. He did really wonderful
-things. You can see them for yourself if you ever go to Martinique; for
-the old Dominican plantation--now Government property, and leased at an
-annual rent of 50,000 francs--remains one of the most valuable in the
-colonies because of Labat's work upon it. The watercourses directed by
-him still excite the admiration of modern professors of hydraulics; the
-mills he built or invented are still good;--the treatise he wrote on
-sugar-making remained for a hundred and fifty years the best of its
-kind, and the manual of French planters. In less than two years Labat
-had not only rescued the plantation from bankruptcy, but had made it
-rich; and if the monks deemed him veritably inspired, the test of time
-throws no ridicule on their astonishment at the capacities of the
-man.... Even now the advice he formulated as far back as 1720--about
-secondary cultures,--about manufactories to establish,--about imports,
-exports, and special commercial methods--has lost little of its value.
-
-Such talents could not fail to excite wide-spread admiration,--nor to
-win for him a reputation in the colonies beyond precedent. He was wanted
-everywhere.... Auger, the Governor of Guadeloupe, sent for him to help
-the colonists in fortifying and defending the island against the
-English; and we find the missionary quite as much at home in this new
-rôle--building bastions, scarps, counterscarps, ravelins, etc.,--as he
-seemed to be upon the plantation of Saint-Jacques. We find him even
-taking part in an engagement;--himself conducting an artillery
-duel,--loading, pointing, and firing no less than twelve times after the
-other French gunners had been killed or driven from their posts. After a
-tremendous English volley, one of the enemy cries out to him in French:
-"White Father, have they told?" (_Père Blanc, ont-ils porté?_) He
-replies only after returning the fire with a better-directed aim, and
-then repeats the mocking question: "Have they told? Yes, they have,"
-confesses the Englishman, in surprised dismay; "but we will pay you back
-for that!"...
-
-... Returning to Martinique with new titles to distinction, Labat was
-made Superior of the order in that island, and likewise Vicar-Apostolic.
-After building the Convent of the Mouillage, at St. Pierre, and many
-other edifices, he undertook that series of voyages in the interests of
-the Dominicans whereof the narration fills six ample volumes. As a
-traveller Père Labat has had few rivals in his own field;--no one,
-indeed, seems to have been able to repeat some of his feats. All the
-French and several of the English colonies were not merely visited by
-him, but were studied in their every geographical detail. Travel in the
-West Indies is difficult to a degree of which strangers have little
-idea; but in the time of Père Labat there were few roads,--and a far
-greater variety of obstacles. I do not believe there are half a dozen
-whites in Martinique who thoroughly know their own island,--who have
-even travelled upon all its roads; but Labat knew it as he knew the palm
-of his hand, and travelled where roads had never been made. Equally well
-he knew Guadeloupe and other islands; and he learned all that it was
-possible to learn in those years about the productions and resources of
-the other colonies. He travelled with the fearlessness and examined with
-the thoroughness of a Humboldt,--so far as his limited science
-permitted: had he possessed the knowledge of modern naturalists and
-geologists he would probably have left little for others to discover
-after him. Even at the present time West Indian travellers are glad to
-consult him for information.
-
-These duties involved prodigious physical and mental exertion, in a
-climate deadly to Europeans. They also involved much voyaging in waters
-haunted by filibusters and buccaneers. But nothing appears to daunt
-Labat. As for the filibusters, he becomes their comrade and personal
-friend;--he even becomes their chaplain, and does not scruple to make
-excursions with them. He figures in several sea-fights;--on one occasion
-he aids in the capture of two English vessels,--and then occupies
-himself in making the prisoners, among whom are several ladies, enjoy
-the event like a holiday. On another voyage Labat's vessel is captured
-by a Spanish ship. At one moment sabres are raised above his head, and
-loaded muskets levelled at his breast;--the next, every Spaniard is on
-his knees, appalled by a cross that Labat holds before the eyes of the
-captors,--the cross worn by officers of the Inquisition,--the terrible
-symbol of the Holy Office. "It did not belong to me," he says, "but to
-one of our brethren who had left it by accident among my effects." He
-seems always prepared in some way to meet any possible emergency. No
-humble and timid monk this: he has the frame and temper of those
-mediaeval abbots who could don with equal indifference the helmet or the
-cowl. He is apparently even more of a soldier than a priest. When
-English corsairs attempt a descent on the Martinique coast at
-Sainte-Marie they find Père Labat waiting for them with all the negroes
-of the Saint-Jacques plantation, to drive them back to their ships.
-
-For other dangers he exhibits absolute unconcern. He studies the
-phenomena of hurricanes with almost pleasurable interest, while his
-comrades on the ship abandon hope. When seized with yellow-fever, then
-known as the Siamese Sickness (_mal de Siam_), he refuses to stay in bed
-the prescribed time, and rises to say his mass. He faints at the altar;
-yet a few days later we hear of him on horseback again, travelling over
-the mountains in the worst and hottest season of the year...
-
-... Labat was thirty years old when he went to the Antilles;--he was
-only forty-two when his work was done. In less than twelve years he made
-his order the most powerful and wealthy of any in the West
-Indies,--lifted their property out of bankruptcy to rebuild it upon a
-foundation of extraordinary prosperity. As Rufz observes without
-exaggeration, the career of Père Labat in the Antilles seems to more
-than realize the antique legend of the labors of Hercules. Whithersoever
-he went,--except in the English colonies,--his passage was memorialized
-by the rising of chinches, convents, and schools,--as well as mills,
-forts, and refineries. Even cities claim him as their founder. The
-solidity of his architectural creations is no less remarkable than their
-excellence of design;--much of what he erected still remains; what has
-vanished was removed by human agency, and not by decay; and when the old
-Dominican church at St. Pierre had to be pulled down to make room for a
-larger edifice, the workmen complained that the stones could not be
-separated,--that the walls seemed single masses of rock. There can be no
-doubt, moreover, that he largely influenced the life of the colonies
-during those years, and expanded their industrial and commercial
-capacities.
-
-He was sent on a mission to Rome after these things had been done, and
-never returned from Europe. There he travelled more or less in
-after-years; but finally settled at Paris, where he prepared and
-published the voluminous narrative of his own voyages, and other curious
-books;--manifesting as a writer the same tireless energy he had shown in
-so many other capacities. He does not, however, appear to have been
-happy. Again and again he prayed to be sent back to his beloved
-Antilles, and for some unknown cause the prayer was always refused. To
-such a character, the restraint of the cloister must have proved a slow
-agony; but he had to endure it for many long years. He died at Paris in
-1738, aged seventy-five.
-
-... It was inevitable that such a man should make bitter enemies: his
-preferences, his position, his activity, his business shrewdness, his
-necessary self-assertion, must have created secret hate and jealousy
-even when open malevolence might not dare to show itself. And to these
-natural results of personal antagonism or opposition were afterwards
-superadded various resentments--irrational, perhaps, but extremely
-violent,--caused by the father's cynical frankness as a writer. He spoke
-freely about the family origin and personal failings of various
-colonists considered high personages in their own small world; and to
-this day his book has an evil reputation undeserved in those old creole
-communities, where any public mention of a family scandal is never
-forgiven or forgotten.... But probably even before his work appeared it
-had been secretly resolved that he should never be permitted to return
-to Martinique or Guadeloupe after his European mission. The exact
-purpose of the Government in this policy remains a mystery,--whatever
-ingenious writers may have alleged to the contrary. We only know that M.
-Adrien Dessalles,--the trustworthy historian of Martinique,--while
-searching among the old _Archives de la Marine_, found there a
-ministerial letter to the Intendent de Vaucresson in which this
-statement occurs:--
-
-... "Le Père Labat shall never be suffered to return to the colonies,
-whatever efforts he may make to obtain permission."
-
-
-
-
-IV
-
-
-One rises from the perusal of the "Nouveau Voyage aux Isles de
-l'Amérique" with a feeling approaching regret; for although the six
-pursy little volumes composing it--full of quaint drawings, plans, and
-odd attempts at topographical maps--reveal a prolix writer. Père Labat
-is always able to interest. He reminds you of one of those slow,
-precise, old-fashioned conversationalists who measure the weight of
-every word and never leave anything to the imagination of the audience,
-yet who invariably reward the patience of their listeners sooner or
-later by reflections of surprising profundity or theories of a totally
-novel description. But what particularly impresses the reader of these
-volumes is not so much the recital of singular incidents and facts as
-the revelation of the author's personality. Reading him, you divine a
-character of enormous force,--gifted but unevenly balanced; singularly
-shrewd in worldly affairs, and surprisingly credulous in other respects;
-superstitious and yet cynical; unsympathetic by his positivism, but
-agreeable through natural desire to give pleasure; just by nature, yet
-capable of merciless severity; profoundly devout, but withal tolerant
-for his calling and his time. He is sufficiently free from petty bigotry
-to make fun of the scruples of his brethren in the matter of employing
-heretics; and his account of the manner in which he secured the services
-of a first-class refiner for the Martinique plantation at the Fond
-Saint-Jacques is not the least amusing page in the book. He writes: "The
-religious who had been appointed Superior in Guadeloupe wrote me that he
-would find it difficult to employ this refiner because the man was a
-Lutheran. This scruple gave me pleasure, as I had long wanted to have
-him upon our plantation in the Fond Saint-Jacques, but did not know how
-I would be able to manage it. I wrote to the Superior at once that all
-he had to do was to send the man to me, because it was a matter of
-indifference to me whether the sugar he might make were Catholic or
-Lutheran sugar, provided it were very white."[11] He displays equal
-frankness in confessing an error or a discomfiture. He acknowledges that
-while Professor of Mathematics and Philosophy, he used to teach that
-there were no tides in the tropics: and in a discussion as to whether
-the _diablotin_ (a now almost extinct species of West Indian nocturnal
-bird) were fish or flesh, and might or might not be eaten in Lent, he
-tells us that he was fairly worsted,--(although he could cite the
-celebrated myth of the "barnacle-geese" as a "fact" in justification of
-one's right to doubt the nature of diablotins).
-
-One has reason to suspect that Père Labat, notwithstanding his
-references to the decision of the Church that diablotins were not birds,
-felt quite well assured within himself that they were. There is a sly
-humor in his story of these controversies, which would appear to imply
-that while well pleased at the decision referred to, he knew all about
-diablotins. Moreover, the father betrays certain tendencies to
-gormandize not altogether in harmony with the profession of an
-ascetic.... There were parrots in nearly all of the French Antilles in
-those days;[12] and Père Labat does not attempt to conceal his fondness
-for--cooked parrots. (He does not appear to have cared much for them as
-pets: if they could not talk well, he condemned them forthwith to the
-pot.) "They all live upon fruits and seeds," he writes, "and their flesh
-contracts the odor and color of that particular fruit or seed they feed
-upon. They become exceedingly tat in the season when the guavas are
-ripe; and when they eat the seeds of the _Bois d'Inde_ they have an odor
-of nutmeg and cloves which is delightful (_une odeur de muscade et de
-girofle qui fait plaisir_)." He recommends four superior ways of
-preparing them, as well as other fowls, for the table, of which the
-first and the best way is "to pluck them alive, then to make them
-swallow vinegar, and then to strangle them while they have the vinegar
-still in their throats by twisting their necks"; and the fourth way is
-"to skin them alive" (_de les écorcher tout en vie_).... "It is
-certain," he continues, "that these ways are excellent, and that fowls
-that have to be cooked in a hurry thereby obtain an admirable tenderness
-(_une tendreté admirable_)." Then he makes a brief apology to his
-readers, not for the inhumanity of his recipes, but for a display of
-culinary knowledge scarcely becoming a monk, and acquired only through
-those peculiar necessities which colonial life in the tropics imposed
-upon all alike. The touch of cruelty here revealed produces an
-impression which there is little in the entire work capable of
-modifying. Labat seems to have possessed but a very small quantity of
-altruism; his cynicism on the subject of animal suffering is not offset
-by any visible sympathy with human pain;--he never compassionates: you
-may seek in vain through all his pages for one gleam of the goodness of
-gentle Père Du Tertre, who, filled with intense pity for the condition
-of the blacks, prays masters to be merciful and just to their slaves for
-the love of God. Labat suggests, on the other hand, that slavery is a
-good means of redeeming negroes from superstition and saving their souls
-from hell: he selects and purchases them himself for the Saint-Jacques
-plantation, never makes a mistake or a bad bargain, and never appears to
-feel a particle of commiseration for their lot. In fact, the emotional
-feeling displayed by Père Du Tertre (whom he mocks slyly betimes) must
-have seemed to him rather condemnable than praiseworthy; for Labat
-regarded the negro as a natural child of the devil,--a born
-sorcerer,--an evil being wielding occult power.
-
-Perhaps the chapters on negro sorcery are the most astonishing in the
-book, displaying on the part of this otherwise hard and practical nature
-a credulity almost without limit. After having related how he had a
-certain negro sent out of the country "who predicted the arrival of
-vessels and other things to come,--in so far, at least, as the devil
-himself was able to know and reveal these matters to him," he plainly
-states his own belief in magic as follows.--
-
-"I know there are many people who consider as pure imagination, and as
-silly stories, or positive falsehoods, all that is related about
-sorcerers and their compacts with the devil. I was myself for a long
-time of this opinion. Moreover, I am aware that what is said on this
-subject is frequently exaggerated; but I am now convinced it must be
-acknowledged that all which has been related is not entirely false,
-although perhaps it may not be entirely true."...
-
-Therewith he begins to relate stones upon what may have seemed
-unimpeachable authority in those days. The first incident narrated took
-place, he assures us, in the Martinique Dominican convent, shortly
-before his arrival in the colony. One of the fathers, Père Fraise, had
-had brought to Martinique, "from the kingdom of Juda (?) in Guinea," a
-little negro about nine or ten years old. Not long afterwards there was
-a serious drought, and the monks prayed vainly for rain. Then the negro
-child, who had begun to understand and speak a little French, told his
-masters that he was a Rainmaker, that he could obtain them all the rain
-they wanted. "This proposition," says Père Labat, "greatly astonished
-the fathers: they consulted together, and at last, curiosity overcoming
-reason, they gave their consent that this unbaptized child should make
-some rain fall in their garden." The unbaptized child asked them if they
-wanted "a big or a little rain"; they answered that a moderate rain
-would satisfy them. Thereupon the little negro got three oranges, and
-placed them on the ground in a line at a short distance from one
-another, and bowed down before each of them in turn, muttering words in
-an unknown tongue. Then he got three small orange-branches, stuck a
-branch in each orange, and repeated his prostrations and
-mutterings;--after which he took one of the branches, stood up, and
-watched the horizon. A small cloud appeared, and he pointed the branch
-at it. It approached swiftly, rested above the garden, and sent down a
-copious shower of rain. Then the boy made a hole in the ground, and
-buried the oranges and the branches. The fathers were amazed to find
-that not a single drop of rain had fallen outside their garden. They
-asked the boy who had taught him this sorcery, and he answered them that
-among the blacks on board the slave-ship which had brought him
-over there were some Rain-makers who had taught him. Père Labat
-declares there is no question as to the truth of the occurrence:
-he cites the names of Père Praise Père Rosiè, Père Temple, and Père
-Bournot,--all members of his own order,--as trustworthy witnesses of
-this incident.
-
-Père Labat displays equal credulity in his recital of a still more
-extravagant story told him by Madame la Comtesse du Gênes. M. le Comte
-du Gênes, husband of the lady in question, and commander of a French
-squadron, captured the English fort of Gorea in 1696, and made prisoners
-of all the English slaves in the service of the factory there
-established. But the vessel on which these were embarked was unable to
-leave the coast, in spite of a good breeze: she seemed bewitched. Some
-of the slaves finally told the captain there was a negress on board who
-had enchanted the ship, and who had the power to "dry up the hearts" of
-all who refused to obey her. A number of deaths taking place among the
-blacks, the captain ordered autopsies made, and it was found that the
-hearts of the dead negroes were desiccated. The negress was taken on
-deck, tied to a gun and whipped, but uttered no cry;--the ship's
-surgeon, angered at her stoicism, took a hand in the punishment and
-flogged her "with all his force." Thereupon she told him that inasmuch
-as he had abused her without reason, his heart also should be "dried
-up." He died next day; and his heart was found in the condition
-predicted. All this time the ship could not be made to move in any
-direction; and the negress told the captain that until he should put her
-and her companions on shore he would never be able to sail. To convince
-him of her power she further asked him to place three fresh melons in a
-chest, to lock the chest and put a guard over it; when she should tell
-him to unlock it, there would be no melons there. The captain made the
-experiment. When the chest was opened, the melons appeared to be there;
-but on touching them it was found that only the outer rind remained: the
-interior had been dried up,--like the surgeon's heart. Thereupon the
-captain put the witch and her friends ashore, and sailed away without
-further trouble.
-
-Another story of African sorcery for the truth of which Père Labat
-earnestly vouches is the following:--
-
-A negro was sentenced to be burned alive for witchcraft at St. Thomas in
-1701: his principal crime was "having made a little figure of baked clay
-to speak." A certain creole, meeting the negro on his way to the place
-of execution, jeeringly observed, "Well, you cannot make your little
-figure talk any more now;--it has been broken. If the gentleman allow
-me," replied the prisoner, "I will make the cane he carries in his hand
-speak." The creole's curiosity was strongly aroused: he prevailed upon
-the guards to halt a few minutes, and permit the prisoner to make the
-experiment. The negro then took the cane, stuck it into the ground in
-the middle of the road, whispered something to it, and asked the
-gentleman what he wished to know. "I would like to know," answered the
-latter, "whether the ship----has yet sailed from Europe, and when she
-will arrive." "Put your ear to the head of the cane," said the negro. On
-doing so the creole distinctly heard a thin voice which informed him
-that the vessel in question had left a certain French port on such a
-date; that she would reach St. Thomas within three days; that she had
-been delayed on her voyage by a storm which had carried away her foretop
-and her mizzen sail; that she had such and such passengers on board
-(mentioning the names), all in good health.... After this incident the
-negro was burned alive; but within three days the vessel arrived in
-port, and the prediction or divination was found to have been absolutely
-correct in every particular.
-
-... Père Labat in no way disapproves the atrocious sentence inflicted
-upon the wretched negro: in his opinion such predictions were made by
-the power and with the personal aid of the devil; and for those who
-knowingly maintained relations with the devil, he could not have
-regarded any punishment too severe. That he could be harsh enough
-himself is amply shown in various accounts of his own personal
-experience with alleged sorcerers, and especially in the narration of
-his dealings with one--apparently a sort of African doctor--who was a
-slave on a neighboring plantation, but used to visit the Saint-Jacques
-quarters by stealth to practise his art. One of the slaves of the order,
-a negress, falling very sick, the wizard was sent for; and he came with
-all his paraphernalia--little earthen pots and fetiches, etc.--during
-the night. He began to practise his incantations, without the least
-suspicion that Père Labat was watching him through a chink; and, after
-having consulted his fetiches, he told the sick woman she would die
-within four days. At this juncture the priest suddenly burst in the door
-and entered, followed by several powerful slaves. He dashed to pieces
-the soothsayer's articles, and attempted to reassure the frightened
-negress, by declaring the prediction a lie inspired by the devil. Then
-he had the sorcerer stripped and flogged in his presence.
-
-"I had him given," he calmly observes, "about (_environ_) three hundred
-lashes, which flayed him (_l'écorchait_) from his shoulders to his
-knees. He screamed like a madman. All the negroes trembled, and assured
-me that the devil would cause my death.... Then I had the wizard put in
-irons, after having had him well washed with a _pimentade_,--that is to
-say, with brine in which pimentos and small lemons have been crushed.
-This causes a horrible pain to those skinned by the whip; but it is a
-certain remedy against gangrene."...
-
-And then he sent the poor wretch back to his master with a note
-requesting the latter to repeat the punishment,--a demand that seems to
-have been approved, as the owner of the negro was "a man who feared
-God." Yet Père Labat is obliged to confess that in spite of all his
-efforts, the sick negress died on the fourth day,--as the sorcerer had
-predicted. This fact must have strongly confirmed his belief that the
-devil was at the bottom of the whole affair, and caused him to doubt
-whether even a flogging of _about_ three hundred lashes, followed by a
-pimentade, was sufficient chastisement for the miserable black. Perhaps
-the tradition of this frightful whipping may have had something to do
-with the terror which still attaches to the name of the Dominican in
-Martinique. The legal extreme punishment was twenty-nine lashes.
-
-Père Labat also avers that in his time the negroes were in the habit of
-carrying sticks which had the power of imparting to any portion of the
-human body touched by them a most severe chronic pain. He at first
-believed, he says, that these pains were merely rheumatic; but after all
-known remedies for rheumatism had been fruitlessly applied, he became
-convinced there was something occult and diabolical in the manner of
-using and preparing these sticks.... A fact worthy of note is that this
-belief is still prevalent in Martinique!
-
-One hardly ever meets in the country a negro who does not carry either a
-stick or a cutlass, or both. The cutlass is indispensable to those who
-work in the woods or upon plantations; the stick is carried both as a
-protection against snakes and as a weapon of offence and defence in
-village quarrels, for unless a negro be extraordinarily drunk he will
-not strike his fellow with a cutlass. The sticks are usually made of a
-strong dense wood: those most sought after of a material termed
-_moudongue_,[13] almost as tough as, but much lighter than, our hickory.
-On inquiring whether any of the sticks thus carried were held to possess
-magic powers, I was assured by many country people that there were men
-who knew a peculiar method of "arranging" sticks so that to touch any
-person with them even lightly, _and through any thickness of clothing_,
-would produce terrible and continuous pain.
-
-
-[Illustration: LE CALVAIRE
-_Above the village of Fort-de-France a series of fourteen
-little crosses lines the roadside to the hilltop--each
-bearing a relievo representing incidents of Christ's
-Passion._]
-
-
-Believing in these things, and withal unable to decide whether the sun
-revolved about the earth, or the earth about the sun,[14] Père Labat
-was, nevertheless, no more credulous and no more ignorant than the
-average missionary of his time: it is only by contrast with his
-practical perspicacity in other matters, his worldly rationalism and
-executive shrewdness, that this superstitious naïveté impresses one as
-odd. And how singular sometimes is the irony of Time! All the wonderful
-work the Dominican accomplished has been forgotten by the people; while
-all the witchcrafts that he warred against survive and flourish openly;
-and his very name is seldom uttered but in connection with
-superstitions,--has been, in fact, preserved among the blacks by the
-power of superstition alone, by the belief in zombis and even
-goblins.... "_Mi! ti manmaille-là, main ké fai Pè Labatt vini pouend
-ou!_"...
-
-
-[Footnote 11: Vol. III, p. 382-3. Edition of 1722.]
-
-[Footnote 12: The parrots of Martinique he describes as having been
-green, with slate-colored plumage on the top of the head, mixed with a
-little red, and as having a few red feathers in the wings, throat, and
-tail.]
-
-[Footnote 13: The creole word _moudongue_ is said to be a corruption of
-_Mondongue_, the name of an African coast tribe who had the reputation
-of being cannibals. A Mondongue slave on the plantations was generally
-feared by his fellow-blacks of other tribes; and the name of the
-cannibal race became transformed into an adjective to denote anything
-formidable or terrible. A blow with a stick made of the wood described
-being greatly dreaded, the term was applied first to the stick, and
-afterward to the wood itself.]
-
-[Footnote 14: Accounting for the origin of the trade-winds, he writes:
-"I say that the Trade-Winds do not exist in the Torrid Zone merely by
-chance; forasmuch as the cause which produces them is very necessary,
-very sure, and very continuous, since they result _either from the
-movement of the Earth around the Sun, or from the movement of the Sun
-around the Earth, Whether it he the one or the other of these two great
-bodies which moves_..." etc.]
-
-
-
-
-V
-
-
-Few habitants of St. Pierre now remember that the beautiful park behind
-the cathedral used to be called the Savanna of the White Fathers,--and
-the long shadowed meadow beside the Roxelane, the Savanna of the Black
-Fathers: the Jesuits. All the great religious orders have long since
-disappeared from the colony: their edifices have been either converted
-to other uses or demolished; their estates have passed into other
-hands.... Were their labors, then, productive of merely ephemeral
-results?--was the colossal work of a Père Labat all in vain, so far as
-the future is concerned? The question is not easily answered; but it is
-worth considering.
-
-Of course the material prosperity which such men toiled to obtain for
-their order represented nothing more, even to their eyes, than the means
-of self-maintenance, and the accumulation of force necessary for the
-future missionary labors of the monastic community. The real ultimate
-purpose was, not the acquisition of power for the order, but for the
-Church, of which the orders represented only a portion of the force
-militant; and this purpose did not fail of accomplishment. The orders
-passed away only when their labors had been completed,--when Martinique
-had become (exteriorly, at least) more Catholic than Rome itself,--after
-the missionaries had done all that religious zeal could do in moulding
-and remoulding the human material under their control. These men could
-scarcely have anticipated those social and political changes which the
-future reserved for the colonies, and which no ecclesiastical sagacity
-could, in any event, have provided against. It is in the existing
-religious condition of these communities that one may observe and
-estimate the character and the probable duration of the real work
-accomplished by the missions.
-
-... Even after a prolonged residence in Martinique, its visible
-religious condition continues to impress one as something phenomenal. A
-stranger, who has no opportunity to penetrate into the home life of the
-people, will not, perhaps, discern the full extent of the religious
-sentiment; but, nevertheless, however brief his stay, he will observe
-enough of the extravagant symbolism of the cult to fill him with
-surprise. Wherever he may choose to ride or to walk, he is certain to
-encounter shrines, statues of saints, or immense crucifixes. Should he
-climb up to the clouds of the peaks, he will find them all along the
-way;--he will perceive them waiting for him, looming through the mists
-of the heights; and passing through the loveliest ravines, he will see
-niches hollowed out in the volcanic rocks, above and below him, or
-contrived in the trunks of trees bending over precipices, often in
-places so difficult of access that he wonders how the work could have
-been accomplished. All this has been done by the various property-owners
-throughout the country: it is the traditional custom to do it--brings
-good-luck! After a longer stay in the island, one discovers also that in
-almost every room of every dwelling--stone residence, wooden cottage, or
-palm-thatched ajoupa--there is a chapelle: that is, a sort of large
-bracket fastened to the wall, on which crosses or images are placed,
-with vases of flowers, and lamps or wax-tapers to be burned at night.
-Sometimes, moreover, statues are placed in windows, or above
-door-ways;--and all passers-by take off their hats to these. Over the
-porch of the cottage in a mountain village, where I lived for some
-weeks, there was an absurd little window contrived,--a sort of purely
-ornamental dormer,--and in this a Virgin about five inches high had been
-placed. At a little distance it looked like a toy,--a child's doll
-forgotten there; and a doll I always supposed it to be, until one day
-that I saw a long procession of black laborers passing before the house,
-every one of whom took off his hat to it.... My bedchamber in the same
-cottage resembled a religious museum. On the chapelle there were no less
-than eight Virgins, varying in height from one to sixteen inches,--a St.
-Joseph,--a St. John,--a crucifix,--and a host of little objects in the
-shape of hearts or crosses, each having some special religious
-significance;--while the walls were covered with framed certificates of
-baptism, "first-communion," confirmation, and other documents
-commemorating the whole church life of the family for two generations.
-
-... Certainly the first impression created by this perpetual display of
-crosses, statues, and miniature chapels is not pleasing,--particularly
-as the work is often inartistic to a degree bordering upon the
-grotesque, and nothing resembling art is anywhere visible. Millions of
-francs must have been consumed in these creations, which have the
-rudeness of mediævalism without its emotional sincerity, and
-which--amid the loveliness of tropic nature, the grace of palms, the
-many-colored fire of liana blossoms--jar on the æsthetic sense with an
-almost brutal violence. Yet there is a veiled poetry in these silent
-populations of plaster and wood and stone. They represent something
-older than the Middle Ages, older than Christianity,--something
-strangely distorted and transformed, it is true, but recognizably
-conserved by the Latin race from those antique years when every home had
-its beloved ghosts, when every wood or hill or spring had its gracious
-divinity, and the boundaries of all fields were marked and guarded by
-statues of gods.
-
-Instances of iconoclasm are of course highly rare in a country of which
-no native--rich or poor, white or half-breed--fails to doff his hat
-before every shrine, cross, or image he may happen to pass. Those
-merchants of St. Pierre or of Fort-de-France living only a few miles out
-of the city must certainly perform a vast number of reverences on their
-way to or from business;--I saw one old gentleman uncover his white head
-about twenty times in the course of a fifteen minutes' walk. I never
-heard of but one image-breaker in Martinique; and his act was the result
-of superstition, not of any hostility to popular faith or custom: it was
-prompted by the same childish feeling which moves Italian fishermen
-sometimes to curse St. Antony or to give his image a ducking in bad
-weather. This Martinique iconoclast was a negro cattle-driver who one
-day, feeling badly in need of a glass of tafia, perhaps, left the
-animals intrusted to him in care of a plaster image of the Virgin, with
-this menace (the phrase is on record):--
-
-"_Moin ka quitté bef-la ba ou pou gàdé ba moin. Quand moin vini, si
-moin pa trouvé compte-moin, moin ké fouté ou vingt-nèf coudfouètt!_"
-(I leave these cattle with you to take care of for me. When I come
-back, if I don't find them all here, I'll give you twenty-nine lashes.)
-
-
-[Illustration: A WAYSIDE SHRINE
-"_There is a veiled poetry in these silent populations of
-plaster and wood and stone. Something older than
-the Middle Ages, older than Christianity._"]
-
-
-Returning about half an hour later, he was greatly enraged to find his
-animals scattered in every direction;--and, rushing at the statue, he
-broke it from the pedestal, fixing it upon the ground, and gave it
-twenty-nine lashes with his bull-whip. For this he was arrested, tried,
-and sentenced to imprisonment, with hard labor, for life! In those days
-there were no colored magistrates;--the judges were all _bêkés._
-
-"Rather a severe sentence," I remarked to my informant, a planter who
-conducted me to the scene of the alleged sacrilege.
-
-"Severe, yes," he answered;--"and I suppose the act would seem to you
-more idiotic than criminal. But here, in Martinique, there were large
-questions involved by such an offence. Relying, as we have always done
-to some extent, upon religious influence as a factor in the maintenance
-of social order, the negro's act seemed a dangerous example."...
-
-
-That the Church remains still rich and prosperous in Martinique there
-can be no question; but whether it continues to wield any powerful
-influence in the maintenance of social order is more than doubtful. A
-Polynesian laxity of morals among the black and colored population, and
-the history of race-hatreds and revolutions inspired by race-hate, would
-indicate that neither in ethics nor in politics does it possess any
-preponderant authority. By expelling various religious orders;--by
-establishing lay schools, lycées, and other educational institutions
-where the teaching is largely characterized by aggressive antagonism to
-Catholic ideas;--by the removal of crucifixes and images from public
-buildings, French Radicalism did not inflict any great blow upon Church
-interests. So far as the white, and, one may say, the wealthy,
-population is concerned, the Church triumphs in her hostility to the
-Government schools; and to the same extent she holds an educational
-monopoly. No white creole would dream of sending his children to a lay
-school or a lycée--notwithstanding the unquestionable superiority of
-the educational system in the latter institutions;--and, although
-obliged, as the chief tax-paying class, to bear the burden of
-maintaining these establishments, the whites hold them in such horror
-that the Government professors are socially ostracized. No doubt the
-prejudice or pride which abhors mixed schools aids the Church in this
-respect; she herself recognizes race-feeling, keeps her schools unmixed,
-and even in her convents, it is said, obliges the colored nuns to serve
-the white! For more than two centuries every white generation has been
-religiously moulded in the seminaries and convents; and among the native
-whites one never hears an overt declaration of free-thought opinion.
-Except among the colored men educated in the Government schools, or
-their foreign professors, there are no avowed free-thinkers;--and this,
-not because the creole whites, many of whom have been educated in Paris,
-are naturally narrow-minded, or incapable of sympathy with the mental
-expansion of the age, but because the religious question at Martinique
-has become so intimately complicated with the social and political one,
-concerning which there can be no compromise whatever, that to divorce
-the former from the latter is impossible. Roman Catholicism is an
-element of the cement which holds creole society together; and it is
-noteworthy that other creeds are not represented. I knew of only one
-Episcopalian and one Methodist in the island,--and heard a sort of
-legend about a solitary Jew whose whereabouts I never could
-discover;--but these were strangers.
-
-It was only through the establishment of universal suffrage, which
-placed the white population at the mercy of its former slaves, that the
-Roman Church sustained any serious injury. All local positions are
-filled by blacks or men of color; no white creole can obtain a public
-office or take part in legislation; and the whole power of the black
-vote is ungenerously used against the interests of the class thus
-politically disinherited. The Church suffers in consequence: her power
-depended upon her intimate union with the wealthy and dominant class;
-and she will never be forgiven by those now in power for her sympathetic
-support of that class in other years. Politics yearly intensify this
-hostility; and as the only hope for the restoration of the whites to
-power, and of the Church to its old position, lies in the possibility of
-another empire or a revival of the monarchy, the white creoles and their
-Church are forced into hostility against republicanism and the republic.
-And political newspapers continually attack Roman Catholicism,--mock its
-tenets and teachings,--ridicule its dogmas and ceremonies,--satirize its
-priests.
-
-In the cities and towns the Church indeed appears to retain a large
-place in the affection of the poorer classes;--her ceremonies are always
-well attended; money pours into her coffers; and one can still witness
-the curious annual procession of the "converted,"--aged women of color
-and negresses going to communion for the first time, all wearing
-snow-white turbans in honor of the event. But among the country people,
-where the dangerous forces of revolution exist, Christian feeling is
-almost stifled by ghastly beliefs of African origin;--the images and
-crucifixes still command respect, but this respect is inspired by a
-feeling purely fetichistic. With the political dispossession of the
-whites, certain dark powers, previously concealed or repressed, have
-obtained formidable development. The old enemy of Père Labat, the
-wizard (the _quimboiseur_), already wields more authority than the
-priest, exercises more terror than the magistrate, commands more
-confidence than the physician. The educated mulatto class may affect to
-despise him;--but he is preparing their overthrow in the dark.
-Astonishing is the persistence with which the African has clung to these
-beliefs and practices, so zealously warred upon by the Church and so
-mercilessly punished by the courts for centuries. He still goes to mass,
-and sends his children to the priest; but he goes more often to the
-quimboiseur and the "_magnetise._" He finds use for both beliefs, but
-gives large preference to the savage one,--just as he prefers the
-pattering of his tamtam to the music of the military band at the _Savane
-du Fort_.... And should it come to pass that Martinique be ever totally
-abandoned by its white population,--an event by no means improbable in
-the present order of things,--the fate of the ecclesiastical fabric so
-toilsomely reared by the monastic orders is not difficult to surmise.
-
-
-
-
-VI
-
-
-From my window in the old Rue du Bois-Morin,--which climbs the foot
-of Morne Labelle by successions of high stone steps,--all the
-southern end of the city is visible as in a bird's-eye view. Under me
-is a long peaking of red-scaled roofs,--gables and dormer-windows,--with
-clouds of bright green here and there,--foliage of tamarind and
-corossolier;--westward purples and flames the great circle of the
-Caribbean Sea;--east and south, towering to the violet sky, curve the
-volcanic hills, green-clad from base to summit;--and right before me the
-beautiful Morne d'Orange, all palm-plumed and wood-wrapped, trends
-seaward and southward. And every night, after the stars come out, I see
-moving lights there,--lantern fires guiding the mountain-dwellers home;
-but I look in vain for the light of Père Labat.
-
-And nevertheless,--although no believer in ghosts,--I see thee very
-plainly sometimes, thou quaint White Father, moving through winter-mists
-in the narrower Paris of another century; musing upon the churches that
-arose at thy bidding under tropic skies; dreaming of the primeval
-valleys changed by thy will to green-gold seas of cane,--and the strong
-mill that will bear thy name for two hundred years (it stands solid unto
-this day),--and the habitations made for thy brethren in pleasant palmy
-places,--and the luminous peace of thy Martinique convent,--and odor of
-roasting parrots fattened upon _grains de bois d'Inde_ and
-guavas,--"_l'odeur de muscade et de girofle qui fait plaisir_"...
-
-Eh, Père Labat!--what changes there have been since thy day! The White
-Fathers have no place here now; and the Black Fathers, too, have been
-driven from the land, leaving only as a memory of them the perfect and
-ponderous architecture of the Perinnelle plantation-buildings, and the
-appellation of the river still known as the Rivière des Pères. Also
-the Ursulines are gone, leaving only their name on the corner of a
-crumbling street. And there are no more slaves; and there are new races
-of colors thou wouldst deem scandalous though beautiful; and there are
-no more parrots; and there are no more diablotins. And the grand woods
-thou sawest in their primitive and inviolate beauty, as if fresh from
-the Creator's touch in the morning of the world, are passing away; the
-secular trees are being converted into charcoal, or sawn into timber for
-the boat-builders: thou shouldst see two hundred men pulling some forest
-giant down to the sea upon the two-wheeled screaming thing they call a
-"devil" (_yon diabe_),--cric-crac!--cric-crac!--all chanting together:--
-
-
-"_Soh-soh!--yaïe-yah!
-Rhâlé bois-canot!_"
-
-
-And all that ephemeral man has had power to change has been
-changed,--ideas, morals, beliefs, the whole social fabric. But the
-eternal summer remains,--and the Hesperian magnificence of azure sky and
-violet sea,--and the jewel-colors of the perpetual hills;--the same
-tepid winds that rippled thy cane-fields two hundred years ago still
-blow over Sainte-Marie;--the same purple shadows lengthen and dwindle
-and turn with the wheeling of the sun. God's witchery still fills this
-land; and the heart of the stranger is even yet snared by the beauty of
-it; and the dreams of him that forsakes it will surely be haunted--even
-as were thine own. Père Labat--by memories of its Eden-summer: the
-sudden leap of the light over a thousand peaks in the glory of tropic
-dawn,--the perfumed peace of enormous azure noons,--and shapes of palm
-wind-rocked in the burning of colossal sunsets,--and the silent
-flickering of the great fire-flies through the lukewarm darkness, when
-mothers call their children home.... "_Mi fanal Pè Labatt!--mi Pè
-Labatt ka vini pouend oi!_"
-
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-LA GUIABLESSE
-
-
-I
-
-
-Night in all countries brings with it vaguenesses and illusions which
-terrify certain imaginations;--but in the tropics it produces effects
-peculiarly impressive and peculiarly sinister. Shapes of vegetation that
-startle even while the sun shines upon them assume, after his setting, a
-grimness,--a grotesquery,--a suggestiveness for which there is no
-name.... In the North a tree is simply a tree;--here it is a personality
-that makes itself felt; it has a vague physiognomy, an indefinable Me:
-it is an Individual (with a capital I); it is a Being (with a capital
-B).
-
-From the high woods, as the moon mounts, fantastic darknesses descend
-into the roads,--black distortions, mockeries, bad dreams,--an endless
-procession of goblins. Least startling are the shadows flung down by the
-various forms of palm, because instantly recognizable;--yet these take
-the semblance of giant fingers opening and closing over the way, or a
-black crawling of unutterable spiders....
-
-Nevertheless, these phasma seldom alarm the solitary and belated Bitaco:
-the darknesses that creep stealthily along the path have no frightful
-signification for him,--do not appeal to his imagination;--if he
-suddenly starts and stops and stares, it is not because of such shapes,
-but because he has perceived two specks of orange light, and is not yet
-sure whether they are only fire-flies, or the eyes of a trigonocephalus.
-The spectres of his fancy have nothing in common with those indistinct
-and monstrous umbrages: what he most fears, next to the deadly serpent,
-are human witchcrafts. A white rag, an old bone lying in the path, might
-be a maléfice which, if trodden upon, would cause his leg to blacken
-and swell up to the size of the limb of an elephant;--an unopened bundle
-of plantain leaves or of bamboo strippings, dropped by the way-side,
-might contain the skin of a _Soucouyan._ But the ghastly being who doffs
-or dons his skin at will--and the Zombi--and the _Moun-Mò_--may be
-quelled or exorcised by prayer; and the lights of shrines, the white
-gleaming of crosses, continually remind the traveller of his duty to the
-Powers that save. All along the way there are shrines at intervals, not
-very far apart: while standing in the radiance of one niche-lamp, you
-may perhaps discern the glow of the next, if the road be level and
-straight. They are almost everywhere,--shining along the skirts of the
-woods, at the entrance of ravines, by the verges of precipices;--there
-is a cross even upon the summit of the loftiest peak in the island. And
-the night-walker removes his hat each time his bare feet touch the soft
-stream of yellow light outpoured from the illuminated shrine of a white
-Virgin or a white Christ. These are good ghostly company for him;--he
-salutes them, talks to them, tells them his pains or fears: their
-blanched faces seem to him full of sympathy;--they appear to cheer him
-voicelessly as he strides from gloom to gloom, under the goblinry of
-those woods which tower black as ebony under the stars.... And he has
-other companionship. One of the greatest terrors of darkness in other
-lands does not exist here after the setting of the sun,--the terror of
-Silence.... Tropical night is full of voices;--extraordinary
-populations of crickets are trilling; nations of tree-frogs are
-chanting; the _Cabri-des-bois_,[15] or _cra-cra_, almost deafens you
-with the wheezy bleating sound by which it earned its creole name; birds
-pipe: everything that bells, ululates, drones, clacks, guggles, joins
-the enormous chorus; and you fancy you see all the shadows vibrating to
-the force of this vocal storm. The true life of Nature in the tropics
-begins with the darkness, ends with the light.
-
-And it is partly, perhaps, because of these conditions that the coming
-of the dawn does not dissipate all fears of the supernatural. _I ni pè
-zombi mênm gran'-jou_ (he is afraid of ghosts even in broad daylight)
-is a phrase which does not sound exaggerated in these latitudes,--not,
-at least, to any one knowing something of the conditions that nourish or
-inspire weird beliefs. In the awful peace of tropical day, in the hush
-of the woods, the solemn silence of the hills (broken only by torrent
-voices that cannot make themselves heard at night), even in the amazing
-luminosity, there is a something apparitional and weird,--something that
-seems to weigh upon the world like a measureless haunting. So still all
-Nature's chambers are that a loud utterance jars upon the ear brutally,
-like a burst of laughter in a sanctuary. With all its luxuriance of
-color, with all its violence of light, this tropical day has its
-ghostliness and its ghosts. Among the people of color there are many who
-believe that even at noon--when the boulevards behind the city are most
-deserted--the zombis will show themselves to solitary loiterers.
-
-
-[Footnote 15: In creole, _cabritt-bois_--("the Wood-Kid")--a colossal
-cricket. Precisely at half-past four in the morning it becomes silent;
-and for thousands of early risers too poor to own a dock, the cessation
-of its song is the signal to get up.]
-
-
-
-
-II
-
-
-... Here a doubt occurs to me,--a doubt regarding the precise nature of
-a word, which I call upon Adou to explain. Adou is the daughter of the
-kind old capresse from whom I rent my room in this little mountain
-cottage. The mother is almost precisely the color of cinnamon; the
-daughter's complexion is brighter,--the ripe tint of an orange.... Adou
-tells me creole stories and _tim-tim._ Adou knows all about ghosts, and
-believes in them. So does Adou's extraordinarily tall brother,
-Yébé,--my guide among the mountains.
-
---"Adou," I ask, "what is a zombi?"
-
-The smile that showed Adou's beautiful white teeth has instantly
-disappeared; and she answers, very seriously, that she has never seen a
-zombi, and does not want to see one.
-
---"_Moin pa té janmain ouè zombi,--pa 'lè ouè ça, moin!_"
-
---"But, Adou, child, I did not ask you whether you ever saw It;--I asked
-you only to tell me what It is like?"...
-
-Adou hesitates a little, and answers:
-
---"_Zombi? Mais ça fai désòde lanuitt, zombi!_"
-
-Ah! it is Something which "makes disorder at night." Still, that is not
-a satisfactory explanation. "Is it the spectre of a dead person, Adou?
-Is it _one who comes back?_"
-
---"_Non, Misié,--non; çê pa ça._"
-
---"Not that?... Then what was it you said the other night when you were
-afraid to pass the cemetery on an errand,--_ça ou té ka di_, Adou?"
-
---"Moin té ka di: 'Moin pa lé k'allé bò cimétiè-là pa ouappò
-moun-mò ké barré moin: moin pa sé pè vini enco.'" (_I said, "I do
-not want to goby that cemetery because of the dead folk;--the dead folk
-will bar the way and I cannot get back again._")
-
---"And you believe that, Adou?"
-
---"Yes, that is what they say.... And if you go into the cemetery at
-night you cannot come out again: the dead folk will stop you--_moun-mò
-ké barré ou._"...
-
---"But are the dead folk zombis, Adou?"
-
---"No; the moun-mò are not zombis. The zombis go everywhere: the dead
-folk remain in the graveyard.... Except on the Night of All Souls: then
-they go to the houses of their people everywhere."
-
---"Adou, if after the doors and windows were locked and barred you were
-to see entering your room in the middle of the night, a Woman fourteen
-feet high?"...
-
---"_Ah! pa pàlé ça!!_"...
-
---"No! tell me, Adou?"
-
---"Why, yes: that would be a zombi. It is the zombis who make all those
-noises at night one cannot understand.... Or, again, if I were to see a
-dog that high [she holds her hand about five feet above the floor]
-coming into our house at night, I would scream: _Mi Zombi!_"
-
-... Then it suddenly occurs to Adou that her mother knows something
-about zombis.
-
---"_Ou! Mannam!_"
-
---"_Eti!_" answers old Théréza's voice from the little out-building
-where the evening meal is being prepared, over a charcoal furnace, in an
-earthen canari.
-
---"_Missié-là ka mandé save ça ça yé yonne zombi;--vini ti
-bouin!_"... The mother laughs, abandons her canari, and comes in to tell
-me all she knows about the weird word.
-
-"_I ni pè zombi_"--I find from old Théréza's explanations--is a
-phrase indefinite as our own vague expressions, "afraid of ghosts,
-afraid of the dark." But the word "Zombi" also has special strange
-meanings.... "Ou passé nans grand chimin lanuitt, épi ou ka ouè
-gouôs difé, épi plis ou ka vini assou difé-à pli ou ka ouè
-difé-à ka màché: çé zombi ka fai ça.... Encò, chouval ka
-passé,--chouval ka ni anni toua patt: ça zombi." (You pass along the
-high-road at night, and you see a great fire, and the more you walk to
-get to it the more it moves away: it is the zombi makes that.... Or a
-horse _with only three legs_ passes you: that is a zombi.)
-
---"How big is the fire that the zombi makes?" I ask.
-
---"It fills the whole road," answers Théréza: "_li ka rempli toutt
-chimin-là._ Folk call those fires the Evil Fires,--_mauvai difé_,--and
-if you follow them they will lead you into chasms,--_ou ké tombé adans
-labîme._"...
-
-And then she tells me this:
-
---"Baidaux was a mad man of color who used to live at St. Pierre, in the
-Street of the Precipice. He was not dangerous,--never did any harm;--his
-sister used to take care of him. And what I am going to relate is
-true,--_çe zhistouè veritabe!_
-
-"One day Baidaux said to his sister: 'Moin ni yonne yche, va!--ou pa
-connaitt li! [I have a child, ah!--you never saw it!] His sister paid no
-attention to what he said that day; but the next day he said it again,
-and the next, and the next, and every day after,--so that his sister at
-last became much annoyed by it, and used to cry out: 'Ah! mais pé
-guiole ou, Baidaux! ou fou pou embêté moin conm ça!--ou bien fou!'...
-But he tormented her that way for months and for years.
-
-"One evening he went out, and only came home at midnight leading a child
-by the hand,--a black child he had found in the street; and he said to
-his sister:--
-
-"'Mi yche-là moin mené ba ou! Tou léjou moin té ka di ou moin tini
-yonne yche: ou pa té 'lè couè,--eh, ben! MI Y!' [Look at the child I
-have brought you! Every day I have been telling you I had a child: you
-would not believe me,--very well, look at him!]
-
-"The sister gave one look, and cried out: 'Baidaux, oti ou pouend
-yche-là?'... For the child was growing taller and taller every
-moment.... And Baidaux,--because he was mad,--kept saying: 'Çé
-yche-moin! çé yche moin!' [It is my child!]
-
-"And the sister threw open the shutters and screamed to all the
-neighbors,--'_Sécou, sécou, sécou! Vint oué ça Baidaux mené ba
-moin!_' [Help! help! Come see what Baidaux has brought in here!] And the
-child said to Baidaux: '_Ou ni bonhè ou fou!_' [You are lucky that you
-are mad!]... Then all the neighbors came running in; but they could not
-see anything: the Zombi was gone."...
-
-
-
-
-III
-
-
-... As I was saying, the hours of vastest light have their weirdness
-here;--and it is of a Something which walketh abroad under the eye of
-the sun, even at high noontide, that I desire to speak, while the
-impressions of a morning journey to the scene of Its last alleged
-apparition yet remains vivid in my recollection.
-
-You follow the mountain road leading from Calebasse over long meadowed
-levels two thousand feet above the ocean, into the woods of La Couresse,
-where it begins to descend slowly, through deep green shadowing, by
-great zigzags. Then, at a turn, you find yourself unexpectedly looking
-down upon a planted valley, through plumy fronds of arborescent fern.
-The surface below seems almost like a lake of gold-green
-water,--especially when long breaths of mountain-wind set the miles of
-ripening cane a-ripple from verge to verge: the illusion is marred only
-by the road, fringed with young cocoa-palms, which serpentines across
-the luminous plain. East, west, and north the horizon is almost wholly
-hidden by surging of hills: those nearest are softly shaped and
-exquisitely green; above them loftier undulations take hazier verdancy
-and darker shadows; farther yet rise silhouettes of blue or violet tone,
-with one beautiful breast-shaped peak thrusting up in the midst;--while,
-westward, over all, topping even the Piton, is a vapory huddling of
-prodigious shapes--wrinkled, fissured, horned, fantastically tall....
-Such at least are the tints of the morning.... Here and there, between
-gaps in the volcanic chain, the land hollows into gorges, slopes down
-into ravines;--and the sea's vast disk of turquoise flames up through
-the interval. Southwardly those deep woods, through which the way winds
-down, shut in the view.... You do not see the plantation buildings till
-you have advanced some distance into the valley;--they are hidden by a
-fold of the land, and stand in a little hollow where the road turns: a
-great quadrangle of low gray antiquated edifices, heavily walled and
-buttressed, and roofed with red tiles. The court they form opens upon
-the main route by an immense archway. Farther along ajoupas begin to
-line the way,--the dwellings of the field hands,--tiny cottages built
-with trunks of the arborescent fern or with stems of bamboo, and
-thatched with cane-straw: each in a little garden planted with bananas,
-yams, couscous, camanioc, choux-caraibes, or other things,--and hedged
-about with roseaux d'Inde and various flowering shrubs.
-
-Thereafter, only the high whispering wildernesses of cane on either
-hand,--the white silent road winding between its swaying
-cocoa-trees,--and the tips of hills that seem to glide on before you as
-you walk, and that take, with the deepening of the afternoon light, such
-amethystine color as if they were going to become transparent.
-
-
-
-
-IV
-
-
-... It is a breezeless and cloudless noon. Under the dazzling downpour
-of light the hills seem to smoke blue: something like a thin yellow fog
-haloes the leagues of ripening cane,--a vast reflection. There is no
-stir in all the green mysterious front of the vine-veiled woods. The
-palms of the roads keep their heads quite still, as if listening. The
-canes do not utter a single susurration. Rarely is there such absolute
-stillness among them: upon the calmest days there are usually rustlings
-audible, thin cracklings, faint creepings: sounds that betray the
-passing of some little animal or reptile--a rat or a manicou, or a
-zanoli or couresse,--more often, however, no harmless lizard or snake,
-but the deadly fer-de-lance. To-day, all these seem to sleep; and there
-are no workers among the cane to clear away the weeds,--to uproot the
-_pié-treffe, pié-poule, pié-balai, zhèbe-en-mè_: it is the hour of
-rest.
-
-
-[Illustration: PITONS DU CARBET
-"_The horizon is almost wholly hidden by surging of
-hills: silhouettes of blue and violet... a vapory huddling
-of prodigious shapes._"]
-
-
-A woman is coming along the road,--young, very swarthy, very tall, and
-barefooted, and black-robed: she wears a high white turban with dark
-stripes, and a white foulard is thrown about her fine shoulders; she
-bears no burden, and walks very swiftly and noiselessly.... Soundless as
-shadow the motion of all these naked-footed people is. On any quiet
-mountain-way, full of curves, where you fancy yourself alone, you may
-often be startled by something you _feel_, rather than hear, behind
-you,--surd steps, the springy movement of a long lithe body, dumb
-oscillations of raiment;--and ere you can turn to look, the haunter
-swiftly passes with creole greeting of "bonjou'" or "bonsouè, Missié."
-This sudden "becoming aware" in broad daylight of a living presence
-unseen is even more disquieting than that sensation which, in absolute
-darkness, makes one halt all breathlessly before great solid objects,
-whose proximity has been revealed by some mute blind emanation of force
-alone. But it is very seldom, indeed, that the negro or half-breed is
-thus surprised: he seems to divine an advent by some specialized
-sense,--like an animal,--and to become conscious of a look directed upon
-him from any distance or from behind any covert;--to pass within the
-range of his keen vision unnoticed is almost impossible.... And the
-approach of this woman has been already observed by the habitants of the
-ajoupas;--dark faces peer out from windows and door-ways;--one
-half-nude laborer even strolls out to the road-side under the sun to
-watch her coming. He looks a moment, turns to the hut again, and
-calls:--
-
---"Ou-ou! Fafa!"
-
---"Êti! Gabou!"
-
---"Vini ti bouin!--mi bel négresse!"
-
-Out rushes Fafa, with his huge straw hat in his hand: "Oti, Gabou?"
-
---"Mi!"
-
---"Ah! quimbé moin!" cries black Fafa, enthusiastically; "fouinq! li
-bel!--Jésis-Maïa! li doux!"... Neither ever saw that woman before; and
-both feel as if they could watch her forever.
-
-There is something superb in the port of a tall young mountain-griffone,
-or negress, who is comely and knows that she is comely: it is a black
-poem of artless dignity, primitive grace, savage exultation of
-movement.... "Ou marché tête enlai cornu couresse qui ka passé
-lariviè" (_You walk with, your head in the air, like the
-couresse-serpent swimming a river_) is a creole comparison which
-pictures perfectly the poise of her neck and chin. And in her walk there
-is also a serpentine elegance, a sinuous charm: the shoulders do not
-swing; the cambered torso seems immobile;--but alternately from waist to
-heel, and from heel to waist, with each long full stride, an
-indescribable undulation seems to pass; while the folds of her loose
-robe oscillate to right and left behind her, in perfect libration, with
-the free swaying of the hips. With us, only a finely trained dancer
-could attempt such a walk;--with the Martinique woman of color it is
-natural as the tint of her skin; and this allurement of motion
-unrestrained is most marked in those who have never worn shoes and are
-clad lightly as the women of antiquity,--in two very thin and simple
-garments;--chemise and _robe-d'indienne_.... But whence is she?--of what
-canton? Not from Vauclin, nor from Lamentin, nor from Marigot,--from
-Case-Pilote or from Case-Navire: Fafa knows all the people there. Never
-of Sainte-Anne, nor of Sainte-Luce, nor of Sainte-Marie, nor of Diamant,
-nor of Gros-Morne, nor of Carbet,--the birthplace of Gabou. Neither is
-she of the village of the Abysms, which is in the Parish of the
-Preacher,--nor yet of Ducos nor of François, which are in the Commune
-of the Holy Ghost....
-
-
-
-
-V
-
-
-... She approaches the ajoupa: both men remove their big straw hats; and
-both salute her with a simultaneous "Bonjou', Manzell."
-
---"Bonjou', Missié," she responds, in a sonorous alto, without
-appearing to notice Gabou,--but smiling upon Fafa as she passes, with
-her great eyes turned full upon his face.... All the libertine blood of
-the man flames under that look;--he feels as if momentarily wrapped in a
-blaze of black lightning.
-
---"Ça ka fai moin pè," exclaims Gabou, turning his face towards the
-ajoupa. Something indefinable in the gaze of the stranger has terrified
-him.
-
---"_Pa ka fai moin pè--fouinq!_" (She does not make me afraid) laughs
-Fafa, boldly following her with a smiling swagger.
-
---"Fafa!" cries Gabou, in alarm. "_Fafa, pa ça!_"
-
-But Fafa does not heed. The strange woman has slackened her pace, as if
-inviting pursuit;--another moment and he is at her side.
-
---"Oti ou ka rété, chè?" he demands, with the boldness of one who
-knows himself a fine specimen of his race.
-
---"Zaffai cabritt pa zaffai lapin," she answers, mockingly.
-
---"Mais pouki ou rhabillé toutt noué conm ça."
-
---"Moin pòté deil pou name moin mò."
-
---"Ale ya yaïe!... Non, voué!--ça ou kallé atouèlement?"
-
---"Lanmou pàti: moin pàti delé lanmou."
-
---"Ho!--ou ni guêpe, anh?"
-
---"Zanoli bail yon bal; épi maboya rentré ladans."
-
---"Di moin oti ou kallé, doudoux?"
-
---"Jouq lariviè Lezà."
-
---"Fouinq!--ni plis passé trente kilomett!"
-
---"Eh ben?--ess ou 'lè vini épi moin?"[16]
-
-And as she puts the question she stands still and gazes at him;--her
-voice is no longer mocking: it has taken another tone,--a tone soft as
-the long golden note of the little brown bird they call the
-_siffleur-de-montagne_, the mountain-whistler.... Yet Fafa hesitates. He
-hears the clear clang of the plantation bell recalling him to duty;--he
-sees far down the road--(_Ouill!_ how fast they have been walking!)--a
-white and black speck in the sun: Gabou, uttering through his joined
-hollowed hands, as through a horn, the _ouklé_, the rally call. For an
-instant he thinks of the overseer's anger,--of the distance,--of the
-white road glaring in the dead heat: then he looks again into the black
-eyes of the strange woman, and answers:
-
---"Oui;--moin ké vini épi ou."
-
-With a burst of mischievous laughter, in which Fafa joins, she walks
-on,--Fafa striding at her side.... And Gabou, far off, watches them
-go,--and wonders that, for the first time since ever they worked
-together, his comrade failed to answer his _ouklé._
-
---"Coument yo ka crié ou, chè?" asks Fafa, curious to know her name.
-
---"Châché nom moin ou-menm, duviné."
-
-But Fafa never was a good guesser,--never could guess the simplest of
-tim-tim.
-
---"Ess Cendrine?"
-
---"Non, çé pa ça."
-
---"Ess Vitaline?"
-
---"Non, çé pa ça."
-
---"Ess Aza?"
-
---"Non, çé pa ça."
-
---"Ess Nini?"
-
---"Chaché encò."
-
---"Ess Tité?"
-
---"Ou pa save,--tant pis pou ou!"
-
---"Ess Youma?"
-
---"Pouki ou 'lè save nom moin?--ça ou ké fai épi y?"
-
---"Ess Yaiya?"
-
---"Non, çé pa y."
-
---"Ess Maiyotte?"
-
---"Non! ou pa ké janmain trouvé y!"
-
---"Ess Sounoune?--ess Loulouze?"
-
-She does not answer, but quickens her pace and begins to sing,--not as
-the half-breed, but as the African sings,--commencing with a low long
-weird intonation that suddenly breaks into fractions of notes
-inexpressible, then rising all at once to a liquid purling bird-tone,
-and descending as abruptly again to the first deep quavering strain:--
-
-
-"À tè--
-moin ka dòmi toute longue;
-Yon paillasse sé fai moin bien,
-Doudoux!
-
-À tè--
-moin ka dòmi toute longue;
-Yon robe biésé sé fai moin bien,
-Doudoux!
-
-À tè--
-moin ka dòmi toute longue;
-Dè jolis foulà sé fai moin bien,
-Doudoux!
-
-À tè--
-moin ka dòmi toute longue;
-Yon joli madras sé fai moin bien,
-Doudoux!
-
-À tè--
-moin ka dòmi toute longue:
-Çé à tè..."
-
-
-... Obliged from the first to lengthen his stride in order to keep up
-with her, Fafa has found his utmost powers of walking overtaxed, and has
-been left behind. Already his thin attire is saturated with sweat; his
-breathing is almost a panting;--yet the black bronze of his companion's
-skin shows no moisture; her rhythmic step, her silent respiration,
-reveal no effort: she laughs at his desperate straining to remain by her
-side.
-
---"Marché toujou' deïé moin,--anh, chè?--marché toujou' deïé!"...
-
-And the involuntary laggard--utterly bewitched by the supple allurement
-of her motion, by the black flame of her gaze, by the savage melody of
-her chant--wonders more and more who she may be, while she waits for him
-with her mocking smile.
-
-But Gabou--who has been following and watching from afar off, and
-sounding his fruitless ouklé betimes--suddenly starts, halts, turns,
-and hurries back, fearfully crossing himself at every step.
-
-He has seen the sign by which She is known....
-
-
-[Footnote 16:--"Where dost stay, dear?"
-
---"Affaire of the goat are not affaire of the rabbit."
-
---"But why art thou dressed all in black thus?"
-
---"I wear mourning for my dead soul."
-
---"_Aïe ya yaïe!_... No, true!... where art thou going now?"
-
---"Love is gone: I go after love."
-
---"Ho! thou hast a Wasp [lover]--eh?"
-
---"The zanoli gives a ball; the maboya enters unasked."
-
---"Tell me where thou art going, sweetheart?"
-
---"As far as the River of the Lizard."
-
---"_Fouinq!_--there are more than thirty kilometres!"
-
---"What of that?--do t thou want to come with me?"]
-
-
-
-
-VI
-
-
-... None ever saw her by night. Her hour is the fulness of the sun's
-flood-tide: she comes in the dead hush and white flame of windless
-noons,--when colors appear to take a very unearthliness of
-intensity,--when even the flash of some colibri, bosomed with living
-fire, shooting hither and thither among the grenadilla blossoms, seemeth
-a spectral happening because of the great green trance of the land....
-
-Mostly she haunts the mountain roads, winding from plantation to
-plantation, from hamlet to hamlet,--sometimes dominating huge sweeps of
-azure sea, sometimes shadowed by mornes deep-wooded to the sky. But
-close to the great towns she sometimes walks: she has been seen at
-mid-day upon the highway which overlooks the Cemetery of the Anchorage,
-behind the cathedral of St. Pierre.... A black Woman, simply clad, of
-lofty stature and strange beauty, silently standing in the light,
-_keeping her eyes fixed upon the Sun!_...
-
-
-
-
-VII
-
-
-Day wanes. The further western altitudes shift their pearline gray to
-deep blue where the sky is yellowing up behind them; and in the
-darkening hollows of nearer mornes strange shadows gather with the
-changing of the light--dead indigoes, fuliginous purples, rubifications
-as of scoriæ,--ancient volcanic colors momentarily resurrected by the
-illusive haze of evening. And the fallow of the canes takes a faint warm
-ruddy tinge. On certain far high slopes, as the sun lowers, they look
-like thin golden hairs against the glow,--blond down upon the skin of
-the living hills.
-
-Still the Woman and her follower walk together,--chatting loudly,
-laughing, chanting snatches of song betimes. And now the valley is well
-behind them;-- they climb the steep road crossing the eastern
-peaks,--through woods that seem to stifle under burdening of creepers.
-The shadow of the Woman and the shadow of the man,--broadening from
-their feet,--lengthening prodigiously,--sometimes, mixing, fill all the
-way; sometimes, at a turn, rise up to climb the trees. Huge masses of
-frondage, catching the failing light, take strange fiery color;--the
-sun's rim almost touches one violet hump in the western procession of
-volcanic silhouettes....
-
-
-Sunset, in the tropics, is vaster than sunrise.... The dawn, upflaming
-swiftly from the sea, has no heralding erubescence, no awful
-blossoming--as in the North: its fairest hues are fawn-colors,
-dove-tints, and yellows,--pale yellows as of old dead gold, in horizon
-and flood. But after the mighty heat of day has charged all the blue air
-with translucent vapor, colors become strangely changed, magnified,
-transcendentalized when the sun falls once more below the verge of
-visibility. Nearly an hour before his death, his light begins to turn
-tint; and all the horizon yellows to the color of a lemon. Then this hue
-deepens, through tones of magnificence unspeakable, into orange; and the
-sea becomes lilac. Orange is the light of the world for a little space;
-and as the orb sinks, the indigo darkness comes--not descending, but
-rising, as if from the ground--all within a few minutes. And during
-those brief minutes peaks and mornes, purpling into richest velvety
-blackness, appear outlined against passions of fire that rise half-way
-to the zenith,--enormous furies of vermilion.
-
-
-... The Woman all at once leaves the main road,--begins to mount a steep
-narrow path leading up from it through the woods upon the left. But Fafa
-hesitates,--halts a moment to look back. He sees the sun's huge orange
-face sink down,--sees the weird procession of the peaks vesture
-themselves in blackness funereal,--sees the burning behind them crimson
-into awfulness; and a vague fear comes upon him as he looks again up the
-darkling path to the left. Whither is she now going?
-
-
---"Oti ou kallé là?" he cries.
-
---"Mais conm ça!--chimin tala plis cou't,--coument?"
-
-It may be the shortest route, indeed;--but then, the fer-de-lance!...
-
---"Ni sèpent ciya,--en pile."
-
-No: there is not a single one, she avers; she has taken
-that path too often not to know:
-
---"Pa ni sèpent piess! Moin ni coutime passé là;--pa ni piess!"
-
-... She leads the way.... Behind them the tremendous glow
-deepens;--before them the gloom. Enormous gnarled forms of ceiba,
-balata, acoma, stand dimly revealed as they pass; masses of viny
-drooping things take, by the failing light, a sanguine tone. For a
-little while Fafa can plainly discern the figure of the Woman before
-him;--then, as the path zigzags into shadow, he can descry only the
-white turban and the white foulard;--and then the boughs meet overhead:
-he can see her no more, and calls to her in alarm:--
-
---"Oti ou?--moin pa pè ouè arien!"
-
-Forked pending ends of creepers trail cold across his face. Huge
-fire-flies sparkle by,--like atoms of kindled charcoal thudding, blown
-by a wind.
-
---"Içitt!--quimbé lanmain-moin!"...
-
-How cold the hand that guides him!... She walks swiftly, surely, as one
-knowing the path by heart. It zigzags once more; and the incandescent
-color flames again between the trees;--the high vaulting of foliage
-fissures overhead, revealing the first stars. A _cabritt-bois_ begins
-its chant. They reach the summit of the morne under the clear sky.
-
-The wood is below their feet now; the path curves on eastward between a
-long swaying of ferns sable in the gloom,--as between a waving of
-prodigious black feathers. Through the further purpling, loftier
-altitudes dimly loom; and from some viewless depth, a dull vast rushing
-sound rises into the night.... Is it the speech of hurrying waters, or
-only some tempest of insect voices from those ravines in which the night
-begins?...
-
-Her face is in the darkness as she stands;--Fafa's eyes are turned to
-the iron-crimson of the western sky. He still holds her hand, fondles
-it,--murmurs something to her in undertones.
-
---"Ess ou ainmein moin conm ça?" she asks, almost in a whisper.
-
-Oh! yes, yes, yes!... more than any living being he loves her!... How
-much? Ever so much,--_gouôs conm caze!_... Yet she seems to doubt
-him,--repeating her question over and over:
-
---"Ess ou ainmein moin?"
-
-And all the while,--gently, caressingly, imperceptibly,--she draws him a
-little nearer to the side of the path, nearer to the black waving of the
-ferns, nearer to the great dull rushing sound that rises from beyond
-them:
-
---"Ess ou ainmein moin?"
-
---"Oui, oui!" he responds,--"ou save ça!--oui, chè doudoux, ou save
-ça!"...
-
-And she, suddenly,--turning at once to him and to the last red light,
-the goblin horror of her face transformed,--shrieks with a burst of
-hideous laughter:
-
---"_Atò, bô!_"[17]
-
-For the fraction of a moment he knows her name:--then, smitten to the
-brain with the sight of her, reels, recoils, and, backward falling,
-crashes two thousand feet down to his death upon the rocks of a mountain
-torrent.
-
-
-[Footnote 17: "Kiss me now!"]
-
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-La VÉRETTE
-
-
-I
-
-
---St. Pierre, _1887._
-
-
-One returning from the country to the city in the Carnival season is
-lucky to find any comfortable rooms for rent. I have been happy to
-secure one even in a rather retired street,--so steep that it is really
-dangerous to sneeze while descending it, lest one lose one's balance and
-tumble right across the town. It is not a fashionable street, the Rue du
-Morne Mirait; but, after all, there is no particularly fashionable
-street in this extraordinary city, and the poorer the neighborhood, the
-better one's chance to see something of its human nature.
-
-One consolation is that I have Manm-Robert for a next-door neighbor, who
-keeps the best bouts in town (those long thin Martinique cigars of which
-a stranger soon becomes fond), and who can relate more queer stories and
-legends of old times in the island than anybody else I know of.
-Manm-Robert is _yon màchonne lapacotte_, a dealer in such cheap
-articles of food as the poor live upon: fruits and tropical vegetables,
-manioc-flour, "macadam" (a singular dish of rice stewed with salt
-fish--_diri épi coubouyon lamori_), akras, etc.; but her bouts probably
-bring her the largest profit--they are all bought up by the békés.
-Manm-Robert is also a sort of doctor: whenever any one in the
-neighborhood falls sick she is sent for, and always comes, and very
-often cures,--as she is skilled in the knowledge and use of medical
-herbs, which she gathers herself upon the mornes. But for these services
-she never accepts any remuneration: she is a sort of Mother of the poor
-in her immediate vicinity. She helps everybody, listens to everybody's
-troubles, gives everybody some sort of consolation, trusts everybody,
-and sees a great deal of the thankless side of human nature without
-seeming to feel any the worse for it. Poor as she must really be, she
-appears to have everything that everybody wants; and will lend anything
-to her neighbors except a scissors or a broom, which it is thought
-bad-luck to lend. And, finally, if anybody is afraid of being bewitched
-(_guimboisé_) Manm-Robert can furnish him or her with something that
-will keep the bewitchment away....
-
-
-
-
-II
-
-_February 15th._
-
-
-... Ash-Wednesday. The last masquerade will appear this afternoon,
-notwithstanding; for the Carnival lasts in Martinique a day longer than
-elsewhere.
-
-All through the country districts since the first week of January there
-have been wild festivities every Sunday--dancing on the public highways
-to the pattering of tamtams,--African dancing, too, such as is never
-seen in St. Pierre. In the city, however, there has been less merriment
-than in previous years;--the natural gaiety of the population has been
-visibly affected by the advent of a terrible and unfamiliar visitor to
-the island,--_La Vérette_: she came by steamer from Colon.
-
-... It was in September. Only two cases had been reported when every
-neighboring British colony quarantined against Martinique. Then other
-West Indian colonies did likewise. Only two cases of small-pox. "But
-there may be two thousand in another month," answered the governors and
-the consuls to many indignant protests. Among West Indian populations
-the malady has a signification unknown in Europe or the United States:
-it means an exterminating plague.
-
-Two months later the little capital of Fort-de-France was swept by the
-pestilence as by a wind of death. Then the evil began to spread. It
-entered St. Pierre in December, about Christmas time. Last week 173
-cases were reported; and a serious epidemic is almost certain. There
-were only 8500 inhabitants in Fort-de-France; there are 28,000 in the
-three quarters of St. Pierre proper, not including her suburbs; and
-there is no saying what ravages the disease may make here.
-
-
-
-
-III
-
-
-... Three o'clock, hot and clear.... In the distance there is a heavy
-sound of drums, always drawing nearer: _tam!--tam!--tamtamtam!_ The
-Grande Rue is lined with expectant multitudes; and its tiny square,--the
-Batterie d'Esnotz,--thronged with békés.--_Tam!--tam!--tamtamtam!_...
-In our own street the people are beginning to gather at door-ways, and
-peer out of windows,--prepared to descend to the main thoroughfare at
-the first glimpse of the procession.
-
---"_Oti masque-à?_" Where are the maskers?
-
-It is little Mimi's voice: she is speaking for two besides herself, both
-quite as anxious as she to know where the maskers are,--Maurice, her
-little fair-haired and blue-eyed brother, three years old; and
-Gabrielle, her child-sister, aged four,--two years her junior.
-
-Every day I have been observing the three, playing in the door-way of
-the house across the street. Mimi, with her brilliant white skin, black
-hair, and laughing black eyes, is the prettiest,--though all are
-unusually pretty children. Were it not for the fact that their mother's
-beautiful brown hair is usually covered with a violet foulard, you would
-certainly believe them white as any children in the world. Now there are
-children whom every one knows to be white, living not very far from
-here, but in a much more silent street, and in a rich house full of
-servants,--children who resemble these as one fleur-d'amour blossom
-resembles another;--there is actually another Mimi (though she is not so
-called at home) so like this Mimi that you could not possibly tell one
-from the other,--except by their dress. And yet the most unhappy
-experience of the Mimi who wears white satin slippers was certainly that
-punishment given her for having been once caught playing in the street
-with this Mimi, who wears no shoes at all. What mischance could have
-brought them thus together?--and the worst of it was they had fallen in
-love with each other at first sight!... It was not because the other
-Mimi must not talk to nice little colored girls, or that this one may
-not play with white children of her own age: it was because there are
-cases.... It was not because the other children I speak of are prettier
-or sweeter or more intelligent than these now playing before me;--or
-because the finest microscopist in the world could or could not detect
-any imaginable race difference between those delicate satin skins. It
-was only because human nature has little changed since the day that
-Hagar knew the hate of Sarah, and the thing was grievous in Abraham's
-sight because of his son....
-
-... The father of these children loved them very much: he had provided a
-home for them,--a house in the Quarter of the Fort, with an allowance of
-two hundred francs monthly; and he died in the belief their future was
-secured. But relatives fought the will with large means and shrewd
-lawyers, and won!... Yzore, the mother, found herself homeless and
-penniless, with three children to care for. But she was brave;--she
-abandoned the costume of the upper class forever, put on the douilette
-and the foulard,--the attire that is a confession of race,--and went to
-work. She is still comely, and so white that she seems only to be
-masquerading in that violet head-dress and long loose robe....
-
---"_Vini ouè!--vini ouè!_" cry the children to one another,--"come and
-see!" The drums are drawing near;--everybody is running to the Grande
-Rue....
-
-
-
-
-IV
-
-
-_Tam!--tam!--tamtamtam!_ ... The spectacle is interesting from the
-Batterie d'Esnotz. High up the Rue Peysette,--up all the precipitous
-streets that ascend the mornes,--a far gathering of showy color appears:
-the massing of maskers in rose and blue and sulphur-yellow attire....
-Then what a _degringolade_ begins!--what a tumbling, leaping, cascading
-of color as the troupes descend. Simultaneously from north and south,
-from the Mouillage and the Fort, two immense bands enter the Grande
-Rue;--the great dancing societies these,--the _Sans-souci_ and the
-_Intrépides._ They are rivals; they are the composers and singers of
-those Carnival songs,--cruel satires most often, of which the local
-meaning is unintelligible to those unacquainted with the incident
-inspiring the improvisation,--of which the words are too often coarse or
-obscene,--whose burdens will be caught up and re-echoed through all the
-burghs of the island. Vile as may be the motive, the satire, the malice,
-these chants are preserved for generations by the singular beauty of the
-airs; and the victim of a Carnival song need never hope that his failing
-or his wrong will be forgotten: it will be sung of long after he is in
-his grave.
-
-... Ten minutes more, and the entire length of the street is thronged
-with a shouting, shrieking, laughing, gesticulating host of maskers.
-Thicker and thicker the press becomes;--the drums are silent: all are
-waiting for the signal of the general dance. Jests and practical jokes
-are being everywhere perpetrated; there is a vast hubbub, made up of
-screams, cries, chattering, laughter. Here and there snatches of
-Carnival song are being sung:--"_Cambronne, Cambronne_;" or "_Ti
-fenm-là doux, li doux, li doux!_"... "Sweeter than sirup the little
-woman is";--this burden will be remembered when the rest of the song
-passes out of fashion. Brown hands reach out from the crowd of masks,
-pulling the beards and patting the faces of white spectators.... "_Main
-connaitt! ou, chè!--moin connaitt ou, doudoux! ba moin ti d'mi franc!_"
-It is well to refuse the half-franc,--though you do not know what these
-maskers might take a notion to do to-day.... Then all the great drums
-suddenly boom together; all the bands strike up; the mad medley
-kaleidoscopes into some sort of order; and the immense processional
-dance begins. Prom the Mouillage to the Fort there is but one continuous
-torrent of sound and color: you are dazed by the tossing of peaked caps,
-the waving of hands, and twinkling of feet;--and all this passes with a
-huge swing,--a regular swaying to right and left.... It will take at
-least an hour for all to pass; and it is an hour well worth passing.
-Band after band whirls by; the musicians all garbed as women or as monks
-in canary-colored habits;--before them the dancers are dancing backward,
-with a motion as of skaters; behind them all leap and wave hands as in
-pursuit. Most of the bands are playing creole airs,--but that of the
-_Sans-souci_ strikes up the melody of the latest French song in
-vogue,--_Petits amoureux aux plumes_ ("Little feathered lovers"[18]).
-Everybody now seems to know this song by heart; you hear children only
-five or six years old singing it: there are pretty lines in it, although
-two out of its four stanzas are commonplace enough, and it is certainly
-the air rather than the words which accounts for its sudden popularity.
-
-
-[Footnote 18: "Petits amoureux aux plumes,
-Enfants d'un brillant séjour
-Vous ignorez l'amertume,
-Vous parlez souvent d'amour:...
-Vous méprisez la dorure,
-Les salons, et les bijoux;
-Vous chérissez la Nature,
-Petits oiseaux, becquetez-vous!
-
-"Voyez là bas, dans cette église,
-Auprès d'un confessional,
-Le prêtre, qui veut faire croire à Lise,
-Qu'un baiser est un grand mal;--
-Pour prouver à la mignonne
-Qu'un baiser bien fait, bien doux,
-N'a jamais damné personne
-Petits oiseaux, becquetez-vous!"
-
-[_Translation._]
-Little feathered lovers, cooing,
-Children of the radiant air,
-Sweet your speech,--the speech of wooing;
-Ye have ne'er a grief to bear!
-Gilded ease and jewelled fashion
-Never own a charm for you;
-Ye love Nature's truth with passion.
-Pretty birdlings, bill and coo!
-
-See that priest who, Lise confessing,
-Wants to make the girl believe
-That a kiss without a blessing
-Is a fault for which to grieve!
-Now to prove, to his vexation,
-That no tender kiss and true
-Ever caused a soul's damnation,
-Pretty birdlings, bill and coo!]
-
-
-
-
-V
-
-
-... Extraordinary things are happening in the streets through which the
-procession passes. Pest-smitten women rise from their beds to costume
-themselves,--to mask face already made unrecognizable by the hideous
-malady,--and stagger out to join the dancers.... They do this in the Rue
-Longchamps, in the Rue St. Jean-de-Dieu, in the Rue Peysette, in the Rue
-de Petit Versailles. And in the Rue Ste.-Marthe there are three young
-girls sick with the disease, who hear the blowing of the horns and the
-pattering of feet and clapping of hands in chorus;--they get up to look
-through the slats of their windows on the masquerade,--and the creole
-passion of the dance comes upon them. "Ah!" cries one,--"_nou ké
-amieusé nou!--c'est zaffai si nou mò!_" [We will have our fill of fun:
-what matter if we die after!] And all mask, and join the rout, and dance
-down to the Savane, and over the river bridge into the high streets of
-the Fort, carrying contagion with them!... No extraordinary example,
-this: the ranks of the dancers hold many and many a _verrettier._
-
-
-
-
-VI
-
-
-... The costumes are rather disappointing,--though the mummery has some
-general characteristics that are not unpicturesque;--for example, the
-predominance of crimson and canary-yellow in choice of color, and a
-marked predilection for pointed hoods and high-peaked head-dresses. Mock
-religious costumes also form a striking element in the general tone of
-the display,--Franciscan, Dominion, or Penitent habits,--usually
-crimson or yellow, rarely sky-blue. There are no historical costumes,
-few eccentricities or monsters: only a few "vampire-bat" head-dresses
-abruptly break the effect of the peaked caps and the hoods.... Still
-there are some decidedly local ideas in dress which deserve notice,--the
-_congo_, the _bébé_ (or _ti-manmaille_), the _ti nègue gouos-sirop_
-("little molasses-negro"); and the _diablesse._
-
-The congo is merely the exact reproduction of the dress worn by workers
-on the plantations. For the women, a gray calico shirt and coarse
-petticoat of percaline; with two coarse handkerchiefs (_mouchoirs
-fatas_), one for her neck, and one for the head, over which is worn a
-monstrous straw hat;--she walks either barefoot or shod with rude native
-sandals, and she carries a hoe. For the man the costume consists of a
-gray shirt of rough material, blue canvas pantaloons, a large mouchoir
-fatas to tie around his waist, and a _chapeau Bacoué_,--an enormous hat
-of Martinique palm-straw. He walks barefooted and carries a cutlass.
-
-The sight of a troupe of young girls en _bébé_, in baby-dress, is
-really pretty. This costume comprises only a loose embroidered chemise,
-laoe-edged pantalettes, and a child's cap; the whole being decorated
-with bright ribbons of various colors. As the dress is short and leaves
-much of the lower limbs exposed, there is ample opportunity for display
-of tinted stockings and elegant slippers.
-
-The "molasses-negro" wears nothing but a cloth around his loins;--his
-whole body and face being smeared with an atrocious mixture of soot and
-molasses. He is supposed to represent the original African ancestor.
-
-The _devilesses_ (_diablesses_)are few in number; for it requires a very
-tall woman to play deviless. These are robed all in black, with a white
-turban and white foulard; they wear black masks. They also carry _boms_
-(large tin cans), which they allow to fall upon the pavement from time
-to time; and they walk barefoot.... The deviless (in true Bitaco idiom,
-"_guiablesse_") represents a singular Martinique superstition. It is
-said that sometimes at noonday a beautiful negress passes silently
-through some isolated plantation,--smiling at the workers in the
-cane-fields,--tempting men to follow her. But he who follows her never
-comes back again; and when a field hand mysteriously disappears, his
-fellows say, "_Y té ka ouè la Guiablesse!_"... The tallest among the
-devilesses always walks first, chanting the question, "_Jou ouvè?_" (Is
-it yet daybreak?) And all the others reply in chorus, "_Jou pa'ncò
-ouvè._" (It is not yet day.)
-
---The masks worn by the multitude include very few grotesques: as a
-rule, they are simply white wire masks, having the form of an oval and
-regular human face;--and they disguise the wearer absolutely, although
-they can be seen through perfectly well from within. It struck me at
-once that this peculiar type of wire mask gave an indescribable tone of
-ghostliness to the whole exhibition. It is not in the least comical; it
-is neither comely nor ugly; it is colorless as mist,--expressionless,
-void, dead;--it lies on the face like a vapor, like a cloud,--creating
-the idea of a spectral vacuity behind it....
-
-
-
-
-VII
-
-
-... Now comes the band of the _Intrépides_, playing the _bouèné._ It
-is a dance melody,--also the name of a mode of dancing, peculiar and
-unrestrained;--the dancers advance and retreat face to face; they hug
-each other, press together, and separate to embrace again. A very old
-dance, this,--of African origin; perhaps the same of which Père Labat
-wrote in 1722:--
-
---"It is not modest. Nevertheless, it has not failed to become so
-popular with the Spanish Creoles of America, and so much in vogue among
-them, that it now forms the chief of their amusements, and that it
-enters even into their devotions. They dance it even in their Churches,
-and in their Processions; and the Nuns seldom fail to dance it Christmas
-Night, upon a stage erected in their Choir and immediately in front of
-their iron grating, which is left open, so that the People may share in
-the joy manifested by these good souls for the birth of the
-Saviour."[19]...
-
-
-[Footnote 19: ... "Cette danse est opposée à la pudeur. Avec tout
-cela, elle ne laisse pas d'être tellement du goût des Espagnols
-Créolles de l'Amérique, & si fort en usage parmi eux, qu'elle fait la
-meilleure partie de leurs divertissements, & qu'elle entre même dans
-leurs devotions. Ils la dansent même dans leurs Églises & à leurs
-processions; et les Religieuses ne manquent guère de la danser la Nuit
-de Noël, sur un théâtre élevé dans leur Chœur, vis-à-vis de leur
-grille, qui est ouverte, afin que le Peuple ait sa part dans la joye que
-ces bonnes âmes témoignent pour la naissance du Sauveur."]
-
-
-
-
-VIII
-
-
-... Every year, on the last day of the Carnival, a droll ceremony used
-to take place called the "Burial of the Bois-bois,"--the bois-bois being
-a dummy, a guy, caricaturing the most unpopular thing in city life or in
-politics. This bois-bois, after having been paraded with mock solemnity
-through all the ways of St. Pierre, was either interred or
-"drowned,"--flung into the sea.... And yesterday the dancing societies
-had announced their intention to bury a _bois-bois laverette_,--a
-manikin that was to represent the plague. But this bois-bois does not
-make its appearance. _La Vérette_ is too terrible a visitor to be made
-fun of, my friends;--you will not laugh at her, because you dare not....
-
-No: there is one who has the courage,--a yellow goblin crying from
-behind his wire mask, in imitation of the màchannes: "_Ça qui 'lè
-quatòze graines laverette pou yon sou?_" (Who wants to buy fourteen
-verette-spots for a sou?)
-
-Not a single laugh follows that jest.... And just one week from to-day,
-poor mocking goblin, you will have a great many more than quatorze
-graines, which will not cost you even a sou, and which will disguise you
-infinitely better than the mask you now wear;--and they will pour
-quick-lime over you, ere ever they let you pass through this street
-again--in a seven franc coffin!...
-
-
-
-
-IX
-
-
-And the multicolored clamoring stream rushes by,--swerves off at last
-through the Rue des Ursulines to the Savane,--rolls over the new bridge
-of the Roxelane to the ancient quarter of the Fort.
-
-All of a sudden there is a hush, a halt;--the drums stop beating, the
-songs cease. Then I see a sudden scattering of goblins and demons and
-devilesses in all directions: they run into houses, up alleys,--hide
-behind door-ways. And the crowd parts; and straight through it, walking
-very quickly, conies a priest in his vestments, preceded by an acolyte
-who rings a little bell. _C'est Bon-Dié ka passé!_ ("It is the
-Good-God who goes by!") The father is bearing the "viaticum" to some
-victim of the pestilence: one must not appear masked as a devil or a
-deviless in the presence of the Bon-Dié.
-
-He goes by. The flood of maskers recloses behind the ominous
-passage;--the drums boom again; the dance recommences; and all the
-fantastic mummery ebbs swiftly out of sight.
-
-
-
-
-X
-
-
-Night falls;--the maskers crowd to the ball-rooms to dance strange
-tropical measures that will become wilder and wilder as the hours pass.
-And through the black streets, the Devil makes his last Carnival-round.
-
-By the gleam of the old-fashioned oil lamps hung across the
-thoroughfares I can make out a few details of his costume. He is clad in
-red, wears a hideous blood-colored mask, and a cap of which the four
-sides are formed by four looking-glasses;--the whole head-dress being
-surmounted by a red lantern. He has a white wig made of horse-hair, to
-make him look weird and old,--since the Devil is older than the world!
-Down the street he comes, leaping nearly his own height,--chanting words
-without human signification,--and followed by some three hundred boys,
-who form the chorus to his chant--all clapping hands together and giving
-tongue with a simultaneity that testifies how strongly the sense of
-rhythm enters into the natural musical feeling of the African,--a
-feeling powerful enough to impose itself upon, all Spanish-America, and
-there create the unmistakable characteristics of all that is called
-"creole music."
-
---"Bimbolo!"
-
---"Zimabolo!"
-
---"Bimbolo!"
-
---"Zimabolo!"
-
---"Et zimbolo!"
-
---"Et bolo-po!"
-
---sing the Devil and his chorus. His chant is cavernous, abysmal,--booms
-from his chest like the sound of a drum beaten in the bottom of a
-well.... _Ti maillelà, baill moin lavoix!_ ("Give me voice, little
-folk,--give me voice!") And all chant after him, in a chanting like the
-rushing of many waters, and with triple clapping of hands:--"_Ti
-marmaille-là, baill moin lavoix!_"... Then he halts before a dwelling
-in the Rue Peysette, and thunders:--
-
---"_Eh! Marie-sans-dent!--mi! diabe-là derhò!_"
-
-That is evidently a piece of spite-work: there is somebody living there
-against whom he has a grudge.... "Hey! Marie-without-teeth! look! the
-Devil is outside!" And the chorus catch the clue.
-
-DEVIL.--"_Eh! Marie-sans-dent!_"...
-
-CHORUS.--"_Marie-sans-dent! mi!--diabe-là derhò!_"
-
-D.--"_Eh! Marie-sans-dent!_"...
-
-C.--"_Marie-sans-dent! mi!--diabe-là derhò!_"
-
-D.--"_Eh! Marie-sans-dent!_"... etc.
-
-The Devil at last descends to the main street, always singing the same
-song;--I follow the chorus to the Savanna, where the rout makes for the
-new bridge over the Roxelane, to mount the high streets of the old
-quarter of the Fort; and the chant changes as they cross over:—
-
-DEVIL.--"_Oti ouè diabe-là passé lariviè?_" (Where did you see the
-Devil going over the river?) And all the boys repeat the words, falling
-into another rhythm with perfect regularity and ease:--"_Oti ouè
-diabe-là passé lariviè?_"
-
-DEVIL.--"_Oti ouè diabe?_"...
-
-CHORUS.--"_Oti ouè diabe-là passé lariviè?_"
-
-D.--"_Oti ouè diabe?_"
-
-C.--"_Oti ouè diabe-là passé lariviè?_"
-
-D.--"_Oti ouè diabe?_"... etc.
-
-
-About midnight the return of the Devil and his following arouses me from
-sleep:--all are chanting a new refrain, "The Devil and the zombis sleep
-anywhere and everywhere!" (_Diabe épi zombi ka dòmi tout-pàtout._)
-The voices of the boys are still clear, shrill, fresh,--clear as a chant
-of frogs;--they still clap hands with a precision of rhythm that is
-simply wonderful,--making each time a sound almost exactly like the
-bursting of a heavy wave:--
-
-DEVIL.--"_Diabe épi zombi._"...
-
-CHORUS.--"_Diabe épi zombi ka dàmi tout-pàtout!_"
-
-D.--"_Diabe épi zombi._"...
-
-C.--"_Diabe épi zombi ka dòmi tout-pàtout!_"
-
-D.--"_Diabe épi zombi._"... etc.
-
-... What is this after all but the old African method of chanting at
-labor. The practice of carrying the burden upon the head left the hands
-free for the rhythmic accompaniment of clapping. And you may still hear
-the women who load the transatlantic steamers with coal at
-Fort-de-France thus chanting and clapping....
-
-Evidently the Devil is moving very fast; for all the boys are
-running;--the pattering of bare feet upon the pavement sounds like a
-heavy shower.... Then the chanting grows fainter in distance; the
-Devil's immense basso becomes inaudible;--one only distinguishes at
-regular intervals the crescendo of the burden,--a wild swelling of many
-hundred boy-voices all rising together,--a retreating storm of rhythmic
-song, wafted to the ear in gusts, in rafales of contralto....
-
-
-
-
-XI
-
-_February 17th._
-
-
-... Yzore is a _calendeuse._
-
-The calendeuses are the women who make up the beautiful Madras turbans
-and color them; for the amazingly brilliant yellow of these head-dresses
-is not the result of any dyeing process: they are all painted by hand.
-When purchased the Madras is simply a great oblong handkerchief, having
-a pale green or pale pink ground, and checkered or plaided by
-intersecting bands of dark blue, purple, crimson, or maroon. The
-calendeuse lays the Madras upon a broad board placed across her
-knees,--then, taking a camel's-hair brush, she begins to fill in the
-spaces between the bands with a sulphur-yellow paint, which is always
-mixed with gum-arabic. It requires a sure eye, very steady fingers, and
-long experience to do this well.... After the Madras has been
-"calendered" (_calendé_) and has become quite stiff and dry, it is
-folded about the head of the purchaser after the comely Martinique
-fashion,--which varies considerably from the modes popular in Guadeloupe
-or Cayenne,--is fixed into the form thus obtained; and can thereafter be
-taken off or put on without arrangement or disarrangement, like a cap.
-The price for calendering a Madras is now two francs and fifteen
-sous;--and for making-up the turban, six sous additional, except in
-Carnival-time, or upon holiday occasions, when the price rises to
-twenty-five sous.... The making-up of the Madras into a turban is
-called "tying a head" (_marré yon tête_); and a prettily folded turban
-is spoken of as "a head well tied" (_yon tête bien marré_)....
-However, the profession of calendeuse is far from being a lucrative one:
-it is two or three days' work to calendar a single Madras well...
-
-But Yzore does not depend upon calendering alone for a living: she earns
-much more by the manufacture of moresques and of chinoises than by
-painting Madras turbans.... Everybody in Martinique who can afford it
-wears moresques and chinoises. The moresques are large loose comfortable
-pantaloons of thin printed calico (_indienne_),--having colored designs
-representing birds, frogs, leaves, lizards, flowers, butterflies, or
-kittens,--or perhaps representing nothing in particular, being simply
-arabesques. The chinoise is a loose body-garment, very much like the
-real Chinese blouse, but always of brightly colored calico with
-fantastic designs. These things are worn at home during siestas, after
-office-hours, and at night. To take a nap during the day with one's
-ordinary clothing on means always a terrible drenching from
-perspiration, and an after-feeling of exhaustion almost
-indescribable--best expressed, perhaps, by the local term: _corps
-écrasé._ Therefore, on entering one's room for the siesta, one strips,
-puts on the light moresques and the chinoise, and dozes in comfort. A
-suit of this sort is very neat, often quite pretty, and very cheap
-(costing only about six francs);--the colors do not fade out in washing,
-and two good suits will last a year.... Yzore can make two pair of
-moresques and two chinoises in a single day upon her machine.
-
-... I have observed there is a prejudice here against treadle
-machines;--the creole girls are persuaded they injure the health. Most
-of the sewing-machines I have seen among this people are operated by
-hand,--with a sort of little crank....
-
-
-
-
-XII
-
-_February 22d._
-
-
-... Old physicians indeed predicted it; but who believed them?...
-
-It is as though something sluggish and viewless, dormant and deadly, had
-been suddenly upstirred to furious life by the wind of robes and tread
-of myriad dancing feet,--by the crash of cymbals and heavy vibration of
-drums! Within a few days there has been a frightful increase of the
-visitation, an almost incredible expansion of the invisible poison: the
-number of new cases and of deaths has successively doubled, tripled,
-quadrupled....
-
-... Great caldrons of tar are kindled now at night in the more thickly
-peopled streets,--about one hundred paces apart, each being tended by an
-Indian laborer in the pay of the city: this is done with the idea of
-purifying the air. These sinister fires are never lighted but in times
-of pestilence and of tempest: on hurricane nights, when enormous waves
-roll in from the fathomless sea upon one of the most fearful coasts in
-the world, and great vessels are being driven ashore, such is the
-illumination by which the brave men of the coast make desperate efforts
-to save the lives of shipwrecked men, often at the cost of their
-own.[20]
-
-
-[Footnote 20: During a hurricane, several years ago, a West Indian
-steamer was disabled at a dangerously brief distance from the coast of
-the island by having her propeller fouled. Some broken and drifting
-rigging had become wrapped around it. One of the crew, a Martinique
-mulatto, tied a rope about his waist, took his knife between his teeth,
-dived overboard, and in that tremendous sea performed the difficult feat
-of disengaging the propeller, and thus saving the steamer from otherwise
-certain destruction.... This brave fellow received the Cross of the
-Legion of Honor....]
-
-
-
-
-XIII
-
-_February 23d._
-
-
-A coffin passes, balanced on the heads of black men. It bolds the body
-of Pascaline Z----, covered with quick-lime.
-
-She was the prettiest, assuredly, among the pretty shop-girls of the
-Grande Rue,--a rare type of _sang-mêlée._ So oddly pleasing, the young
-face, that once seen, you could never again dissociate the recollection
-of it from the memory of the street. But one who saw it last night
-before they poured quick-lime upon it could discern no features,--only
-a dark brown mass, like a fungus, too frightful to think about.
-
-... And they are all going thus, the beautiful women of color. In the
-opinion of physicians, the whole generation is doomed.... Yet a curious
-fact is that the young children of octoroons are suffering least: these
-women have their children vaccinated,--though they will not be
-vaccinated themselves. I see many brightly colored children, too,
-recovering from the disorder: the skin is not pitted, like that of the
-darker classes; and the rose-colored patches finally disappear
-altogether, leaving no trace.
-
-... Here the sick are wrapped in banana leaves, after having been
-smeared with a certain unguent....
-
-
-[Illustration: FORT-DE-FRANCE
-_The city from the heights of Le Calvaire, behind
-the town._]
-
-
-There is an immense demand for banana leaves. In ordinary times these
-leaves--especially the younger ones, still unrolled, and tender and soft
-beyond any fabric possible for man to make--are used for poultices of
-all kinds, and sell from one to two sous each, according to size and
-quality.
-
-
-
-
-XIV
-
-_February 29th._
-
-
-... The whites remain exempt from the malady.
-
-One might therefore hastily suppose that liability to contagion would be
-diminished in proportion to the excess of white blood over African; but
-such is far from being the case;--St. Pierre is losing its handsomest
-octoroons. Where the proportion of white to black blood is 116 to 8, as
-in the type called _mamelouc_;--or 122 to 4, as in the _quarteronné_
-(not to be confounded with the quarteron or quadroon);--or even 127 to
-1, as in the _sang-mêlé_, the liability to attack remains the same,
-while the chances of recovery are considerably less than in the case of
-the black. Some few striking instances of immunity appear to offer a
-different basis for argument; but these might be due to the social
-position of the individual rather than to any constitutional temper:
-wealth and comfort, it must be remembered, have no small prophylactic
-value in such times. Still,--although there is reason to doubt whether
-mixed races have a constitutional vigor comparable to that of the
-original parent-races,--the liability to diseases of this class is
-decided less, perhaps, by race characteristics than by ancestral
-experience. The white peoples of the world have been practically
-inoculated, vaccinated, by experience of centuries;--while among these
-visibly mixed or black populations the seeds of the pest find absolutely
-fresh soil in which to germinate, and its ravages are therefore scarcely
-less terrible than those it made among the American-Indian or the
-Polynesian races in other times. Moreover, there is an unfortunate
-prejudice against vaccination here. People even now declare that those
-vaccinated die just as speedily of the plague as those who have never
-been;--and they can cite cases in proof. It is useless to talk to them
-about averages of immunity, percentage of liability, etc.;--they have
-seen with their own eyes persons who had been well vaccinated die of the
-verette, and that is enough to destroy their faith in the system... Even
-the priests, who pray their congregations to adopt the only known
-safeguard against the disease, can do little against this scepticism.
-
-
-
-
-XV
-
-_March 5th._
-
-
-... The streets are so narrow in this old-fashioned quarter that even a
-whisper is audible across them; and after dark I hear a great many
-things,--sometimes sounds of pain, sobbing, despairing cries as Death
-makes his nightly round,--sometimes, again, angry words, and laughter,
-and even song,--always one melancholy chant: the voice has that peculiar
-metallic timbre that reveals the young negress:--
-
-
-"_Paw' ti Lélé,
-Paw' ti Lélé!
-Li gagnin doulè, doulè, doulè,--
-Li gagnin doulè
-Tout-pàtout!_"
-
-
-I want to know who little Lélé was, and why she had pains "all
-over";--for however artless and childish these creole songs seem, they
-are invariably originated by some real incident. And at last somebody
-tells me that "poor little Lélé" had the reputation in other years of
-being the most unlucky girl in St. Pierre; whatever she tried to do
-resulted only in misfortune;--when it was morning she wished it were
-evening, that she might sleep and forget; but when the night came she
-could not sleep for thinking of the trouble she had had during the day,
-so that she wished it were morning....
-
-More pleasant it is to hear the chatting of Yzore's children across the
-way, after the sun has set, and the stars come out.... Gabrielle always
-wants to know what the stars are:--
-
---"_Ça qui ka clairé conm, ça, manman?_" (What is it that shines like
-that?)
-
-And Yzore answers:--
-
---"_Ça, mafi,--c'est ti limiè Bon-Dié._" (Those are the little lights
-of the Good-God.)
-
---"It is so pretty,--eh, mamma? I want to count them."
-
---"You cannot count them, child."
-
---"One--two--three--four--five--six--seven." Gabrielle can only count up
-to seven. "_Moin pride!_--I am lost, mamma!"
-
-The moon comes up;--she cries:--"_Mi! manman!--gàdé gouôs difé qui
-adans ciel-à!_" (Look at the great fire in the sky!)
-
---"It is the Moon, child!... Don't you see St. Joseph in it, carrying a
-bundle of wood?"
-
---"Yes, mamma! I see him!... A great big bundle of wood!"...
-
-But Mimi is wiser in moon-lore: she borrows half a franc from her mother
-"to show to the Moon." And holding it up before the silver light, she
-sings:--
-
---"Pretty Moon, I show you my little money;--now let me always have
-money so long as you shiner!"[21]
-
-Then the mother takes them up to bed;--and in a little while there
-floats to me, through the open window, the murmur of the children's
-evening prayer:--
-
-
-"Ange-gardien,
-Veillez sur moi."
-* * * *
-"Ayez pitié de ma faiblesse;
-Couchez-vous sur mon petit lit;
-Suivez-moi sans cesse."[22]...
-
-
-I can only catch a line here and there.... They do not sleep
-immediately;--they continue to chat in bed. Gabrielle wants to know
-what a guardian-angel is like. And I hear Mimi's voice replying in
-creole:--
-
---"_Zange-gàdien, c'est yon jeine fi, touts bel._" (The guardian-angel
-is a young girl, all beautiful.)
-
-A little while, and there is silence; and I see Yzore come out,
-barefooted, upon the moonlit balcony of her little room,--looking up and
-down the hushed street, looking at the sea, looking up betimes at the
-high flickering of stars,--moving her lips as in prayer.... And,
-standing there white-robed, with her rich dark hair loose-falling, there
-is a weird grace about her that recalls those long slim figures of
-guardian-angels in French religious prints....
-
-
-[Footnote 21: "_Bel ladine, moin ka montré ou ti pièce moin!--ba moin
-làgent toutt tempe ou ka clairé!_"... This little invocation is
-supposed to have most power when ottered on the first appearance of the
-new moon.]
-
-[Footnote 22: "Guardian-angel, watch over me;--have pity upon my
-weakness; lie down on my little bed with me; follow me whithersoever I
-go."... The prayers are always said in French. Metaphysical and
-theological terms cannot be rendered in the patois; and the authors of
-creole catechisms have always been obliged to borrow and explain French
-religious phrases in order to make their texts comprehensible.]
-
-
-
-
-
-XVI
-
-_March 6th._
-
-
-This morning Manm-Robert brings me something queer,--something hard tied
-up in a tiny piece of black cloth, with a string attached to hang it
-round my neck. I must wear it, she says.
-
---"_Ça ça yè, Manm-Robert?_"
-
---"_Pou empêché ou pouend laverette_" she answers. It is to keep me
-from catching the verette!... And what is inside it?
-
---"_Toua graines maïs, épi dicamfre._" (Three grains of corn, with a
-bit of camphor!)...
-
-
-
-
-XVII
-
-_March 8th._
-
-
-... Rich households throughout the city are almost helpless for the want
-of servants. One can scarcely obtain help at any price: it is true that
-young country-girls keep coming into town to fill the places of the
-dead; but these new-comers fall a prey to the disease much more readily
-than those who preceded them. And such deaths often represent more than
-a mere derangement in the mechanism of domestic life. The creole bonne
-bears a relation to the family of an absolutely peculiar sort,--a
-relation of which the term "house-servant" does not convey the faintest
-idea. She is really a member of the household: her association with its
-life usually begins in childhood, when she is barely strong enough to
-carry a dobanne of water up-stairs;--and in many cases she has the
-additional claim of having been born in the house. As a child, she plays
-with the white children,--shares their pleasures and presents. She is
-very seldom harshly spoken to, or reminded of the fact that she is a
-servitor: she has a pet name;--she is allowed much familiarity,--is
-often permitted to join in conversation when there is no company
-present, and to express her opinion about domestic affairs. She costs
-very little to keep; four or five dollars a year will supply her with
-all necessary clothing;--she rarely wears shoes;--she sleeps on a little
-straw mattress (_paillasse_) on the floor, or perhaps upon a paillasse
-supported upon an "elephant" (_léfan_)--two thick square pieces of hard
-mattress placed together so as to form an oblong. She is only a nominal
-expense to the family; and she is the confidential messenger, the nurse,
-the chamber-maid, the water-carrier,--everything, in short, except cook
-and washer-woman. Families possessing a really good bonne would not part
-with her on any consideration. If she has been brought up in the
-household, she is regarded almost as a kind of adopted child. If she
-leave that household to make a home of her own, and have ill-fortune
-afterwards, she will not be afraid to return with her baby, which will
-perhaps be received and brought up as she herself was, under the old
-roof. The stranger may feel puzzled at first by this state of affairs;
-yet the cause is not obscure. It is traceable to the time of the
-formation of creole society--to the early period of slavery. Among the
-Latin races,--especially the French,--slavery preserved in modern times
-many of the least harsh features of slavery in the antique
-world,--where the domestic slave, entering the _famillia_, actually
-became a member of it.
-
-
-
-
-XVIII
-
-_March 10th._
-
-
-... Yzore and her little ones are all in Manm-Robert's shop;--she is
-recounting her troubles,--fresh troubles: forty-seven francs' worth of
-work delivered on time, and no money received.... So much I hear as I
-enter the little boutique myself, to buy a package of "bouts."
-
---"_Assise!_" says Manm-Robert, handing me her own chair;--she is always
-pleased to see me, pleased to chat with me about creole folk-lore. Then
-observing a smile exchanged between myself and Mimi, she tells the
-children to bid me good-day:--"_Allé di bonjou' Missié-à!_"
-
-One after another, each holds up a velvety cheek to kiss. And Mimi, who
-has been asking her mother the same question over and over again for at
-least five minutes without being able to obtain an answer, ventures to
-demand of me on the strength of this introduction:--
-
---"_Missié, oti masque-à?_"
-
---"_Y ben fou, pouloss!_" the mother cries out;--"Why, the child must
-be going out of her senses!... _Mimi pa 'mbêté moune conm ça!--pa ni
-piess masque: c'est la-vérette qui ni._" (Don't annoy people like
-that!--there are no maskers now; there is nothing but the verette!)
-
-
-[You are not annoying me at all, little Mimi; but I would not like to
-answer your question truthfully. I know where the maskers are,--most of
-them, child; and I do not think it would be well for you to know. They
-wear no masks now; but if you were to see them for even one moment, by
-some extraordinary accident, pretty Mimi, I think you would feel more
-frightened than you ever felt before.]...
-
---"_Toutt la nuite y k'anni rêvé masque-à_," continues Yzore.... I am
-curious to know what Mimi's dreams are like;--wonder if I can coax her
-to tell me....
-
-
-
-
-XIX
-
-
-... I have written Mimi's last dream from the child's dictation:--[23]
-
---"I saw a ball," she says. "I was dreaming: I saw everybody dancing
-with masks on;--I was looking at them. And all at once I saw that the
-folks who were dancing were all made of pasteboard. And I saw a
-commandeur: he asked me what I was doing there. I answered him: 'Why, I
-saw a ball, and I came to look--what of it?' He answered me:--'Since you
-are so curious to come and look at other folks' business, you will have
-to stop here and dance too!' I said to him:--'No! I won't dance with
-people made of pasteboard;--I am afraid of them!'... And I ran and ran
-and ran,--I was so much afraid. And I ran into a big garden, where I saw
-a big cherry-tree that had only leaves upon it; and I saw a man sitting
-under the cherry-tree. He asked me:--'What are you doing here?' I said
-to him:--'I am trying to find my way out.' He said:--'You must stay
-here.' I said:--'No, no!'--and I said, in order to be able to get
-away:--'Go up there!--you will see a fine ball: all pasteboard people
-dancing there, and a pasteboard commandeur commanding them!'... And then
-I got so frightened that I awoke."...
-
-... "And why were you so afraid of them, Mimi?" I ask.
-
---"_Pace yo té toutt vide endedans!_" answers Mimi. (_Because they were
-all hollow inside!_)
-
-
-
-[Footnote 23:--"Moin té ouè yon bal;--moin rêvé: moin té ka ouè toutt
-moune ka dansé masqué; moin té ka gàdé. Et toutt-à-coup moin ka ouè c'est
-bonhomme-càton ka dansé. Et main ka ouè yon Commandè: y ka mandé moin
-ça moin ka fai là. Moin reponne y conm ça:--'Moin ouè yon bal, moin
-gàdé-coument!' Y ka réponne moin:--'Pisse ou si quirièse pou vini gàdé
-baggaïe moune, faut rété là pou dansé 'tou.' Moin réponne y:--'Non! moin
-pa dansé épi bonhomme-càton!--moin pè!'... Et moin ka couri, moin ka
-couri, main ka couri à fòce moin te ni pè. Et moin rentré adans grand
-jàdin; et moin ouè gouôs pié-cirise qui té chàgé anni feuill; et moin ka
-ouè yon nhomme assise enba cirise-à. Y mandé moin:--'Ça ou ka fai là?'
-Moin di y:--'Moin ka châché chimin pou moin allé.' Y di moin:--'Faut
-rété içitt.' Et moin di y:--'Non!'--et pou chappé cò moin, moin di
-y:--'Allé enhaut-là: ou ké ouè yon bel bal,--toutt bonhomme-càton ka
-dansé, épi yon Commande-en-càton ka coumandé yo.'... Epi moin levé, à
-fòce moin té pè."...]
-
-
-
-
-XX
-
-_Mardi 19th._
-
-
-... The death-rate in St. Pierre is now between three hundred and fifty
-and four hundred a month. Our street is being depopulated. Every day men
-come with immense stretchers,--covered with a sort of canvas awning,--to
-take somebody away to the _lazaretto._ At brief intervals, also, coffins
-are carried into houses empty, and carried out again followed by women
-who cry so loud that their sobbing can be heard a great way off.
-
-... Before the visitation few quarters were so densely peopled: there
-were living often in one small house as many as fifty. The poorer
-classes had been accustomed from birth to live as simply as
-animals,--wearing scarcely any clothing, sleeping on bare floors,
-exposing themselves to all changes of weather, eating the cheapest and
-coarsest food. Yet, though living under such adverse conditions, no
-healthier people could be found, perhaps, in the world,--nor a more
-cleanly. Every yard having its fountain, almost everybody could bathe
-daily,--and with hundreds it was the custom to enter the river every
-morning at daybreak or to take a swim in the bay (the young women here
-swim as well as the men).... But the pestilence, entering among so dense
-and unprotected a life, made extraordinarily rapid havoc; and bodily
-cleanliness availed little against the contagion. Now all the bathing
-resorts are deserted,--because the lazarettos infect the bay with
-refuse, and because the clothing of the sick is washed in the Roxelane.
-
-... Guadeloupe, the sister colony, now sends aid;--the sum total is less
-than a single American merchant might give to a charitable undertaking:
-but it is a great deal for Guadeloupe to give. And far Cayenne sends
-money too; and the mother-country will send one hundred thousand francs.
-
-
-
-
-XXI
-
-_March 20th._
-
-
-... The infinite goodness of this colored population to one another is
-something which impresses with astonishment those accustomed to the
-selfishness of the world's great cities. No one is suffered to go to the
-pesthouse who has a bed to lie upon, and a single relative or tried
-friend to administer remedies;--the multitude who pass through the
-lazarettos are strangers,--persons from the country who have no home of
-their own, or servants who are not permitted to remain sick in houses of
-employers.... There are, however, many cases where a mistress will not
-suffer her bonne to take the risks of the pest-house,--especially in
-families where there are no children: the domestic is carefully nursed;
-a physician hired for her, remedies purchased for her....
-
-But among the colored people themselves the heroism displayed is
-beautiful, is touching,--something which makes one doubt all accepted
-theories about the natural egotism of mankind, and would compel the most
-hardened pessimist to conceive a higher idea of humanity. There is never
-a moment's hesitation in visiting a stricken individual: every relative,
-and even the most intimate friends of every relative, may be seen
-hurrying to the bedside. They take turns at nursing, sitting up all
-night, securing medical attendance and medicines, without ever a thought
-of the danger,--nay, of the almost absolute certainty of contagion. If
-the patient have no means, all contribute: what the sister or brother
-has not, the uncle or the aunt, the godfather or godmother, the cousin,
-brother-in-law, or sister-in-law, may be able to give. No one dreams of
-refusing money or linen or wine or anything possible to give, lend, or
-procure on credit. Women seem to forget that they are beautiful, that
-they are young, that they are loved,--to forget everything but the sense
-of that which they hold to be duty. You see young girls of remarkably
-elegant presence,--young colored girls well educated and
-_élevées-en-chapeau_[24] (that is to say, brought up like white creole
-girls, dressed and accomplished like them), voluntarily leave rich homes
-to nurse some poor mulatress or capresse in the indigent quarters of the
-town, because the sick one happens to be a distant relative. They will
-not trust others to perform this for them;--they feel bound to do it in
-person. I heard such a one say, in reply to some earnest protest about
-thus exposing herself (she had never been vaccinated):--"_Ah! quand il
-s'agit du devoir, la vie ou la mort c'est pour moi la même chose._"
-
-... But without any sanitary law to check this self-immolation, and with
-the conviction that in the presence of duty, or what is believed to be
-duty, "life or death is the same thing," or ought to be so
-considered,--you can readily imagine how soon the city must become one
-vast hospital.
-
-
-[Footnote 24: Lit.,--"brought-up-in-a-hat." To wear the madras is to
-acknowledge oneself of color;--to follow the European style of dressing
-the hair and adopt the costume of the white creoles indicate a desire to
-affiliate with the white class.]
-
-
-
-
-XXII
-
-
-... By nine o'clock, as a general rule, St. Pierre becomes silent: every
-one here retires early and rises with the sun. But sometimes, when the
-night is exceptionally warm, people continue to sit at their doors and
-chat until a far later hour; and on such a night one may hear and see
-curious things, in this period of plague....
-
-It is certainly singular that while the howling of a dog at night has no
-ghastly signification here (nobody ever pays the least attention to the
-sound, however hideous), the moaning and screaming of cats is believed
-to bode death; and in these times folks never appear to feel too sleepy
-to rise at any hour and drive them away when they begin their cries....
-To-night--a night so oppressive that all but the sick are sitting
-up--almost a panic is created in our street by a screaming of cats;--and
-long after the creatures have been hunted out of sight and hearing,
-everybody who has a relative ill with the prevailing malady continues to
-discuss the omen with terror.
-
-... Then I observe a colored child standing barefooted in the moonlight,
-with her little round arms uplifted and hands joined above her head. A
-more graceful little figure it would be hard to find as she appears thus
-posed; but, all unconsciously, she is violating another superstition by
-this very attitude; and the angry mother shrieks:--
-
---"_Ti manmaille-là!--tiré lanmain-ou assous tête-ou, foute! pisse
-moin encò là!... Espéré moin allé lazarett avant metté lanmain
-conm ça!_" (Child, take down your hands from your head... because I am
-here yet! Wait till I go to the lazaretto before you put up your hands
-like that!)
-
-For it was the savage, natural, primitive gesture of mourning,--of great
-despair.
-
-... Then all begin to compare their misfortunes, to relate their
-miseries;--they say grotesque things,--even make jests about their
-troubles. One declares:--
-
---"_Si moin té ka venne chapeau, à fòce moin ni malhè, toutt manman
-sé fai yche yo sans tête._" (I have that ill-luck, that if I were
-selling hats all the mothers would have children without heads!)
-
---Those who sit at their doors, I observe, do not sit, as a rule, upon
-the steps, even when these are of wood. There is a superstition which
-checks such a practice. "_Si ou assise assous pas-lapòte, ou ké pouend
-doulè toutt moune._" (If you sit upon the door-step, you will take the
-pain of all who pass by.)
-
-
-
-
-XXIII
-
-_March 30th._
-
-
-Good Friday....
-
-The bells have ceased to ring,--even the bells for the dead; the hours
-are marked by cannon-shots. The ships in the harbor form crosses with
-their spars, turn their flags upside down. And the entire colored
-population put on mourning:--it is a custom among them centuries old.
-
-You will not perceive a single gaudy robe to-day, a single calendered
-Madras: not a speck of showy color is visible through all the ways of
-St. Pierre. The costumes donned are all similar to those worn for the
-death of relatives: either full mourning,--a black robe with violet
-foulard, and dark violet-banded headkerchief; or half-mourning,--a dark
-violet robe with black foulard and turban;--the half-mourning being worn
-only by those who cannot afford the more sombre costume. From my window
-I can see long processions climbing the mornes about the city, to visit
-the shrines and crucifixes, and to pray for the cessation of the
-pestilence.
-
-... Three o'clock. Three cannon-shots shake the hills: it is the
-supposed hour of the Saviour's death. All believers--whether in the
-churches, on the highways, or in their homes--bow down and kiss the
-cross thrice, or, if there be no cross, press their lips three times to
-the ground or the pavement, and utter those three wishes which if
-expressed precisely at this traditional moment will surely, it is held,
-be fulfilled. Immense crowds are assembled before the crosses on the
-heights, and about the statue of Notre Dame de la Garde.
-
-... There is no hubbub in the streets; there is not even the customary
-loud weeping to be heard as the coffins go by. One must not complain
-to-day, nor become angry, nor utter unkind words,--any fault committed
-on Good Friday is thought to obtain a special and awful magnitude in the
-sight of Heaven.... There is a curious saying in vogue here. If a son
-or daughter grows up vicious,--become a shame to the family and a curse
-to the parents,--it is observed of such:--"_Ça, c'est yon péché
-Vendredi-Saint!_" (Must be a _Good-Friday sin!_)
-
-There are two other strange beliefs connected with Good Friday. One is
-that it always rains on that day,--that the sky weeps for the death of
-the Saviour; and that this rain, if caught in a vessel, will never
-evaporate or spoil, and will cure all diseases.
-
-The other is that only Jesus Christ died precisely at three o'clock.
-Nobody else ever died exactly at that hour;--they may die a second
-before or a second after three, but never exactly at three.
-
-
-
-
-XXIV
-
-_Mardi 31st._
-
-
-... Holy Saturday morning;--nine o'clock. All the bells suddenly ring
-out; the humming of the bourdon blends with the thunder of a hundred
-guns: this is the _Gloria!_... At this signal it is a religious custom
-for the whole coast-population to enter the sea, and for those living
-too far from the beach to bathe in the rivers. But rivers and sea are
-now alike infected;--all the linen of the lazarettos has been washed
-therein; and to-day there are fewer bathers than usual.
-
-But there are twenty-seven burials. Now they are burying the dead two
-together: the cemeteries are overburdened....
-
-
-
-
-XXV
-
-
-... In most of the old stone houses you will occasionally see spiders of
-terrifying size,--measuring across perhaps as much as six inches from
-the tip of one outstretched leg to the tip of its opposite fellow, as
-they cling to the wall. I never heard of any one being bitten by them;
-and among the poor it is deemed unlucky to injure or drive them away....
-But early this morning Yzore swept her house clean, and ejected through
-the door-way quite a host of these monster insects. Manm-Robert is quite
-dismayed:--
-
---"_Jesis-Maïa!--ou 'lè malhè éncò fou fai ça, chè?_" (You want
-to have still more bad luck, that you do such a thing?)
-
-And Yzore answers:--
-
---"_Toutt moune içitt pa ni yon soul--ça fil zagrignin, et moin pa
-menm mangé! Epi laverette encò.... Main couè toutt ça ka pòté
-malhè!_" (No one here has a sou!--heaps of cobwebs like that, and
-nothing to eat yet; and the verette into the bargain.... I think those
-things bring bad luck.)
-
---"Ah! you have not eaten yet!" cries Manm-Robert. "_Vini épi moin!_"
-(Come with me!)
-
-And Yzore--already feeling a little remorse for her treatment of the
-spiders--murmurs apologetically as she crosses over to Manm-Robert's
-little shop:--"_Moin pa tchoué yo; moin chassé yo--ké vini encò._"
-(I did not kill them; I only put them out;--they will come back again.)
-
-But long afterwards, Manm-Robert remarked to me that they never went
-back....
-
-
-
-
-XXVI
-
-_April 5th._
-
-
---"_Toutt bel bois ka allé_," says Manm-Robert. (All the beautiful
-trees are going.)... I do not understand.
-
---"_Toutt bel bois--toutt bel moune ka allé_," she adds,
-interpretatively. (All the "beautiful trees,"--all the handsome
-people,--are passing away.)... As in the speech of the world's primitive
-poets, so in the creole patois is a beautiful woman compared with a
-comely tree: nay, more than this, the name of the object is actually
-substituted for that of the living being. _Yon bel bois_ may mean a fine
-tree: it more generally signifies a graceful woman: this is the very
-comparison made by Ulysses looking upon Nausicas, though more naïvely
-expressed.... And now there comes to me the recollection of a creole
-ballad illustrating the use of the phrase,--a ballad about a youth of
-Fort-de-France sent to St. Pierre by his father to purchase a stock of
-dobannes,[25] who, falling in love with a handsome colored girl, spent
-all his father's mopey in buying her presents and a wedding outfit:--
-
-
-"Moin descenne Saint-Piè
-Acheté dobannes
-Auliè ces dobannes
-C'est yon _bel-bois_ moin mennein monté!"
-
-
-("I went down to Saint-Pierre to buy dobannes: instead of the dobannes,
-'tis a pretty tree--a charming girl--that I bring back with me.")
-
---"Why, who is dead now, Manm-Robert?"
-
---"It is little Marie, the porteuse, who has got the vérette. She is
-gone to the lazaretto."
-
-
-[Footnote 25: Red earthen-ware jars for keeping drinking-water cool. The
-origin of the word is probably to be sought in the name of the town,
-near Marseilles, where they are made,--"Aubagne."]
-
-
-
-
-XXVII
-
-_April 7th._
-
-
---_Toutt bel bois ka allé_.... News has just come that Ti Marie died
-last night at the lazaretto of the Fort: she was attacked by what they
-call the _lavérette-pouff_,--a form of the disease which strangles its
-victim within a few hours.
-
-Ti Marie was certainly the neatest little màchanne I ever knew. Without
-being actually pretty, her face had a childish charm which made it a
-pleasure to look at her;--and she had a clear chocolate-red skin, a
-light compact little figure, and a remarkably symmetrical pair of little
-feet which had never felt the pressure of a shoe. Every morning I used
-to hear her passing cry, just about daybreak:--"_Qui 'lè café?--qui
-'lè sirop?_" (Who wants coffee?--who wants syrup?) She looked about
-sixteen, but was a mother. "Where is her husband?" I ask. "_Nhomme-y mò
-laverette 'tou._" (Her man died of the verette also.) "And the little
-one, her _yche? Y lazarett._" (At the lazaretto.)... But only those
-without friends or relatives in the city are suffered to go to the
-lazaretto;--Ti Marie cannot have been of St. Pierre?
-
---"No: she was from Vauclin," answers Manm-Robert. "You do not often see
-pretty red girls who are natives of St. Pierre. St. Pierre has pretty
-_sang-mêlées._ The pretty red girls mostly come from Vauclin. The
-yellow ones, who are really bel-bois, are from Grande Anse: they are
-banana-colored people there. At Gros-Morne they are generally black."...
-
-
-
-
-XXVIII
-
-
-... It appears that the red race here, the race _capresse_, is
-particularly liable to the disease. Every family employing capresses for
-house-servants loses them;--one family living at the next corner has
-lost four in succession....
-
-The tint is a cinnamon or chocolate color;--the skin is naturally clear,
-smooth, glossy: it is of the capresse especially that the term
-"sapota-skin" (_peau-chapoti_) is used,--coupled with all curious creole
-adjectives to express what is comely,--_jojoll, beaujoll_,[26] etc. The
-hair is long, but bushy; the limbs light and strong, and admirably
-shaped.... I am told that when transported to a colder climate, the
-capre or capresse partly loses this ruddy tint. Here, under the tropic
-sun, it has a beauty only possible to imitate in metal.... And because
-photography cannot convey any idea of this singular color, the capresse
-hates a photograph.--"_Moin pas noué_," she says;--"_moin ouôuge: ou
-fai moin nouè nans pàtrait-à._" (I am not black: I am red:--you make
-me black in that portrait.) It is difficult to make her pose before the
-camera: she is red, as she avers, beautifully red; but the malicious
-instrument makes her gray or black--_noué conm poule-zo-nouè_ ("black
-as a blackboned hen!")
-
-... And this red race is disappearing from St. Pierre--doubtless also
-from other plague-striken centres.
-
-
-[Footnote 26: I may cite in this relation one stanza of a creole
-song--very popular in St. Pierre--celebrating the charms of a little
-capresse:--
-
-"Moin toutt jeine,
-Goufa, gouàs, vaillant,
-Peau di chapoti
-Ka fai plaisi;--
-Lapeau moin
-Li bien poli;
-Et moin ka plai
-Mêmn toutt nhomme grave!"
-
---Which might be freely rendered thus:--
-
-"I am dimpled, young,
-Round-limbed, and strong,
-With sapota-skin
-That is good to see:
-All glossy-smooth
-Is this skin of mine;
-And the gravest men
-Like to look to me!"]
-
-
-
-
-XXIX
-
-_April 10th._
-
-
-... Manm-Robert is much annoyed and puzzled because the American
-steamer--the _bom-mangé_, as she calls it--does not come. It used to
-bring regularly so many barrels of potatoes and beans, so much lard and
-cheese and garlic and dried pease--everything, almost of which she keeps
-a stock. It is now nearly eight weeks since the cannon of a New York
-steamer aroused the echoes of the harbor. Every morning Manm-Robert has
-been sending out her little servant Louis to see if there is any sign of
-the American packet:--"_Allé ouè Batterie d'Esnotz si bom-mangé-à
-pas vini._" But Louis always returns with the same rueful answer:--
-
---"_Manm-Robert, pa ni piess bom-mangé_" (there is not so much as a bit
-of a _bom-mangé_).
-
-... "No more American steamers for Martinique:" that is the news
-received by telegraph! The disease has broken out among the shipping;
-the harbors have been declared infected. United States mail-packets drop
-their Martinique mails at St. Kitt's or Dominica, and pass us by. There
-will be suffering now among the canotiers, the caboteurs, all those who
-live by stowing or unloading cargo;--great warehouses are being closed
-up, and strong men discharged, because there will be nothing for them to
-do.
-
-... They are burying twenty-five _verettiers_ per day in the city.
-
-But never was this tropic sky more beautiful;--never was this circling
-sea more marvellously blue;--never were the mornes more richly robed in
-luminous green, under a more golden day.... And it seems strange that
-Nature should remain so lovely....
-
-
-... Suddenly it occurs to me that I have not seen Yzore nor her children
-for some days; and I wonder if they have moved away.... Towards evening,
-passing by Manm-Robert's, I ask about them. The old woman answers me
-very gravely:--
-
---"_Aid, mon chè, c'est Yzore qui ni lavérette!_"
-
-The mother has been seized by the plague at last. But Manm-Robert will
-look after her; and Manm-Robert has taken charge of the three little
-ones, who are not now allowed to leave the house, for fear some one
-should tell them what it were best they should not know.... _Pauv ti
-manmaille!_
-
-
-
-
-XXX
-
-_April 13th._
-
-
-... Still the vérette does not attack the native whites. But the whole
-air has become poisoned; the sanitary condition of the city becomes
-unprecedentedly bad; and a new epidemic makes its appearance,--typhoid
-fever. And now the békés begin to go, especially the young and strong;
-and bells keep sounding for them, and the tolling bourdon fills the city
-with its enormous hum all day and far into the night. For these are
-rich; and the high solemnities of burial are theirs--the coffin of
-acajou, and the triple ringing, and the Cross of Gold to be carried
-before them as they pass to their long sleep under the palms,--saluted
-for the last time by all the population of St. Pierre, standing
-bareheaded in the sun....
-
-... Is it in times like these, when all the conditions are febrile, that
-one is most apt to have queer dreams?
-
-Last night it seemed to me that I saw that Carnival dance again,--the
-hooded musicians, the fantastic torrent of peaked caps, and the spectral
-masks, and the swaying of bodies and waving of arms,--but soundless as a
-passing of smoke. There were figures I thought I knew;--hands I had
-somewhere seen reached out and touched me in silence;--and then, all
-suddenly, a Viewless Something seemed to scatter the shapes as leaves
-are blown by a wind.... And waking, I thought I heard again,--plainly as
-on that last Carnival afternoon,--the strange cry of fear:--"_C'est
-Bon-Dié ka passé!_"...
-
-
-
-
-XXXI
-
-_April 20th._
-
-
-... Very early yesterday morning Yzore was carried away under a covering
-of quick-lime: the children do not know; Manm-Robert took heed they
-should not see. They have been told their mother has been taken to the
-country to get well,--that the doctor will bring her back soon.... All
-the furniture is to be sold at auction to pay the debts;--the landlord
-was patient, he waited four months; the doctor was kindly: but now these
-must have their due. Everything will be bidden off, except the chapelle,
-with its Virgin and angels of porcelain: _yo pa ka pè venne Bon-Dié_
-(the things of the Good-God must not be sold). And Manm-Robert will take
-care of the little ones.
-
-The bed--a relic of former good-fortune,--a great Martinique bed of
-carved heavy native wood,--_a lit-à-bateau_ (boat-bed), so called
-because shaped almost like a barge, perhaps--will surely bring three
-hundred francs;--the armoire, with its mirror doors, not less than two
-hundred and fifty. There is little else of value: the whole will not
-fetch enough to pay all the dead owes.
-
-
-
-
-XXXII
-
-_April 28th._
-
-
---_Tam-tam-tam!--tam-tam-tam!_... It is the booming of the auction-drum
-from the Place: Yzore's furniture is about to change hands.
-
-The children start at the sound, so vividly associated in their minds
-with the sights of Carnival days, with the fantastic mirth of the great
-processional dance: they run to the sunny street, calling to each
-other,--_Vini ouè!_--they look up and down. But there is a great quiet
-in the Rue du Morne Mirail;--the street is empty.
-
-... Manm-Robert enters very weary: she has been at the sale, trying to
-save something for the children, but the prices were too high. In
-silence she takes her accustomed seat at the worn counter of her little
-shop; the young ones gather about her, caress her;--Mimi looks up
-laughing into the kind brown face, and wonders why Manm-Robert will not
-smile. Then Mimi becomes afraid to ask where the maskers are,--why they
-do not come. But little Maurice, bolder and less sensitive, cries out:--
-
---"_Manm-Robert, oti masque-à?_"
-
-
-Manm-Robert does not answer;--she does not hear. She is gazing directly
-into the young faces clustered about her knee,--yet she does not see
-them: she sees far, far beyond them,--into the hidden years. And,
-suddenly, with a savage tenderness in her voice, she utters all the dark
-thought of her heart for them:--
-
---"_Toua ti blancs sans lesou!--quitté main châché papa-ou qui adans
-cimétiè pou vint pouend ou tou!_" (Ye three little penniless white
-ones!--let me go call your father, who is in the cemetery, to come and
-take you also away!)
-
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-LES BLANCHISSEUSES
-
-
-I
-
-
-Whoever stops for a few months in St. Pierre is certain, sooner or
-later, to pass an idle half-hour in that charming place of Martinique
-idlers,--the beautiful Savane du Fort,--and, once there, is equally
-certain to lean a little while over the mossy parapet of the river-wall
-to watch the _blanchisseuses_ at work. It has a curious interest, this
-spectacle of primitive toil: the deep channel of the Roxelane winding
-under the palm-crowned heights of the Fort; the blinding whiteness of
-linen laid out to bleach for miles upon the huge bowlders of porphyry
-and prismatic basalt; and the dark bronze-limbed women, with faces
-hidden under immense straw hats, and knees in the rushing torrent,--all
-form a scene that makes one think of the earliest civilizations. Even
-here, in this modern colony, it is nearly three centuries old; and it
-will probably continue thus at the Rivière des Blanchisseuses for fully
-another three hundred years. Quaint as certain weird Breton legends
-whereof it reminds you,--especially if you watch it before daybreak
-while the city sleeps,--this fashion of washing is not likely to change.
-There is a local prejudice against new methods, new inventions, new
-ideas;--several efforts at introducing a less savage style of washing
-proved unsuccessful; and an attempt to establish a steam-laundry
-resulted in failure. The public were quite contented with the old ways
-of laundrying, and saw no benefits to be gained by forsaking
-them;--while the washers and ironers engaged by the laundry proprietor
-at higher rates than they had ever obtained before soon wearied of
-in-door work, abandoned their situations, and returned with a sense of
-relief to their ancient way of working out in the blue air and the wind
-of the hills, with their feet in the mountain-water and their heads in
-the awful sun.
-
-... It is one of the sights of St. Pierre,--this daily scene at the
-River of the Washerwomen: everybody likes to watch it;--the men,
-because among the blanchisseuses there are not a few decidedly
-handsome girls; the women, probably because a woman feels always
-interested in woman's work. All the white bridges of the Roxelane
-are dotted with lookers-on during fine days, and particularly
-in the morning, when every bonne on her way to and from the
-market stops a moment to observe or to greet those blanchisseuses
-whom she knows. Then one hears such a calling and clamoring,--such
-an intercrossing of cries from the bridge to the river, and the river
-to the bridge.... "Ouill! Noémi!" ... "Coument ou yé, chè?"...
-"Eh! Pascaline!"... "Bonjou', Youtte!--Dédé!--Fifi!--Henrillia!"...
-"Coument ou kallé, Cyrillia?"... "Toutt douce, chè!--et Ti Mémé?"... "Y
-bien;--oti Ninotte?"... "Bo ti manmaille pou moin, chè--ou tanne?"... But
-the bridge leading to the market of the Fort is the poorest point of view;
-for the better classes of blanchisseuses are not there: only the lazy,
-the weak, or non-professionals--house-servants, who do washing at the
-river two or three times a month as part of their family-service--are
-apt to get so far down. The experienced professionals and early risers
-secure the best places and choice of rocks; and among the hundreds at
-work you can discern something like a physical gradation. At the next
-bridge the women look better, stronger; more young faces appear; and the
-further you follow the river-course towards the Jardin des Plantes, the
-more the appearance of the blanchisseuses improves,--so that within the
-space of a mile you can see well exemplified one natural law of life's
-struggle,--the best chances to the best constitutions.
-
-You might also observe, if you watch long enough, that among the
-blanchisseuses there are few sufficiently light of color to be classed
-as bright mulâtresses;--the majority are black or of that dark
-copper-red race which is perhaps superior to the black creole in
-strength and bulk; for it requires a skin insensible to sun as well as
-the toughest of constitutions to be a blanchisseuse. A porteuse can
-begin to make long trips at nine or ten years; but no girl is strong
-enough to learn the washing-trade until she is past twelve. The
-blanchisseuse is the hardest worker among the whole population;--her
-daily labor is rarely less than thirteen hours; and during the greater
-part of that time she is working in the sun, and standing up to her
-knees in water that descends quite cold from the mountain peaks. Her
-labor makes her perspire profusely; and she can never venture to cool
-herself by further immersion without serious danger of pleurisy. The
-trade is said to kill all who continue at it beyond a certain number of
-years:--"_Nou ka mò toutt dleau_" (we all die of the water), one told
-me, replying to a question. No feeble or light-skinned person can
-attempt to do a single day's work of this kind without danger; and a
-weak girl, driven by necessity to do her own washing, seldom ventures to
-go to the river. Yet I saw an instance of such rashness one day. A
-pretty sang-mêlée, perhaps about eighteen or nineteen years old,--whom
-I afterwards learned had just lost her mother and found herself thus
-absolutely destitute,--began to descend one of the flights of stone
-steps leading to the river, with a small bundle upon her head; and two
-or three of the blanchisseuses stopped their work to look at her. A tall
-capresse inquired mischievously:--
-
-
-[Illustration: LES BLANCHISSEUSES
-"_Their daily labor is rarely less than thirteen hours,--during
-the greater part of the time in the sun and up to
-their knees in water that descends quite cold from the
-mountain peaks._"]
-
-
---"_Ou vini pou pouend yon bain?_" (Coming to take a bath?) For the
-river is a great bathing-place.
-
---"_Non; moin vini lavé._" (No; I am coming to wash.)
-
---"_Aïe! aïe! aïe!--y vini lavé!_"... And all within hearing laughed
-together. "Are you crazy, girl?--_ess ou fou?_" The tall capresse
-snatched the bundle from her, opened it, threw a garment to her nearest
-neighbor, another to the next one, dividing the work among a little
-circle of friends, and said to the stranger, "Non ké lavé toutt ça ba
-ou bien vite chè,--va, amisé ou!" (We'll wash this for you very
-quickly, dear--go and amuse yourself!) These kind women even did more
-for the poor girl;--they subscribed to buy her a good breakfast, when
-the food-seller--the màchanne-mangé--made her regular round among
-them, with fried fish and eggs and manioc flour and bananas.
-
-
-
-
-II
-
-
-All of the multitude who wash clothing at the river are not professional
-blanchisseuses. Hundreds of women, too poor to pay for laundrying, do
-their own work at the Roxelane;--and numerous bonnes there wash the
-linen of their mistresses as a regular part of their domestic duty. But
-even if the professionals did not always occupy a certain well-known
-portion of the channel, they could easily be distinguished from others
-by their rapid and methodical manner of work, by the ease with which
-immense masses of linen are handled by them, and, above all, by their
-way of whipping it against the rocks. Furthermore, the greater number of
-professionals are likewise teachers, mistresses (_bou'geoises_), and
-have their apprentices beside them,--young girls from twelve to sixteen
-years of age. Among these _apprenti_, as they are called in the patois,
-there are many attractive types, such as idlers upon the bridges like to
-look at.
-
-If, after one year of instruction, the apprentice fails to prove a good
-washer, it is not likely she will ever become one; and there are some
-branches of the trade requiring a longer period of teaching and of
-practice. The young girl first learns simply to soap and wash the linen
-in the river, which operation is called "rubbing" (_frotté_ in
-creole);--after she can do this pretty well, she is taught the curious
-art of whipping it (_fessé_). You can hear the sound of the fessé a
-great way off, echoing and re-echoing among the mornes: it is not a
-sharp smacking noise, as the name might seem to imply, but a heavy
-hollow sound exactly like that of an axe splitting dry timber. In fact,
-it so closely resembles the latter sound that you are apt on first
-hearing it to look up at the mornes with the expectation of seeing
-woodmen there at work. And it is not made by striking the linen with
-anything, but only by lashing it against the sides of the rocks....
-After a piece has been well rubbed and rinsed, it is folded up into a
-peculiar sheaf-shape, and seized by the closely gathered end for the
-fessé. Then the folding process is repeated on the reverse, and the
-other end whipped. This process expels suds that rinsing cannot remove:
-it must be done very dexterously to avoid tearing or damaging the
-material. By an experienced hand the linen is never torn; and even pearl
-and bone buttons are much less often broken than might be supposed. The
-singular echo is altogether due to the manner of folding the article for
-the fessé.
-
-After this, all the pieces are spread out upon the rocks, in the sun,
-for the "first bleaching" (_poumèmiè lablanie_). In the evening they
-are gathered into large wooden trays or baskets, and carried to what is
-called the "lye-house" (_locaïe lessive_)--overlooking the river from a
-point on the Fort bank opposite to the higher end of the Savane. Here
-each blanchisseuse hires a small or a large vat, or even
-several,--according to the quantity of work done,--at two, three or ten
-sous, and leaves her washing to steep in lye (_coulé_ is the creole
-word used) during the night. There are watchmen to guard it. Before
-daybreak it is rinsed in warm water; then it is taken back to the
-river,--is rinsed again, bleached again, blued and starched. Then it is
-ready for ironing. To press and iron well is the most difficult part of
-the trade. When an apprentice is able to iron a gentleman's shirt
-nicely, and a pair of white pantaloons, she is considered to have
-finished her time;--she becomes a journey-woman (_ouvouïyé_).
-
-Even in a country where wages are almost incredibly low, the
-blanchisseuse earns considerable money. There is no fixed scale of
-prices: it is even customary to bargain with these women beforehand.
-Shirts and white pantaloons figure at six and eight cents in laundry
-bills; but other washing is much cheaper. I saw a lot of thirty-three
-pieces--including such large ones as sheets, bed-covers, and several
-douillettes (the long Martinique trailing robes of one piece from neck
-to feet)--for which only three francs was charged. Articles are
-frequently stolen or lost by house-servants sent to do washing at the
-river; but very seldom indeed by the regular blanchisseuses. Few of them
-can read or write or understand owners' marks on wearing apparel; and
-when you see at the river the wilderness of scattered linen, the
-seemingly enormous confusion, you cannot understand how these women
-manage to separate and classify it all. Yet they do this admirably,--and
-for that reason perhaps more than any other, are able to charge fair
-rates;--it is false economy to have your washing done by the
-house-servant;--with the professionals your property is safe. And cheap
-as her rates are, a good professional can make from twenty-five to
-thirty francs a week; averaging fully a hundred francs a month,--as much
-as many a white clerk can earn in the stores of St. Pierre, and quite as
-much (considering local differences in the purchasing power of money) as
-$60 per month would represent in the United States.
-
-Probably the ability to earn large wages often tempts the blanchisseuse
-to continue at her trade until it kills her. The "water-disease," as she
-calls it (_maladie-dleau_), makes its appearance after middle-life: the
-feet, lower limbs, and abdomen swell enormously, while the face becomes
-almost fleshless;--then, gradually tissues give way, muscles yield, and
-the whole physical structure crumbles.
-
-Nevertheless, the blanchisseuse is essentially a sober liver,--never a
-drunkard. In fact, she is sober from rigid necessity: she would not dare
-to swallow one mouthful of spirits while at work with her feet in the
-cold water;--everybody else in Martinique, even the little children, can
-drink rum; the blanchisseuse cannot unless she wishes to die of a
-congestion. Her strongest refreshment is _mabi_,--a mild, effervescent,
-and, I think, rather disagreeable, beer made from molasses.
-
-
-
-
-III
-
-
-Always before daybreak they rise to work, while the vapors of the monies
-fill the air with scent of mouldering vegetation,--clayey odors,--grassy
-smells: there is only a faint gray light, and the water of the river is
-very chill. One by one they arrive, barefooted, under their burdens
-built up tower-shape on their trays;--silently as ghosts they descend
-the steps to the river-bed, and begin to unfold and immerse their
-washing. They greet each other as they come, then become silent again;
-there is scarcely any talking: the hearts of all are heavy with the
-heaviness of the hour. But the gray light turns yellow; the sun climbs
-over the peaks: light changes the dark water to living crystal; and all
-begin to chatter a little. Then the city awakens; the currents of its
-daily life circulate again,--thinly and slowly at first, then swiftly
-and strongly,--up and down every yellow street, and through the Savane,
-and over the bridges of the river. Passers-by pause to look
-down, and cry "_bonjou', chè!_" Idle men stare at some pretty washer,
-till she points at them and cries:--"_Godé Missié-à ka guetté
-nou!--anh!--anh!--anh!_" And all the others look up and repeat the
-groan--"_anh!--anh!--anh!_" till the starers beat a retreat. The air
-grows warmer; the sky blue takes fire: the great light makes joy for the
-washers; they shout to each other from distance to distance, jest,
-laugh, sing.
-
-Gusty of speech these women are: long habit of calling to one another
-through the roar of the torrent has given their voices a singular
-sonority and force: it is well worth while to hear them sing. One starts
-the song,--the next joins her; then another and another, till all the
-channel rings with the melody from the bridge of the Jardin des Plantes
-to the Pont-bois:--
-
-
-"C'est moin qui té ka lavé,
-Passé, raccommodé:
-Y té néf hè disouè
-Ou metté moin derhò,--
-Yche moin assous bouas moin;--
-Laplie té ka tombé--
-Léfan moin assous tète moin!
-Doudoux, ou m'abandonne!
-Moin pa ni pèsonne pou soigné moin."[27]
-
-
-... A melancholy chant--originally a Carnival improvisation made to
-bring public shame upon the perpetrator of a cruel act;--but it contains
-the story of many of these lives--the story of industrious affectionate
-women temporarily united to brutal and worthless men in a country where
-legal marriages are rare. Half of the creole songs which I was able to
-collect during a residence of nearly two years in the island touch upon
-the same sad theme. Of these, "Chè Manman Moin," a great favorite still
-with the older blanchisseuses, has a simple pathos unrivalled, I
-believe, in the oral literature of this people. Here is an attempt to
-translate its three rhymeless stanzas into prose; but the childish
-sweetness of the patois original is lost:--
-
-
-CHÈ MANMAN MOIN
-
-
-I
-
-
-... "Dear mamma, once you were young like I;--dear papa, you also have
-been young;--dear great elder brother, you too have been young. Ah! let
-me cherish this sweet friendship!--so sick my heart is--yes, 'tis very,
-very ill, this heart of mine: love, only love can make it well
-again."...
-
-
-
-
-II
-
-
-"O cursed eyes he praised that led me to him! O cursed lips of mine
-which ever repeated his name! O cursed moment in which I gave up my
-heart to the ingrate who no longer knows how to love."...
-
-
-
-
-III
-
-
-"Doudoux, you swore to me by Heaven!--doudoux, you swore to me by your
-faith!... And now you cannot come to me?... Oh! my heart is withering
-with pain!... I was passing by the cemetery;--I saw my name upon a
-stone--all by itself. I saw two white roses; and in a moment one faded
-and fell before me.... So my forgotten heart will be!"...
-
-The air is not so charming, however, as that of a little song which
-every creole knows, and which may be often heard still at the river: I
-think it is the prettiest of all creole melodies. "To-to-to" (patois for
-the French _toc_) is an onomatope for the sound of knocking at a door.
-
-
-"_To, to, to!_--'Ça qui là?'
---'C'est moin-mênme, lanmou;--
-Ouvé lapott ba moin!'
-
-"_To, to, to!_--'Ça qui là?'
---'C'est moin-mênme, lanmou;--
-Qui ka ba ou khè moin!'
-
-"_To, to, to!_--'Ça qui là?'
---'C'est moin-mênme, anmou;--
-Laplie ka mouillé moin!'"
-
-[_To-to-to_... "Who taps there?"--"'Tis mine own self
-Love: open the door for me."
-
-_To-to-to_... "Who taps there?"--"'Tis mine own self
-Love, who give my heart to thee."
-
-_To-to-to_... "Who taps there?"--"Tis mine own self
-Love: open thy door to me;--the rain is wetting me!"...]
-
-
-... But it is more common to hear the blanchisseuses singing merry,
-jaunty, sarcastic ditties,--Carnival compositions,--in which the African
-sense of rhythmic melody is more marked:--"Marie-Clémence maudi, Loéma
-tombé, Quand ou ni ti mari jojoll."[28]
-
---At mid-day the màchanne-mangé comes, with her girls,--carrying trays
-of fried fish, and _akras_, and cooked beans, and bottles of mabi. The
-blanchisseuses buy, and eat with their feet in the water, using rocks
-for tables. Each has her little tin cup to drink her mabi in.... Then
-the washing and the chanting and the booming of the fessé begin again.
-Afternoon wanes;--school-hours close; and children of many beautiful
-colors come to the river, and leap down the steps crying, "_Eti!
-manman!"--"Sésé!"--"Nenneine!_" calling their elder sisters, mothers,
-and godmothers: the little boys strip naked to play in the water a
-while.... Towards sunset the more rapid and active workers begin to
-gather in their linen, and pile it on trays. Large patches of bald rock
-appear again.... By six o'clock almost the whole bed of the river is
-bare;--the women are nearly all gone. A few linger a while on the
-Savane, to watch the last-comer. There is always a great laugh at the
-last to leave the channel: they ask her if she has not forgotten "to
-lock up the river."
-
---"_Ou fèmé lapòte lariviè, chè--anh?_"
-
---"_Ah! oui, chè!--moin fèmé y, ou tanne?--moin ni laclé-à!_" (Oh
-yes, dear. I locked it up,--you hear?--I've got the key!)
-
-
-But there are days and weeks when they do not sing,--times of want or of
-plague, when the silence of the valley is broken only by the sound of
-linen beaten upon the rocks, and the great voice of the Roxelane, which
-will sing on when the city itself shall have ceased to be, just as it
-sang one hundred thousand years ago.... "Why do they not sing to-day?" I
-once asked during the summer of 1887,--a year of pestilence. "_Yo ka
-pensé toutt lanmizè yo,--toutt lapeine yo_," I was answered. (They are
-thinking of all their trouble, all their misery.) Yet in all seasons,
-while youth and strength stay with them, they work on in wind and sun,
-mist and rain, washing the linen of the living and the dead,--white
-wraps for the newly born, white robes for the bride, white shrouds for
-them that pass into the Great Silence. And the torrent that wears away
-the ribs of the perpetual hills wears away their lives,--sometimes
-slowly, slowly as black basalt is worn,--sometimes suddenly,--in the
-twinkling of an eye.
-
-For a strange danger ever menaces the blanchisseuse,--the treachery of
-the stream!... Watch them working, and observe how often they turn their
-eyes to the high north-east, to look at Pelée. Pelée gives them
-warning betimes. When all is sunny in St. Pierre, and the harbor lies
-blue as lapis-lazuli, there may be mighty rains in the region of the
-great woods and the valleys of the higher peaks; and thin streams swell
-to raging floods which burst suddenly from the altitudes, rolling down
-rocks and trees and wreck of forests, uplifting crags, devastating
-slopes. And sometimes, down the ravine of the Roxelane, there comes a
-roar as of eruption, with a rush of foaming water like a moving
-mountain-wall; and bridges and buildings vanish with its passing. In
-1865 the Savane, high as it lies above the river-bed, was flooded;--and
-all the bridges were swept into the sea.
-
-So the older and wiser blanchisseuses keep watch upon Pelée; and if a
-blackness gather over it, with lightnings breaking through,
-then--however fair the sun shine on St. Pierre--the alarm is given, the
-miles of bleaching linen vanish from the rocks in a few minutes, and
-every one leaves the channel. But it has occasionally happened that
-Pelée gave no such friendly signal before the river rose: thus lives
-have been lost. Most of the blanchisseuses are swimmers, and good
-ones,--I have seen one of these girls swim almost out of sight in the
-harbor, during an idle hour;--but no swimmer has any chances in a rising
-of the Roxelane: all overtaken by it are stricken by rocks and
-drift;--_yo crazé_, as a creole term expresses it,--a term signifying
-to crush, to bray, to dash to pieces.
-
-... Sometimes it happens that one who has been absent at home for a
-brief while returns to the river only to meet her comrades fleeing from
-it,--many leaving their linen behind them. But she will not abandon the
-linen intrusted to her: she makes a run for it,--in spite of warning
-screams,--in spite of the vain clutching of kind rough fingers. She
-gains the river-bed:--the flood has already reached her waist, but she
-is strong; she reaches her linen,--snatches it up, piece by piece,
-scattered as it is--"one!--two!--five!--seven!";--there is a roaring in
-her ears--"eleven!--thirteen!" she has it all... but now the rocks are
-moving! For one instant she strives to reach the steps, only a few yards
-off;--another, and the thunder of the deluge is upon her,--and the
-crushing crags,--and the spinning trees....
-
-Perhaps before sundown some canotier may find her floating far in the
-bay,--drifting upon her face in a thousand feet of water,--with faithful
-dead hands still holding fast the property of her employer.
-
-
-[Footnote 27: It was I who washed and ironed and mended;--at nine
-o'clock at night thou didst put me out-of-doors, with my child in my
-arms,--the rain was falling,--with my poor straw mattress upon my
-head!... Doudoux! thou dost abandon me!... I have none to care for me.]
-
-[Footnote 28: See Appendix for specimens of creole music.]
-
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-LA PELÉE
-
-
-I
-
-
-The first attempt made to colonize Martinique was abandoned almost as
-soon as begun, because the leaders of the expedition found the country
-"too rugged and too mountainous," and were "terrified by the prodigious
-number of serpents which covered its soil." Landing on June 25, 1635,
-Olive and Duplessis left the island after a few hours' exploration, or,
-rather, observation, and made sail for Guadeloupe,--according to the
-quaint and most veracious history of Père Du Tertre, of the Order of
-Friars-Preachers.
-
-A single glance at the topographical map of Martinique would suffice to
-confirm the father's assertion that the country was found to be _trop
-haché et trop montueux_: more than two-thirds of it is peak and
-mountain;--even to-day only 42,445 of its supposed 98,782 hectares have
-been cultivated; and on page 426 of the last "Annuaire" (1887) I find
-the statement that in the interior there are extensive Government lands
-of which the area is "not exactly known." Yet mountainous as a country
-must be which--although scarcely forty-nine miles long and twenty miles
-in average breath--remains partly unfamiliar to its own inhabitants
-after nearly three centuries of civilization (there are not half a dozen
-creoles who have travelled all over it), only two elevations in
-Martinique bear the name _montagne._ These are La Montagne Pelée, in
-the north, and La Montagne du Vauclin, in the south. The term _morne_,
-used throughout the French West Indian colonies to designate certain
-altitudes of volcanic origin, a term rather unsatisfactorily translated
-in certain dictionaries as "a small mountain," is justly applied to the
-majority of Martinique hills, and unjustly sometimes even to its
-mightiest elevation,--called Morne Pelé, or Montagne Pelée, or simply
-"La Montagne," according, perhaps, to the varying degree of respect it
-inspires in different minds. But even in the popular nomenclature one
-finds the orography of Martinique, as well as of other West Indian
-islands, regularly classified by _pitons, mornes_, and _monts_ or
-_montagnes._ Mornes usually have those beautiful and curious forms which
-bespeak volcanic origin even to the unscientific observer: they are most
-often pyramidal or conoid up to a certain height; but have summits
-either rounded or truncated;--their sides, green with the richest
-vegetation, rise from valley-levels and coastlines with remarkable
-abruptness, and are apt to be curiously ribbed or wrinkled. The pitons,
-far fewer in number, are much more fantastic in form;--volcanic cones,
-or volcanic upheavals of splintered strata almost at right
-angles,--sometimes sharp of lines as spires, and mostly too steep for
-habitation. They are occasionally mammiform, and so symmetrical that one
-might imagine them artificial creations,--particularly when they occur
-in pairs. Only a very important mass is dignified by the name
-_montagne_: there are, as I have already observed, but two thus called
-in all Martinique,--Pelée, the head and summit of the island; and La
-Montagne du Vauclin, in the south-east. Vauclin is inferior in height
-and bulk to several mornes and pitons of the north and north-west,--and
-owes its distinction probably to its position as centre of a system of
-ranges: but in altitude and mass and majesty. Pelée far outranks
-everything in the island, and well deserves its special appellation, "La
-Montagne."
-
-No description could give the reader a just idea of what Martinique is,
-configuratively, so well as the simple statement that, although less
-than fifty miles in extreme length, and less than twenty in average
-breadth, there are upwards of _four hundred mountains_ in this little
-island, or of what at least might be termed mountains elsewhere. These
-again are divided and interpeaked, and bear hillocks on their
-slopes;--and the lowest hillock in Martinique is fifty metres high. Some
-of the peaks are said to be totally inaccessible: many mornes are so on
-one or two or even three sides. Ninety-one only of the principal
-mountains have been named; and among these several bear similar
-appellations: for example, there are two Mornes-Rouges, one in the north
-and one in the south; and there are four or five Gros-Mornes. All the
-elevations belong to six great groups, clustering about or radiating
-from six ancient volcanic centres,--1. La Pelée; 2. Pitons du Carbet;
-3. Roches Carrées;[29] 4. Vauclin; 5. Marin; 6. Morne de la Plaine.
-Forty-two distinct mountain-masses belong to the Carbet system
-alone,--that of Pelée including but thirteen; and the whole Carbet area
-has a circumference of 120,000 metres,--much more considerable than that
-of Pelée. But its centre is not one enormous pyramidal mass like that
-of "La Montagne"; it is marked only by a group of five remarkable
-porphyritic cones,--the Pitons of Carbet;--while Pelée, dominating
-everything, and filling the north, presents an aspect and occupies an
-area scarcely inferior to those of Ætna.
-
---Sometimes, while looking at La Pelée, I have wondered if the
-enterprise of the great Japanese painter who made the Hundred Views of
-Fusiyama could not be imitated by some creole artist equally proud of
-his native hills, and fearless of the heat of the plains or the snakes
-of the slopes. A hundred views of Pelée might certainly be made: for
-the enormous mass is omnipresent to dwellers in the northern part of the
-island, and can be seen from the heights of the most southern mornes. It
-is visible from almost any part of St. Pierre,--which nestles in a fold
-of its rocky skirts. It overlooks all the island ranges, and overtops
-the mighty Pitons of Carbet by a thousand feet;--you can only lose sight
-of it by entering gorges, or journeying into the valleys of the
-south.... But the peaked character of the whole country, and the hot
-moist climate, oppose any artistic undertaking of the sort suggested:
-even photographers never dream of taking views in the further interior,
-nor on the east coast. Travel, moreover, is no less costly than
-difficult: there are no inns or places of rest for tourists; there are,
-almost daily, sudden and violent rains, which are much dreaded (since a
-thorough wetting, with the pores all distended by heat, may produce
-pleurisy); and there are serpents! The artist willing to devote a few
-weeks of travel and study to Pelée, in spite of these annoyances and
-risks, has not yet made his appearance in Martinique.[30]
-
-Huge as the mountain looks from St. Pierre, the eye underestimates its
-bulk; and when you climb the mornes about the town, Labelle, d'Orange,
-or the much grander Parnasse, you are surprised to find how much vaster
-Pelée appears from these summits. Volcanic hills often seem higher, by
-reason of their steepness, than they really are; but Pelée deludes in
-another manner. From surrounding valleys it appears lower, and from
-adjacent mornes higher than it really is: the illusion in the former
-case being due to the singular slope of its contours, and the remarkable
-breadth of its base, occupying nearly all the northern end of the
-island; in the latter, to misconception of the comparative height of the
-eminence you have reached, which deceives by the precipitious pitch of
-its sides. Pelée is not very remarkable in point of altitude, however:
-its height was estimated by Moreau de Jonnés at 1600 metres; and by
-others at between 4400 and 4500 feet. The sum of the various imperfect
-estimates made justifies the opinion of Dr. Cornilliac that the extreme
-summit is over 5000 feet above the sea--perhaps 5200.[31] The clouds of
-the summit afford no indication to eyes accustomed to mountain scenery
-in northern countries; for in these hot moist latitudes clouds hang very
-low, even in fair weather. But in bulk Pelée is grandiose: it spurs out
-across the island from the Caribbean to the Atlantic: the great chains
-of mornes about it are merely counter-forts; the Piton Pierreux and the
-Piton Pain-à-Sucre (_Sugar-loaf Peak_), and other elevations varying
-from 800 to 2100 feet, are its volcanic children. Nearly thirty rivers
-have their birth in its flanks,--besides many thermal springs, variously
-mineralized. As the culminant point of the island. Pelée is also the
-ruler of its météorologie life,--cloud-herder, lightning-forger, and
-rain-maker. During clear weather you can see it drawing to itself all
-the white vapors of the land,--robbing lesser eminences of their
-shoulder-wraps and head-coverings;--though the Pitons of Carbet (3700
-feet) usually manage to retain about their middle a cloud-clout,--a
-_lantchô._ You will also see that the clouds run in a circle about
-Pelée,--gathering bulk as they turn by continual accessions from other
-points. If the crater be totally bare in the morning, and shows the
-broken edges very sharply against the blue, it is a sign of foul rather
-than of fair weather to come.[32]
-
-Even in bulk, perhaps, Pelée might not impress those who know the
-stupendous scenery of the American ranges; but none could deny it
-special attractions appealing to the senses of form and color. There is
-an imposing fantasticality in its configuration worth months of artistic
-study: one does not easily tire of watching its slopes undulating
-against the north sky,--and the strange jagging of its ridges,--and the
-succession of its terraces crumbling down to other terraces, which again
-break into ravines here and there bridged by enormous buttresses of
-basalt: an extravaganza of lava-shapes overpitching and cascading into
-sea and plain. All this is verdant wherever surfaces catch the sun: you
-can divine what the frame is only by examining the dark and ponderous
-rocks of the torrents. And the hundred tints of this verdure do not form
-the only colorific charms of the landscape. Lovely as the long
-upreaching slopes of cane are,--and the loftier bands of forest-growths,
-so far off that they look like belts of moss,--and the more
-tender-colored masses above, wrinkling and folding together up to the
-frost-white clouds of the summit,--you will be still more delighted by
-the shadow-colors,--opulent, diaphanous. The umbrages lining the
-wrinkles, collecting in the hollows, slanting from sudden projections,
-may become before your eyes almost as unreally beautiful as the
-landscape colors of a Japanese fan;--they shift most generally during
-the day from indigo-blue through violets and paler blues to final lilacs
-and purples; and even the shadows of passing clouds have a faint blue
-tinge when they fall on Pelée.
-
-.... Is the great volcano dead?... Nobody knows. Less than forty years
-ago it rained ashes over all the roofs of St. Pierre;--within twenty
-years it has uttered mutterings. For the moment, it appears to sleep;
-and the clouds have dripped into the cup of its highest crater till it
-has become a lake, several hundred yards in circumference. The crater
-occupied by this lake--called L'Étang, or "The Pool"--has never been
-active within human memory. There are others,--difficult and dangerous
-to visit because opening on the side of a tremendous gorge; and it was
-one of these, no doubt, which has always been called _La Soufrière_,
-that rained ashes over the city in 1851.
-
-The explosion was almost concomitant with the last of a series of
-earthquake shocks, which began in the middle of May and ended in the
-first week of August,--all much more severe in Guadeloupe than in
-Martinique. In the village Au Prêcheur, lying at the foot of the
-western slope of Pelée, the people had been for some time complaining
-of an oppressive stench of sulphur,--or, as chemists declared it,
-sulphuretted hydrogen,--when, on the 4th of August, much trepidation was
-caused by a long and appalling noise from the mountain,--a noise
-compared by planters on the neighboring slopes to the hollow roaring
-made by a packet blowing off steam, but infinitely louder. These sounds
-continued through intervals until the following night, sometimes
-deepening into a rumble like thunder. The mountain guides declared:
-"_C'est la Soufrière qui bout!_" (the Souffrière is boiling); and a
-panic seized the negroes of the neighboring plantations. At 11 P.M. the
-noise was terrible enough to fill all St. Pierre with alarm; and on the
-morning of the 6th the city presented an unwonted aspect, compared by
-creoles who had lived abroad to the effect of a great hoar-frost. All
-the roofs, trees, balconies, awnings, pavements, were covered with a
-white layer of ashes. The same shower blanched the roofs of Monte Rouge,
-and all the villages about the chief city,--Carbet, Fond-Corré, and Au
-Prêcheur; also whitening the neighboring country: the mountain was
-sending up columns of smoke or vapor; and it was noticed that the
-Rivière Blanche, usually of a glaucous color, ran black into the sea
-like an outpouring of ink, staining its azure for a mile. A committee
-appointed to make an investigation, and prepare an official report,
-found that a number of rents had either been newly formed, or suddenly
-become active, in the flank of the mountain: these were all situated in
-the immense gorge sloping westward from that point now known as the
-Morne de la Croix. Several were visited with much difficulty,--members
-of the commission being obliged to lower themselves down a succession of
-precipices with cords of lianas; and it is noteworthy that their
-researches were prosecuted in spite of the momentary panic created by
-another outburst. It was satisfactorily ascertained that the main force
-of the explosion had been exerted within a perimeter of about one
-thousand yards; that various hot springs had suddenly gushed out,--the
-temperature of the least warm being about 37° Réaumur (116°
-F.);--that there was no change in the configuration of the
-mountain;--and that the terrific sounds had been produced only by the
-violent outrush of vapor and ashes from some of the rents. In hope of
-allaying the general alarm, a creole priest climbed the summit of the
-volcano, and there planted the great cross which gives the height its
-name and still remains to commemorate the event.
-
-There was an extraordinary emigration of serpents from the high woods,
-and from the higher to the lower plantations,--where they were killed by
-thousands. For a long time Pelée continued to send up an immense column
-of white vapor; but there were no more showers of ashes; and the
-mountain gradually settled down to its present state of quiescence.
-
-
-[Footnote 29: Also called _La Barre de l'Isle_,--a long high
-mountain-wall interlinking the northern and southern system of
-ranges,--and only two metres broad at the summit. The "Roches-Carrées"
-display a geological formation unlike anything discovered in the rest of
-the Antillesian system, excepting in Grenada,--columnar or prismatic
-basalts.... In the plains of Marin curious petrifactions exist;--I saw a
-honey-comb so perfect that the eye alone could scarcely divine the
-transformation.]
-
-[Footnote 30: Thibault de Chanvallon, writing of Martinique in 1751,
-declared:--"All possible hindrances to study are encountered here (_tout
-s'oppose à l'étude_): if the Americans (creoles) do not devote
-themselves to research, the fact must not be attributed solely to
-indifference or indolence. On the one hand, the overpowering and
-continual heat,--the perpetual succession of mornes and
-acclivities,--the difficulty of entering forests rendered almost
-inaccessible by the lianas interwoven across all openings, and the
-prickly plants which oppose a barrier to the naturalist,--the continual
-anxiety and fear inspired by serpents also;--on the other hand, the
-disheartening necessity of having to work alone, and the discouragement
-of being unable to communicate one's ideas or discoveries to persons
-having similar tastes. And finally, it must be remembered that these
-discouragements and dangers are never mitigated by the least hope of
-personal consideration, or by the pleasure of emulation,--since such
-study is necessarily unaccompanied either by the one or the other in a
-country where nobody undertakes it."--(_Voyage à la Martinique._)...
-The conditions have scarcely changed since De Chanvallon's day, despite
-the creation of Government roads, and the thinning of the high woods.]
-
-[Footnote 31: Humboldt believed the height to be not less than 800 taint
-(1 toise=6 feet 4.73 inches), or about 5115 feet.]
-
-[Footnote 32: There used to be a strange popular belief that however
-heavily veiled by clouds the mountain might be prior to an earthquake,
-these would always vanish with the first shock. But Thibault de
-Chanvallon took pains to examine into the truth of this alleged
-phenomenon; and found that during a number of earthquake shocks the
-clouds remained over the crater precisely as usual.... There was more
-foundation, however, for another popular belief, which still
-exists,--that the absolute purity of the atmosphere about Pelée, and
-the perfect exposure of its summit for any considerable tinny might be
-regarded as an omen of hurricane.]
-
-
-
-
-II
-
-
-From St. Pierre, trips to Pelée can be made by several routes;--the
-most popular is that by way of Morne Rouge and the Calebasse; but the
-summit can be reached in much less time by making the ascent from
-different points along the coast-road to Au Prêcheur,--such as the
-Morne St. Martin, or a well-known path further north, passing near the
-celebrated hot springs (_Fontaines Chaudes_). You drive towards Au
-Prêcheur, and begin the ascent on foot, through cane-plantations....
-The road by which you follow the north-west coast round the skirts of
-Pelée is very picturesque:--you cross the Roxelane, the Rivière des
-Pères, the Rivière Sèche (whose bed is now occupied only by a
-motionless torrent of rocks);--passing first by the suburb of
-Fond-Corré, with its cocoa groves, and broad beach of iron-gray
-sand,--a bathing resort;--then Pointe Prince, and the Fond de
-Canonville, somnolent villages that occupy wrinkles in the hem of
-Pelée's lava robe. The drive ultimately rises and lowers over the
-undulations of the cliff, and is well shadowed along the greater part of
-its course: you will admire many huge _fromagers_, or silk-cotton trees,
-various heavy lines of tamarinds, and groups of _flamboyants_ with thick
-dark feathery foliage, and cassia-trees with long pods pending and
-blackening from every branch, and hedges of campêche, or logwood, and
-calabash-trees, and multitudes of the pretty shrubs bearing the fruit
-called in creole _raisins-bò-lanmè_, or "sea-side grapes." Then you
-reach Au Prêcheur: a very antiquated village, which boasts a stone
-church and a little public square with a fountain in it. If you have
-time to cross the Rivière du Prêcheur, a little further on, you can
-obtain a fine view of the coast, which, rising suddenly to a grand
-altitude, sweeps round in a semicircle over the Village of the Abysses
-(_Aux Abymes_),--whose name was doubtless suggested by the immense depth
-of the sea at that point.... It was under the shadow of those cliffs
-that the Confederate cruiser _Alabama_ once, hid herself, as a fish
-hides in the shadow of a rock, and escaped from her pursuer, the
-Iroquois. She had long been blockaded in the harbor of St. Pierre by the
-Northern man-of-war,--anxiously awaiting a chance to pounce upon her the
-instant she should leave French waters;--and various Yankee vessels in
-port were to send up rocket-signals should the _Alabama_ attempt to
-escape under cover of darkness. But one night the privateer took a
-creole pilot on board, and steamed out southward, with all her lights
-masked, and her chimneys so arranged that neither smoke nor sparks could
-betray her to the enemy in the offing. However, some Yankee vessels near
-enough to discern her movements through the darkness at once shot
-rockets south; and the Iroquois gave chase. The _Alabama_ hugged the
-high shore as far as Carbet, remaining quite invisible in the shadow of
-it: then she suddenly turned and recrossed the harbor. Again Yankee
-rockets betrayed her manœuvre to the _Iroquois_; but she gained Aux
-Abymes, laid herself dose to the enormous black cliff, and there
-remained indistinguishable; the _Iroquois_ steamed by north without
-seeing her. Once the Confederate cruiser found her enemy well out of
-sight, she put her pilot ashore and escaped into the Dominica channel.
-The pilot was a poor mulatto, who thought himself well paid with five
-hundred francs!
-
-... The more popular route to Pelée by way of Morne Rouge is otherwise
-interesting.... Anybody not too much afraid of the tropic sun must find
-it a delightful experience to follow the mountain roads leading to the
-interior from the city, as all the mornes traversed by them command
-landscapes of extraordinary beauty. According to the zigzags of the way,
-the scenery shifts panoramically. At one moment you are looking down
-into valleys a thousand feet below, at another, over luminous leagues of
-meadow or cane-field, you see some far crowding of cones and cratered
-shapes--sharp as the teeth of a saw, and blue as sapphire,--with further
-eminences ranging away through pearline color to high-peaked
-remotenesses of vapory gold. As you follow the windings of such a way as
-the road of the Morne Labelle, or the Morne d'Orange, the city
-disappears and reappears many times,--always diminishing, till at last
-it looks no bigger than a chess-board. Simultaneously distant mountain
-shapes appear to unfold and lengthen;--and always, always the sea rises
-with your rising. Viewed at first from the bulwark (boulevard)
-commanding the roofs of the town, its horizon-line seemed straight and
-keen as a knife-edge;--but as you mount higher, it elongates, begins to
-curve; and gradually the whole azure expanse of water broadens out
-roundly like a disk. From certain very lofty summits further inland you
-behold the immense blue circle touching the sky all round you,--except
-where a still greater altitude, like that of Pelée or the Pitons,
-breaks the ring; and this high vision of the sea has a phantasmal effect
-hard to describe, and due to vapory conditions of the atmosphere. There
-are bright cloudless days when, even as seen from the city, the
-ocean-verge has a spectral vagueness; but on any day, in any season,
-that you ascend to a point dominating the sea by a thousand feet, the
-rim of the visible world takes a ghostliness that startles,--because the
-prodigious light gives to all near shapes such intense sharpness of
-outline and vividness of color.
-
-
-[Illustration: LA PELÉE
-"_Over luminous leagues of meadow or cane field, you
-see far crowding of cones and cratered shapes--sharp
-as the teeth of a saw, and blue as a sapphire._"]
-
-
-Yet wonderful as are the perspective beauties of those mountain routes
-from which one can keep St. Pierre in view, the road to Morne Rouge
-surpasses them, notwithstanding that it almost immediately leaves the
-city behind, and out of sight. Excepting only _La Trace_,--the long
-routs winding over mountain ridges and between primitive forests south
-to Fort-de-France,--there is probably no section of national highway in
-the island more remarkable than the Morne Rouge road. Leaving the Grande
-Rue by the public conveyance, you drive out through the Savane du Fort,
-with its immense mango and tamarind trees, skirting the Roxelane. Then
-reaching the boulevard, you pass high Morne Labelle,--and then the
-Jardin des Plantes on the right, where white-stemmed palms are lifting
-their heads two hundred feet,--and beautiful Parnasse, heavily timbered
-to the top;--while on your left the valley of the Roxelane shallows up,
-and Pelée shows less and less of its tremendous base. Then you pass
-through the sleepy, palmy, pretty Village of the Three Bridges (_Trois
-Ponts_),--where a Fahrenheit thermometer shows already three degrees of
-temperature lower than at St. Pierre;--and the national road, making a
-sharp turn to the right, becomes all at once very steep--so steep that
-the horses can mount only at a walk. Around and between the wooded hills
-it ascends by zigzags,--occasionally overlooking the sea,--sometimes
-following the verges of ravines. Now and then you catch glimpses of the
-road over which you passed half an hour before undulating far below,
-looking narrow as a tape-line,--and of the gorge of the Roxelane,--and
-of Pelée always higher, now thrusting out long spurs of green and
-purple land into the sea. You drive under cool shadowing of mountain
-woods--under waving bamboos like enormous ostrich feathers dyed
-green,--and exquisite tree-ferns thirty to forty feet high,--and
-imposing ceibas, with strangely buttressed trunks,--and all sorts of
-broadleaved forms: cachibous, balisiers, bananiers.... Then you reach a
-plateau covered with cane, whose yellow expanse is bounded on the right
-by a demilune of hills sharply angled as crystals;--on the left it dips
-seaward; and before you Pelée's head towers over the shoulders of
-intervening monies. A strong cool wind is blowing; and the horses can
-trot a while. Twenty minutes, and the road, leaving the plateau, becomes
-steep again;--you are approaching the volcano over the ridge of a
-colossal spur. The way turns in a semicircle,--zigzags,--once more
-touches the edge of a valley,--where the clear fall might be nearly
-fifteen hundred feet. But narrowing more and more, the valley becomes an
-ascending gorge; and across its chasm, upon the brow of the opposite
-cliff, you catch sight of houses and a spire seemingly perched on the
-verge, like so many birds'-nests,--the village of Morne Rouge. It is two
-thousand feet above the sea; and Pelée, although looming high over it,
-looks a trifle less lofty now.
-
-One's first impression of Morne Rouge is that of a single straggling
-street of gray-painted cottages and shops (or rather booths), dominated
-by a plain church, with four pursy-bodied palmistes facing the main
-porch. Nevertheless, Morne Rouge is not a small place, considering its
-situation;--there are nearly five thousand inhabitants; but in order to
-find out where they live, you must leave the public road, which is on a
-ridge, and explore the high-hedged lanes leading down from it on either
-side. Then you will find a veritable city of little wooden
-cottages,--each screened about with banana-trees, Indian-reeds, and
-_pommiers-roses._ You will also see a number of handsome private
-residences--country-houses of wealthy merchants; and you will find that
-the church, though uninteresting exteriorly, is rich and impressive
-within: it is a famous shrine, where miracles are alleged to have been
-wrought. Immense processions periodically wend their way to it from St.
-Pierre,--starting at three or four o'clock in the morning, so as to
-arrive before the sun is well up.... But there are no woods here,--only
-fields. An odd tone is given to the lanes by a local custom of planting
-hedges of what are termed _roseaux d'Inde_, having a dark-red foliage;
-and there is a visible fondness for ornamental plants with crimson
-leaves. Otherwise the mountain summit is somewhat bare; trees have a
-scrubby aspect. You must have noticed while ascending that the palmistes
-became smaller as they were situated higher: at Morne Rouge they are
-dwarfed,--having a short stature, and very thick trunks.
-
-In spite of the fine views of the sea, the mountain-heights, and the
-valley-reaches, obtainable from Morne Rouge, the place has a somewhat
-bleak look. Perhaps this is largely owing to the universal slate-gray
-tint of the buildings,--very melancholy by comparison with the apricot
-and banana yellows tinting the walls of St. Pierre. But this cheerless
-gray is the only color which can resist the climate of Morne Rouge,
-where people are literally dwelling in the clouds. Rolling down like
-white smoke from Pelée, these often create a dismal fog; and Morne
-Rouge is certainly one of the rainiest places in the world. When it is
-dry everywhere else, it rains at Morne Rouge. It rains at least three
-hundred and sixty days and three hundred and sixty nights of the year.
-It rains almost invariably once in every twenty-four hours; but oftener
-five or six times. The dampness is phenomenal. All mirrors become
-patchy; linen moulds in one day; leather turns white; woollen goods feel
-as if saturated with moisture; new brass becomes green; steel crumbles
-into red powder: wood-work rots with astonishing rapidity; salt is
-quickly transformed into brine; and matches, unless kept in a very warm
-place, refuse to light. Everything moulders and peels and decomposes;
-even the frescos of the church-interior lump out in immense blisters;
-and a microscopic vegetation, green or brown, attacks all exposed
-surfaces of timber or stone. At night it is often really cold;--and it
-is hard to understand how, with all this dampness and coolness and
-mouldiness, Morne Rouge can be a healthy place. But it is so, beyond any
-question: it is the great Martinique resort for invalids; strangers
-debilitated by the climate of Trinidad or Cayenne come to it for
-recuperation.
-
-Leaving the village by the still uprising road, you will be surprised,
-after a walk of twenty minutes northward, by a magnificent view,--the
-vast valley of the Champ-Flore, watered by many torrents, and bounded
-south and west by double, triple, and quadruple surging of
-mountains,--mountains broken, peaked, tormented-looking, and tinted
-(_irisées_, as the creoles say) with all those gem-tones distance gives
-in a West Indian atmosphere. Particularly impressive is the beauty of
-one purple cone in the midst of this many-colored chain: the Piton
-Gélé. All the valley-expanse of rich land is checkered with
-alternations of meadow and cane and cacao,--except northwestwardly,
-where woods billow out of sight beyond a curve. Facing this landscape,
-on your left, are mornes of various heights,--among which you will
-notice La Calebasse, overtopping everything but Pelée shadowing behind
-it;--and a grass-grown road leads up westward from the national highway
-towards the volcano. This is the Calebasse route to Pelée.
-
-
-
-
-III
-
-
-One must be very sure of the weather before undertaking the ascent of
-Pelée; for if one merely selects some particular leisure day in
-advance, one's chances of seeing anything from the summit are
-considerably less than an astronomer's chances of being able to make a
-satisfactory observation of the next transit of Venus. Moreover, if the
-heights remain even partly clouded, it may not be safe to ascend the
-Morne de la Croix,--a cone-point above the crater itself, and ordinarily
-invisible below. And a cloudless afternoon can never be predicted from
-the aspect of deceitful Pelée: when the crater edges are quite clearly
-cut against the sky at dawn, you may be tolerably certain there will be
-bad weather during the day; and when they are all bare at sundown, you
-have no good reason to believe they will not be hidden next morning.
-Hundreds of tourists, deluded by such appearances, have made the weary
-trip in vain,--found themselves obliged to return without having seen
-anything but a thick white cold fog. The sky may remain perfectly blue
-for weeks in every other direction, and Pelée's head remain always
-hidden. In order to make a successful ascent, one must not wait for a
-period of dry weather,--one might thus wait for years! What one must
-look for is a certain periodicity in the diurnal rains,--a regular
-alternation of sun and cloud; such as characterizes a certain portion of
-the hivernage, or rainy summer season, when mornings and evenings are
-perfectly limpid, with very heavy sudden rains in the middle of the day.
-It is of no use to rely on the prospect of a dry spell. There is no
-really dry weather, notwithstanding there recurs--in books--a _Saison de
-la Sécheresse._ In fact, there are no distinctly marked seasons in
-Martinique:--a little less heat and rain from October to July, a little
-more rain and heat from July to October: that is about all the notable
-difference! Perhaps the official notification by cannon-shot that the
-hivernage, the season of heavy rains and hurricanes, begins on July
-15th, is no more trustworthy than the contradictory declarations of
-Martinique authors who have attempted to define the vague and illusive
-limits of the tropic seasons. Still, the Government report on the
-subject is more satisfactory than any: according to the "Annuaire,"
-there are these seasons:--
-
-1. _Saison fraîche._ December to March. Rainfall, about 475
-millimeters.
-
-2. _Saison chaude et sèche._ April to July. Rainfall, about 140
-millimeters.
-
-3. _Saison chaude et pluvieuse._ July to November. Rainfall average,
-1121 millimeters.
-
-Other authorities divide the _saison chaude et sèche_ into two periods,
-of which the latter, beginning about May, is called the _Renouveau_; and
-it is at least true that at the time indicated there is a great burst of
-vegetal luxuriance. But there is always rain, there are almost always
-clouds, there is no possibility of marking and dating the beginnings and
-the endings of weather in this country where the barometer is almost
-useless, and the thermometer mounts in the sun to twice the figure it
-reaches in the shade. Long and patient observation has, however,
-established the fact that during the hivernage, if the heavy showers
-have a certain fixed periodicity,--falling at mid-day or in the heated
-part of the afternoon,--Pelée is likely to be clear early in the
-morning; and by starting before daylight one can then have good chances
-of a fine view from the summit.
-
-
-
-
-IV
-
-
-At five o'clock of a September morning, warm and starry, I leave St.
-Pierre in a carriage with several friends, to make the ascent by the
-shortest route of all,--that of the Morne St. Martin, one of Pelée's
-western counterforts. We drive north along the shore for about half an
-hour; then, leaving the coast behind, pursue a winding mountain road,
-leading to the upper plantations, between leagues of cane. The sky
-begins to brighten as we ascend, and a steely glow announces that day
-has begun on the other side of the island. Miles up, the crest of the
-volcano cuts sharp as a saw-edge against the growing light: there is not
-a cloud visible. Then the light slowly yellows behind the vast cone; and
-one of the most beautiful dawns I ever saw reveals on our right an
-immense valley through which three rivers flow. This deepens very
-quickly as we drive; the mornes about St. Pierre, beginning to catch the
-light, sink below us in distance; and above them, southwardly, an
-amazing silhouette begins to rise,--all blue,--a mountain wall capped
-with cusps and cones, seeming high as Pelée itself in the middle, but
-sinking down to the sea-level westward. There are a number of
-extraordinary acuminations; but the most impressive shape is the
-nearest,--a tremendous conoidal mass crowned with a group of peaks, of
-which two, taller than the rest, tell their name at once by the beauty
-of their forms,--the Pitons of Carbet. They wear their girdles of cloud,
-though Pelée is naked to-day. All this is blue: the growing light only
-deepens the color, does not dissipate it;--but in the nearer valleys
-gleams of tender yellowish green begin to appear. Still the sun has not
-been able to show himself;--it will take him some time yet to climb
-Pelée.
-
-Reaching the last plantation, we draw rein in a village of small wooden
-cottages,--the quarters of the field hands,--and receive from the
-proprietor, a personal friend of my friends, the kindest welcome. At his
-house we change clothing and prepare for the journey;--he provides for
-our horses, and secures experienced guides for us,--two young colored
-men belonging to the plantation. Then we begin the ascent. The guides
-walk before, barefoot, each carrying a cutlass in his hand and a package
-on his head--our provisions, photographic instruments, etc.
-
-The mountain is cultivated in spots up to twenty-five hundred feet; and
-for three-quarters of an hour after leaving the planter's residence we
-still traverse fields of cane and of manioc. The light is now strong in
-the valley; but we are in the shadow of Pelée. Cultivated fields end at
-last; the ascending path is through wild cane, wild guavas, guinea-grass
-run mad, and other tough growths, some bearing pretty pink blossoms. The
-forest is before us. Startled by our approach, a tiny fer-de-lance
-glides out from a bunch of dead wild-cane, almost under the bare feet of
-our foremost guide, who as instantly decapitates it with a touch of his
-cutlass. It is not quite fifteen inches long, and almost the color of
-the yellowish leaves under which it had been hiding.... The
-conversation turns on snakes as we make our first halt at the verge of
-the woods.
-
-
-[Illustration: THE CATHEDRAL, ST. PIERRE
-_Completely destroyed by the catastrophe of 1902 except
-for a marble statue of the Virgin. This has been set
-high on a cliff above the town and may be seen from
-far out at sea._]
-
-
-Hundreds may be hiding around us; but a snake never shows himself by
-daylight except under the pressure of sudden alarm. We are not likely,
-in the opinion of all present, to meet another. Every one in the party,
-except myself, has some curious experience to relate. I hear for the
-first time about the alleged inability of the trigonocephalus to wound
-except at a distance from his enemy of not less than one-third of his
-length;--about M. A----, a former director of the Jardin des Plantes,
-who used to boldly thrust his arm into holes where he knew snakes were,
-and pull them out,--catching them just behind the head and wrapping the
-tail round his arm,--and place them alive in a cage without ever getting
-bitten;--about M. B----, who, while hunting one day, tripped in the
-coils of an immense trigonocephalus, and ran so fast in his fright that
-the serpent, entangled round his leg, could not bite him;--about M.
-C----, who could catch a fer-de-lance by the tail, and "crack it like a
-whip" until the head would fly off;--about an old white man living in
-the Champ-Flore, whose diet was snake-meat, and who always kept in his
-ajoupa "a keg of salted serpents" (_yon ka sèpent-salé_);--about a
-monster eight feet long which killed, near Morne Rouge, M. Charles
-Fabre's white cat, but was also killed by the cat after she had been
-caught in the folds of the reptile;--about the value of snakes as
-protectors of the sugar-cane and cocoa-shrub against rats;--about an
-unsuccessful effort made, during a plague of rats in Guadeloupe, to
-introduce the fer-de-lance there;--about the alleged power of a
-monstrous toad, the _crapaud-ladre_, to cause the death of the snake
-that swallows it;--and, finally, about the total absence of the idyllic
-and pastoral elements in Martinique literature, as due to the presence
-of reptiles everywhere. "Even the flora and fauna of the country remain
-to a large extent unknown,"--adds the last speaker, an amiable old
-physician of St. Pierre,--"because the existence of the fer-de-lance
-renders all serious research dangerous in the extreme."
-
-My own experiences do not justify my taking part in such a
-conversation;--I never saw alive but two very small specimens of the
-trigonocephalus. People who have passed even a considerable time in
-Martinique may have never seen a fer-de-lance except in a jar of
-alcohol, or as exhibited by negro snake-catchers, tied fast to a bamboo.
-But this is only because strangers rarely travel much in the interior of
-the country, or find themselves on country roads after sundown. It is
-not correct to suppose that snakes are uncommon even in the neighborhood
-of St. Pierre: they are often killed on the bulwarks behind the city and
-on the verge of the Savane; they have been often washed into the streets
-by heavy rains; and many washer-women at the Roxelane have been bitten
-by them. It is considered very dangerous to walk about the bulwarks
-after dark;--for the snakes, which travel only at night, then descend
-from the mornes towards the river. The Jardin des Plantes shelters great
-numbers of the reptiles; and only a few days prior to the writing of
-these lines a colored laborer in the garden was stricken and killed by a
-fer-de-lance measuring one metre and sixty-seven centimetres in length.
-In the interior much larger reptiles are sometimes seen: I saw one
-freshly killed measuring six feet five inches, and thick as a man's leg
-in the middle. There are few planters in the island who have not some of
-their hands bitten during the cane-cutting and cocoa-gathering
-seasons;--the average annual mortality among the class of travailleurs
-from serpent bite alone is probably fifty[33],--always fine young men or
-women in the prime of life. Even among the wealthy whites deaths from
-this cause are less rare than might be supposed: I know one gentleman, a
-rich citizen of St. Pierre, who in ten years lost three relatives by the
-trigonocephalus,--the wound having in each case been received in the
-neighborhood of a vein. When the vein has been pierced, cure is
-impossible.
-
-
-[Footnote 33: "De la piqûre du serpent de la Martinique," par Auguste
-Charriez, Médecin de la Marine. Paris: Moquet, 1875.]
-
-
-
-
-V
-
-
-... We look back over the upreaching yellow fan-spread of cane-fields,
-and winding of tortuous valleys, and the sea expanding beyond an opening
-in the west. It has already broadened surprisingly, the sea,--appears to
-have risen up, not as a horizontal plane, but like an immeasurable azure
-precipice: what will it look like when we shall have reached the top?
-Far down we can distinguish a line of field-hands--the whole _atelier_,
-as it is called, of a plantation--slowly descending a slope, hewing the
-canes as they go. There is a woman to every two men, a binder
-(_amarreuse_): she gathers the canes as they are cut down, binds them
-with their own tough long leaves into a sort of sheaf, and carries them
-away on her head;--the men wield their cutlasses so beautifully that it
-is a delight to watch them. One cannot often enjoy such a spectacle
-nowadays; for the introduction of the piece-work system has destroyed
-the picturesqueness of plantation labor throughout the island, with rare
-exceptions. Formerly the work of cane-cutting resembled the march of an
-army;--first advanced the cutlassers in line, naked to the waist; then
-the amarreuses, the women who tied and carried; and behind these the
-_ka_, the drum,--with a paid _crieur_ or _crieuse_ to lead the
-song;--and lastly the black Commandeur, for general. And in the old
-days, too, it was not unfrequent that the sudden descent of an English
-corsair on the coast converted this soldiery of labor into veritable
-military: more than one attack was repelled by the cutlasses of a
-plantation atelier.
-
-At this height the chatting and chanting can be heard, though not
-distinctly enough to catch the words. Suddenly a voice, powerful as a
-bugle, rings out,--the voice of the Commandeur: he walks along the line,
-looking, with his cutlass under his arm. I ask one of our guides what
-the cry is:--
-
---"_Y ka coumandé yo pouend gàde pou sèpent_," he replies. (He is
-telling them to keep watch for serpents.) The nearer the cutlassers
-approach the end of their task, the greater the danger: for the
-reptiles, retreating before them to the last clump of cane, become
-massed there, and will fight desperately. Regularly as the
-ripening-time, Death gathers his toll of human lives from among the
-workers. But when one falls, another steps into the vacant
-place,--perhaps the Commandeur himself: these dark swordsmen never
-retreat; all the blades swing swiftly as before; there is hardly any
-emotion; the travailleur is a fatalist....[34]
-
-
-[Footnote 34: M. Francard Baya delle, overseer of the Presbourg
-plantation at Grande Anse, tells me that the most successful treatment
-of snakebite consists in severe local cupping and bleeding; the
-immediate application of twenty to thirty leeches (when these can be
-obtained), and the administration of alkali as an internal medicine. He
-has saved several lives by these methods.
-
-The negro _panseur's_ method is much more elaborate and, to some
-extent, mysterious. He cups and bleeds, using a small _couï_, or
-half-calabash,  in lieu of a glass; and then applies cataplasms of
-herbs,--orange-leaves, cinnamon-leaves, clove-leaves, _chardon-béni,
-charpentier_, perhaps twenty other things, all mingled together;--this
-poulticing being continued every day for a month. Meantime the patient
-is given all sorts of absurd things to drink, in tafia and sour-orange
-juice--such as old clay pipes ground to powder, or _the head of the
-fer-de-lance itself_, roasted dry and pounded.... The plantation negro
-has no faith in any other system of cure but that of the panseur;--he
-refuses to let the physician try to save him, and will scarcely submit
-to be treated even by an experienced white overseer.]
-
-
-
-
-VI
-
-
-... We enter the _grands-bois_,--the primitive forest,--the "high
-woods."
-
-As seen with a field-glass from St. Pierre, these woods present only the
-appearance of a band of moss belting the volcano, and following all its
-corrugations,--so densely do the leafy crests intermingle. But on
-actually entering them, you find yourself at once in green twilight,
-among lofty trunks uprising everywhere like huge pillars wrapped with
-vines;--and the inter-spaces between these bulks are all occupied by
-lianas and parasitic creepers,--some monstrous,--veritable
-parasite-trees,--ascending at all angles, or dropping straight down from
-the tallest crests to take root again. The effect in the dim light is
-that of innumerable black ropes and cables of varying thicknesses
-stretched taut from the soil to the tree-tops, and also from branch to
-branch, like rigging. There are rare and remarkable trees
-here,--acomats, courbarils, balatas, ceibas or fromages, acajous,
-gommiers;--hundreds have been cut down by charcoal-makers; but the
-forest is still grand. It is to be regretted that the Government has
-placed no restriction upon the barbarous destruction of trees by the
-_charbonniers_, which is going on throughout the island. Many valuable
-woods are rapidly disappearing. The courbaril, yielding a fine-grained,
-heavy, chocolate-colored timber; the balata, giving a wood even heavier,
-denser, and darker; the acajou, producing a rich red wood, with a strong
-scent of cedar; the bois-de-fer; the bois d'Inde; the superb
-acomat,--all used to flourish by tens of thousands upon these volcanic
-slopes, whose productiveness is eighteen times greater than that of the
-richest European soil. All Martinique furniture used to be made of
-native woods; and the colored cabinet-makers still produce work which
-would probably astonish New York or London manufacturers. But today the
-island exports no more hard woods: it has even been found necessary to
-import much from neighboring islands;--and yet the destruction of
-forests still goes on. The domestic fabrication of charcoal from
-forest-trees has been estimated at 1,400,000 hectolitres per annum.
-Primitive forest still covers the island to the extent of 21.37 per
-cent; but to find precious woods now, one must climb heights like those
-of Pelée and Carbet, or penetrate into the mountains of the interior.
-
-Most common formerly on these slopes were the gommiers, from which
-canoes of a single piece, forty-five feet long by seven wide, used to be
-made. There are plenty of gommiers still; but the difficulty of
-transporting them to the shore has latterly caused a demand for the
-gommiers of Dominica. The dimensions of canoes now made from these trees
-rarely exceed fifteen feet in length by eighteen inches in width: the
-art of making them is an inheritance from the ancient Caribs. First the
-trunk is shaped to the form of the canoe, and pointed at both ends; it
-is then hollowed out. The width of the hollow does not exceed six inches
-at the widest part; but the cavity is then filled with wet sand, which
-in the course of some weeks widens the excavation by its weight, and
-gives the boat perfect form. Finally gunwales of plank are fastened on;
-seats are put in--generally four;--and no boat is more durable or more
-swift.
-
-
-... We climb. There is a trace rather than a footpath;--no visible soil,
-only vegetable detritus, with roots woven over it in every direction.
-The foot never rests on a flat surface,--only upon surfaces of roots;
-and these are covered, like every protruding branch along the route,
-with a slimy green moss, slippery as ice. Unless accustomed to walking
-in tropical woods, one will fall at every step. In a little while I find
-it impossible to advance. Our nearest guide, observing my predicament,
-turns, and without moving the bundle upon his head, cuts and trims me an
-excellent staff with a few strokes of his cutlass. This staff not only
-saves pie from dangerous slips, but also serves at times to probe the
-way; for the further we proceed, the vaguer the path becomes. It was
-made by the _chasseurs-de-choux_ (cabbage-hunters),--the negro
-mountaineers who live by furnishing heads of young cabbage-palm to the
-city markets; and these men also keep it open,--otherwise the woods
-would grow over it in a month. Two chasseurs-de-choux stride past as we
-advance, with their freshly gathered palm-salad upon their heads,
-wrapped in cachibou or balisier leaves, and tied with lianas. The
-palmiste-franc reaches a stature of one hundred feet; but the young
-trees are so eagerly sought for by the chasseurs-de-choux that in these
-woods few reach a height of even twelve feet before being cut.
-
-... Walking becomes more difficult;--there seems no termination to the
-grands-bois: always the same faint green light, the same rude natural
-stair-way of slippery roots,--half the time hidden by fern leaves and
-vines. Sharp ammoniacal scents are in the air; a dew, cold as ice-water,
-drenches our clothing. Unfamiliar insects make trilling noises in dark
-places; and now and then a series of soft clear notes ring out, almost
-like a thrush's whistle: the chant of a little tree-frog. The path
-becomes more and more overgrown; and but for the constant excursions of
-the cabbage-hunters, we should certainly have to cutlass every foot of
-the way through creepers and brambles. More and more amazing also is the
-interminable interweaving of roots: the whole forest is thus spun
-together--not underground so much as overground. These tropical trees do
-not strike deep, although able to climb steep slopes of porphyry and
-basalt: they send out great far-reaching webs of roots,--each such web
-interknotting with others all round it, and these in turn with further
-ones; while between their reticulations lianas ascend and descend: and a
-nameless multitude of shrubs as tough as india-rubber push up, together
-with mosses, grasses, and ferns. Square miles upon square miles of woods
-are thus interlocked and interbound into one mass solid enough to resist
-the pressure of a hurricane; and where there is no path already made,
-entrance into them can only be effected by the most dexterous
-cutlassing.
-
-An inexperienced stranger might be puzzled to understand how this
-cutlassing is done. It is no easy feat to sever with one blow a liana
-thick as a man's arm; the trained cutlasser does it without apparent
-difficulty: moreover, he cuts horizontally, so as to prevent the severed
-top presenting a sharp angle and proving afterwards dangerous. He never
-appears to strike hard,--only give light taps with his blade, which
-flickers continually about him as he moves. Our own guides in cutlassing
-are not at all inconvenienced by their loads; they walk perfectly
-upright, never stumble, never slip, never hesitate, and do not even seem
-to perspire: their bare feet are prehensile. Some creoles in our party,
-habituated to the woods, walk nearly as well in their shoes; but they
-carry no loads.
-
-... At last we are rejoiced to observe that the trees are becoming
-smaller;--there are no more colossal trunks;--there are frequent
-glimpses of sky: the sun has risen well above the peaks, and sends
-occasional beams down through the leaves. Ten minutes, and we reach a
-clear space,--a wild savane, very steep, above which looms a higher belt
-of woods. Here we take another short rest.
-
-Northward the view is cut off by a ridge covered with herbaceous
-vegetation;--but to the south-west it is open, over a gorge of which
-both sides are shrouded in sombre green--crests of trees forming a solid
-curtain against the sun. Beyond the outer and lower cliff
-valley-surfaces appear miles away, flinging up broad gleams of
-cane-gold; further off greens disappear into blues, and the fantastic
-masses of Carbet loom up far higher than before. St. Pierre, in a curve
-of the coast, is a little red-and-yellow semicircular streak, less than
-two inches long. The interspaces between far mountain chains,--masses of
-pyramids, cones, single and double humps, queer blue angles as of raised
-knees under coverings,--resemble misty lakes: they are filled with
-brume;--the sea-line has vanished altogether. Only the horizon,
-enormously heightened, can be discerned as a circling band of faint
-yellowish light,--auroral, ghostly,--almost on a level with the tips of
-the Pitons. Between this vague horizon and the shore, the sea no longer
-looks like sea, but like a second hollow sky reversed. All the landscape
-has unreal beauty:--there are no keen lines; there are no definite
-beginnings or endings; the tints are half-colors only;--peaks rise
-suddenly from mysteries of bluish fog as from a flood; land melts into
-sea the same hue. It gives one the idea of some great aquarelle
-unfinished,--abandoned before tones were deepened and details brought
-out.
-
-
-
-
-VII
-
-
-We are overlooking from this height the birthplaces of several rivers;
-and the rivers of Pelée are the clearest and the coolest of the island.
-
-From whatever direction the trip be undertaken, the ascent of the
-volcano must be made over some one of those many immense ridges sloping
-from the summit to the sea west, north, and east,--like buttresses eight
-to ten miles long,--formed by ancient lava-torrents. Down the deep
-gorges between them the cloud-fed rivers run,--receiving as they descend
-the waters of countless smaller streams gushing from either side of the
-ridge. There are also cold springs,--one of which furnishes St. Pierre
-with her _Eau-de-Gouyave_ (guava-water), which is always sweet, clear,
-and cool in the very hottest weather. But the water of almost every one
-of the seventy-five principal rivers of Martinique is cool and clear and
-sweet. And these rivers are curious in their way. Their average fall has
-been estimated at nine inches to every six feet;--many are
-cataracts;--the Rivière de Case-Navire has a fall of nearly 150 feet to
-every fifty yards of its upper course. Naturally these streams cut for
-themselves channels of immense depth. Where they flow through forests
-and between monies, their banks vary from 1200 to 1600 feet high,--so as
-to render their beds inaccessible; and many enter the sea through a
-channel of rock with perpendicular walls from 150 to 200 feet high.
-Their waters are necessarily shallow in normal weather; but during
-rainstorms they become torrents thunderous and terrific beyond
-description. In order to comprehend their sudden swelling, one must know
-what tropical rain is. Col. Boyer Peyreleau, in 1823, estimated the
-annual rainfall in these colonies at 150 inches on the coast, to 350 on
-the mountains,--while the annual fall at Paris was only eighteen inches.
-The character of such rain is totally different from that of rain in the
-temperate zone: the drops are enormous, heavy like hailstones,--one will
-spatter over the circumference of a saucer!--and the shower roars so
-that people cannot hear each other speak without shouting. When there is
-a true storm, no roofing seems able to shut out the cataract; the
-best-built houses leak in all directions; and objects but a short
-distance off become invisible behind the heavy curtain of water. The
-ravages of such rain may be imagined! Roads are cut away in an hour;
-trees are overthrown as if blown down;--for there are few West Indian
-trees which plunge their roots even as low as two feet; they merely
-extend them over a large diameter; and isolated trees will actually
-slide under rain. The swelling of rivers is so sudden that washer-women
-at work in the Roxelane and other streams have been swept away and
-drowned without the least warning of their danger; the shower occurring
-seven or eight miles off.
-
-Most of these rivers are well stocked with fish, of which the _tétart,
-banane, loche_, and _dormeur_ are the principal varieties. The tétart
-(best of all) and the loche climb the torrents to the height of 2500 and
-even 3000 feet: they have a kind of pneumatic sucker, which enables them
-to cling to rocks. Under stones in the lower basins crawfish of the most
-extraordinary size are taken; some will measure thirty-six inches from
-claw to tail. And at all the river-mouths, during July and August, are
-caught vast numbers of _titiri_[35],--tiny white fish, of which a
-thousand might be put into one teacup. They are delicious when served in
-oil,--infinitely more delicate than the sardine. Some regard them as a
-particular species: others believe them to be only the fry of larger
-fish,--as their periodical appearance and disappearance would seem to
-indicate. They are often swept by millions into the city of St. Pierre,
-with the flow of mountain-water which purifies the streets:
-then you will see them swarming in the gutters, fountains, and
-bathing-basins;--and on Saturdays, when the water is temporarily shut
-off to allow of the pipes being cleansed, the titiri may die in the
-gutters in such numbers as to make the air offensive.
-
-The mountain-crab, celebrated for its periodical migrations, is also
-found at considerable heights. Its numbers appear to have been
-diminished extraordinarily by its consumption as an article of negro
-diet; but in certain islands those armies of crabs described by the old
-writers are still occasionally to be seen. The Père Du Tertre relates
-that in 1640, at St. Christophe, thirty sick emigrants, temporarily left
-on the beach, were attacked and devoured alive during the night by a
-similar species of crab. "They descended from the mountains in such
-multitude," he tells us, "that they were heaped higher than houses over
-the bodies of the poor wretches... whose bones were picked so clean that
-not one speck of flesh could be found upon them."...
-
-
-[Footnote 35: The sheet-lightnings which play during the nights
-of July  and August are termed in creole _Zéclai-tiriri_, or
-"titiri-lightnings";--it is believed these give notice that the titiri
-have begun to swarm in the rivers. Among the colored population there
-exists an idea of some queer relation between the lightning and the
-birth of the little fish;--it is commonly said, "Zéclai-à ka fai yo
-écloré" (the lightning hatches them).]
-
-
-
-
-VIII
-
-
-... We enter the upper belt of woods--green twilight again. There are as
-many lianas as ever: but they are less massive in stem;--the trees,
-which are stunted, stand closer together; and the web-work of roots is
-finer and more thickly spun. These are called the _petits-bois_ (little
-woods), in contradistinction to the grands-bois, or high woods.
-Multitudes of balisiers, dwarf-palms, arborescent ferns, wild guavas,
-mingle with the lower growths on either side of the path, which has
-narrowed to the breadth of a wheel-rut, and is nearly concealed by
-protruding grasses and fern leaves. Never does the sole of the foot
-press upon a surface large as itself,--always the slippery backs of
-roots crossing at all angles, like loop-traps, over sharp fragments of
-volcanic rock or pumice-stone. There are abrupt descents, sudden
-acclivities, mud-holes, and fissures;--one grasps at the ferns on both
-sides to keep from falling; and some ferns are spiked sometimes on the
-under surface, and tear the hands. But the barefooted guides stride on
-rapidly, erect as ever under their loads,--chopping off with their
-cutlasses any branches that hang low. There are beautiful flowers
-here,--various unfamiliar species of lobelia;--pretty red and yellow
-blossoms belonging to plants which the creole physician calls
-_Bromeliaceœ_; and a plant like the _Guy Lussacia_ of Brazil, with
-violet-red petals. There is an indescribable multitude of ferns,--a very
-museum of ferns! The doctor, who is a great woodsman, says that he never
-makes a trip to the hills without finding some new kind of fern; and he
-had already a collection of several hundred.
-
-The route is continually growing steeper, and makes a number of turns
-and windings: we reach another bit of savane, where we have to walk over
-black-pointed stones that resemble slag;--then more petits-bois, still
-more dwarfed, then another opening. The naked crest of the volcano
-appears like a peaked precipice, dark-red, with streaks of green, over a
-narrow but terrific chasm on the left: we are almost on a level with the
-crater, but must make a long circuit to reach it, through a wilderness
-of stunted timber and bush. The creoles call this undergrowth _razié_:
-it is really only a prolongation of the low jungle which carpets the
-high forests below, with this difference, that there are fewer creepers
-and much more fern.... Suddenly we reach a black gap in the path about
-thirty inches wide--half hidden by the tangle of leaves,--_La Fente._ It
-is a volcanic fissure which divides the whole ridge, and is said to have
-no bottom: for fear of a possible slip, the guides insist upon holding
-our hands while we cross it. Happily there are no more such clefts; but
-there are mud-holes, snags, roots, and loose rocks beyond counting.
-Least disagreeable are the _boubiers_, in which you sink to your knees
-in black or gray slime. Then the path descends into open light
-again;--and we find ourselves at the Étang,--in the dead Crater of the
-Three Palmistes.
-
-
-An immense pool, completely encircled by high green walls of rock, which
-shut out all further view, and shoot up, here and there, into cones, or
-rise into queer lofty humps and knobs. One of these elevations at the
-opposite side has almost the shape of a blunt horn: it is the Morne de
-la Croix. The scenery is at once imposing and sinister: the shapes
-towering above the lake and reflected in its still surface have the
-weirdness of things seen in photographs of the moon. Clouds are circling
-above them and between them;--one descends to the water, haunts us a
-moment, blurring everything; then rises again. We have travelled too
-slow; the clouds have had time to gather.
-
-I look in vain for the Three Palmistes which gave the crater a name:
-they were destroyed long ago. But there are numbers of young ones
-scattered through the dense ferny covering of the lake-slopes,--just
-showing their heads like bunches of great dark-green feathers.
-
---The estimate of Dr. Rufz, made in 1851, and the estimate of the last
-"Annuaire" regarding the circumference of the lake, are evidently both
-at fault. That of the "Annuaire," 150 metres, is a gross error: the
-writer must have meant the diameter,--following Rufz, who estimated the
-circumference at something over 300 paces. As we find it, the Étang,
-which is nearly circular, must measure 200 yards across;--perhaps it has
-been greatly swollen by the extraordinary rains of this summer. Our
-guides say that the little iron cross projecting from the water about
-two yards off was high and dry on the shore last season. At present
-there is only one narrow patch of grassy bank on which we can rest,
-between the water and the walls of the crater.
-
-The lake is perfectly clear, with a bottom of yellowish shallow mud,
-which rests--according to investigations made in 1851--upon a mass of
-pumice-stone mixed in places with ferruginous sand; and the yellow mud
-itself is a detritus of pumice-stone. We strip for a swim.
-
-Though at an elevation of nearly 5000 feet, this water is not so cold as
-that of the Roxelane, nor of other rivers of the north-west and
-north-east coasts. It has an agreeable fresh taste, like dew. Looking
-down into it, I see many lame of the maringouin, or large mosquito: no
-fish. The maringouins themselves are troublesome,--whirring around us
-and stinging. On striking out for the middle, one is surprised to feel
-the water growing slightly warmer. The committee of investigation in
-1851 found the temperature of the lake, in spite of a north wind, 20.5
-Centigrade, while that of the air was but 19 (about 69 F. for the water,
-and 66.2 for the air). The depth in the centre is over six feet; the
-average is scarcely four.
-
-Regaining the bank, we prepare to ascend the Morne de la Croix. The
-circular path by which it is commonly reached is now under water; and we
-have to wade up to our waists. All the while clouds keep passing over us
-in great slow whirls. Some are white and half-transparent; others opaque
-and dark gray;--a dark cloud passing through a white one looks like a
-goblin. Gaining the opposite shore, we find a very rough path over
-splintered stone, ascending between the thickest fern-growths possible
-to imagine. The general tone of this fern is dark green; but there are
-paler cloudings of yellow and pink,--due to the varying age of the
-leaves, which are pressed into a cushion three or four feet high, and
-almost solid enough to sit upon. About two hundred and fifty yards from
-the crater edge, the path rises above this tangle, and zigzags up the
-morne, which now appears twice as lofty as from the lake, where we had a
-curiously foreshortened view of it. It then looked scarcely a hundred
-feet high; it is more than double that. The cone is green to the top
-with moss, low grasses, small fern, and creeping pretty plants, like
-violets, with big carmine flowers. The path is a black line: the rock
-laid bare by it looks as if burned to the core. We have now to use our
-hands in climbing; but the low thick ferns give a good hold. Out of
-breath, and drenched in perspiration, we reach the apex,--the highest
-point of the island. But we are curtained about with clouds,--moving in
-dense white and gray masses: we cannot see fifty feet away.
-
-The top of the peak has a slightly slanting surface of perhaps twenty
-square yards, very irregular in outline;--southwardly the morne pitches
-sheer into a frightful chasm, between the converging of two of those
-long corrugated ridges already described as buttressing the volcano on
-all sides. Through a cloud-rift we can see another crater-lake twelve
-hundred feet below--said to be five times larger than the Étang we have
-just left: it is also of more irregular outline. This is called the
-_Étang Sec_, or "Dry Pool," because dry in less rainy seasons. It
-occupies a more ancient crater, and is very rarely visited: the path
-leading to it is difficult and dangerous,--a natural ladder of roots and
-lianas over a series of precipices. Behind us the Crater of the Three
-Palmistes now looks no larger than the surface on which we stand;--over
-its further boundary we can see the wall of another gorge, in which
-there is a third crater-lake. West and north are green peakings, ridges,
-and high lava walls steep as fortifications. All this we can only note
-in the intervals between passing of clouds. As yet there is no landscape
-visible southward;--we sit down and wait.
-
-
-
-
-IX
-
-
-... Two crosses are planted nearly at the verge of the precipice; a
-small one of iron; and a large one of wood--probably the same put up by
-the Abbé Lespinasse during the panic of 1851, after the eruption. This
-has been splintered to pieces by a flash of lightning; and the fragments
-are clumsily united with cord. There is also a little tin plate let into
-a slit in a black post: it bears a date,--_8 Avril, 1867_.... The
-volcanic vents, which were active in 1851, are not visible from the
-peak: they are in the gorge descending from it, at a point nearly on a
-level with the Étang Sec.
-
-The ground gives out a peculiar hollow sound when tapped, and is covered
-with a singular lichen,--all composed of round overlapping leaves about
-one-eighth of an inch in diameter, pale green, and tough as fish-scales.
-Here and there one sees a beautiful branching growth, like a mass of
-green coral: it is a gigantic moss. _Cabane-Jésus_ ("bed-of-Jesus") the
-patois name is: at Christmas-time, in all the churches, those decorated
-cribs in which the image of the Child-Saviour is laid are filled with
-it. The creeping crimson violet is also here. Fire-flies with
-bronze-green bodies are crawling about;--I notice also small frogs,
-large gray crickets, and a species of snail with a black shell. A
-solitary humming-bird passes, with a beautiful blue head, flaming like
-sapphire.
-
-All at once the peak vibrates to a tremendous sound from somewhere
-below.... It is only a peal of thunder; but it startled at first,
-because the mountain rumbles and grumbles occasionally.... From the
-wilderness of ferns about the lake a sweet long low whistle
-comes--three times;--a _siffleur-de-montagne_ has its nest there.
-
-There is a rain-storm over the woods beneath us: clouds now hide
-everything but the point on which we rest; the crater of the Palmistes
-becomes invisible. But it is only for a little while that we are thus
-befogged: a wind conies, blows the clouds over us, lifts them up and
-folds them like a drapery, and slowly whirls them away northward. And
-for the first time the view is clear over the intervening gorge,--now
-spanned by the rocket-leap of a perfect rainbow.
-
-... Valleys and mornes, peaks and ravines,--succeeding each other
-swiftly as surge succeeds surge in a storm,--a weirdly tossed world, but
-beautiful as it is weird: all green the foreground, with all tints of
-green, shadowing off to billowy distances of purest blue. The sea-line
-remains invisible as ever: you know where it is only by the zone of pale
-light ringing the double sphericity of sky and ocean. And in this double
-blue void the island seems to hang suspended: far peaks seem to come up
-from nowhere, to rest on nothing--like forms of mirage. Useless to
-attempt photography;--distances take the same color as the sea.
-Vauclin's truncated mass is recognizable only by the shape of its indigo
-shadows. All is vague, vertiginous;--the land still seems to quiver with
-the prodigious forces that upheaved it.
-
-High over all this billowing and peaking tower the Pitons of Carbet,
-gem-violet through the vapored miles,--the tallest one filleted with a
-single soft white band of cloud. Through all the wonderful chain of the
-Antilles you might seek in vain for other peaks exquisite of form as
-these. Their beauty no less surprises the traveller to-day than it did
-Columbus three hundred and eighty-six years ago, when--on the thirteenth
-day of June, 1502--his caravel first sailed into sight of them, and he
-asked his Indian guide the name of the unknown land, and the names of
-those marvellous shapes. Then, according to Pedro Martyr de Anghiera,
-the Indian answered that the name of the island was Madiana; that those
-peaks had been venerated from immemorial time by the ancient peoples of
-the archipelago as the birthplace of the human race; and that the first
-brown habitants of Madiana, having been driven from their natural
-heritage by the man-eating pirates of the south--the cannibal
-Caribs,--remembered and mourned for their sacred mountains, and gave the
-names of them, for a memory, to the loftiest summits of their new
-home,--Hayti.... Surely never was fairer spot hallowed by the legend of
-man's nursing-place than the valley blue-shadowed by those
-peaks,--worthy, for their gracious femininity of shape, to seem the
-visible breasts of the All-nourishing Mother,--dreaming under this
-tropic sun.
-
-Touching the zone of pale light north-east, appears a beautiful peaked
-silhouette,--Dominica. We had hoped to perceive Saint Lucia; but the
-atmosphere is too heavily charged with vapor to-day. How magnificent
-must be the view on certain extraordinary days, when it reaches from
-Antigua to the Grenadines--over a range of three hundred miles! But the
-atmospheric conditions which allow of such a spectacle are rare indeed.
-As a general rule, even in the most unclouded West Indian weather, the
-loftiest peaks fade into the light at a distance of one hundred miles.
-
-A sharp ridge covered with fern cuts off the view of the northern
-slopes: one must climb it to look down upon Macouba. Macouba occupies
-the steepest slope of Pelée, and the grimmest part of the coast: its
-little _chef-lieu_ is industrially famous for the manufacture of native
-tobacco, and historically for the ministrations of Père Labat, who
-rebuilt its church. Little change has taken place in the parish since
-his time. "Do you know Macouba?" asks a native writer;--"it is not
-Pelion upon Ossa, but ten or twelve Pelions side by side with ten or
-twelve Ossæ, interseparated by prodigious ravines. Men can speak to
-each other from places whence, by rapid walking, it would require hours
-to meet;--to travel there is to experience on dry land the sensation of
-the sea."
-
-With the diminution of the warmth provoked by the exertion of climbing,
-you begin to notice how cool it feels;--you could almost doubt the
-testimony of your latitude. Directly east is Senegambia: we are well
-south of Timbuctoo and the Sahara,--on a line with southern India. The
-ocean has cooled the winds; at this altitude the rarity of the air is
-northern; but in the valleys below the vegetation is African. The best
-alimentary plants, the best forage, the flowers of the gardens, are of
-Guinea;--the graceful date-palms are from the Atlas region: those
-tamarinds, whose thick shade stifles all other vegetal life beneath it,
-are from Senegal. Only, in the touch of the air, the vapory colors of
-distance, the shapes of the hills, there is a something not of Africa:
-that strange fascination which has given to the island its poetic creole
-name,--_le Pays des Revenants._ And the charm is as puissant in our own
-day as it was more than two hundred years ago, when Père Du Tertre
-wrote:--"I have never met one single man, nor one single woman, of all
-those who came back therefrom, in whom I have not remarked a most
-passionate desire to return thereunto."
-
-Time and familiarity do not weaken the charm, either for those born
-among these scenes who never voyaged beyond their native island, or for
-those to whom the streets of Paris and the streets of St. Pierre are
-equally well known. Even at a time when Martinique had been forsaken by
-hundreds of her ruined planters, and the paradise-life of the old days
-had become only a memory to embitter exile,--a Creole writes:--
-
---"Let there suddenly open before you one of those vistas, or anses,
-with colonnades of cocoa-palm--at the end of which you see smoking the
-chimney of a sugar-mill, and catch a glimpse of the hamlet of negro
-cabins (_cases_);--or merely picture to yourself one of the most
-ordinary, most trivial scenes: nets being hauled by two ranks of
-fishermen; a canot waiting for the embellie to make a dash for the
-beach; even a negro bending under the weight of a basket of fruits, and
-running along the shore to get to market;--and illuminate that with the
-light of our sun! What landscapes!--O Salvator Rosa! O Claude
-Lorrain,--if I had your pencil!... Well do I remember the day on which,
-after twenty years of absence, I found myself again in presence of these
-wonders;--I feel once more the thrill of delight that made all my body
-tremble, the tears that came to my eyes. It was my land, my own land,
-that appeared so beautiful."...[36]
-
-
-[Footnote 36: Dr. E. Rufz: "Études historiques," vol. I, p. 180.]
-
-
-
-
-X
-
-
-At the beginning, while gazing south, east, west, to the rim of the
-world, all laughed, shouted, interchanged the quick delight of new
-impressions: every face was radiant.... Now all look serious;--none
-speak. The first physical joy of finding oneself on this point in violet
-air, exalted above the hills, soon yields to other emotions inspired by
-the mighty vision and the colossal peace of the heights. Dominating all,
-I think, is the consciousness of the awful antiquity of what one is
-looking upon,--such a sensation, perhaps, as of old found utterance in
-that tremendous question of the Book of Job:--"_Wast thou brought forth
-before the hills?_"
-
-
-[Illustration: RUINS, ST. PIERRE
-_Decked out with flowers grayed by the passing years,
-these crumbling walls look immeasurably old._]
-
-
-... And the blue multitude of the peaks, the perpetual congregation of
-the mornes, seem to chorus in the vast resplendence,--telling of
-Nature's eternal youth, and the passionless permanence of that about us
-and beyond us and beneath,--until something like the fulness of a great
-grief begins to weigh at the heart.... For all this astonishment of
-beauty, all this majesty of light and form and color, will surely
-endure,--marvellous as now,--after we shall have lain down to sleep
-where no dreams come, and may never arise from the dust of our rest to
-look upon it.
-
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-'TI CANOTIÉ
-
-
-I
-
-
-One might almost say that commercial time in St. Pierre is measured by
-cannon-shots,--by the signal-guns of steamers. Every such report
-announces an event of extreme importance to the whole population. To the
-merchant it is a notification that mails, money, and goods have
-arrived;--to consuls and Government officials it gives notice of fees
-and dues to be collected;--for the host of lightermen, longshoremen,
-port laborers of all classes, it promises work and pay;--for all it
-signifies the arrival of food. The island does not feed itself: cattle,
-salt meats, hams, lard, flour, cheese, dried fish, all come from
-abroad,--particularly from America. And in the minds of the colored
-population the American steamer is so intimately associated with the
-idea of those great tin cans in which food-stuffs are brought from the
-United States, that the onomatope applied to the can, because of the
-sound outgiven by it when tapped,--_bom!_--is also applied to the ship
-itself. The English or French or Belgian steamer, however large,
-is only known as _packett-à, batiment-là_; but the American
-steamer is always the "bom-ship"--_batiment-bom-à_; or, the
-"food-ship"--_batiment-mangé-à._ ... You hear women and men asking
-each other, as the shock of the gun flaps through all the town, "_Mil
-godé ça qui là, chè?_" And if the answer be, "_Mais c'est bom-là,
-chè,--bom-mangé-à ka rivé_" (Why, it is the bom, dear,--the food-bom
-that has come), great is the exultation.
-
-Again, because of the sound of her whistle, we find a steamer called in
-this same picturesque idiom, _batiment-cône_,--"the horn-ship." There
-is even a song, of which the refrain is:--
-
-
-"Bom-là rivé, chè,--
-Batiment-cône-là rivé."
-
-
-... But of all the various classes of citizens, those most joyously
-excited by the coming of a great steamer, whether she be a "bom" or
-not,--are the '_ti canotié_, who swarm out immediately in little canoes
-of their own manufacture to dive for coins which passengers gladly throw
-into the water for the pleasure of witnessing the graceful spectacle. No
-sooner does a steamer drop anchor--unless the water be very rough
-indeed--than she is surrounded by a fleet of the funniest little boats
-imaginable, full of naked urchins screaming creole.
-
-
-These _'ti canotié_--these little canoe-boys and professional
-divers--are, for the most part, sons of boatmen of color, the real
-canotiers. I cannot find who first invented the '_ti canot_: the shape
-and dimensions of the little canoe are fixed according to a tradition
-several generations old; and no improvements upon the original model
-seem to have ever been attempted, with the sole exception of a tiny
-water-tight box contrived sometimes at one end, in which the _palettes_,
-or miniature paddles, and various other trifles may be stowed away. The
-actual cost of material for a canoe of this kind seldom exceeds
-twenty-five or thirty cents; and, nevertheless, the number of canoes is
-not very large--I doubt if there be more than fifteen in the harbor;--as
-the families of Martinique boatmen are all so poor that twenty-five sous
-are difficult to spare, in spite of the certainty that the little son
-can earn fifty times the amount within a month after owning a canoe.
-
-For the manufacture of a canoe an American lard-box or kerosene-oil box
-is preferred by reason of its shape; but any well-constructed
-shipping-case of small size would serve the purpose. The top is removed;
-the sides and the corners of the bottom are sawn out at certain angles;
-and the pieces removed are utilized for the sides of the bow and
-stern,--sometimes also in making the little box for the paddles, or
-palettes, which are simply thin pieces of tough wood about the form and
-size of a cigar-box lid. Then the little boat is tarred and varnished:
-it cannot sink,--though it is quite easily upset. There are no seats.
-The boys (there are usually two to each canot) simply squat down in the
-bottom,--facing each other. They can paddle with surprising swiftness
-over a smooth sea; and it is a very pretty sight to witness one of their
-prize contests in racing,--which take place every 14th of July....
-
-
-
-
-II
-
-
-... It was five o'clock in the afternoon: the horizon beyond the harbor
-was turning lemon-color;--and a thin warm wind began to come in weak
-puffs from the south-west,--the first breaths to break the immobility of
-the tropical air. Sails of vessels becalmed at the entrance of the bay
-commenced to flap lazily: they might belly after sundown.
-
-The _La Guayra_ was in port, lying well out: her mountainous iron mass
-rising high above the modest sailing craft moored in her
-vicinity,--barks and brigantines and brigs and schooners and
-barkentines. She had lain before the town the whole afternoon,
-surrounded by the entire squadron of canots; and the boys were still
-circling about her flanks, although she had got up steam and was lifting
-her anchor. They had been very lucky, indeed, that afternoon,--all the
-little canotiers;--and even many yellow lads, not fortunate enough to
-own canoes, had swum out to her in hope of sharing the silver shower
-falling from her saloon-deck. Some of these, tired out, were resting
-themselves by sitting on the slanting cables of neighboring ships.
-Perched naked thus,--balancing in the sun, against the blue of sky or
-water, their slender bodies took such orange from the mellowing light as
-to seem made of some self-luminous substance,--flesh of sea-fairies....
-
-Suddenly the _La Guayra_ opened her steam-throat and uttered such a moo
-that all the mornes cried out for at least a minute after;--and the
-little fellows perched on the cables of the sailing craft tumbled into
-the sea at the sound and struck out for shore. Then the water all at
-once burst backward in immense frothing swirls from beneath the stem of
-the steamer; and there arose such a heaving as made all the little
-canoes dance. The _La Guayra_ was moving. She moved slowly at first,
-making a great fuss as she turned round: then she began to settle down
-to her journey very majestically,--just making the water pitch a little
-behind her, as the hem of a woman's robe tosses lightly at her heels
-while she walks.
-
-And, contrary to custom, some of the canoes followed after her. A dark
-handsome man, wearing an immense Panama hat, and jewelled rings upon his
-hands, was still throwing money; and still the boys dived for it. But
-only one of each crew now plunged; for, though the _La Guayra_ was yet
-moving slowly, it was a severe strain to follow her, and there was no
-time to be lost.
-
-The captain of the little band--black Maximilien, ten years old, and his
-comrade Stéphane--nicknamed _Ti Chabin_, because of his bright hair,--a
-slim little yellow boy of eleven--led the pursuit, crying always,
-"_Encò, Missié,--encò!_"...
-
-The _La Guayra_ had gained fully two hundred yards when the handsome
-passenger made his final largess,--proving himself quite an expert in
-flinging coin. The piece fell far short of the boys, but near enough to
-distinctly betray a yellow shimmer as it twirled to the water. That was
-gold!
-
-In another minute the leading canoe had reached the spot, the other
-canotiers voluntarily abandoning the quest,--for it was little use to
-contend against Maximilien and Stéphane, who had won all the canoe
-contests last 14th of July. Stéphane, who was the better diver,
-plunged.
-
-He was much longer below than usual, came up at quite a distance, panted
-as he regained the canoe, and rested his arms upon it. The water was so
-deep there, he could not reach the coin the first time, though he could
-see it: he was going to try again,--it was gold, sure enough.
-
---"_Fouinq! ça fond içitt!_" he gasped.
-
-Maximilien felt all at once uneasy. Very deep water, and perhaps sharks.
-And sunset not far off! The _La Guayra_ was diminishing in the offing.
-
---"_Boug-là 'lé fai nou néyé!--laissé y, Stéphane!_" he cried.
-(The fellow wants to drown us. _Laissé_--leave it alone.)
-
-But Stéphane had recovered breath, and was evidently resolved to try
-again. It was gold!
-
---"_Mais ça c'est lò!_"
-
---"_Assez, non!_" screamed Maximilien. "_Pa plongé ncò, moin ka di ou!
-Ah! foute!_"...
-
-Stéphane had dived again!
-
-... And where were the others? "_Bon-Dié, gadé oti yo yé!_" They were
-almost out of sight,--tiny specks moving shoreward.... The _La Guayra_
-now seemed no bigger than the little packet running between St. Pierre
-and Fort-de-France.
-
-Up came Stéphane again, at a still greater distance than
-before,--holding high the yellow coin in one hand. He made for the
-canoe, and Maximilien paddled towards him and helped him in. Blood was
-streaming from the little diver's nostrils, and blood colored the water
-he spat from his mouth.
-
---"_Ah! moin té ka di ou laissé y!_" cried Maximilien, in anger and
-alarm.... "_Gàdé, godé sang-à ka coulé nans nez ou,--nans bouche
-ou!... Mi oti lézautt!_"
-
-_Lézautt_, the rest, were no longer visible.
-
---"_Et mi oti nou yé!_" cried Maximilien again. They had never ventured
-so far from shore.
-
-But Stéphane answered only, "_C'est lò!_" For the first time in his
-life he held a piece of gold in his fingers. He tied it up in a little
-rag attached to the string fastened about his waist,--a purse of his own
-invention,--and took up his paddles, coughing the while and spitting
-crimson.
-
---"_Mi! mi!--mi oti nou yé!_" reiterated Maximilien. "_Bon-Dié!_ look
-where we are!"
-
-The Place had become indistinct;--the light-house, directly behind half
-an hour earlier, now lay well south: the red light had just been
-kindled. Seaward, in advance of the sinking orange disk of the sun, was
-the _La Guayra_, passing to the horizon. There was no sound from the
-shore: about them a great silence had gathered,--the Silence of seas,
-which is a fear. Panic seized them: they began to paddle furiously.
-
-But St. Pierre did not appear to draw any nearer. Was it only an effect
-of the dying light, or were they actually moving towards the
-semicircular cliffs of Fond-Corré?... Maximilien began to cry. The
-little chabin paddled on,--though the blood was still trickling over his
-breast.
-
-Maximilien screamed out to him:--
-
---"_Ou pa ka pagayé,--anh?--ou ni bousoin demi?_?" (Thou dost not
-paddle, eh?--thou wouldst go to sleep?)
-
---"_Si! moin ka pagayé,--epi fò!_" (I am paddling, and hard, too!)
-responded Stéphane....
-
---"_Ou ka pagayé!--ou ka menti!_" (Thou art paddling!--thou liest!)
-vociferated Maximilien.... "And the fault is all thine. I cannot, all by
-myself, make the canoe to go in water like this! The fault is all thine:
-I told thee not to dive, thou stupid!"
-
---"_Ou fou!_" cried Stéphane, becoming angry. "_Moin ka pagayé!_" (I
-am paddling.)
-
---"Beast! never may we get home so! Paddle, thou lazy;--paddle, thou
-nasty!"
-
---"_Macaque_ thou!--monkey!"
-
---"_Chabin!_--must be chabin, for to be stupid so!"
-
---"Thou black monkey!--thou species of _ouistiti!_"
-
---"Thou tortoise-of-the-land!--thou slothful more than _molocoye!_"
-
---"Why, thou cursed monkey, if thou sayest I do not paddle, thou dost
-not know how to paddle!"...
-
-... But Maximilien's whole expression changed: he suddenly stopped
-paddling, and stared before him and behind him at a great violet band
-broadening across the sea northward out of sight; and his eyes were big
-with terror as he cried out:--
-
---"_Mais ni qui chose qui douôle içitt!_... There is something queer,
-Stéphane; there is something queer."...
-
---"Ah! you begin to see now, Maximilien!--it is the current!"
-
---"A devil-current, Stéphane.... We are drifting: we will go to the
-horizon!"...
-
-To the horizon--"_nou kallé Ihorizon!_"--a phrase of terrible
-picturesqueness.... In the creole tongue, "to the horizon" signifies to
-the Great Open--into the measureless sea.
-
---"_C'est pa lapeine pagayé atouèlement!_" (It is no use to paddle
-now), sobbed Maximilien, laying down his palettes.
-
---"_Si! si!_" said Stéphane, reversing the motion: "paddle with the
-current."
-
---"With the current! It runs to La Dominique!"
-
---"_Pouloss_," phlegmatically returned Stéphane,--"_ennou!_--let us
-make for La Dominique!"
-
---"Thou fool!--it is more than past forty kilometres.... _Stéphane,
-mi! gadé!--mi qui gouôs requ'em!_"
-
-A long black fin cut the water almost beside them, passed, and
-vanished,--a requin indeed! But, in his patois, the boy almost re-echoed
-the name as uttered by quaint Père Du Tertre, who, writing of strange
-fishes more than two hundred years ago, says it is called REQUIEM,
-because for the man who findeth himself alone with it in the midst of
-the sea, surely a requiem must be sung.
-
---"Do not paddle, Stéphane!--do not put thy hand in the water again!"
-
-
-
-
-III
-
-
-... The _La Guayra_ was a point on the sky-verge;--the sun's face had
-vanished. The silence and the darkness were deepening together.
-
---"_Si lanmè ka vini plis fò, ça nou ké fai?_" (If the sea roughens,
-what are we to do?) asked Maximilien.
-
---"Maybe we will meet a steamer," answered Stéphane: "the _Orinoco_ was
-due to-day."
-
---"And if she pass in the night?"
-
---"They can see us."...
-
---"No, they will not be able to see us at all. There is no moon."
-
---"They have lights ahead."
-
---"I tell thee, they will not see us at all,--_pièss! pièss!_"
-
---"Then they will hear us cry out."
-
---"No,--we cannot cry so loud. One can hear nothing but a steam-whistle
-or a cannon, with the noise of the wind and the water and the
-machine.... Even on the Fort-de-France packet one cannot hear for the
-machine. And the machine of the _Orinoco_ is more big than the church of
-the 'Centre.'"
-
---"Then we must try to get to La Dominique."
-
-... They could now feel the sweep of the mighty current;--it even seemed
-to them that they could hear it,--a deep low whispering. At long
-intervals they saw lights,--the lights of houses in Pointe-Prince, in
-Fond-Canonville,--in Au Prêcheur. Under them the depth was
-unfathomed:--hydrographic charts mark it _sans-fond._ And they passed
-the great cliffs of Aux Abymes, under which lies the Village of the
-Abysms.
-
-The red glare in the west disappeared suddenly as if blown out;--the rim
-of the sea vanished into the void of the gloom;--the night narrowed
-about them, thickening like a black fog. And the invisible, irresistible
-power of the sea was now bearing them away from the tall coast,--over
-profundities unknown,--over the _sans-fond_,--out "to the horizon."
-
-
-
-
-IV
-
-
-... Behind the canoe a long thread of pale light quivered and twisted:
-bright points from time to time mounted up, glowered like eyes, and
-vanished again;--glimmerings of faint flame wormed away on either side
-as they floated on. And the little craft no longer rocked as
-before;--they felt another and a larger motion,--long slow ascents and
-descents enduring for minutes at a time;--they were riding the great
-swells,--_riding the horizon!_
-
-Twice they were capsized. But happily the heaving was a smooth one, and
-their little canoe could not sink: they groped for it, found it, righted
-it, and climbed in, and baled out the water with their hands.
-
-From time to time they both cried out together, as loud as they
-could,--"_Sucou!--sucou!--sucou!_"--hoping that some one might be
-looking for them.... The alarm had indeed been given; and one of the
-little steam-packets had been sent out to look for them,--with
-torch-fires blazing at her bows; but she had taken the wrong direction.
-
---"Maximilien," said Stéphane, while the great heaving seemed to grow
-vaster,--"_fau nou ka prié Bon-Dié._"...
-
-Maximilien answered nothing.
-
---"_Fau prié Bon-Dié_" (We must pray to the Bon-Dié), repeated
-Stéphane.
-
---"_Pa lapeine, li pas pè ouè nou atò!_" (It is not worth while: He
-cannot see us now) answered the little black.
-
-... In the immense darkness even the loom of the island was no longer
-visible.
-
---"O Maximilien!--_Bon-Dié ka ouè toutt, ha connaitt toutt_" (He sees
-all; He knows all), cried Stéphane.
-
---"_Y pa pè ouè non pièss atouèlement, moin ben sur!_" (He cannot
-see us at all now,--I am quite sure) irreverently responded
-Maximilien....
-
---"Thou thinkest the Bon-Dié like thyself!--He has not eyes like thou,"
-protested Stéphane. "_Li pas ka tiny coulé; li pas ka tini zié_" (He
-has not color; He has not eyes), continued the boy, repeating the text
-of his catechism,--the curious creole catechism of old Perè Goux, of
-Carbet. [Quaint priest and quaint catechism have both passed away.]
-
---"_Moin pa save si li pa ka tini coulè_" (I know not if He has not
-color), answered Maximilien. "But what I well know is that if He has not
-eyes. He cannot see.... _Fouinq!_--how idiot!"
-
---"Why, it is in the Catechism," cried Stéphane.... "'_Bon-Dié, li
-conm vent: vent tout-patout, et nou pa save ouè li;--li ka touché
-nou,--li ka boulvésé lamnè._" (The Good-God is like the Wind: the
-Wind is everywhere, and we cannot see It;--It touches us,--It tosses the
-sea.)
-
---"If the Bon-Dié is the Wind," responded Maximilien, "then pray thou
-the Wind to stay quiet."
-
---"The Bon-Dié is not the Wind," cried Stéphane: "He is like the Wind,
-but He is not the Wind."...
-
---"_Ah! soc-soc!--fouinq!_... More better past praying to care we be
-not upset again and eaten by sharks."
-
-* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
-
-
-... Whether the little chabin prayed either to the Wind or to the
-Bon-Dié, I do not know. But the Wind remained very quiet all that
-night,--seemed to hold its breath for fear of ruffling the sea. And in
-the Mouillage of St. Pierre furious American captains swore at the Wind
-because it would not fill their sails.
-
-
-
-
-V
-
-
-Perhaps, if there had been a breeze, neither Stéphane nor Maximilien
-would have seen the sun again. But they saw him rise.
-
-Light pearled in the east, over the edge of the ocean, ran around the
-rim of the sky and yellowed: then the sun's brow appeared;--a current of
-gold gushed rippling across the sea before him;--and all the heaven at
-once caught blue fire from horizon to zenith. Violet from flood to cloud
-the vast recumbent form of Pelée loomed far behind,--with long reaches
-of mountaining: pale grays o'ertopping misty blues. And in the north
-another lofty shape was towering,--strangely jagged and peaked and
-beautiful,--the silhouette of Dominica: a sapphire saw!... No wandering
-clouds:--over far Pelée only a shadowy piling of nimbi.... Under them
-the sea swayed dark as purple ink--a token of tremendous depth.... Still
-a dead calm, and no sail in sight.
-
---"_Ça c'est la Dominique_," said Maximilien,--"_Ennou pou
-ouivage-à!_"
-
-They had lost their little palettes during the night;--they used their
-naked hands, and moved swiftly. But Dominica was many and many a mile
-away. Which was the nearer island, it was yet difficult to say;--in the
-morning sea-haze, both were vapory,--difference of color was largely due
-to position....
-
-_Sough!--sough!--sough!_--A bird with a white breast passed overhead;
-and they stopped paddling to look at it,--a gull. Sign of fair
-weather!--it was making for Dominica.
-
---"_Moin ni ben faim_," murmured Maximilien. Neither had eaten since the
-morning of the previous day,--most of which they had passed sitting in
-their canoe.
-
---"_Moin ni anni soif_," said Stéphane. And besides his thirst he
-complained of a burning pain in his head, always growing worse. He still
-coughed, and spat out pink threads after each burst of coughing.
-
-The heightening sun flamed whiter and whiter: the flashing of waters
-before his face began to dazzle like a play of lightning.... Now the
-islands began to show sharper lines, stronger colors; and Dominica was
-evidently the nearer;--for bright streaks of green were breaking at
-various angles through its vapor-colored silhouette, and Martinique
-still remained all blue.
-
-... Hotter and hotter the sun burned; more and more blinding became his
-reverberation. Maximilien's black skin suffered least; but both lads,
-accustomed as they were to remaining naked in the sun, found the heat
-difficult to bear. They would gladly have plunged into the deep water to
-cool themselves, but for fear of sharks;--all they could do was to
-moisten their heads, and rinse their mouths with sea-water.
-
-Each from his end of the canoe continually watched the horizon. Neither
-hoped for a sail, there was no wind; but they looked for the coining of
-steamers,--the _Orinoco_ might pass, or the English packet, or some one
-of the small Martinique steamboats might be sent out to find them.
-
-Yet hours went by; and there still appeared no smoke in the ring of the
-sky,--never a sign in all the round of the sea, broken only by the two
-huge silhouettes.... But Dominica was certainly nearing;--the green
-lights were spreading through the luminous blue of her hills.
-
-... Their long immobility in the squatting posture began to tell upon
-the endurance of both boys,--producing dull throbbing aches in thighs,
-hips, and loins.... Then, about mid-day, Stéphane declared he could
-not paddle any more;--it seemed to him as if his head must soon burst
-open with the pain which filled it: even the sound of his own voice hurt
-him,--he did not want to talk.
-
-
-
-
-VI
-
-
-... And another oppression came upon them,--in spite of all the pains,
-and the blinding dazzle of waters, and the biting of the sun: the
-oppression of drowsiness. They began to doze at intervals,--keeping
-their canoe balanced in some automatic way,--as cavalry soldiers,
-overweary, ride asleep in the saddle.
-
-But at last, Stéphane, awaking suddenly with a paroxysm of coughing, so
-swayed himself to one side as to overturn the canoe; and both found
-themselves in the sea.
-
-Maximilien righted the craft, and got in again; but the little chabin
-twice fell back in trying to raise himself upon his arms. He had become
-almost helplessly feeble. Maximilien, attempting to aid him, again
-overturned the unsteady little boat; and this time it required all his
-skill and his utmost strength to get Stéphane out of the water.
-Evidently Stéphane could be of no more assistance;--the boy was so weak
-he could not even sit up straight.
-
---"_Aïe! ou kê jété nou encò_," panted Maximilien,--"_metté ou
-toutt longue._"
-
-Stéphane slowly let himself down, so as to lie nearly all his length in
-the canoe,--one foot on either side of Maximilien's hips. Then he lay
-very still for a long time,--so still that Maximilien became uneasy.
-
---"_Ou ben malade?_" he asked.... Stéphane did not seem to hear: his
-eyes remained closed.
-
---"Stéphane!" cried Maximilien, in alarm,--"Stéphane!"
-
---"_C'est lò, papoute_," murmured Stéphane, without lifting his
-eyelids,--"_ça c'est lò!--ou pa janmain cuè yon bel pièce conm
-ça?_" (It is gold, little father.... Didst thou ever see a pretty piece
-like that?... No, thou wilt not beat me, little father?--no, _papoute!_)
-
---"_Ou ka dòmi, Stéphane?_"--queried Maximilien, wondering,--"art
-asleep?"
-
-But Stéphane opened his eyes and looked at him so strangely! Never had
-he seen Stéphane look that way before.
-
---"_Ça ou ni, Stéphane?_--what ails thee?--_aïe! Bon-Dié,
-Bon-Dié?_"
-
---"_Bon-Dié!_"--muttered Stéphane, closing his eyes again at the sound
-of the great Name,--"He has no color;--He is like the Wind."...
-
---"Stéphane!"...
-
---"He feels in the dark;--He has not eyes."...
-
---"_Stéphane, pa pàlé ça!_"
-
---"He tosses the sea.... He has no face;--He lifts up the dead... and
-the leaves."...
-
-
-[Illustration: ARMISTICE DAY, FORT-DE-FRANCE
-_A review at 7 A. M. by the governor anti his staff, all
-in evening dress, with cannons booming as noisily as
-in the north--followed by a day busily devoted to
-doing nothing._]
-
-
---"_Ou fou!_" cried Maximilien, bursting into a wild fit of
-sobbing,--"Stéphane, thou art mad!"
-
-And all at once he became afraid of Stéphane,--afraid of all he
-said,--afraid of his touch,--afraid of his eyes... he was growing like a
-_zombi!_
-
-But Stéphane's eyes remained closed;--he ceased to speak.
-
-... About them deepened the enormous silence of the sea;--low swung the
-sun again. The horizon was yellowing: day had begun to fade. Tall
-Dominica was now half green; but there yet appeared no smoke, no sail,
-no sign of life.
-
-And the tints of the two vast Shapes that shattered the rim of the light
-shifted as if evanescing,--shifted like tones of West Indian fishes,--of
-_pisquette_ and _congre_,--of _caringue_ and _gouôs-zié_ and _balaou._
-Lower sank the sun;--cloud-fleeces of orange pushed up over the edge of
-the west;--a thin warm breath caressed the sea,--sent long lilac
-shudderings over the flanks of the swells. Then colors changed again:
-violet richened to purple;--greens blackened softly;--grays smouldered
-into smoky gold.
-
-And the sun went down.
-
-
-
-
-VII
-
-
-And they floated into the fear of the night together. Again the ghostly
-fires began to wimple about them: naught else was visible but the high
-stars.
-
-Black hours passed. From minute to minute Maximilien cried
-out:--"_Sucou! sucou!_" Stéphane lay motionless and dumb: his feet,
-touching Maximilien's naked hips, felt singularly cold.
-
-... Something knocked suddenly against the bottom of the canoe,--knocked
-heavily--making a hollow loud sound. It was not Stéphane;--Stéphane
-lay still as a stone: it was from the depth below. Perhaps a great fish
-passing.
-
-It came again,--twice,--shaking the canoe like a great blow. Then
-Stéphane suddenly moved,--drew up his feet a little,--made as if to
-speak:--"_Ou_..."; but the speech failed at his lips,--ending in a sound
-like the moan of one trying to call out in sleep;--and Maximilien's
-heart almost stopped beating.... Then Stéphane's limbs straightened
-again; he made no more movement;--Maximilien could not even hear him
-breathe.... All the sea had begun to whisper.
-
-A breeze was rising;--Maximilien felt it blowing upon him. All at once
-it seemed to him that he had ceased to be afraid,--that he did not care
-what might happen. He thought about a cricket he had one day watched in
-the harbor,--drifting out with the tide, on an atom of dead bark,--and
-he wondered what had become of it. Then he understood that he himself
-was the cricket,--still alive. But some boy had found him and pulled off
-his legs. There they were,--his own legs, pressing against him: he could
-still feel the aching where they had been pulled off; and they had been
-dead so long they were now quite cold.... It was certainly Stéphane who
-had pulled them off....
-
-The water was talking to him. It was saying the same thing over and over
-again,--louder each time, as if it thought he could not hear. But he
-heard it very well:--"_Bon-Dié, li conm vent... li ka touché nou...
-nou pa save ouè li._" (But why had the Bon-Dié shaken the wind?) "_Li
-pa ka tint zié_," answered the water.... _Ouille!_--He might all the
-same care not to upset folks in the sea!... _Mi!_...
-
-But even as he thought these things, Maximilien became aware that a
-white, strange, bearded face was looking at him: the Bon-Dié was
-there,--bending over him with a lantern,--talking to him in a language
-he did not understand. And the Bon-Dié certainly had eyes,--great gray
-eyes that did not look wicked at all. He tried to tell the Bon-Dié how
-sorry he was for what he had been saying about him;--but found he could
-not utter a word. He felt great hands lift him up to the stars, and lay
-him down very near them,--just under them. They burned blue-white, and
-hurt his eyes like lightning:--he felt afraid of them.... About him he
-heard voices,--always speaking the same language, which he could not
-understand.... "_Poor little devils!--poor little devils!_" Then he
-heard a bell ring; and the Bon-Dié made him swallow something nice and
-warm;--and everything became black again. The stars went out!...
-
-
-... Maximilien was lying under an electric-light on board the great
-steamer _Rio de Janeiro_, and dead Stéphane beside him.... It was four
-o'clock in the morning.
-
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-LA FILLE DE COULEUR
-
-
-
-
-I
-
-
-Nothing else in the picturesque life of the French colonies of the
-Occident impresses the traveller on his first arrival more than the
-costumes of the women of color. They surprise the aesthetic sense
-agreeably;--they are local and special: you will see nothing resembling
-them among the populations of the British West Indies; they belong to
-Martinique, Guadeloupe, Désirade, Marie-Galante, and Cayenne,--in each
-place differing sufficiently to make the difference interesting,
-especially in regard to the head-dress. That of Martinique is quite
-Oriental;--more attractive, although less fantastic than the Cayenne
-coiffure, or the pretty drooping mouchoir of Guadeloupe.
-
-These costumes are gradually disappearing, for various reasons,--the
-chief reason being of course the changes in the social condition of the
-colonies during the last forty years. Probably the question of health
-had also something to do with the almost universal abandonment in
-Martinique of the primitive slave dress,--_chemise_ and _jupe_,--which
-exposed its wearer to serious risks of pneumonia; for as far as
-economical reasons are concerned, there was no fault to find with it:
-six francs could purchase it when money was worth more than it is now.
-The douillette, a long trailing dress, one piece from neck to feet, has
-taken its place.[37] But there was a luxurious variety of the jupe
-costume which is disappearing because of its cost; there is no money in
-the colonies now for such display:--I refer to the celebrated attire of
-the pet slaves and _belles affranchies_ of the old colonial days. A full
-costume,--including violet or crimson "petticoat" of silk or satin;
-chemise with half-sleeves, and much embroidery and lace;
-"trembling-pins" of gold (_zépingue tremblant_) to attach the folds of
-the brilliant Madras turban; the great necklace of three or four strings
-of gold beads bigger than peas (_collier-choux_); the ear-rings, immense
-but light as egg-shells (_zanneaux-à-clous_ or _zanneaux-chenilles_);
-the bracelets (_portes-bonheur_); the studs (_boutons-à-clous_); the
-brooches, not only for the turban, but for the chemise, below the folds
-of the showy silken foulard or shoulder-scarf,--would sometimes
-represent over five thousand francs expenditure. This gorgeous attire is
-becoming less visible every year: it is now rarely worn except on very
-solemn occasions,--weddings, baptisms, first communions, confirmations.
-The _da_ (nurse) or "porteuse-de-baptême" who bears the baby to church
-holds it at the baptismal font, and afterwards carries it from house to
-house in order that all the friends of the family may kiss it, is thus
-attired; but nowadays, unless she be a professional (for there are
-professional _das_, hired only for such occasions), she usually borrows
-the jewellry. If tall, young, graceful, with a rich gold tone of skin,
-the effect of her costume is dazzling as that of a Byzantine Virgin. I
-saw one young da who, thus garbed, scarcely seemed of the earth and
-earthly;--there was an Oriental something in her appearance difficult to
-describe,--something that made you think of the Queen of Sheba going to
-visit Solomon. She had brought a merchant's baby, just christened, to
-receive the caresses of the family at whose house I was visiting; and
-when it came to my turn to kiss it, I confess I could not notice the
-child: I saw only the beautiful dark face, coiffed with orange and
-purple, bending over it, in an illumination of antique gold.... What a
-da!... She represented really the type of that _belle affranchie_ of
-other days, against whose fascination special sumptuary laws were made;
-romantically she imaged for me the supernatural god-mothers and
-Cinderellas of the creole fairy-tales. For these become transformed in
-the West Indian folklore,--adapted to the environment, and to local
-idealism:--Cinderella, for example, is changed to a beautiful metisse,
-wearing a quadruple _collier-choux_, _zépingues tremblants_, and all
-the ornaments of a da.[38] Recalling the impression of that dazzling
-_da_, I can even now feel the picturesque justice of the fabulist's
-description of Cinderella's creole costume: _Ça té ka baille ou mal
-zie!_--(it would have given you a pain in your eyes to look at her!)
-
-
-... Even the every-day Martinique costume is slowly changing. Year by
-year the "calendeuses"--the women who paint and fold the turbans--have
-less work to do;--the colors of the _douiellette_ are becoming less
-vivid;--while more and more young colored girls are being _élevées en
-chapeau_ ("brought up in a hat")--i.e., dressed and educated like the
-daughters of the whites. These, it must be confessed, look far less
-attractive in the latest Paris fashion, unless white as the whites
-themselves: on the other hand, few white girls could look well in
-_douillette_ and _mouchoir_,--not merely because of color contrast, but
-because they have not that amplitude of limb and particular cambering of
-the torso peculiar to the half-breed race, with its large bulk and
-stature. Attractive as certain coolie women are, I observed that all who
-have adopted the Martinique costume look badly in it: they are too
-slender of body to wear it to advantage.
-
-Slavery introduced these costumes, even though it probably did not
-invent them; and they were necessarily doomed to pass away with the
-peculiar social conditions to which they belonged. If the population
-clings still to its _douillettes_, _mouchoirs_, and _foulards_, the fact
-is largely due to the cheapness of such attire. A girl can dress very
-showily indeed for about twenty francs--shoes excepted;--and thousands
-never wear shoes. But the fashion will no doubt have become cheaper and
-uglier within another decade.
-
-At the present time, however, the stranger might be sufficiently
-impressed by the oddity and brilliancy of these dresses to ask about
-their origin,--in which case it is not likely that he will obtain any
-satisfactory answer. After long research I found myself obliged to give
-up all hope of being able to outline the history of Martinique
-costume,--partly because books and histories are scanty or defective,
-and partly because such an undertaking would require a knowledge
-possible only to a specialist. I found good reason, nevertheless, to
-suppose that these costumes were in the beginning adopted from certain
-fashions of provincial France,--that the respective fashions of
-Guadeloupe, Martinique, and Cayenne were patterned after modes still
-worn in parts of the mother-country. The old-time garb of the
-_affranchie_--that still worn by the _da_--somewhat recalls dresses worn
-by the women of Southern France, more particularly about Montpellier.
-Perhaps a specialist might also trace back the evolution of the various
-creole coiffures to old forms of head-dresses which still survive among
-the French country-fashions of the south and south-west provinces;--but
-local taste has so much modified the original style as to leave it
-unrecognizable to those who have never studied the subject. The
-Martinique fashion of folding and tying the Madras, and of calendering
-it, are probably local; and I am assured that the designs of the curious
-semi-barbaric jewellry were all invented in the colony, where the
-_collier-choux_ is still manufactured by local goldsmiths. Purchasers
-buy one, two, or three _grains_, or beads, at a time, and string them
-only on obtaining the requisite number.... This is the sum of all that I
-was able to learn on the matter; but in the course of searching various
-West Indian authors and historians for information, I found something
-far more important than the origin of the _douillette_ or the
-_collier-choux_: the facts of that strange struggle between nature and
-interest, between love and law, between prejudice and passion, which
-forms the evolutional history of the mixed race.
-
-
-[Footnote 37: The brightly colored douillettes are classified by the people
-according to the designs of the printed
-calico:--_robe-à-bambou,--robe-à-bouquet,--robe-arc-en-ciel--robe-à-carreau_,--etc.,
-according as the pattern is in stripes, flower-designs, "rainbow" bands
-of different tints, or plaidings. _Ronde-en-ronde_ means a stuff printed
-with disk-patterns, or link-patterns of different colors,--each joined
-with the other. A robe of one color only is called a _robe-uni._
-
-The general laws of contrasts observed in the costume require the silk
-foulard, or shoulder-kerchief, to make a sharp relief with the color of
-the robe, thus:--
-
-_Robe_                    _Foulard._
-Yellow                     Blue.
-Dark blue                  Yellow.
-Pink                       Green.
-Violet                     Bright red.
-Red                        Violet.
-Chocolate (cacao)          Pale blue.
-Sky blue                   Pale rose.
-
-These refer, of course, to dominant or ground colors, as there are
-usually several tints in the foulard as well as the robe. The painted
-Madras should always be bright yellow. According to popular ideas of
-good dressing, the different tints of skin should be relieved by special
-choice of color in the robe, as follows:--
-
-_Capresse_ (a clear red skin) should wear  Pale yellow.
-
-_Mulatresse_ (according to shade)          Rose.
-                                           Blue.
-                                           {Green.
-
-_Négresse_                                 {White.
-                                           {Scarlet, or any violent color.]
-
-[Footnote 38: "_Vouèla Cendrillon evec yon bel ròbe velou grande
-lakhè.... Ça té ka bail ou mal ziè. Li té tini bel zanneau dans
-zòreill li, quate-tou-chou, bouoche, bracelet, tremblant,--toutt sòte
-bel baggaïe conm ça._"...--(_Conte Cendrillon_,--d'après Turiault.)
-
---"There was Cendrillon with a beautiful long trailing robe of velvet on
-her!... It was enough to hurt one's eyes to look at her! She had
-beautiful rings in her ears, and a collier-choux of four rows, brooches,
-_tremblants_, bracelets,--everything fine of that sort."--(Story of
-Cinderella in Turinault's Creole Grammar).]
-
-
-
-
-II
-
-
-Considering only the French peasant colonist and the West African slave
-as the original factors of that physical evolution visible in the modern
-_fille-de-couleur_, it would seem incredible;--for the intercrossing
-alone could not adequately explain all the physical results. To
-understand them fully, it will be necessary to bear in mind that both of
-the original races became modified in their lineage to a surprising
-degree by conditions of climate and environment.
-
-The precise time of the first introduction of slaves into Martinique is
-not now possible to ascertain,--no record exists on the subject; but it
-is probable that the establishment of slavery was coincident with the
-settlement of the island. Most likely the first hundred colonists from
-St. Christophe, who landed, in 1635, near the bay whereon the city of
-St. Pierre is now situated, either brought slaves with them, or else
-were furnished with negroes very soon after their arrival. In the time
-of Père Dutertre (who visited the colonies in 1640, and printed his
-history of the French Antilles at Paris in 1667) slavery was already a
-flourishing institution,--the foundation of the whole social structure.
-According to the Dominican missionary, the Africans then in the colony
-were decidedly repulsive; he describes the women as "hideous"
-(_hideuses_). There is no good reason to charge Dutertre with prejudice
-in his pictures of them. No writer of the century was more keenly
-sensitive to natural beauty than the author of that "Voyage aux
-Antilles" which inspired Chateaubriand, and which still, after two
-hundred and fifty years, delights even those perfectly familiar with the
-nature of the places and things spoken of. No other writer and traveller
-of the period possessed to a more marked degree that sense of generous
-pity which makes the unfortunate appear to us in an illusive, almost
-ideal aspect. Nevertheless, he asserts that the negresses were, as a
-general rule, revoltingly ugly,--and, although he had seen many strange
-sides of human nature (having been a soldier before becoming a monk),
-was astonished to find that miscegenation had already begun. Doubtless
-the first black women thus favored, or afflicted, as the case might be,
-were of the finer types of negresses; for he notes remarkable
-differences among the slaves procured from different coasts and various
-tribes. Still, these were rather differences of ugliness than aught
-else: they were all repulsive;--only some were more repulsive than
-others.[39] Granting that the first mothers of mulattoes in the colony
-were the superior rather than the inferior physical types,--which would
-be a perfectly natural supposition,--still we find their offspring
-worthy in his eyes of no higher sentiment than pity. He writes in his
-chapter entitled "_De la naissance honteuse des mulastres_":
-
---"They have something of their Father and something of their
-Mother,--in the same wise that Mules partake of the qualities of the
-creatures that engendered them: for they are neither all white, like the
-French; nor all black, like the Negroes, but have a livid tint, which
-comes of both."...
-
-To-day, however, the traveller would look in vain for a _livid_ tint
-among the descendants of those thus described: in less than two
-centuries and a half the physical characteristics of the race have been
-totally changed. What most surprises is the rapidity of the
-transformation. After the time of Père Labat, Europeans never could
-"have mistaken little negro children for monkeys." Nature had begun to
-remodel the white, the black, and half-breed according to environment
-and climate: the descendant of the early colonists ceased to resemble
-his fathers; the creole negro improved upon his progenitors;[40] the
-mulatto began to give evidence of those qualities of physical and mental
-power which were afterwards to render him dangerous to the integrity of
-the colony itself. In a temperate climate such a change would have been
-so gradual as to escape observation for a long period;--in the tropics
-it was effected with a quickness that astounds by its revelation of the
-natural forces at work.
-
---"Under the sun of the tropics," writes Dr. Rufz, of Martinique, "the
-African race, as well as the European, becomes greatly modified in its
-reproduction. Either race gives birth to a totally new being. The Creole
-African came into existence as did the Creole white." And just as the
-offspring of Europeans who emigrated to the tropics from different parts
-of France displayed characteristics so identical that it was impossible
-to divine the original race-source,--so likewise the Creole
-negro--whether brought into being by the heavy thick-set Congo, or the
-long slender black of Senegambia, or the suppler and more active
-Mandingo,--appeared so remodelled, homogeneous, and adapted in such wise
-to his environment that it was utterly impossible to discern in his
-features anything of his parentage, his original kindred, his original
-source.... The transformation is absolute. All that In be asserted is:
-"This is a white Creole; this is a black Creole";--or, "This is a
-European white; this is an African black";--and furthermore, after a
-certain number of years passed in the tropics, the enervated and
-discolored aspect of the European may create uncertainty, as to his
-origin. But with very few exceptions the primitive African, or, as he is
-termed here, the "Coast Black" (_le noir de la Côte_), can be
-recognized at once....
-
-... "The Creole negro is gracefully shaped, finely proportioned: his
-limbs are lithe, his neck long;--his features are more delicate, his
-lips less thick, his nose less flattened, than those of the African;--he
-has the Carib's large and melancholy eye, better adapted to express the
-emotions.... Rarely can you discover in him the sombre fury of the
-African, rarely a surly and savage mien: he is brave, chatty, boastful.
-His skin has not the same tint as his father's,--it has become more
-satiny; his hair remains woolly, but it is a finer wool... all his
-outlines are more rounded;--one may perceive that the cellular tissue
-predominates, as in cultivated plants, of which the ligneous and savage
-fibre has become transformed."...[41]
-
-This new and comelier black race naturally won from its masters a more
-sympathetic attention than could have been vouchsafed to its
-progenitors; and the consequences in Martinique and elsewhere seemed to
-have evoked the curious Article 9 of the _Code Noir_ of 1665,--enacting,
-first, that free men who should have one or two children by slave women,
-as well as the slave-owners permitting the same, should be each
-condemned to pay two thousand pounds of sugar; secondly, that if the
-violator of the ordinance should be himself the owner of the mother and
-father of her children, the mother and the children should be
-confiscated for the profit of the Hospital, and deprived for their lives
-of the right to enfranchisement. An exception, however, was made to the
-effect that if the father were unmarried at the period of his
-concubinage, he could escape the provisions of the penalty by marrying,
-"according to the rites of the Church," the female slave, who would
-thereby be enfranchised, and her children "rendered free and
-legitimate." Probably the legislators did not imagine that the first
-portion of the article could prove inefficacious, or that any violator
-of the ordinance would seek to escape the penalty by those means offered
-in the provision. The facts, however, proved the reverse. Miscegenation
-continued; and Labat notices two cases of marriage between whites and
-blacks,--describing the offspring of one union as "very handsome little
-mulattoes." These legitimate unions were certainly exceptional,--one of
-them was dissolved by the ridicule cast upon the father;--but
-illegitimate unions would seem to have become common within a very brief
-time after the passage of the law. At a later day they were to become
-customary. The Article 9 was evidently at fault; and in March, 1724, the
-Black Code was reinforced by a new ordinance, of which the sixth
-provision prohibited marriage as well as concubinage between the races.
-
-It appears to have had no more effect than the previous law, even in
-Martinique, where the state of public morals was better than in Santo
-Domingo. The slave race had begun to exercise an influence never
-anticipated by legislators. Scarcely a century had elapsed since the
-colonization of the island; but in that time climate and civilization
-had transfigured the black woman. "After one or two generations," writes
-the historian Rufz, "the _Africaine_, reformed, refined, beautified in
-her descendants, transformed into the creole negress, commenced to exert
-a fascination irresistible, capable of winning anything (_capable de
-tout obtenir_)."[42] Travellers of the eighteenth century were
-confounded by the luxury of dress and of jewellry displayed by swarthy
-beauties in St. Pierre. It was a public scandal to European eyes. But
-the creole negress or mulattress, beginning to understand her power,
-sought for higher favors and privileges than silken robes and necklaces
-of gold beads: she sought to obtain, not merely liberty for herself, but
-for her parents, brothers, sisters,--even friends. What successes she
-achieved in this regard may be imagined from the serious statement of
-creole historians that if human nature had been left untrammelled to
-follow its better impulses, slavery would have ceased to exist a century
-before the actual period of emancipation! By 1738, when the white
-population had reached its maximum (15,000),[43] and colonial luxury had
-arrived at its greatest height, the question of voluntary
-enfranchisement was becoming very grave. So omnipotent the charm of
-half-breed beauty that masters were becoming the slaves of their slaves.
-It was not only the creole _negress_ who had appeared to play a part in
-this strange drama which was the triumph of nature over interest and
-judgment: her daughters, far more beautiful, had grown up to aid her,
-and to form a special class. These women, whose tints of skin rivalled
-the colors of ripe fruit, and whose gracefulness--peculiar, exotic, and
-irresistible--made them formidable rivals to the daughters of the
-dominant race, were no doubt physically superior to the modern
-_filles-de-couleur_. They were results of a natural selection which
-could have taken place in no community otherwise constituted;--the
-offspring of the union between the finer types of both races. But that
-which only slavery could have rendered possible began to endanger the
-integrity of slavery itself: the institutions upon which the whole
-social structure rested were being steadily sapped by the influence of
-half-breed girls. Some new, severe, extreme policy was evidently
-necessary to avert the already visible peril. Special laws were passed
-by the Home-Government to check enfranchisement, to limit its reasons or
-motives; and the power of the slave woman was so well comprehended by
-the Métropole that an extraordinary enactment was made against it. It
-was decreed that whosoever should free a woman of color would have to
-pay to the Government _three times her value as a slave!_
-
-Thus heavily weighted, emancipation advanced much more slowly than
-before, but it still continued to a considerable extent. The poorer
-creole planter or merchant might find it impossible to obey the impulse
-of his conscience or of his affection, but among the richer classes
-pecuniary considerations could scarcely affect enfranchisement. The
-country had grown wealthy; and although the acquisition of wealth may
-not evoke generosity in particular natures, the enrichment of a whole
-class develops pre-existing tendencies to kindness, and opens new ways
-for its exercise. Later in the eighteenth century, when hospitality had
-been cultivated as a gentleman's duty to fantastical extremes,--when
-liberality was the rule throughout society,--when a notary summoned to
-draw up a deed, or a priest invited to celebrate a marriage, might
-receive for fee five thousand francs in gold,--there were certainly many
-emancipations.... "Even though interest and public opinion in the
-colonies," says a historian,[44] "were adverse to enfranchisement, the
-private feeling of each man combated that opinion;--Nature resumed her
-sway in the secret places of hearts;--and as local custom permitted a
-sort of polygamy, the rich man naturally felt himself bound in honor to
-secure the freedom of his own blood.... It was not a rare thing to see
-legitimate wives taking care of the natural children of their
-husbands,--becoming their godmothers (_s'en faire les marraines_)."...
-Nature seemed to laugh all these laws to scorn, and the prejudices of
-race! In vain did the wisdom of legislators attempt to render the
-condition of the enfranchised more humble,--enacting extravagant
-penalties for the blow by which a mulatto might avenge the insult of a
-white,--prohibiting the freed from wearing the same dress as their
-former masters or mistresses wore;--"the _belles affranchies_ found, in
-a costume whereof the negligence seemed a very inspiration of
-voluptuousness, means of evading that social inferiority which the law
-sought to impose upon them:--they began to inspire the most violent
-jealousies."[45]
-
-
-[Footnote 39: It is quite possible, however, that the slaves of
-Dutertre's time belonged for the most part to the uglier African tribes;
-and that later supplies may have been procured from other parts of the
-slave coast. Writing half a century later, Père Labat declares having
-seen freshly disembarked blacks handsome enough to inspire an
-artist:--"_J'en ai vu des deux sexes faits à peindre, et beaux par
-merveille_" (vol. iv. chap, vii,). He adds that their skin was extremely
-fine, and of velvety softness;--"_le velours n'est pas plus doux_."...
-Among the 30,000 blacks yearly shipped to the French colonies, there
-were doubtless many representatives of the finer African races.]
-
-[Footnote 40: "Leur sueur n'est pas fétide comme celle des nègres de
-la Guinée," writes the traveller Dauxion-Lavaysse, in 1813.]
-
-[Footnote 41: Dr. E. Rufz: "Études historiques et statistiques sur la
-population de la Martinique." St. Pierre: 1850. Vol. I, pp. 148-50.
-
-It has been generally imagined that the physical constitution of the
-black race was proof against the deadly climate of the West Indies. The
-truth is that the freshly imported Africans died of fever by thousands
-and tens-of-thousands;--the creole-negro race, now so prolific,
-represents only the fittest survivors in the long and terrible struggle
-of the slave element to adapt itself to the new environment. Thirty
-thousand negroes a year were long needed to supply the French colonies.
-Between 1700 and 1789 no less than 900,000 slaves were imported by San
-Domingo alone;--yet there were less than half that number left in 1789.
-(See Placide Justin's history of Santo Domingo, p. 147.) The entire
-slave population of Barbadoes had to be renewed every sixteen years,
-according to estimates: the loss to planters by deaths of slaves
-(reckoning the value of a slave at only £20 sterling) during the same
-period was £1,600,000 ($8,000,000). (Burck's "History of European
-Colonies," vol. II., p. 141; French edition of 1767.)]
-
-[Footnote 42: Rufz: "Études," vol. I., p. 236.]
-
-[Footnote 43: I am assured it has now fallen to a figure not exceeding
-5000.]
-
-[Footnote 44: Rufz: "Études," vol. II., pp. 311, 312.]
-
-[Footnote 45: Rufz: "Études," vol. I., p. 237.]
-
-
-
-
-III
-
-
-What the legislators of 1685 and 1724 endeavored to correct did not
-greatly improve with the abolition of slavery, nor yet with those
-political troubles which socially deranged colonial life. The
-_fille-de-couleur_, inheriting the charm of the belle _affranchie_,
-continued to exert a similar influence, and to fulfil an almost similar
-destiny. The latitude of morals persisted,--though with less
-ostentation: it has latterly contracted under the pressure of necessity
-rather than through any other influences. Certain ethical principles
-thought essential to social integrity elsewhere have always been largely
-relaxed in the tropics; and--excepting, perhaps, Santo Domingo--the
-moral standard in Martinique was not higher than in the other French
-colonies. Outward decorum might be to some degree maintained; but there
-was no great restraint of any sort upon private lives: it was not
-uncommon for a rich man to have many "natural" families; and almost
-every individual of means had children of color. The superficial
-character of race prejudices was everywhere manifested by unions, which
-although never mentioned in polite converse, were none the less
-universally known; and the "irresistible fascination" of the half-breed
-gave the open lie to pretended hate. Nature, in the guise of the _belle
-affranchie_, had mocked at slave codes;--in the _fille-de-couleur_ she
-still laughed at race pretensions, and ridiculed the fable of physical
-degradation. To-day, the situation has not greatly changed; and with
-such examples on the part of the cultivated race, what could be expected
-from the other? Marriages are rare;--it has been officially stated that
-the illegitimate births are sixty per cent; but seventy-five to eighty
-per cent would probably be nearer the truth. It is very common to see in
-the local papers such announcements as: _Enfants légitimes_, 1 (one
-birth announced); _enfants naturels_, 25.
-
-In speaking of the _fille-de-couleur_ it is necessary also to speak of
-the extraordinary social stratification of the community to which she
-belongs. The official statement of 20,000 "colored" to the total
-population of between 173,000 and 174,000 (in which the number of pure
-whites is said to have fallen as low as 5,000) does not at all indicate
-the real proportion of mixed blood. Only a small element of unmixed
-African descent really exists; yet when a white creole speaks of the
-_gens-de-couleur_ he certainly means nothing darker than a mulatto skin.
-Race classifications have been locally made by sentiments of political
-origin: at least four or five shades of visible color are classed as
-negro. There is, however, some natural truth at the bottom of this
-classification: where African blood predominates, the sympathies are
-likely to be African; and the turning-point is reached only in the true
-mulatto, where, allowing the proportions of mixed blood to be
-nearly equal, the white would have the dominant influence in
-situations more natural than existing politics. And in speaking of the
-_filles-de-couleur_, the local reference is always to women in whom the
-predominant element is white: a white creole, as a general rule, deigns
-only thus to distinguish those who are nearly white,--more usually he
-refers to the whole class as mulattresses. Those women whom wealth and
-education have placed in a social position parallel with that of the
-daughters of creole whites are in some cases allowed to pass for
-white,--or at the very worst, are only referred to in a whisper as being
-_de couleur_. (Needless to say, these are totally beyond the range of
-the present considerations: there is nothing to be further said of them
-except that they can be classed with the most attractive and refined
-women of the entire tropical world.) As there is an almost infinite
-gradation from the true black up to the brightest _sang-mêlé_, it is
-impossible to establish any color-classification recognizable by the eye
-alone; and whatever lines of demarcation can be drawn between castes
-must be social rather than ethnical. In this sense we may accept the
-local Creole definition of _fille-de-couleur_ as signifying, not so much
-a daughter of the race of visible color, as the half-breed girl destined
-from her birth to a career like that of the _belle affranchie_ of the
-old regime;--for the moral cruelties of slavery have survived
-emancipation.
-
-Physically, the typical _fille-de-couleur_ may certainly be classed, as
-white creole writers have not hesitated to class her, with the "most
-beautiful women of the human race."[46] She has inherited not only the
-finer bodily characteristics of either parent race, but a something else
-belonging originally to neither, and created by special climatic and
-physical conditions,--a grace, a suppleness of form, a delicacy of
-extremities (so that all the lines described by the bending of limbs or
-fingers are parts of clean curves), a satiny smoothness and fruit-tint
-of skin,--solely West Indian.... Morally, of course, it is much more
-difficult to describe her; and whatever may safely be said refers rather
-to the fille-de-couleur of the past than of the present half-century.
-The race is now in a period of transition: public education and
-political changes are modifying the type, and it is impossible to guess
-the ultimate consequence, because it is impossible to safely predict
-what new influences may yet be brought to affect its social development.
-Befare the present era of colonial decadence, the character of the
-fille-de-couleur was not what it is now. Even when totally uneducated,
-she had a peculiar charm,--that charm of childishness which has power to
-win sympathy from the rudest natures. One could not but feel attracted
-towards this naïf being, docile as an infant, and as easily pleased or
-as easily pained,--artless in her goodnesses as in her faults, to all
-outward appearance;--willing to give her youth, her beauty, her caresses
-to some one in exchange for the promise to love her,--perhaps also to
-care for a mother, or a younger brother. Her astonishing capacity for
-being delighted with trifles, her pretty vanities and pretty follies,
-her sudden veerings of mood from laughter to tears,--like the sudden
-rainbursts and sunbursts of her own passionate climate: these touched,
-drew, won, and tyrannized. Yet such easily created joys and pains did
-not really indicate any deep reserve of feeling: rather a superficial
-sensitiveness only,--like the _zhèbe-m'amisé_, or _zhèbe-manmzelle_,
-whose leaves close at the touch of a hair. Such human manifestations,
-nevertheless, are apt to attract more in proportion as they are more
-visible,--in proportion as the soul-current, being less profound, flows
-more audibly. But no hasty observation could have revealed the whole
-character of the fille-de-couleur to the stranger, equally charmed and
-surprised: the creole comprehended her better, and probably treated her
-with even more real kindness. The truth was that centuries of
-deprivation of natural rights and hopes had given to her race--itself
-fathered by passion unrestrained and mothered by subjection
-unlimited--an inherent scepticism in the duration of love, and a
-marvellous capacity for accepting the destiny of abandonment as one
-accepts the natural and the inevitable. And that desire to please--which
-in the fille-de-couleur seemed to prevail above all other motives of
-action (maternal affection excepted)--could have appeared absolutely
-natural only to those who never reflected that even sentiment had been
-artificially cultivated by slavery.
-
-She asked for so little,--accepted a gift with such childish
-pleasure,--submitted so unresistingly to the will of the man
-who promised to love her. She bore him children--such beautiful
-children!--whom he rarely acknowledged, and was never asked
-to legitimatize;--and she did not ask perpetual affection
-notwithstanding,--regarded the relation as a necessarily temporary one,
-to be sooner or later dissolved by the marriage of her children's
-father. If deceived in all things,--if absolutely ill-treated and left
-destitute, she did not lose faith in human nature: she seemed a born
-optimist, believing most men good;--she would make a home for another
-and serve him better than any slave.... "_Née de l'amour_," says a
-creole writer, "_la fille-de-couleur vit d'amour, de rires, et
-d'oublis_."...[47]
-
-Then came the general colonial crash!... You cannot see its results
-without feeling touched by them. Everywhere the weird beauty, the
-immense melancholy of tropic ruin. Magnificent terraces, once golden
-with cane, now abandoned to weeds and serpents;--deserted
-plantation-homes, with trees rooted in the apartments and pushing up
-through the place of the roofs;--grass-grown alleys ravined by
-rains;--fruit-trees strangled by lianas;--here and there the stem of
-some splendid palmiste, brutally decapitated, naked as a mast;--petty
-frail growths of banana-trees or of bamboo slowly taking the place of
-century-old forest giants destroyed to make charcoal. But beauty enough
-remains to tell what the sensual paradise of the old days must have
-been, when sugar was selling at 52.
-
-And the fille-de-couleur has also changed. She is much less humble and
-submissive,--somewhat more exacting: she comprehends better the moral
-injustice of her position. The almost extreme physical refinement and
-delicacy, bequeathed to her by the freedwomen of the old regime, are
-passing away: like a conservatory plant deprived of its shelter, she is
-returning to a more primitive condition,--hardening and growing perhaps
-less comely as well as less helpless. She perceives also in a vague way
-the peril of her race: the creole white, her lover and protector, is
-emigrating;--the domination of the black becomes more and more probable.
-Furthermore, with the continual increase of the difficulty of living,
-and the growing pressure of population, social cruelties and hatreds
-have been developed such as her ancestors never knew. She is still
-loved; but it is alleged that she rarely loves the white, no matter how
-large the sacrifices made for her sake, and she no longer enjoys that
-reputation of fidelity accorded to her class in other years. Probably
-the truth is that the fille-de-couleur never had at any time capacity to
-bestow that quality of affection imagined or exacted as a right. Her
-moral side is still half savage: her feelings are still those of a
-child. If she does not love the white man according to his unreasonable
-desire, it is certain at least that she loves him as well as he
-deserves. Her alleged demoralization is more apparent than real;--she is
-changing from an artificial to a very natural being, and revealing more
-and more in her sufferings the true character of the luxurious social
-condition that brought her into existence. As a general rule, even while
-questioning her fidelity, the creole freely confesses her kindness of
-heart, and grants her capable of extreme generosity and devotedness to
-strangers or to children whom she has an opportunity to care for.
-Indeed, her natural kindness is so strikingly in contrast with the
-harder and subtler character of the men of color that one might almost
-feel tempted to doubt if she belong to the same race. Said a creole
-once, in my hearing:--"The gens-de-couleur are just like the
-_tourtouroux_:[48] one must pick out the females and leave the males
-alone." Although perhaps capable of a double meaning, his words were not
-lightly uttered;--he referred to the curious but indubitable fact that
-the character of the colored woman appears in many respects far superior
-to that of the colored man. In order to understand this, one must bear
-in mind the difference in the colonial history of both sexes; and a
-citation from General Romanet,[49] who visited Martinique at the end of
-the last century, offers a clue to the mystery. Speaking of the tax upon
-enfranchisement, he writes:--
-
---"The governor appointed by the sovereign delivers the certificates of
-liberty,--on payment by the master of a sum usually equivalent to the
-value of the subject. Public interest frequently justifies him in making
-the price of the slave proportionate to the desire or the interest
-manifested by the master. It can be readily understood that the tax upon
-the liberty of the women ought to be higher than that of the men: the
-latter unfortunates having no greater advantage than that of being
-useful;--the former know how to please: they have those rights and
-privileges which the whole world allows to their sex; they know how to
-make even the fetters of slavery serve them for adornments. They may be
-seen placing upon their proud tyrants the same chains worn by
-themselves, and making them kiss the marks left thereby: the master
-becomes the slave, and purchases another's liberty only to lose his
-own."
-
-Long before the time of General Romanet, the colored male slave might
-win liberty as the guerdon of bravery in fighting against foreign
-invasion, or might purchase it by extraordinary economy, while working
-as a mechanic on extra time for his own account (he always refused to
-labor with negroes); but in either case his success depended upon the
-possession and exercise of qualities the reverse of amiable. On the
-other hand, the bondwoman won manumission chiefly through her power to
-excite affection. In the survival and perpetuation of the fittest of
-both sexes these widely different characteristics would obtain more and
-more definition with successive generations.
-
-I find in the "Bulletin des Actes Administratifs de la Martinique" for
-1831 (No. 41) a list of slaves to whom liberty was accorded _pour
-services rendus à leurs maîtres_. Out of the sixty-nine
-enfranchisements recorded under this head, there are only two names of
-male adults to be found,--one an old man of sixty;--the other, called
-Laurencin, the betrayer of a conspiracy. The rest are young girls, or
-young mothers and children;--plenty of those singular and pretty names
-in vogue among the creole population,--Acélie, Avrillette, Mélie,
-Robertine, Célianne, Francillette, Adée, Catharinette, Sidollie,
-Céline, Coraline;--and the ages given are from sixteen to twenty-one,
-with few exceptions. Yet these liberties were asked for and granted at a
-time when Louis Philippe had abolished the tax on manumissions.... The
-same "Bulletin" contains a list of liberties granted to colored men,
-_pour service accompli dans la milice_, only!
-
-Most of the French West Indian writers whose works I was able to obtain
-and examine speak severely of the _hommes-de-couleur_ as a class,--in
-some instances the historian writes with a very violence of hatred. As
-far back as the commencement of the eighteenth century, Labat, who, with
-all his personal oddities, was undoubtedly a fine judge of men,
-declared:--"The mulattoes are as a general rule well made, of good
-stature, vigorous, strong, adroit, industrious, and daring (_hardis_)
-beyond all conception. They have much vivacity, but are given to their
-pleasures, fickle, proud, deceitful (_cachés_), wicked, and capable of
-the greatest crimes." A San Domingo historian, far more prejudiced than
-Père Labat, speaks of them "as physically superior, though morally
-inferior to the whites": he wrote at a time when the race had given to
-the world the two best swordsmen it has yet perhaps seen,--Saint-Georges
-and Jean-Louis.
-
-Commenting on the judgment of Père Labat, the historian Borde
-observes:--"The wickedness spoken of by Père Labat doubtless relates to
-their political passions only; for the women of color are, beyond any
-question, the best and sweetest persons in the world--_à coup
-sûr, les meilleures et les plus douces personnes qu'il y ait au
-monde_."--("Histoire de l'Ile de la Trinidad," par M. Pierre Gustave
-Louis Borde, vol. I., p. 222.) The same author, speaking of their
-goodness of heart, generosity to strangers and the sick says "they are
-born Sisters of Charity";--and he is not the only historian who has
-expressed such admiration of their moral qualities. What I myself saw
-during the epidemic of 1887-88 at Martinique convinced me that these
-eulogies of the women of color are not extravagant. On the other hand,
-the existing creole opinion of the men of color is much less favorable
-than even that expressed by Père Labat. Political events and passions
-have, perhaps, rendered a just estimate of their qualities difficult.
-The history of the _hommes-de-couleur_ in all the French colonies has
-been the same;--distrusted by the whites, who feared their aspirations
-to social equality, distrusted even more by the blacks (who still hate
-them secretly, although ruled by them), the mulattoes became an
-Ishmaelitish clan, inimical to both races, and dreaded of both. In
-Martinique it was attempted, with some success, to manage them by
-according freedom to all who would serve in the militia for a certain
-period with credit. At no time was it found possible to compel them to
-work with blacks; and they formed the whole class of skilled city
-workmen and mechanics for a century prior to emancipation.
-
-... To-day it cannot be truly said of the _fille-de-couleur_ that her
-existence is made up of "love, laughter, and forgettings." She has aims
-in life,--the bettering of her condition, the higher education of her
-children, whom she hopes to free from the curse of prejudice. She still
-clings to the white, because through him she may hope to improve her
-position. Under other conditions she might even hope to effect some sort
-of reconciliation between the races. But the gulf has become so much
-widened within the last forty years, that no rapprochement now appears
-possible; and it is perhaps too late even to restore the lost prosperity
-of the colony by any legislative or commercial reforms. The universal
-creole belief is summed up in the daily-repeated cry: "_C'est un pays
-perdu!_" Yearly the number of failures increase; and more whites
-emigrate;--and with every bankruptcy or departure some fille-de-couleur
-is left almost destitute, to begin life over again. Many a one has been
-rich and poor several times in succession;--one day her property is
-seized for debt;--perhaps on the morrow she finds some one able and
-willing to give her a home again... Whatever comes, she does not die for
-grief, this daughter of the sun: she pours out her pain in song, like a
-bird, Here is one of her little improvisations,--a song very popular in
-both Martinique and Guadeloupe, though originally composed in the latter
-colony:--
-
-
---"Good-bye Madras!
-Good-bye foulard!
-Good-bye pretty calicoes!
-Good-bye collier-choux!
-That ship
-Which is there on the buoy,
-It is taking
-My doudoux away."
-
---"Adiéu Madras!
-Adiéu foulard!
-Adiéu dézinde!
-Adiéu collier-choux!
-Batiment-là
-Qui sou labouè-là,
-Li ka mennein
-Doudoux-à-moin allé."
-
---"Very good-day,--
-Monsieur the Consignee.
-I come
-To make one little petition.
-My doudoux
-Is going away.
-Alas! I pray you
-Delay his going."
-
---"Bien le-bonjou',
-Missié le Consignataire.
-Moin ka vini
-Fai yon ti pétition;
-Doudoux-à-moin
-Y ka pati,--T'enprie, hélas!
-Rétàdé li."
-
-[He answers kindly in French: the _békés_ are always kind to these
-gentle children.]
-
---"My dear child,
-It is too late.
-The bills of lading
-Are already signed;
-The ship
-Is already on the buoy.
-In an hour from now
-They will be getting her under way."
-
---"Ma chère enfant
-Il est trop tard,
-Les connaissements
-Sont déjà signés,
-Est déjà sur la bouée;
-Dans une heure d'ici,
-Ils vont appareiller."
-
---"When the foulards came....
-I always had some;
-When the Madras-kerchiefs came,
-I always had some;
-When the printed calicoes came,
-I always had some.
-... That second officer--Is such a kind man!"
-
---"Foulard rivé,
-Moin té toujou tini;
-Madras rivé,
-Moin té toujou tini;
-Dézindes rivé,
-Moin té toujou tini.--Capitaine sougonde
-C'est yon bon gàçon!"
-
-"Everybody has
-Somebody to love;
-Everybody has
-Somebody to pet;
-Every body has
-A sweetheart of her own.
-I am the only one
-Who cannot have that,--I!"
-
-"Toutt moune tini
-Yon moune yo aimé;
-Toutt moune tini
-Yon moune yo chéri;
-Toutt moune tini
-Yon doudoux à yo.
-Jusse moin tou sèle
-Pa tini ça--moin!"
-
-
-... On the eve of the _Fête Dieu_, or Corpus Christi festival, in all
-these Catholic countries, the city streets are hung with banners and
-decorated with festoons and with palm branches; and great altars are
-erected at various points along the route of the procession, to serve as
-resting-places for the Host. These are called _reposoirs_; in creole
-patois, "_reposouè Bon-Dié_." Each wealthy man lends something to help
-to make them attractive,--rich plate, dainty crystal, bronzes,
-paintings, beautiful models of ships or steamers, curiosities from
-remote parts of the world.... The procession over, the altar is
-stripped, the valuables are returned to their owners: all the splendor
-disappears.... And the spectacle of that evanescent magnificence,
-repeated year by year, suggested to this proverb-loving people a
-similitude for the unstable fortune of the fille-de-couleur:--_Fortune
-milatresse c'est reposouè Bon-Dié_. (The luck of the mulattress is the
-resting-place of the Good-God).
-
-
-[Footnote 46: _La race de sang-mêlé, issue des blancs et des noirs,
-est éminement civilizable. Comme types physiques, elle fournit dans
-beaucoup d'individus, dans ses femmes en général, les plus beaux
-specimens de la race humaine_.--"Le Préjugé de Race aux Antilles
-Françaises." Par G. Souquet-Basiège. St. Pierre, Martinique: 1883. pp.
-661-62.]
-
-[Footnote 47: Turiault: "Étude sur le langage Créole de la
-Martinique." Brest: 1874.... On page 136 he cites the following pretty
-verses in speaking of the _fille-de-couleur_:--
-
-L'Amour prit soin de la former
-Tendre, naïve, et caressante.
-Faite pour plaire, encore plus pour aimer.
-Portant tous les traits précieux
-Du caractère d'une amante.
-Le plaisir sur sa bouche et l'amour dans set yeux.]
-
-[Footnote 48: A sort of land-crab;--the female is selected for food,
-and, properly cooked, makes a delicious dish;--the male is almost
-worthless.]
-
-[Footnote 49: "Voyage à la Martinique," Par J. R., Général de
-Brigade. Paris: An. XII., 1804. Page 106.]
-
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-BÊTE-NI-PIÉ
-
-
-
-
-I
-
-
-St. Pierre is in one respect fortunate beyond many tropical cities;--she
-has scarcely any mosquitoes, although there are plenty of mosquitoes
-in other parts of Martinique, even in the higher mountain villages. The
-flood of bright water that pours perpetually through all her streets,
-renders her comparatively free from the pest;--nobody sleeps under a
-mosquito bar.
-
-Nevertheless, St. Pierre is not exempt from other peculiar plagues of
-tropical life; and you cannot be too careful about examining your bed
-before venturing to lie down, and your clothing before you dress;--for
-various disagreeable things might be hiding in them: a spider large as a
-big crab, or a scorpion or a _mabouya_ or a centipede,--or certain large
-ants whose bite burns like the pricking of a red-hot needle. No one who
-has lived in St. Pierre is likely to forget the ants.... There are three
-or four kinds in every house;--the _fourmi fou_ (mad ant), a little
-speckled yellowish creature whose movements are so rapid as to delude
-the vision; the great black ant which allows itself to be killed before
-it lets go what it has bitten; the venomous little red ant, which is
-almost too small to see; and the small black ant which does not bite at
-all,--are usually omnipresent, and appear to dwell together in
-harmony. They are pests in kitchens, cupboards, and safes; but they are
-scavengers. It is marvellous to see them carrying away the body of
-a great dead roach or centipede,--pulling and pushing together like
-trained laborers, and guiding the corpse over obstacles or around them
-with extraordinary skill.... There was a time when ants almost destroyed
-the colony,--in 1751. The plantations, devastated by them are described
-by historians as having looked as if desolated by fire. Underneath the
-ground in certain places, layers of their eggs two inches deep were
-found extending over acres. Infants left unwatched in the cradle for a
-few hours were devoured alive by them. Immense balls of living ants
-were washed ashore at the same time on various parts of the coast (a
-phenomenon repeated within the memory of creoles now living in the
-north-east parishes). The Government vainly offered rewards for the best
-means of destroying the insects; but the plague gradually disappeared as
-it came.
-
-None of these creatures can be prevented from entering a dwelling;--you
-may as well resign yourself to the certainty of meeting with them from
-time to time. The great spiders (with the exception of those which are
-hairy) need excite no alarm or disgust;--indeed they are suffered to
-live unmolested in many houses, partly owing to a belief that they bring
-good-luck, and partly because they destroy multitudes of those enormous
-and noisome roaches which spoil whatever they cannot eat. The scorpion
-is less common; but it has a detestable habit of lurking under beds; and
-its bite communicates a burning fever. With far less reason, the mabouya
-is almost equally feared. It is a little lizard about six inches long,
-and ashen-colored;--it haunts only the interior of houses, while the
-bright-green lizards dwell only upon the roofs. Like other reptiles of
-the same order, the mabouya can run over or cling to polished surfaces;
-and there is a popular belief that if frightened, it will leap at one's
-face or hands and there fasten itself so tightly that it cannot be
-dislodged except by cutting it to pieces. Moreover, it's feet are
-supposed to have the power of leaving certain livid and ineffaceable
-marks upon the skin of the person to whom it attaches itself:--_ça ka
-ba ou lota_, say the colored people. Nevertheless, there is no creature
-more timid and harmless than the mabouya.
-
-But the most dreaded and the most insolent invader of domestic peace is
-the centipede. The water system of the city banished the mosquito; but
-it introduced the centipede into almost every dwelling. St. Pierre has a
-plague of centipedes. All the covered drains, the gutters, the crevices
-of fountain-basins and bathing-basins, the spaces between floor and
-ground, shelter centipedes. And the _bête à-mille-pattes_ is the terror
-of the barefooted population:--scarcely a day passes that some child or
-bonne or workman is not bitten by the creature.
-
-The sight of a full-grown centipede is enough to affect a strong set
-of nerves. Ten to eleven inches is the average length of adults; but
-extraordinary individuals much exceeding this dimension may be sometimes
-observed in the neighborhood of distilleries (_rhommeries_) and
-sugar-refineries. According to age, the color of the creature varies
-from yellowish to black;--the younger ones often have several different
-tints; the old ones are uniformly jet-black, and have a carapace of
-surprising toughness,--difficult to break. If you tread, by accident or
-design, upon the tail, the poisonous head will instantly curl back and
-bite the foot through any ordinary thickness of upper-leather.
-
-As a general rule the centipede lurks about the court-yards,
-foundations, and drains by preference; but in the season of heavy rains
-he does not hesitate to move upstairs, and make himself at home in
-parlors and bed-rooms. He has a provoking habit of nestling in your
-_moresques_ or your _chinoises_,--those wide light garments you put on
-before taking your siesta or retiring for the night. He also likes to
-get into your umbrella,--an article indispensable in the tropics; and
-you had better never open it carelessly. He may even take a notion to
-curl himself up in your hat, suspended on the wall. (I have known a
-trigonocephalus to do the same thing in a country-house). He has also a
-singular custom of mounting upon the long trailing dresses (douillettes)
-worn by Martinique women,--and climbing up very swiftly and lightly to
-the wearer's neck, where the prickling of his feet first betrays his
-presence. Sometimes he will get into bed with you and bite you, because
-you have not resolution enough to lie perfectly still while he is
-tickling you.... It is well to remember before dressing that merely
-shaking a garment may not dislodge him;--you must examine every part
-very patiently,--particularly the sleeves of a coat and the legs of
-pantaloons.
-
-The vitality of the creature is amazing. I kept one in a bottle without
-food or water for thirteen weeks, at the end of which time it remained
-active and dangerous as ever. Then I fed it with living insects,
-which it devoured ravenously;--beetles, roaches, earthworms, several
-_lepismaoe_, even one of the dangerous-looking millepedes, which have a
-great resemblance in outward structure to the centipede, but a thinner
-body, and more numerous limbs,--all seemed equally palatable to the
-prisoner.... I knew an instance of one, nearly a foot long, remaining in
-a silk parasol for more than four months, and emerging unexpectedly
-one day, with aggressiveness undiminished, to bite the hand that had
-involuntarily given it deliverance.
-
-In the city the centipede has but one natural enemy able to cope with
-him,--the hen! The hen attacks him with delight, and often swallows him,
-head first, without taking the trouble to kill him. The cat hunts him,
-but she is careful never to put her head near him;--she has a trick of
-whirling him round and round upon the floor so quickly as to stupefy
-him: then, when she sees a good chance, she strikes him dead with her
-claws. But if you are fond of your cat you will let her run no risks, as
-the bite of a large centipede might have very bad results for your pet.
-Its quickness of movement demands all the quickness of even the cat for
-self-defence.... I know of men who have proved themselves able to seize
-a fer-de-lance by the tail, whirl it round and round, and then flip it
-as you would crack a whip,--whereupon the terrible head flies off; but I
-never heard of anyone in Martinique daring to handle a living centipede.
-
-There are superstitions concerning the creature which have a good effect
-in diminishing his tribe. If you kill a centipede, you are sure
-to receive money soon; and even if you dream of killing one it
-is good-luck. Consequently, people are glad of any chance to kill
-centipedes,--usually taking a heavy stone or some iron utensil for the
-work;--a wooden stick is not a good weapon. There is always a little
-excitement when a _bête-ni-pié_ (as the centipede is termed in the
-patois) exposes itself to death; and you may often hear those who kill
-it uttering a sort of litany of abuse with every blow, as if addressing
-a human enemy:--"_Quitté moin tchoué ou, maudi!--quitté moin tchoué
-ou, scelerat!--quitté moin tchoué ou, Satan!--quitté moin tchoué
-ou, abonocio!_" etc. (Let me kill you, accursed! scoundrel! Satan!
-abomination!)
-
-The patois term for the centipede is not a mere corruption of the French
-_bête-à-mille-pattes_. Among a population of slaves, unable to read or
-write, [48] there were only the vaguest conceptions of numerical values;
-and the French term bête-à-mille-pattes was not one which could appeal
-to negro imagination. The slaves themselves invented an equally vivid
-name, _bête-anni-pié_ (the Beast-which-is-all-feet); _anni_ in creole
-signifying "only," and in such a sense "all." Abbreviated by subsequent
-usage to _bête-'ni-pié_, the appellation has amphibology;--for there are
-two words _ni_ in the patois, one signifying "to have," and the other
-"naked." So that the creole for a centipede might be translated in three
-ways,--"the Beast-which-is-all-feet"; or, "the Naked-footed Beast"; or,
-with fine irony of affirmation, "the Beast-which-has-feet."
-
-
-[Footnote 50: According to the Martinique "Annuaire" for 1887, there
-were even then, out of a total population of 173,182, no less than
-125,366 unable to read and write.]
-
-
-
-
-II
-
-
-What is the secret of that horror inspired by the centipede?... It
-is but very faintly related to our knowledge that the creature is
-venomous;--the results of the bite are only temporary swelling and a
-brief fever;--it is less to be feared than the bite of other tropical
-insects and reptiles which never inspire the same loathing by their
-aspect. And the shapes of venomous creatures are not always shapes of
-ugliness. The serpent has elegance of form as well as attractions
-of metallic tinting;--the tarantula, or the _matoutou-falaise_, have
-geometrical beauty. Lapidaries have in all ages expended rare skill
-upon imitations of serpent grace in gold and gems;--a princess would not
-scorn to wear a diamond spider. But what art could utilize successfully
-the form of the centipede? It is a form of absolute repulsiveness,--a
-skeleton-shape half defined:--the suggestion of some old reptile-spine
-astir, crawling with its fragments of ribs.
-
-No other living thing excites exactly the same feeling produced by the
-sight of the centipede,--the intense loathing and peculiar fear. The
-instant you see a centipede you feel it is absolutely necessary to kill
-it; you cannot find peace in your house while you know that such a life
-exists in it: perhaps the intrusion of a serpent would annoy and
-disgust you less. And it is not easy to explain the whole reason of this
-loathing. The form alone has, of course, something to do with it,--a
-form that seems almost a departure from natural laws. But the form alone
-does not produce the full effect, which is only experienced when you see
-the creature in motion. The true horror of the centipede, perhaps, must
-be due to the monstrosity of its movement,--multiple and complex, as of
-a chain of pursuing and inter-devouring lives: there is something about
-it that makes you recoil, as from a sudden corrupt swarming-out. It is
-confusing,--a series of contractings and lengthenings and, undulations
-so rapid as to allow of being only half seen: it alarms also, because
-the thing seems perpetually about to disappear, and because you know
-that to lose sight of it for one moment involves the very unpleasant
-chance of finding it upon you the next,--perhaps between skin and
-clothing.
-
-But this is not all:--the sensation produced by the centipede is still
-more complex--complex, in fact, as the visible organization of the
-creature. For, during pursuit,--whether retreating or attacking, in
-hiding or fleeing,--it displays a something which seems more than
-instinct: calculation and cunning,--a sort of malevolent intelligence.
-It knows how to delude, how to terrify;--it has marvellous skill in
-feinting;--it is an abominable juggler....
-
-
-
-III
-
-
-I am about to leave my room after breakfast, when little Victoire who
-carries the meals up-stairs in a wooden tray, screams out:--"_Gadé,
-Missié! ni bête-ni-pié assous dos ou!_" There is a thousand-footed beast
-upon my back!
-
-Off goes my coat, which I throw upon the floor;--the little servant, who
-has a nervous horror of centipedes, climbs upon a chair. I cannot see
-anything under the coat, nevertheless;--I lift it by the collar, turn it
-about very cautiously--nothing! Suddenly the child screams again; and I
-perceive the head close to my hand;--the execrable thing had been hiding
-in a perpendicular fold of the coat, which I drop only just in time to
-escape getting bitten. Immediately the centipede becomes invisible.
-Then I take the coat by one flap, and turn it over very quickly: just
-as quickly does the centipede pass over it in the inverse direction, and
-disappear under it again. I have had my first good look at him: he
-seems nearly a foot long,--has a greenish-yellow hue against the black
-cloth,--and pink legs, and a violet head;--he is evidently young.... I
-turn the coat a second time: same disgusting manreuvre. Undulations of
-livid color flow over him as he lengthens and shortens;--while running
-his shape is but half apparent; it is only as he makes a half pause in
-doubling round and under the coat that the panic of his legs becomes
-discernible. When he is fully exposed they move with invisible
-rapidity,--like a vibration;--you can see only a sort of pink haze
-extending about him,--something to which you would no more dare advance
-your finger than to the vapory halo edging a circular saw in motion.
-Twice more I turn and re-turn the coat with the same result;--I observe
-that the centipede always runs towards my hand, until I withdraw it: he
-feints!
-
-With a stick I uplift one portion of the coat after another; and
-suddenly perceive him curved under a sleeve,--looking quite small!--how
-could he have seemed so large a moment ago?... But before I can strike
-him he has flickered over the cloth again, and vanished; and I discover
-that he has the power of _magnifying himself_,--dilating the disgust of
-his shape at will: he invariably amplifies himself to face attack....
-
-It seems very difficult to dislodge him; he displays astonishing
-activity and cunning at finding wrinkles and folds to hide in. Even at
-the risk of damaging various things in the pockets, I stamp upon the
-coat;--then lift it up with the expectation of finding the creature
-dead. But it suddenly rushes out from some part or other, looking larger
-and more wicked than ever,--drops to the floor, and charges at my feet:
-a sortie! I strike at him unsuccessfully with the stick: he retreats
-to the angle between wainscoting and floor, and runs along it fast as
-a railroad train,--dodges two or three pokes,--gains the
-door-frame,--glides behind a hinge, and commences to run over the wall
-of the stair-way. There the hand of a black servant slaps him dead.
-
---"Always strike at the head," the servant tells me; "never tread on the
-tail.... This is a small one: the big fellows can make you afraid if you
-do not know how to kill them."
-
-... I pick up the carcass with a pair of scissors. It does not look
-formidable now that it is all contracted;--it is scarcely eight
-inches long,--thin as card-board, and even less heavy. It has no
-substantiality, no weight;--it is a mere appearance, a mask, a
-delusion.... But remembering the spectral, cunning, juggling something
-which magnified and moved it but a moment ago,--I feel almost tempted to
-believe, with certain savages, that there are animal shapes inhabited by
-goblins....
-
-
-
-
-IV
-
-
---"Is there anything still living and lurking in old black drains
-of Thought,--any bigotry, any prejudice, anything in the moral world
-whereunto the centipede may be likened?"
-
---"Really, I do not know," replied the friend to whom I had put the
-question; "but you need only go as far as the vegetable world for a
-likeness. Did you ever see anything like this?" he added, opening a
-drawer and taking therefrom something revolting, which, as he pressed it
-in his hand, looked like a long thick bundle of dried centipedes.
-
---"Touch them," he said, holding out to me the mass of articulated flat
-bodies and bristling legs.
-
---"Not for anything!" I replied, in astonished disgust. He laughed, and
-opened his hand. As he did so, the mass expanded.
-
---"Now look," he exclaimed!
-
-Then I saw that all the bodies were united at the tails--grew together
-upon one thick flat annulated stalk... a plant!--"But here is the
-fruit," he continued, taking from the same drawer a beautifully embossed
-ovoid nut, large as a duck's egg, ruddy-colored, and so exquisitely
-varnished by nature as to resemble a rosewood carving fresh from the
-hands of the cabinet-maker. In its proper place among the leaves and
-branches, it had the appearance of something delicious being devoured
-by a multitude of centipedes. Inside was a kernel, hard and heavy as
-iron-wood; but this in time, I was told, falls into dust: though the
-beautiful shell remains always perfect.
-
-Negroes call it the _coco-macaque._
-
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-MA BONNE
-
-
-
-
-I
-
-
-I cannot teach Cyrillia the clock;--I have tried until both of us had
-our patience strained to the breaking-point. Cyrillia still believes she
-will learn how to tell the time some day or other;--I am certain that
-she never will. "_Missié_," she says, "_lézhè pa aïen pou moin: c'est
-minitt ka fouté moin yon travail!_"--the hours do not give her any
-trouble; but the minutes are a frightful bore! And nevertheless,
-Cyrillia is punctual as the sun;--she always brings my coffee and a
-slice of corossol at five in the morning precisely. Her clock is the
-_cabritt-bois_. The great cricket stops singing, she says, at half-past
-four: the cessation of its chant awakens her.
-
---"_Bonjou', Missié. Coument ou passé lanuitt?_"--"Thanks, my daughter,
-I slept well."--"The weather is beautiful: if Missié would like to go
-to the beach, his bathing-towels are ready."--"Good! Cyrillia; I will
-go."... Such is our regular morning conversation.
-
-Nobody breakfasts before eleven o'clock or thereabout; but after an
-early sea-bath, one is apt to feel a little hollow during the morning,
-unless one take some sort of refreshment. Cyrillia always prepares
-something for me on my return from the beach,--either a little pot of
-fresh cocoa-water, or a _cocoyage_, or a _mabiyage_, or a _bavaroise_.
-
-The _cocoyage_ I like the best of all. Cyrillia takes a green cocoa-nut,
-slices off one side of it so as to open a hole, then pours the
-opalescent water into a bowl, adds to it a fresh egg, a little Holland
-gin, and some grated nutmeg and plenty of sugar. Then she whips up the
-mixture into effervescence with her _baton-lélé_. The _baton-lélé_ is an
-indispensaple article in every creole home: it is a thin stick which is
-cut from a young tree so as to leave at one end a whorl of branch-stumps
-sticking out at right angles like spokes;--by twirling the stem between
-the hands, the stumps whip up the drink in a moment.
-
-The _mabiyage_ is less agreeable, but is a popular morning drink among
-the poorer classes. It is made with a little white rum and a bottle of
-the bitter native root-beer called _mabi_. The taste of _mabi_ I can
-only describe as that of molasses and water flavored with a little
-cinchona bark.
-
-The _bavaroise_ is fresh milk, sugar, and a little Holland gin or
-rum,--mixed with the baton-lélé until a fine thick foam is formed.
-After the _cocoyage_, I think it is the best drink one can take in the
-morning; but very little spirit must be used for any of these mixtures.
-It is not until just before the mid-day meal that one can venture to
-take a serious stimulant,--_yon ti ponch_,--rum and water, sweetened
-with plenty of sugar or sugar syrup.
-
-The word _sucre_ is rarely used in Martinique,--considering that sugar
-is still the chief product;--the word _doux_, "sweet," is commonly
-substituted for it. _Doux_ has, however, a larger range of meaning: it
-may signify syrup, or any sort of sweets,--duplicated into _doudoux_, it
-means the corossole fruit as well as a sweetheart. _Ça qui lè doudoux?_
-is the cry of the corossole-seller. If a negro asks at a grocery store
-(_graisserie_) for _sique_ instead of for _doux_, it is only because he
-does not want it to be supposed that he means syrup;--as a general rule,
-he will only use the word _sique_ when referring to quality of
-sugar wanted, or to sugar in hogsheads. _Doux_ enters into domestic
-consumption in quite remarkable ways. People put sugar into fresh milk,
-English porter, beer, and cheap wine;--they cook various vegetables
-with sugar, such as peas; they seem to be particularly fond of
-sugar-and-water and of _d'leau-pain_,--bread-and-water boiled, strained,
-mixed with sugar, and flavored with cinnamon. The stranger gets
-accustomed to all this sweetness without evil results. In a northern
-climate the consequence would probably be at least a bilious attack; but
-in the tropics, where salt fish and fruits are popularly preferred to
-meat, the prodigal use of sugar or sugar-syrups appears to be decidedly
-beneficial.
-
-... After Cyrillia has prepared my _cocoyage_, and rinsed the
-bathing-towels in fresh-water, she is ready to go to market, and wants
-to know what I would like to eat for breakfast. "Anything creole,
-Cyrillia;--I want to know what people eat in this country." She always
-does her best to please me in this respect,--almost daily introduces me
-to some unfamiliar dishes, something odd in the way of fruit or fish.
-
-
-
-
-II
-
-
-Cyrillia has given me a good idea of the range and character of
-_mangé-Créole_, and I can venture to write something about it after a
-year's observation. By _mangé-Créole_ I refer only to the food of the
-people proper, the colored population; for the _cuisine_ of the small
-class of wealthy whites is chiefly European, and devoid of local
-interest:--I might observe, however, that the fashion of cooking is
-rather Provençal than Parisian;--rather of southern than of northern
-France.
-
-Meat, whether fresh or salt, enters little into the nourishment of the
-poorer classes. This is partly, no doubt, because of the cost of all
-meats; but it is also due to natural preference for fruits and
-fish. When fresh meat is purchased, it is usually to make a stew or
-_daube_;--probably salt meats are more popular; and native vegetables
-and manioc flour are preferred to bread. There are only two popular
-soups which are peculiar to the creole cuisine,--_calalou_, a
-gombo soup, almost precisely similar to that of Louisiana; and the
-_soupe-d'habitant_, or "country soup." It is made of yams, carrots,
-bananas, turnips, _choux-caraïbes_, pumpkins, salt pork, and pimento,
-all boiled together;--the salt meat being left out of the composition on
-Fridays.
-
-The great staple, the true meat of the population, is salt codfish,
-which is prepared in a great number of ways. The most popular and the
-rudest preparation of it is called "Ferocious" (_férocé_); and it is
-not at all unpalatable. The codfish is simply fried, and served with
-vinegar, oil, pimento;--manioc flour and avocados being considered
-indispensable adjuncts. As manioc flour forms a part of almost every
-creole meal, a word of information regarding it will not be out of place
-here. Everybody who has heard the name probably knows that the manioc
-root is naturally poisonous, and that the toxic elements must be removed
-by pressure and desiccation before the flour can be made. Good manioc
-flour has an appearance like very coarse oatmeal; and is probably quite
-as nourishing. Even when dear as bread, it is preferred, and forms
-the flour of the population, by whom the word _farine_ is only used
-to signify manioc flour: if wheat-flour be referred to it is always
-qualified as "French flour" (_farine-Fouance_). Although certain flours
-are regularly advertised as American in the local papers, they are still
-_farine-Fouance_ for the population, who call everything foreign French.
-American beer is _biè-Fouance_; American canned peas, _ti-pois-Fouance_;
-any white foreigner who can talk French is _yon béké-Fouance_.
-
-Usually the manioc flour is eaten uncooked:[51] merely poured into a
-plate, with a little water and stirred with a spoon into a thick paste
-or mush,--the thicker the better;--_dleau passé farine_ (more water
-than manioc flour) is a saying which describes the condition of a very
-destitute person. When not served with fish, the flour is occasionally
-mixed with water and refined molasses (_sirop-battrie_): this
-preparation, which is very nice, is called _cousscaye_. There is also a
-way of boiling it with molasses and milk into a kind of pudding. This
-is called _matêté_; children are very fond of it. Both of these names,
-_cousscaye_ and _matêté_, are alleged to be of Carib origin: the art of
-preparing the flour itself from manioc root is certainly an inheritance
-from the Caribs, who bequeathed many singular words to the creole patois
-of the French West Indies.
-
-Of all the preparations of codfish with which manioc flour is eaten,
-I preferred the _lamori-bouilli_,--the fish boiled plain, after having
-been steeped long enough to remove the excess of salt; and then served
-with plenty of olive-oil and pimento. The people who have no home of
-their own, or at least no place to cook, can buy their food already
-prepared from the _màchannes lapacotte_, who seem to make a specialty
-of _macadam_ (codfish stewed with rice) and the other two dishes already
-referred to. But in every colored family there are occasional feasts
-of _lamori-au-laitt_, codfish stewed with milk and potatoes;
-_lamori-au-grattin_, codfish boned, pounded with toast crumbs, and
-boiled with butter, onions, and pepper into a mush;--_coubouyon-lamori_,
-codfish stewed with butter and oil;--_bachamelle_, codfish boned and
-stewed with potatoes, pimentos, oil, garlic, and butter.
-
-_Pimento_ is an essential accompaniment to all these dishes, whether
-it be cooked or raw: everything is served with plenty of pimento,-_en
-pile_, _en pile piment._ Among the various kinds I can mention only the
-_piment-café_, or "coffee-pepper," larger but about the same shape as a
-grain of Liberian coffee, violet-red at one end; the _piment-zouèseau_,
-or bird-pepper, small and long and scarlet;--and the _piment-capresse_,
-very large, pointed at one end, and bag-shaped at the other. It takes a
-very deep red color when ripe, and is so strong that if you only break
-the pod in a room, the sharp perfume instantly fills the apartment.
-Unless you are as well-trained as any Mexican to eat pimento, you will
-probably regret your first encounter with the _capresse_.
-
-Cyrillia told me a story about this infernal vegetable.
-
-
-[Footnote 51: There is record of an attempt to manufacture bread with
-one part manioc flour to three of wheat flour. The result was excellent;
-but no serious effort was ever made to put the manioc bread on the
-market.]
-
-
-
-
-III
-
-
-ZHISTOUÈ PIMENT.
-
-Té ni yon manman qui té ni en pile, en pile yche; et yon jou y pa té ni
-aïen pou y té baill yche-là mangé. Y té ka lévé bon matin-là sans yon
-sou: y pa sa ça y té douè fai,--là y té ké baill latête. Y allé
-lacaïe macoumè-y, raconté lapeine-y. Macoumè baill y toua chopine
-farine-manioc. Y allé lacaill liautt macoumè, qui baill y yon grand
-trai piment. Macoumè-là di y venne trai-piment-à, épi y té pè acheté
-lamori,--pisse y ja té ni farine. Madame-là di: "Mèçi, macoumè;"--y di y
-bonjou'; épi y allé lacaïe-y.
-
-Lhè y rivé àcaïe y limé difè: y metté canari épi dleau assous difé-a;
-épi y cassé toutt piment-là et metté yo adans canari-à assous diré.
-
-Lhè y oue canari-à ka bouï, y pouend _baton-lélé_, epi y lélé piment-à:
-aloss y ka fai yonne calalou-piment. Lhè calalou-piment-là té tchouitt,
-y pouend chaque zassiett yche-li; y metté calalou yo fouète dans
-zassiett-là; y metté ta-mari fouète, assou, épi ta-y. Épi lhè calalou-là
-té bien fouète, y metté farine nans chaque zassiett-là. Épi y crié toutt
-moune vini mangé. Toutt moune vini metté yo à-tabe.
-
-Pouèmiè bouchée mari-à pouend, y rété,--y crié: "Aïe! ouaill! mafenm!"
-Fenm-là réponne mari y: "Ouaill! monmari!" Cés ti manmaille-la crie:
-"Ouaill! manman!" Manman-à. réponne:--"Ouaill! yches-moin!"... Yo toutt
-pouend couri, quitté caïe-là sèle,--épi yo toutt tombé larviè à touempé
-bouche yo. Cés ti manmaille-là bouè dleau sitellement jusse temps yo
-toutt néyé: té ka rété anni manman-là épi papa-là. Yo té là bò lariviè,
-qui té ka pleiré. Moin té ka passé à lhè-à;--moin ka mandé yo: "Ça zautt
-ni?"
-
-Nhomme-là lévé: y baill moin yon sèle coup d'piè, y voyé moin lautt bo
-lariviè-ou ouè moin vini pou conté ça ba ou.
-
-There was once a mamma who had ever so many children; and one day she
-had nothing to give those children to eat. She had got up very early
-that morning, without a sou in the world: she did not know what to do:
-she was so worried that her head was upset. She went to the house of a
-woman-friend, and told her about her trouble. The friend gave her three
-_chopines_ [three pints] of manioc flour. Then she went to the house
-of another female friend, who gave her a big trayful of pimentos. The
-friend told her to sell that tray of pimentos: then she could buy some
-codfish,--since she already had some manioc flour. The good-wife said:
-"Thank you, _macoumè_,"--she bid her good-day, and then went to her own
-house.
-
-The moment she got home, she made a fire, and put her _canari_ [earthen
-pot] full of water on the fire to boil: then she broke up all the
-pimentos and put them into the canari on the fire.
-
-As soon as she saw the canari boiling, she took her _baton-lélé_, and
-beat up all those pimentos: then she made a _pimento-calalou_. When the
-pimento-calalou was well cooked, she took each one of the children's
-plates, and poured their calalou into the plates to cool it; she also
-put her husband's out to cool, and her own. And when the calalou was
-quite cool, she put some manioc flour into each of the plates. Then
-she called to everybody to come and eat. They all came, and sat down to
-table.
-
-The first mouthful that husband took he stopped and screamed:--"_Aïe!
-ouaill!_ my wife!" The woman answered her husband: "_Ouaill_! my
-husband!" The little children all screamed: "_Ouaill!_ mamma!" Their
-mamma answered: "_Ouaill!_ my children!"... They all ran out, left the
-house empty; and they tumbled into the river to steep their mouths.
-Those little children just drank water and drank water till they were
-all drowned: there was nobody left except the mamma and the papa, They
-stayed there on the river-bank, and cried. I was passing that way just
-at that time;--I asked them: "What ails you people?" That man got up and
-gave me just one kick that sent me right across the river; I came here
-at once, as you see, to tell you all about it....
-
-
-
-
-IV
-
-
-... It is no use for me to attempt anything like a detailed description
-of the fish Cyrillia brings me day after day from the Place du Fort: the
-variety seems to be infinite. I have learned, however, one curious fact
-which is worth noting: that, as a general rule, the more beautifully
-colored fish are the least palatable, and are sought after only by the
-poor. The _perroquet_, black, with bright bands of red and yellow;
-the _cirurgien_, blue and black; the _patate_, yellow and black; the
-_moringue_, which looks like polished granite; the _souri_, pink
-and yellow; the vermilion _Gouôs-zie_; the rosy _sade_; the red
-_Bon-Dié-manié-moin_ ("the-Good-God-handled-me")--it has two queer marks
-as of great fingers; and the various kinds of all-blue fish, _balaou_,
-_conliou_, etc. varying from steel-color to violet,--these are seldom
-seen at the tables of the rich. There are exceptions, of course, to this
-and all general rules: notably the _couronné_, pink spotted beautifully
-with black,--a sort of Redfish, which never sells less than fourteen
-cents a pound; and the _zorphie_, which has exquisite changing lights
-of nacreous green and purple. It is said, however, that the zorphi is
-sometimes poisonous, like the _bécunne_; and there are many fish which,
-although not venomous by nature, have always been considered dangerous.
-In the time of Père Dutertre it was believed these fish ate the apples
-of the manchineel-tree, washed into the sea by rains;--to-day it is
-popularly supposed that they are rendered occasionally poisonous by
-eating the barnacles attached to copper-plating of ships. The _tazard_,
-the _lune_, the _capitaine_, the _dorade_, the _perroquet_, the
-_couliou_, the _congre_, various crabs, and even the _tonne_,--all
-are dangerous unless perfectly fresh: the least decomposition seems
-to develop a mysterious poison. A singular phenomenon regarding the
-poisoning occasionally produced by the bécunne and dorade is that the
-skin peels from the hands and feet of those lucky enough to survive
-the terrible colics, burnings, itchings, and delirium, which are early
-symptoms, Happily these accidents are very rare, since the markets have
-been properly inspected: in the time of Dr. Rufz, they would seem to
-have been very common,--so common that he tells us he would not eat
-fresh fish without being perfectly certain where it was caught and how
-long it had been out of the water.
-
-The poor buy the brightly colored fish only when the finer qualities
-are not obtainable at low rates; but often and often the catch is so
-enormous that half of it has to be thrown back into the sea. In the hot
-moist air, fish decomposes very rapidly; it is impossible to transport
-it to any distance into the interior; and only the inhabitants of the
-coast can indulge in fresh fish,--at least sea-fish.
-
-Naturally, among the laboring class the question of quality is less
-important than that of quantity and substance, unless the fish-market be
-extraordinarily well stocked. Of all fresh fish, the most popular is the
-_tonne_, a great blue-gray creature whose flesh is solid as beef; next
-come in order of preferment the flying-fish (_volants_), which often
-sell as low as four for a cent;--then the _lambi_, or sea-snail, which
-has a very dense and nutritious flesh;--then the small whitish fish
-classed as _sàdines_;--then the blue-colored fishes according to price,
-_couliou_, _balaou_, etc.;--lastly, the shark, which sells commonly at
-two cents a pound. Large sharks are not edible; the flesh is too hard;
-but a young shark is very good eating indeed. Cyrillia cooked me a slice
-one morning: it was quite delicate, tasted almost like veal.
-
-The quantity of very small fish sold is surprising. With ten sous the
-family of a laborer can have a good fish-dinner: a pound of _sàdines_ is
-never dearer than two sous;--a pint of manioc flour can be had for the
-same price; and a big avocado sells for a sou. This is more than enough
-food for any one person; and by doubling the expense one obtains a
-proportionately greater quantity--enough for four or five individuals.
-The _sàdines_ are roasted over a charcoal fire, and flavored with a
-sauce of lemon, pimento, and garlic. When there are no _sàdines_, there
-are sure to be _coulious_ in plenty,--small _coulious_ about as long as
-your little finger: these are more delicate, and fetch double the price.
-With four sous' worth of _coulious_ a family can have a superb _blaffe_.
-To make a _blaffe_ the fish are cooked in water, and served with
-pimento, lemon, spices, onions, and garlic; but without oil or butter.
-Experience has demonstrated that _coulious_ make the best _blaffe_; and
-a _blaffe_ is seldom prepared with other fish.
-
-
-
-
-V
-
-
-There are four dishes which are the holiday luxuries of the
-poor:--_manicou_, _ver-palmiste_, _zandouille_, and _poule-épi-diri_.[52]
-
-
-[Illustration: MARKET, FORT-DE FRANCE
-_Daily, at dawn, these carriers stream in from the
-country with burdens of fruit upon their heads._]
-
-
-The _manitou_ is a brave little marsupial, which might be called
-the opossum of Martinique: it fights, although overmatched, with the
-serpent, and is a great enemy to the field-rat. In the market a manicou
-sells for two francs and a half at cheapest: it is generally salted
-before being cooked.
-
-The great worm, or caterpillar, called _ver-palmiste_ is found in the
-heads of cabbage-palms,--especially after the cabbage has been cut out,
-and the tree has begun to perish. It is the grub of a curious beetle,
-which has a proboscis of such form as suggested the creole appellation,
-_léfant_: the "elephant." These worms are sold in the Place du Fort at
-two sous each: they are spitted and roasted alive, and are said to taste
-like almonds. I have never tried to find out whether this be fact or
-fancy; and I am glad to say that few white creoles confess a liking for
-this barbarous food.
-
-The _zandouilles_ are delicious sausages made with pig-buff,--and only
-seen in the market on Sundays. They cost a franc and a half each; and
-there are several women who have an established reputation throughout
-Martinique for their skill in making them. I have tasted some not less
-palatable than the famous London "pork-pies." Those of Lamentin are
-reputed the best in the island.
-
-But _poule-épi-diri_ is certainly the most popular dish of all: it is
-the dearest, as well, and poor people can rarely afford it. In Louisiana
-an almost similar dish is called _jimbalaya_: chicken cooked with rice.
-The Martiniquais think it such a delicacy that an over-exacting person,
-or one difficult to satisfy, is reproved with the simple question:--"_Ça
-ou lè 'nco-poule, épi-diri?_" (What more do you want, great
-heavens!--chicken-and-rice?) Naughty children are bribed into absolute
-goodness by the promise of poule-épi-diri:--
-
-
---"_Aïe! chè, bò doudoux!
-Doudoux ba ou poule-épi-diri;
-Aïe! chè, bò doudoux!_"...
-
-(Aïe, dear! kiss _doudoux!--doudoux_ has rice-and-chicken for
-you!--_aïe_, dear! kiss _doudoux!_)
-
-
-How far rice enters into the success of the dish above mentioned I
-cannot say; but rice ranks in favor generally above all cereals; it is
-at least six times more in demand than maize. _Diri-doux_, rice boiled
-with sugar, is sold in prodigious quantities daily,--especially at
-the markets, where little heaps of it, rolled in pieces of banana
-or _cachibou_ leaves, are retailed at a cent each. _Diri-aulaitt_, a
-veritable rice-pudding, is also very popular; but it would weary the
-reader to mention one-tenth of the creole preparations into which rice
-enters.
-
-
-[Footnote 52: I must mention a surreptitious dish, _chatt_;--needless to
-say the cats are not sold, but stolen. It is true that only a small
-class of poor people eat cats; but they eat so many cats that cats have
-become quite rare in St Pierre. The custom is purely superstitious: it
-is alleged that if you eat cat seven times, or if you eat seven cats, no
-witch, wizard, or _quimboiseur_ can ever do you any harm; and the cat
-ought to be eaten on Christmas Eve in order that the meal be perfectly
-efficacious. . . . The mystic number "seven" enters into another and a
-better creole superstition;--if you kill a serpent, seven great sins are
-forgiven to you: _ou ké ni sept grands péchés effacé._]
-
-
-
-
-VI
-
-
-Everybody eats _akras_;--they sell at a cent apiece. The akra is a small
-fritter or pancake, which may be made of fifty different things,--among
-others codfish, titiri, beans, brains, _choux-caraïbes_, little
-black peas (_poix-zié-nouè_, "black-eyed peas"), or of crawfish
-(_akra-cribîche_). When made of carrots, bananas, chicken, palm-cabbage,
-etc. and sweetened, they are called _marinades_. On first acquaintance
-they seem rather greasy for so hot a climate; but one learns, on
-becoming accustomed to tropical conditions, that a certain amount of
-oily or greasy food is both healthy and needful.
-
-First among popular vegetables are beans. Red beans are preferred; but
-boiled white beans, served cold with vinegar and plenty of oil, form a
-favorite salad. Next in order of preferment come the _choux-caraïbes_,
-_patates_, _zignames_, _camanioc_, and _cousscouche_: all immense
-roots,--the true potatoes of the tropics. The camanioc is finer than the
-choux-caraïbe, boils whiter and softer: in appearance it resembles the
-manioc root very closely, but has no toxic element. The cousscouche is
-the best of all: the finest Irish potato boiled into sparkling flour
-is not so good. Most of these roots can be cooked into a sort of mush,
-called _migan_: such as _migan-choux_, made with the choux-caraïbe;
-_migan-zignames_, made with yams; _migan-cousscouche_, etc.,--in which
-case crabs or shrimps are usually served with the _migan_. There is a
-particular fondness for the little rosy crab called _tourlouroux_, in
-patois _touloulou_. _Migan_ is also made with bread-fruit. Very large
-bananas or plantains are boiled with codfish, with _daubes_, or
-meat stews, and with eggs. The bread-fruit is a fair substitute for
-vegetables. It must be cooked very thoroughly, and has a dry potato
-taste. What is called the _fleu-fouitt-à-pain_, or "bread-fruit
-flower"--a long pod-shaped solid growth, covered exteriorly with tiny
-seeds closely set as pin-heads could be, and having an interior pith
-very elastic and resistant,--is candied into a delicious sweetmeat.
-
-
-
-
-VII
-
-
-The consumption of bananas is enormous: more bananas are eaten than
-vegetables; and more banana-trees are yearly being cultivated. The negro
-seems to recognize instinctively that economical value of the banana to
-which attention was long since called by Humboldt, who estimated that
-while an acre planted in wheat would barely support three persons, an
-acre planted in banana-trees would nourish fifty.
-
-Bananas and plantains hold the first place among fruits in popular
-esteem;--they are cooked in every way, and served with almost every sort
-of meat or fish. What we call bananas in the United States, however, are
-not called bananas in Martinique, but figs (_figues_). Plantains seem
-to be called _bananes_. One is often surprised at popular nomenclature:
-_choux_ may mean either a sort of root (_choux-caraïbe_), or the top
-of the cabbage-palm; _Jacquot_ may mean a fish; _cabane_ never means
-a cabin, but a bed; _crickett_ means not a cricket, but a frog; and at
-least fifty other words have equally deceptive uses. If one desires
-to speak of real figs--dried figs--he must say _figues-Fouanc_ (French
-figs); otherwise nobody will understand him. There are many kinds
-of bananas here called _figues_,--the four most popular are the
-_figues-bananes_, which are plantains, I think; the _figues-makouenga_,
-which grow wild, and have a red skin; the _figues-pommes_
-(apple-bananas), which are large and yellow; and the _ti-figues-desse_
-(little-dessert-bananas), which are to be seen on all tables in St.
-Pierre. They are small, sweet, and always agreeable, even when one has
-no appetite for other fruits.
-
-It requires some little time to become accustomed to many tropical
-fruits, or at least to find patience as well as inclination to eat them.
-A large number, in spite of delicious flavor, are provokingly stony:
-such as the ripe guavas, the cherries, the barbadines; even the
-corrossole and _pomme-cannelle_ are little more than huge masses of
-very hard seeds buried in pulp of exquisite taste. The _sapota_, or
-_sapodtilla_, is less characterized by stoniness, and one soon learns to
-like it. It has large flat seeds, which can be split into two with the
-finger-nail; and a fine white skin lies between these two halves. It
-requires some skill to remove entire this little skin, or pellicle,
-without breaking it: to do so is said to be a test of affection. Perhaps
-this bit of folk-lore was suggested by the shape of the pellicle, which
-is that of a heart. The pretty fille-de-couleur asks her doudoux:--"_Ess
-ou ainmein moin?--pouloss tiré ti lapeau-là sans cassé-y_." Woe to
-him if he breaks it!... The most disagreeable fruit is, I think, the
-_pomme-d'Haiti_, or Haytian apple: it is very attractive exteriorly;
-but has a strong musky odor and taste which nauseates. Few white creoles
-ever eat it.
-
-Of the oranges, nothing except praise can be said; but there are
-fruits that look like oranges, and are not oranges, that are far more
-noteworthy. There is the _chadèque_, which grows here to fully three
-feet in circumference, and has a sweet pink pulp; and there is the
-"forbidden-fruit" (_fouitt-défendu_), a sort of cross between the orange
-and the chadèque, and superior to both. The colored people declare that
-this monster fruit is the same which grew in Eden upon the fatal tree:
-_c'est ça mênm qui fai moune ka fai yche conm ça atouelement!_ The
-fouitt-défendu is wonderful, indeed, in its way; but the fruit which
-most surprised me on my first acquaintance with it was the _zabricôt_.
-
---"_Ou lè yon zabricôt?_" (Would you like an apricot?) Cyrillia asked
-me one day. I replied that I liked apricots very much,--wanted more than
-one. Cyrillia looked astonished, but said nothing until she
-returned from market, and put on the table _two_ apricots, with the
-observation:--"_Ça ke fai ou malade mangé toutt ça!_" (You will get sick
-if you eat all that.) I could not eat even half of one of them. Imagine
-a plum larger than the largest turnip, with a skin like a russet apple,
-solid sweet flesh of a carrot-red color, and a nut in the middle bigger
-than a duck's egg and hard as a rock. These fruits are aromatic as well
-as sweet to the taste: the price varies from one to four cents each,
-according to size. The tree is indigenous to the West Indies; the
-aborigines of Hayti had a strange belief regarding it. They alleged that
-its fruits formed the nourishment of the dead; and however pressed by
-hunger, an Indian in the woods would rather remain without food than
-strip one of these trees, lest he should deprive the ghosts of their
-sustenance.... No trace of this belief seems to exist among the colored
-people of Martinique.
-
-Among the poor such fruits are luxuries: they eat more mangoes than
-any other fruits excepting bananas. It is rather slobbery work eating
-a common mango, in which every particle of pulp is threaded fast to
-the kernel: one prefers to gnaw it when alone. But there are cultivated
-mangoes with finer and thicker flesh which can be sliced off, so that
-the greater part of the fruit may be eaten without smearing and sucking.
-Among grafted varieties the _mangue_ is quite as delicious as the
-orange. Perhaps there are nearly as many varieties of mangoes in
-Martinique as there are varieties of peaches with us: I am acquainted,
-however, with only a few,--such as the _mango-Bassignac_;--_mango-pêche_
-(or peach-mango);--_mango-vert_ (green mango), very large and
-oblong;--_mango-grêffé_;--_mangotine_, quite round and
-small;--_mango-quinette_, very small also, almost egg-shaped;--_mango-Zézé_,
-very sweet, rather small, and of flattened form;--_mango-d'or_ (golden
-mango), worth half a franc each;--_mango-Lamentin_, a highly cultivated
-variety--and the superb _Reine-Amélie_ (or Queen Amelia), a great yellow
-fruit which retails even in Martinique at five cents apiece.
-
-
-
-
-VIII
-
-
-... "_Ou c'est bonhomme caton?-ou c'est zimage, non?_" (Am I a
-pasteboard man, or an image, that I do not eat?) Cyrillia wants to know.
-The fact is that I am a little overfed; but the stranger in the tropics
-cannot eat like a native, and my abstemiousness is a surprise. In the
-North we eat a good deal for the sake of caloric; in the tropics, unless
-one be in the habit of taking much physical exercise, which is a very
-difficult thing to do, a generous appetite is out of the question.
-Cyrillia will not suffer me to live upon _mangé-Creole_ altogether; she
-insists upon occasional beefsteaks and roasts, and tries to tempt me
-with all kinds of queer delicious, desserts as well,--particularly those
-cakes made of grated cocoanut and sugar-syrup (_tablett-coco-rapé_)
-of which a stranger becomes very fond. But, nevertheless, I cannot eat
-enough to quiet Cyrillia's fears.
-
-Not eating enough is not her only complaint against me. I am perpetually
-doing something or other which shocks her. The Creoles are the most
-cautious livers in the world, perhaps;--the stranger who walks in the
-sun without an umbrella, or stands in currents of air, is for them
-an object of wonder and compassion. Cyrillia's complaints about my
-recklessness in the matter of hygiene always terminate with the refrain:
-"_Yo pa fai ça içi_"--(People never do such things in Martinique.) Among
-such rash acts are washing one's face or hands while perspiring, taking
-off one's hat on coming in from a walk, going out immediately after
-a bath, and washing my face with soap. "Oh, Cyrillia! what
-foolishness!--why should I not wash my face with soap? Because it will
-blind you," Cyrillia answers: "_ça ké tchoué limiè zié ou_" (it will
-kill the light in your eyes). There is no cleaner person than Cyrillia;
-and, indeed among the city people, the daily bath is the rule in all
-weathers; but soap is never used on the face by thousands, who, like
-Cyrillia, believe it will "kill the light of the eyes."
-
-One day I had been taking a long walk in the sun, and returned so
-thirsty that all the old stories about travellers suffering in waterless
-deserts returned to memory with new significance;--visions of simooms
-arose before me. What a delight to see and to grasp the heavy, red,
-thick-lipped _dobanne_, the water-jar, dewy and cool with the exudation
-of the _Eau-de-Gouyave_ which filled it to the brim,--_toutt vivant_,
-as Cyrillia says, "all alive"! There was a sudden scream,--the
-water-pitcher was snatched from my hands by Cyrillia with the question:
-"_Ess ou lè tchoué cò-ou?--Saint Joseph!_" (Did I want to kill my
-body?)... The Creoles use the word "body" in speaking of anything that
-can happen to one,--"hurt one's body, tire one's body, marry
-one's body, bury one's body," etc.;--I wonder whether the expression
-originated in zealous desire to prove a profound faith in the soul....
-Then Cyrillia made me a little punch with sugar and rum, and told me
-I must never drink fresh-water after a walk unless I wanted to kill my
-body. In this matter her advice was good. The immediate result of a
-cold drink while heated is a profuse and icy perspiration, during which
-currents of air are really dangerous. A cold is not dreaded here, and
-colds are rare; but pleurisy is common, and may be the consequence of
-any imprudent exposure.
-
-I do not often have the opportunity at home of committing even an
-unconscious imprudence; for Cyrillia is ubiquitous, and always on the
-watch lest something dreadful should happen to me. She is wonderful as
-a house-keeper as well as a cook: there is certainly much to do, and
-she has only a child to help her, but she always seems to have time.
-Her kitchen apparatus is of the simplest kind: a charcoal furnace
-constructed of bricks, a few earthenware pots (_canar_), and some
-grid-irons;--yet with these she can certainly prepare as many dishes as
-there are days in the year. I have never known her to be busy with her
-_canari_ for more than an hour; yet everything is kept in perfect order.
-When she is not working, she is quite happy in sitting at a window, and
-amusing herself by watching the life of the street,--or playing with
-a kitten, which she has trained so well that it seems to understand
-everything she says.
-
-
-
-
-IX
-
-
-With darkness all the population of the island retire to their
-homes;--the streets become silent, and the life of the day is done.
-By eight o'clock nearly all the windows are closed, and the lights put
-out;--by nine the people are asleep. There are no evening parties, no
-night amusements, except during rare theatrical seasons and times of
-Carnival; there are no evening visits: active existence is almost timed
-by the rising and setting of the sun.... The only pleasure left for the
-stranger of evenings is a quiet smoke on his balcony or before his door:
-reading is out of the question, partly because books are rare, partly
-because lights are bad, partly because insects throng about every lamp
-or candle. I am lucky enough to have a balcony, broad enough for a
-rocking-chair; and sometimes Cyrillia and the kitten come to keep me
-company before bedtime. The kitten climbs on my knees; Cyrillia sits
-right down upon the balcony.
-
-One bright evening, Cyrillia was amusing herself very much by watching
-the clouds: they were floating high; the moonlight made them brilliant
-as frost. As they changed shape under the pressure of the trade-wind,
-Cyrillia seemed to discover wonderful things in them: sheep, ships with
-sails, cows, faces, perhaps even _zombis_.
-
---"_Travaill Bon-Dié joli,--anh?_" (Is not the work of the Good-God
-pretty?) she said at last.... "There was Madame Remy, who used to sell
-the finest _foulards_ and Madrases in St. Pierre;--she used to study the
-clouds. She drew the patterns of the clouds for her _foulards_: whenever
-she saw a beautiful cloud or a beautiful rainbow, she would make a
-drawing of it in color at once; and then she would send that to France
-to have _foulards_ made just like it.... Since she is dead, you do not
-see any more pretty _foulards_ such as there used to be."...
-
---"Would you like to look at the moon with my telescope, Cyrillia?" I
-asked. "Let me get it for you."
-
---"Oh no, no!" she answered, as if shocked.
-
---"Why?"
-
---"_Ah! faut pa gàdé baggaïe Bon-Dié conm ça!_" (It is not right to look
-at the things of the Good-God that way.)
-
-I did not insist. After a little silence, Cyrillia resumed:--
-
---"But I saw the Sun and the Moon once fighting together: that was what
-people call an _eclipse_,--is not that the word?... They fought together
-a long time: I was looking at them. We put a _terrine_ full of water
-on the ground, and looked into the water to see them. And the Moon is
-stronger than the Sun!--yes, the Sun was obliged to give way to the
-Moon.... Why do they fight like that?"
-
---"They don't, Cyrillia."
-
---"Oh yes, they do. I saw them!... And the Moon is much stronger than
-the Sun!"
-
-I did not attempt to contradict this testimony of the eyes. Cyrillia
-continued to watch the pretty clouds. Then she said:--"Would you not
-like to have a ladder long enough to let you climb up to those clouds,
-and see what they are made of?"
-
---"Why, Cyrillia, they are only vapor,--brume: I have been in clouds."
-
-She looked at me in surprise, and, after a moment's silence, asked, with
-an irony of which I had not supposed her capable:--
-
---"Then you are the Good-God?"
-
---"Why, Cyrillia, it is not difficult to reach clouds. You see clouds
-always upon the top of the Montagne Pelée;--people go there. I have been
-there--in the clouds."
-
---"Ah! those are not the same clouds: those are not the clouds of the
-Good-God. You cannot touch the sky when you are on the Morne de la
-Croix."
-
---"My dear Cyrillia, there is no sky to touch. The sky is only an
-appearance."
-
---"_Anh, anh, anh!_ No sky!--you say there is no sky?... Then, what is
-that up there?"
-
---"That is air, Cyrillia, beautiful blue air."
-
---"And what are the stars fastened to?"
-
---"To nothing. They are suns, but so much further away than our sun that
-they look small."
-
---"No, they are not suns! They have not the same form as the sun... You
-must not say there is no sky: it is wicked! But you are not a Catholic!"
-
---"My dear Cyrillia, I don't see what that has to do with the sky."
-
---"Where does the Good-God stay, if there be no sky? And where is
-heaven?--and where is hell?"
-
---"Hell in the sky, Cyrillia?"
-
---"The Good-God made heaven in one part of the sky, and hell in another
-part, for bad people.... Ah! you are a Protestant;--you do not know the
-things of the Good-God! That is why you talk like that."
-
---"What is a Protestant, Cyrillia?"
-
---"You are one. The Protestants do not believe in religion,--do not love
-the Good-God."
-
---"Well, I am neither a Protestant nor a Catholic, Cyrillia."
-
---"Oh! you do not mean that; you cannot be a _maudi_, an accursed. There
-are only the Protestants, the Catholics, and the accursed. You are not a
-_maudi_, I am sure, But you must not say there is no sky"...
-
---"But, Cyrillia"--
-
---"No: I will not listen to you:--you are a Protestant. Where does the
-rain come from, if there is no sky,"...
-
---"Why, Cyrillia... the clouds"...
-
---"No, you are a Protestant.... How can you say such things? There are
-the Three Kings and the Three Valets,--the beautiful stars that come
-at Christmas-time,--there, over there--all beautiful, and big, big,
-big!... And you say there is no sky!"
-
---"Cyrillia, perhaps I am a _maudi_."
-
---"No, no! You are only a Protestant. But do not tell me there is no
-sky: it is wicked to say that!"
-
---"I won't say it any more, Cyrillia--there! But I will say there are no
-_zombis_."
-
---"I know you are not a _maudi_;--you have been baptized."
-
---"How do you know I have been baptized?"
-
---"Because, if you had not been baptized you would see _zombis_ all
-the time, even in broad day. All children who are not baptized see
-_zombis_."...
-
-
-
-
-X
-
-
-Cyrilla's solicitude for me extends beyond the commonplaces of hygiene
-and diet into the uncertain domain of matters ghostly. She fears much
-that something might happen to me through the agency of wizards, witches
-(_sociès_), or _zombis_. Especially zombis. Cyrillia's belief in zombis
-has a solidity that renders argument out of the question. This belief
-is part of her inner nature,--something hereditary, racial, ancient
-as Africa, as characteristic of her people as the love of rhythms
-and melodies totally different from our own musical conceptions, but
-possessing, even for the civilized, an inexplicable emotional charm.
-
-_Zombi!_--the word is perhaps full of mystery even for those who made
-it. The explanations of those who utter it most often are never quite
-lucid: it seems to convey ideas darkly impossible to define,--fancies
-belonging to the mind of another race and another era,--unspeakably old.
-Perhaps the word in our own language which offers the best analogy is
-"goblin": yet the one is not fully translated by the other. Both have,
-however, one common ground on which they become indistinguishable,--that
-region of the supernatural which is most primitive and most vague; and
-the closest relation between the savage and the civilized fancy may be
-found in the fears which we call childish,--of darkness, shadows, and
-things dreamed. One form of the _zombi_-belief--akin to certain ghostly
-superstitions held by various primitive races--would seem to have
-been suggested by nightmare,--that form of nightmare in which familiar
-persons become slowly and hideously transformed into malevolent beings.
-The _zombi_ deludes under the appearance of a travelling companion, an
-old comrade--like the desert spirits of the Arabs--or even under the
-form of an animal. Consequently the creole negro fears everything living
-which he meets after dark upon a lonely road,--a stray horse, a cow,
-even a dog; and mothers quell the naughtiness of their children by
-the threat of summoning a zombi-cat or a zombi-creature of some kind.
-"_Zombi ké nana ou_" (the zombi will gobble thee up) is generally an
-effectual menace in the country parts, where it is believed zombis may
-be met with any time after sunset. In the city it is thought that their
-regular hours are between two and four o'clock in the morning. At least
-so Cyrillia says:--
-
---"Dèezhè, toua-zhè-matin: c'est lhè zombi. Yo ka sòti dèzhè, toua zhè:
-c'est lhè yo. A quattrhè yo ka rentré;--angelus ka sonné." (At four
-o'clock they go back where they came from, before the _Angelus_ rings.)
-Why?
-
---"_C'est pou moune pas joinne yo dans larue_." (So that people may not
-meet with them in the street), Cyrillia answers.
-
---"Are they afraid of the people, Cyrillia?" I asked.
-
---"No, they are not afraid; but they do not want people to know their
-business" (_pa lè moune ouè zaffai yo_).
-
-Cyrillia also says one must not look out of the window when a dog howls
-at night. Such a dog may be a _mauvais vivant_ (evil being): "If he sees
-me looking at him he will say, '_Ou tropp quirièse quittée cabane ou pou
-gàdé zaffai lezautt_.'" (You are too curious to leave your bed like that
-to look at other folks' business.)
-
---"And what then, Cyrillia?"
-
---"Then he will put out your eyes,--_y ké coqui zié ou_,--make you
-blind."
-
---"But, Cyrillia," I asked one day, "did you ever see any zombis?"
-
---"How? I often see them!... They walk about the room at night;--they
-walk like people. They sit in the rocking-chairs and rock themselves
-very softly, and look at me. I say to them:--'What do you want here?--I
-never did any harm to anybody. Go away!' Then they go away."
-
---"What do they look like?"
-
---"Like people,--sometimes like beautiful people (_bel moune_). I am
-afraid of them. I only see them when there is no light burning. While
-the lamp bums before the Virgin they do not come. But sometimes the oil
-fails, and the light dies."
-
-In my own room there are dried palm leaves and some withered flowers
-fastened to the wall. Cyrillia put them there. They were taken from
-the _reposoirs_ (temporary altars) erected for the last Corpus Christi
-procession: consequently they are blessed, and ought to keep the zombis
-away. That is why they are fastened to the wall, over my bed.
-
-Nobody could be kinder to animals than Cyrillia usually shows herself
-to be: all the domestic animals in the neighborhood impose upon
-her;--various dogs and cats steal from her impudently, without the least
-fear of being beaten. I was therefore very much surprised to see her
-one evening catch a flying beetle that approached the light, and
-deliberately put its head in the candle-flame. When I asked her how she
-could be so cruel, she replied:--
-
---"_Ah ou pa connaitt choïe pays-ci_." (You do not know Things in this
-country.)
-
-The Things thus referred to I found to be supernatural Things. It is
-popularly believed that certain winged creatures which circle about
-candles at night may be _engagés_ or _envoyés_--wicked people having the
-power of transformation, or even zombis "sent" by witches or wizards to
-do harm. "There was a woman at Tricolore," Cyrillia says, "who used to
-sew a great deal at night; and a big beetle used to come into her room
-and fly about the candle, and and bother her very much. One night she
-managed to get hold of it, and she singed its head in the candle. Next
-day, a woman who was her neighbor came to the house with her head
-all tied up. '_Ah! macoumè_,' asked the sewing-woman, '_ça ou ni dans
-guiôle-ou?_' And the other answered, very angrily, '_Ou ni toupet mandé
-moin ça moin ni dans guiôle moin!--et cété ou qui té brilé guiôle moin
-nans chandelle-ou hiè-souè_.'" (You have the impudence to ask what
-is the matter with my mouth! and you yourself burned my mouth in your
-candle last night.)
-
-Early one morning, about five o'clock, Cyrillia, opening the front door,
-saw a huge crab walking down the street. Probably it had escaped from
-some barrel; for it is customary here to keep live crabs in barrels and
-fatten them,--feeding them with maize, mangoes, and, above all, green
-peppers: nobody likes to cook crabs as soon as caught; for they may have
-been eating manchineel apples at the river-mouths. Cyrillia uttered
-a cry of dismay on seeing that crab; then I heard her talking to
-herself:--"_I_ touch it?--never! it can go about its business. How do
-I know it is not _an arranged crab_ (_yon crabe rangé_), or an
-_envoyé_?--since everybody knows I like crabs. For two sous I can buy
-a fine crab and know where it comes from." The crab went on down the
-street: everywhere the sight of it created consternation; nobody dared
-to touch it; women cried out at it, "_Miserabe!--envoyé Satan!--allez,
-maudi!_"--some threw holy water on the crab. Doubtless it reached the
-sea in safety. In the evening Cyrillia said: "I think that crab was
-a little zombi;--I am going to burn a light all night to keep it from
-coming back."
-
-Another day, while I was out, a negro to whom I had lent two francs came
-to the house, and paid his debt Cyrillia told me when I came back, and
-showed me the money carefully enveloped in a piece of brown paper; but
-said I must not touch it,--she would get rid of it for me at the market.
-I laughed at her fears; and she observed: "You do not know negroes,
-Missié!--negroes are wicked, negroes are jealous! I do not want you to
-touch that money, because I have not a good opinion about this affair."
-
-After I began to learn more of the underside of Martinique life, I could
-understand the source and justification of many similar superstitions
-in simple and uneducated minds. The negro sorcerer is, at worst, only a
-poisoner; but he possesses a very curious art which long defied serious
-investigation, and in the beginning of the last century was attributed,
-even by whites, to diabolical influence. In 1721, 1723, and 1725,
-several negroes were burned alive at the stake as wizards in league with
-the devil. It was an era of comparative ignorance; but even now
-things are done which would astonish the most sceptical and practical
-physician. For example, a laborer discharged from a plantation vows
-vengeance; and the next morning the whole force of hands--the entire
-atelier--are totally disabled from work. Every man and woman on the
-place is unable to walk; everybody has one or both legs frightfully
-swollen. _Yo te ka pilé malifice_: they have trodden on a "malifice."
-What is the "malifice"? All that can be ascertained is that certain
-little prickly seeds have been scattered all over the ground, where the
-barefooted workers are in the habit of passing. Ordinarily, treading on
-these seeds is of no consequence; but it is evident in such a case that
-they must have been prepared in a special way,--soaked in some poison,
-perhaps snake-venom. At all events, the physician deems it safest to
-treat the inflammations after the manner of snake wounds; and after many
-days the hands are perhaps able to resume duty.
-
-
-
-
-XI
-
-
-While Cyrillia is busy with her _canari_, she talks to herself or sings.
-She has a low rich voice,--sings strange things, things that have been
-forgotten by this generation,--creole songs of the old days, having a
-weird rhythm and fractions of tones that are surely African. But more
-generally she talks to herself, as all the Martiniquaises do: it is
-a continual murmur as of a stream. At first I used to think she was
-talking to somebody else, and would call out:--
-
---"_Épi quiless moune ça ou ka pàlé-à?_"
-
-But she would always answer:--"_Moin ka pàlé anni cò moin_" (I am only
-talking to my own body), which is the creole expression for talking to
-oneself.
-
---"And what are you talking so much to your own body about, Cyrillia?"
-
---"I am talking about my own little affairs" (_ti zaffai-moin_).... That
-is all that I could ever draw from her.
-
-But when not working, she will sit for hours looking out of the window.
-In this she resembles the kitten: both seem to find the same silent
-pleasure in watching the street, or the green heights that rise above
-its roofs,--the Morne d'Orange. Occasionally at such times she will
-break the silence in the strangest way, if she thinks I am not too busy
-with my papers to answer a question:--
-
---"_Missié?_"--timidly.
-
---"Eh?"
-
---"_Di moin, chè, ti manmaille dans pays ou, toutt piti, piti,--ess ça
-pàlé Anglais?_" (Do the little children in my country--the very, very
-little children--talk English?)
-
---"Why, certainly, Cyrillia."
-
---"_Toutt piti, piti?_"--with growing surprise.
-
---"Why, of course!"
-
---"_C'est drôle, ça_" (It is queer, that!) She cannot understand it.
-
---"And the little _manmaille_ in Martinique, Cyrillia--_toutt
-piti, piti_,--don't they talk creole?"
-
---"'_Oui; mais toutt moune ka pâlé nègue: ça facile_." (Yes; but anybody
-can talk negro--that is easy to learn.)
-
-
-
-
-XII
-
-
-Cyrillia's room has no furniture in it: the Martinique bonne lives as
-simply and as rudely as a domestic animal. One thin mattress covered
-with a sheet, and elevated from the floor only by a léfant, forms her
-bed. The _léfant_, or "elephant," is composed of two thick square pieces
-of coarse hard mattress stuffed with shavings, and placed
-end to end. Cyrillia has a good pillow, however,--_bourré épi
-flêches-canne_,--filled with the plumes of the sugar-cane. A cheap
-trunk with broken hinges contains her modest little wardrobe: a few
-_mouchoirs_, or kerchiefs, used for head-dresses, a spare _douillette_,
-or long robe, and some tattered linen. Still she is always clean, neat,
-fresh-looking. I see a pair of sandals in the corner,--such as the women
-of the country sometimes wear--wooden soles with a leather band for the
-instep, and two little straps; but she never puts them on. Fastened to
-the wall are two French prints--lithographs: one representing Victor
-Hugo's _Esmeralda_ in prison with her pet goat; the other, Lamartine's
-_Laurence_ with her fawn. Both are very old and stained and bitten by
-the _bête-à-ciseau_, a species of _lepisma_, which destroys books
-and papers, and everything it can find exposed. On a shelf are two
-bottles,--one filled with holy water; another with _tafia camphrée_
-(camphor dissolved in tafia), which is Cyrillia's sole remedy for colds,
-fevers, headaches--all maladies not of a very fatal description. There
-are also a little woollen monkey, about three inches high--the
-dusty plaything of a long-dead child;--an image of the Virgin, even
-smaller;--and a broken cup with fresh bright blossoms in it, the
-Virgin's flower-offering;--and the Virgin's invariable lamp--a
-night-light, a little wick floating on olive-oil in a tiny glass.
-
-I know that Cyrillia must have bought these flowers--they are garden
-flowers--at the Marchè du Fort. There are always old women sitting there
-who sell nothing else but bouquets for the Virgin,--and who cry out to
-passers-by:--"_Gagné ti bouquet pou Viège-ou, chè!_... Buy a nosegay,
-dear, for your Virgin;--she is asking you for one;--give her a little
-one, _chè cocott_."... Cyrillia says you must not smell the flowers you
-give the Virgin: it would be stealing from her.... The little lamp is
-always lighted at six o'clock. At six o'clock the Virgin is supposed to
-pass through all the streets of St. Pierre, and wherever a lamp burns
-before her image, she enters there and blesses that house. "_Faut limé
-lampe ou pou fai la-Viège passé dans caïe-ou_," says Cyrillia. (You must
-light the lamp to make the Virgin come into your house.)... Cyrillia
-often talks to her little image, exactly as if it were a baby,--calls it
-pet names,--asks if it is content with the flowers.
-
-This image of the Virgin is broken: it is only half a Virgin,--the upper
-half. Cyrillia has arranged it so, nevertheless, that had I not been
-very inquisitive I should never have divined its mishap. She found a
-small broken powder-box without a lid,--probably thrown negligently out
-of a boudoir window by some wealthy beauty: she filled this little box
-with straw, and fixed the mutilated image upright within it, so that you
-could never suspect the loss of its feet. The Virgin looks very funny,
-thus peeping over the edge of her little box,--looks like a broken toy,
-which a child has been trying to mend. But this Virgin has offerings
-too: Cyrillia buys flowers for her, and sticks them all round her,
-between the edge of the powder-box and the straw. After all, Cyrillia's
-Virgin is quite as serious a fact as any image of silver or of ivory in
-the homes of the rich: probably the prayers said to her are more simply
-beautiful, and more direct from the heart, than many daily murmured
-before the _chapelles_ of luxurious homes. And the more one looks at it,
-the more one feels that it were almost wicked to smile at this little
-broken toy of faith.
-
---"Cyrillia, _mafi_," I asked her one day, after my discovery of the
-little Virgin,--"would you not like me to buy a _chapelle_ for you?"
-The _chapelle_ is the little bracket-altar, together with images and
-ornaments, to be found in every creole bedroom.
-
---"_Mais non, Missié_," she answered, smiling, "_moin aimein ti Viège
-moin, pa lè gagnin dautt_. I love my little Virgin: do not want any
-other. I have seen much trouble: she was with me in my trouble;--she
-heard my prayers. It would be wicked for me to throw her away. When I
-have a sou to spare, I buy flowers for her;--when I have no money, I
-climb the mornes, and pick pretty buds for her.... But why should Missié
-want to buy me a _chapelle?_--Missié is a Protestant?"
-
---"I thought it might give you pleasure, Cyrillia."
-
---"No, Missié, I thank you; it would not give me pleasure. But Missié
-could give me something else which would make me very happy--I often
-thought of asking Missié...but--"
-
-
-[Illustration: CREOLE WOMEN
-_In their gay dresses with their brilliant "maárases"
-and "foulards they seem always in gala array._]
-
-
---"Tell me what it is, Cyrillia."
-
-She remained silent a moment, then said:--
-
---"Missié makes photographs...."
-
---"You want a photograph of yourself, Cyrillia?"
-
---"Oh! no, Missié, I am too ugly and too old. But I have a daughter. She
-is beautiful--_yon bel bois_,--like a beautiful tree, as we say here. I
-would like so much to have her picture taken."
-
-A photographic instrument belonging to a clumsy amateur suggested this
-request to Cyrillia. I could not attempt such work successfully; but I
-gave her a note to a photographer of much skill; and a few days later
-the portrait was sent to the house. Cyrillia's daughter was certainly a
-comely girl,--tall and almost gold-colored, with pleasing features; and
-the photograph looked very nice, though less nice than the original.
-Half the beauty of these people is a beauty of tint,--a tint so
-exquisite sometimes that I have even heard white creoles declare
-no white complexion compares with it: the greater part of the charm
-remaining is grace,--the grace of movement; and neither of these can be
-rendered by photography. I had the portrait framed for Cyrillia, to hang
-up beside her little pictures.
-
-When it came, she was not in; I put it in her room, and waited to see
-the effect. On returning, she entered there; and I did not see her for
-so long a time that I stole to the door of the chamber to observe her.
-She was standing before the portrait,--looking at it, talking to it as
-if it were alive. "_Yche moin, yche moin!... Oui! ou toutt bel!--yche
-moin bel_." (My child, my child!... Yes, thou art all beautiful: my
-child is beautiful.) All at once she turned--perhaps she noticed
-my shadow, or felt my presence in some way: her eyes were wet;--she
-started, flushed, then laughed.
-
---"Ah! Missié, you watch me;--_ou guette moin_.... But she is my child.
-Why should I not love her?... She looks so beautiful there."
-
---"She is beautiful, Cyrillia;--I love to see you love her."
-
-She gazed at the picture a little longer in silence;--then turned to me
-again, and asked earnestly:--
-
---"_Pouki yo ja ka fai pòtrai palé--anh?... pisse yo ka tiré y toutt
-samm ou: c'est ou-menm!... Yo douè fai y palé 'tou_."
-
-(Why do they not make a portrait talk,--tell me? For they draw it just
-all like you!--it is yourself: they ought to make it talk.)
-
---"Perhaps they will be able to do something like that one of these
-days, Cyrillia."
-
---"Ah! that would be so nice. Then I could talk to her. _C'est yon bel
-moune moin fai--y bel, joli moune!... Moin sé causé épi y_."...
-
-
-... And I, watching her beautiful childish emotion, thought:--Cursed
-be the cruelty that would persuade itself that one soul may be
-like another,--that one affection may be replaced by another,--that
-individual goodness is not a thing apart, original, untwinned on earth,
-but only the general characteristic of a class or type, to be sought and
-found and utilized at will!...
-Self-curséd he who denies the divinity of love! Each heart, each brain
-in the billions of humanity,--even so surely as sorrow lives,--feels and
-thinks in some special way unlike any other; and goodness in each
-has its unlikeness to all other goodness,--and thus its own infinite
-preciousness; for however humble, however small, it is something all
-alone, and God never repeats his work. No heart-beat is cheap, no
-gentleness is despicable, no kindness is common; and Death, in removing
-a life--the simplest life ignored,--removes what never will reappear
-through the eternity of eternities,--since every being is the sum of
-a chain of experiences infinitely varied from all others.... To some
-Cyrillia's happy tears might bring a smile: to me that smile would seem
-the unforgivable sin against the Giver of Life!...
-
-
-
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-"PA COMBINÉ, CHÈ!"
-
-
-I
-
-
-More finely than any term in our tongue does the French word
-_frisson_ express that faint shiver--as of a ghostly touch thrilling
-from hair to feet--which intense pleasure sometimes gives, and which is
-felt most often and most strongly in childhood, when the imagination is
-still so sensitive and so powerful that one's whole being trembles
-to the vibration of a fancy. And this electric word best expresses,
-I think, that long thrill of amazed delight inspired by the first
-knowledge of the tropic world,--a sensation of weirdness in beauty, like
-the effect, in child-days, of fairy tales and stories of phantom isles.
-
-For all unreal seems the vision of it. The transfiguration of all
-things by the stupendous light and the strange vapors of the West Indian
-sea,--the interorbing of flood and sky in blinding azure,--the sudden
-spirings of gem-tinted coast from the ocean,--the iris-colors and
-astounding shapes of the hills,--the unimaginable magnificence of
-palms,--the high woods veiled and swathed in vines that blaze like
-emerald: all remind you in some queer way of things half forgotten,--the
-fables of enchantment. Enchantment it is indeed--but only the
-enchantment of that Great Wizard, the Sun, whose power you are scarcely
-beginning to know.
-
-And into the life of the tropical city you enter as in dreams one enters
-into the life of a dead century. In all the quaint streets--over whose
-luminous yellow façades the beautiful burning violet of the sky appears
-as if but a few feet away--you see youth good to look upon as ripe
-fruit; and the speech of the people is soft as a coo; and eyes of brown
-girls caress you with a passing look.... Love's world, you may have
-heard, has few restraints here, where Nature ever seems to cry out, like
-the swart seller of corossoles:--"_ça qui le doudoux?_"...
-
-How often in some passing figure does one discern an ideal almost
-realized, and forbear to follow it with untired gaze only when another,
-another, and yet another, come to provoke the same aesthetic fancy,--to
-win the same unspoken praise! How often does one long for artist's power
-to fix the fleeting lines, to catch the color, to seize the whole exotic
-charm of some special type!... One finds a strange charm even in the
-timbre of these voices,--these half-breed voices, always with a tendency
-to contralto, and vibrant as ringing silver. What is that mysterious
-quality in a voice which has power to make the pulse beat faster, even
-when the singer is unseen?... do only the birds know?
-
-... It seems to you that you could never weary of watching this
-picturesque life,--of studying the costumes, brilliant with butterfly
-colors,--and the statuesque semi-nudity of laboring hundreds,--and the
-untaught grace of attitudes,--and the simplicity of manners. Each day
-brings some new pleasure of surprise;--even from the window of your
-lodging you are ever noting something novel, something to delight the
-sense of oddity or beauty.... Even in your room everything interests
-you, because of its queerness or quaintness: you become fond of the
-objects about you,--the great noiseless rocking-chairs that lull to
-sleep;--the immense bed (_lit-à-bateau_) of heavy polished wood, with
-its richly carven sides reaching down to the very floor;--and its
-invariable companion, the little couch or _sopha_, similarly shaped
-but much narrower, used only for the siesta;--and the thick red earthen
-vessels (_dobannes_) which keep your drinking-water cool on the hottest
-days, but which are always filled thrice between sunrise and sunset with
-clear water from the mountain,--_dleau toutt vivant_, "all alive";--and
-the _verrines_, tall glass vases with stems of bronze in which your
-candle will burn steadily despite a draught;--and even those funny
-little angels and Virgins which look at you from their bracket in the
-corner, over the oil lamp you are presumed to kindle nightly in their
-honor, however great a heretic you may be.... You adopt at once, and
-without reservation, those creole home habits which are the result of
-centuries of experience with climate,--abstention from solid food before
-the middle of the day, repose after the noon meal;--and you find each
-repast an experience as curious as it is agreeable. It is not at all
-difficult to accustom oneself to green pease stewed with sugar, eggs
-mixed with tomatoes, salt fish stewed in milk, palmiste pith made into
-salad, grated cocoa formed into rich cakes, and dishes of titiri cooked
-in oil,--the minuscule fish, of which a thousand will scarcely fill
-a saucer. Above all, you are astonished by the endless variety of
-vegetables and fruits, of all conceivable shapes and inconceivable
-flavors.
-
-And it does not seem possible that even the simplest little recurrences
-of this antiquated, gentle home-life could ever prove wearisome by daily
-repetition through the months and years. The musical greeting of
-the colored child, tapping at your door before sunrise,--"_Bonjou',
-Missié_,"--as she brings your cup of black hot coffee and slice of
-corossole;--the smile of the silent brown girl who carries your meals
-up-stairs in a tray poised upon her brightly coiffed head, and who
-stands by while you dine, watching every chance to serve, treading
-quite silently with her pretty bare feet;--the pleasant manners of
-the _màchanne_ who brings your fruit, the _porteuse_ who delivers your
-bread, the _blanchisseuse_ who washes your linen at the river,--and all
-the kindly folk who circle about your existence, with their trays and
-turbans, their _foulards_ and _douillettes_, their primitive grace
-and creole chatter: these can never cease to have a charm for you. You
-cannot fail to be touched also by the amusing solicitude of these good
-people for your health, because you are a stranger: their advice about
-hours to go out and hours to stay at home,--about roads to follow and
-paths to avoid on account of snakes,--about removing your hat and
-coat, or drinking while warm.... Should you fall ill, this solicitude
-intensifies to devotion; you are tirelessly tended;--the good people
-will exhaust their wonderful knowledge of herbs to get you well,--will
-climb the mornes even at midnight, in spite of the risk of snakes and
-fear of zombis, to gather strange plants by the light of a lantern.
-Natural joyousness, natural kindliness, heart-felt desire to please,
-childish capacity of being delighted with trifles,--seem characteristic
-of all this colored population. It is turning its best side towards you,
-no doubt; but the side of the nature made visible appears none the less
-agreeable because you suspect there is another which you have not seen.
-What kindly inventiveness is displayed in contriving surprises for you,
-or in finding some queer thing to show you,--some fantastic plant,
-or grotesque fish, or singular bird! What apparent pleasure in taking
-trouble to gratify,--what innocent frankness of sympathy!... Childishly
-beautiful seems the readiness of this tinted race to compassionate: you
-do not reflect that it is also a savage trait, while the charm of its
-novelty is yet upon you. No one is ashamed to shed tears for the death
-of a pet animal; any mishap to a child creates excitement, and evokes an
-immediate volunteering of services. And this compassionate sentiment is
-often extended, in a semi-poetical way, even to inanimate objects. One
-June morning, I remember, a three-masted schooner lying in the bay
-took fire, and had to be set adrift. An immense crowd gathered on the
-wharves; and I saw many curious manifestations of grief,--such grief,
-perhaps, as an infant feels for the misfortune of a toy it imagines to
-possess feeling, but not the less sincere because unreasoning. As the
-flames climbed the rigging, and the masts fell, the crowd moaned as
-though looking upon some human tragedy; and everywhere one could hear
-such strange cries of pity as, "_Pauv' malhérè!_" (poor unfortunate),
-"_pauv' diabe!_"... "_Toutt baggaïe-y pou allé, casse!_" (All its
-things-to-go-with are broken!) sobbed a girl, with tears streaming down
-her cheeks.... She seemed to believe it was alive....
-
-... And day by day the artlessness of this exotic humanity touches you
-more;--day by day this savage, somnolent, splendid Nature--delighting in
-furious color--bewitches you more. Already the anticipated necessity
-of having to leave it all some day--the far-seen pain of bidding it
-farewell--weighs upon you, even in dreams.
-
-
-
-II
-
-
-Reader, if you be of those who have longed in vain for a glimpse of that
-tropic world,--tales of whose beauty charmed your childhood, and made
-stronger upon you that weird mesmerism of the sea which pulls at the
-heart of a boy,--one who had longed like you, and who, chance-led,
-beheld at last the fulfilment of the wish, can swear to you that the
-magnificence of the reality far excels the imagining. Those who know
-only the lands in which all processes for the satisfaction of human
-wants have been perfected under the terrible stimulus of necessity, can
-little guess the witchery of that Nature ruling the zones of color and
-of light. Within their primeval circles, the earth remains radiant and
-young as in that preglacial time whereof some transmitted memory
-may have created the hundred traditions of an Age of Gold. And the
-prediction of a paradise to come,--a phantom realm of rest and perpetual
-light: may this not have been but a sum of the remembrances and the
-yearnings of man first exiled from his heritage,--a dream born of the
-great nostalgia of races migrating to people the pallid North?...
-
-
-... But with the realization of the hope to know this magical Nature you
-learn that the actuality varies from the preconceived ideal otherwise
-than in surpassing it. Unless you enter the torrid world equipped with
-scientific knowledge extraordinary, your anticipations are likely to be
-at fault. Perhaps you had pictured to yourself the effect of perpetual
-summer as a physical delight,--something like an indefinite prolongation
-of the fairest summer weather ever enjoyed at home. Probably you had
-heard of fevers, risks of acclimatization, intense heat, and a swarming
-of venomous creatures; but you may nevertheless believe you know what
-precautions to take; and published statistics of climatic temperature
-may have persuaded you that the heat is not difficult to bear. By that
-enervation to which all white dwellers in the tropics are subject you
-may have understood a pleasant languor,--a painless disinclination
-to effort in a country where physical effort is less needed than
-elsewhere,--a soft temptation to idle away the hours in a hammock, under
-the shade of giant trees. Perhaps you have read, with eyes of faith,
-that torpor of the body is favorable to activity of the mind, and
-therefore believe that the intellectual powers can be stimulated and
-strengthened by tropical influences:--you suppose that enervation will
-reveal itself only as a beatific indolence which will leave the brain
-free to think with lucidity, or to revel in romantic dreams.
-
-
-
-
-III
-
-
-You are not at first undeceived;--the disillusion is long delayed.
-Doubtless you have read the delicious idyl of Bernardin de Saint-Pierre
-(this is not Mauritius, but the old life of Mauritius was wellnigh the
-same); and you look for idyllic personages among the beautiful humanity
-about you,--for idyllic scenes among the mornes shadowed by primeval
-forest, and the valleys threaded by a hundred brooks. I know not whether
-the faces and forms that you seek will be revealed to you;--but you
-will not be able to complain for the lack of idyllic loveliness in the
-commonest landscape. Whatever artistic knowledge you possess will merely
-teach you the more to wonder at the luxuriant purple of the sea, the
-violet opulence of the sky, the violent beauty of foliage greens, the
-lilac tints of evening, and the color-enchantments distance gives in
-an atmosphere full of iridescent power,--the amethysts and agates, the
-pearls and ghostly golds, of far mountainings. Never, you imagine,
-never could one tire of wandering through those marvellous valleys,--of
-climbing the silent roads under emeraldine shadow to heights from which
-the city seems but a few inches long, and the moored ships tinier than
-gnats that cling to a mirror,--or of swimming in that blue bay whose
-clear flood stays warm through all the year.[53] Or, standing alone,
-in some aisle of colossal palms, where humming-birds are flashing and
-shooting like a showering of jewel-fires, you feel how weak the skill
-of poet or painter to fix the sensation of that white-pillared imperial
-splendor;--and you think you know why creoles exiled by necessity to
-colder lands may sicken for love of their own,--die of home-yearning, as
-did many a one in far Louisiana, after the political tragedies of 1848....
-
-
-[Illustration: DIDIER SPRINGS
-_At the end of a gorgeous ride, in a deep ravine we
-found the spring--warm, effervescent water gushing
-from the depths of the earth._]
-
-
-... But you are not a creole, and must pay tribute of suffering to the
-climate of the tropics. You will have to learn that a temperature of
-90° Fahr. in the tropics is by no means the same thing as 90° Fahr. in
-Europe or the United States;--that the mornes cannot be climbed with
-safety during the hotter hours of the afternoon;--that by taking a long
-walk you incur serious danger of catching a fever;--that to enter the
-high woods, a path must be hewn with the cutlass through the creepers
-and vines and undergrowth,--among snakes, venomous insects, venomous
-plants, and malarial exhalations;--that the finest blown dust is full
-of irritant and invisible enemies;--that it is folly to seek repose on
-a sward, or in the shade of trees,--particularly under tamarinds. Only
-after you have by experience become well convinced of these facts can
-you begin to comprehend something general in regard to West Indian
-conditions of life.
-
-
-[Footnote 53: Rufz remarks that the first effect of this climate of the
-Antilles is a sort of general physical excitement, an exaltation, a
-sense of unaccustomed strength,--which begets the desire of immediate
-action to discharge the surplus of nervous force. "Then all
-distances seem brief;--the greatest fatigues are braved without
-hesitation."--_Études._]
-
-
-
-
-IV
-
-
-... Slowly the knowledge comes.... For months the vitality of a strong
-European (the American constitution bears the test even better) may
-resist the debilitating climate: perhaps the stranger will flatter
-himself that, like men habituated to heavy labor in stifling
-warmth,--those toiling in mines, in founderies in engine-rooms of ships,
-at iron-furnaces,--so he too may become accustomed, without losing his
-strength to the continuous draining of the pores, to the exhausting
-force of this strange motionless heat which compels change of clothing
-many times a day. But gradually he finds that it is not heat alone which
-is debilitating him, but the weight and septic nature of an atmosphere
-charged with vapor, with electricity, with unknown agents not less
-inimical to human existence than propitious to vegetal luxuriance. If
-he has learned those rules of careful living which served him well in a
-temperate climate, he will not be likely to abandon them among his new
-surroundings; and they will help him; no doubt,--particularly if he be
-prudent enough to avoid the sea-coast at night, and all exposure to dews
-or early morning mists, and all severe physical strain. Nevertheless,
-he becomes slowly conscious of changes extraordinary going on within
-him,--in especial, a continual sensation of weight in the brain, daily
-growing, and compelling frequent repose;--also a curious heightening
-of nervous sensibility to atmospheric changes, to tastes and odors, to
-pleasure and pain. Total loss of appetite soon teaches him to follow the
-local custom of eating nothing solid before mid-day, and enables him
-to divine how largely the necessity for caloric enters into the
-food-consumption of northern races. He becomes abstemious, eats
-sparingly, and discovers his palate to have become oddly exacting--finds
-that certain fruits and drinks are indeed, as the creoles assert,
-appropriate only to particular physical conditions corresponding with
-particular hours of the day. Corossole is only to be eaten in the
-morning, after black coffee;--vermouth is good to drink only between the
-hours of nine and half-past ten;--rum or other strong liquor only before
-meals or after fatigue;--claret or wine only during a repast, and then
-very sparingly,--for, strangely enough, wine is found to be injurious
-in a country where stronger liquors are considered among the prime
-necessaries of existence.
-
-And he expected, at the worst, to feel lazy, to lose some physical
-energy! But this is no mere languor which now begins to oppress him;--it
-is a sense of vital exhaustion painful as the misery of convalescence:
-the least effort provokes a perspiration profuse enough to saturate
-clothing, and the limbs ache as from muscular overstrain;--the lightest
-attire feels almost insupportable;--the idea of sleeping even under a
-sheet is torture, for the weight of a silken handkerchief is discomfort.
-One wishes one could live as a savage,--naked in the heat. One burns
-with a thirst impossible to assuage--feels a desire for stimulants, a
-sense of difficulty in breathing, occasional quickenings of the heart's
-action so violent as to alarm. Then comes at last the absolute dread of
-physical exertion. Some slight relief might be obtained, no doubt, by
-resigning oneself forthwith to adopt the gentle indolent manners of the
-white creoles, who do not walk when it is possible to ride, and never
-ride if it is equally convenient to drive;--but the northern nature
-generally refuses to accept this ultimate necessity without a protracted
-and painful struggle.
-
-... Not even then has the stranger fully divined the evil power of this
-tropical climate, which remodels the characters of races within a couple
-of generations,--changing the shape of the skeleton,--deepening
-the cavities of the orbits to protect the eye from the flood of
-light,--transforming the blood,--darkening the skin. Following upon the
-nervous modifications of the first few months come modifications and
-changes of a yet graver kind;--with the loss of bodily energy ensues a
-more than corresponding loss of mental activity and strength. The whole
-range of thought diminishes, contracts,--shrinks to that narrowest of
-circles which surrounds the physical sell, the inner ring of merely
-material sensation: the memory weakens appallingly;--the mind operates
-faintly, slowly, incoherently,--almost as in dreams. Serious reading,
-vigorous thinking, become impossible. You doze over the most important
-project;--you fall fast asleep over the most fascinating of books.
-
-Then comes the vain revolt, the fruitless desperate striving with this
-occult power which numbs the memory and enchants the will. Against
-the set resolve to think, to act, to study, there is a hostile rush of
-unfamiliar pain to the temples, to the eyes, to the nerve centres of
-the brain; and a great weight is somewhere in the head, always growing
-heavier: then comes a drowsiness that overpowers and stupefies, like the
-effect of a narcotic. And this obligation to sleep, to sink into coma,
-will impose itself just so surely as you venture to attempt any mental
-work in leisure hours, after the noon repast, or during the heat of the
-afternoon. Yet at night you can scarcely sleep. Repose is made feverish
-by a still heat that keeps the skin drenched with thick sweat, or by
-a perpetual, unaccountable, tingling and prickling of the whole
-body-surface. With the approach of morning the air grows cooler, and
-slumber comes,--a slumber of exhaustion, dreamless and sickly; and
-perhaps when you would rise with the sun you feel such a dizziness, such
-a numbness, such a torpor, that only by the most intense effort can you
-keep your feet for the first five minutes. You experience a sensation
-that recalls the poet's fancy of death-in-life, or old stories of sudden
-rising from the grave: it is as though all the electricity of will
-had ebbed away,--all the vital force evaporated, in the heat of the
-night....
-
-
-
-
-V
-
-
-It might be stated, I think, with safety, that for a certain class of
-invalids the effect of the climate is like a powerful stimulant,--a
-tonic medicine which may produce astonishing results within a fixed
-time,--but which if taken beyond that time will prove dangerous. After
-a certain number of months, your first enthusiasm with your new
-surroundings dies out;--even Nature ceases to affect the senses in the
-same way: the _frisson_ ceases to come to you. Meanwhile you may have
-striven to become as much as possible a part of the exotic life into
-which you have entered,--may have adopted its customs, learned its
-language. But you cannot mix with it mentally;--You circulate only as an
-oil-drop in its current. You still feel yourself alone.
-
-The very longest West Indian day is but twelve hours fifty-six
-minutes;--perhaps your first dissatisfaction was evoked by the brevity
-of the days. There is no twilight whatever; and all activity ceases with
-sundown: there is no going outside of the city after dark, because of
-snakes;--club life here ends at the hour it only begins abroad;--there
-is no visiting of evenings; after the seven o'clock dinner, everyone
-prepares to retire. And the foreigner, accustomed to make evening a time
-for social intercourse, finds no small difficulty in resigning himself
-to this habit of early retiring. The natural activity of a European
-or American mind requires some intellectual exercise,--at least some
-interchange of ideas with sympathetic natures; the hours during the
-suspension of business after noon, or those following the closing of
-offices at sunset, are the only ones in which busy men may find time
-for such relaxation; and these very hours have been always devoted to
-restorative sleep by the native population ever since the colony began.
-Naturally, therefore, the stranger dreads the coming of the darkness,
-the inevitable isolation of long sleepless hours. And if he seek those
-solaces for loneliness which he was wont to seek at home,--reading,
-study,--he is made to comprehend, as never before, what the absence of
-all libraries, lack of books, inaccessibility of all reading-matter,
-means for the man of the nineteenth century. One must send abroad to
-obtain even a review, and wait months for its coming. And this
-mental starvation gnaws at the brain more and more as one feels less
-inclination and less capacity for effort, and as that single enjoyment,
-which at first rendered a man indifferent to other pleasures,--the
-delight of being alone with tropical Nature,--becomes more difficult to
-indulge. When lethargy has totally mastered habit and purpose, and you
-must at last confess yourself resigned to view Nature from your chamber,
-or at best from a carriage window,--then, indeed, the want of all
-literature proves a positive torture. It is not a consolation to
-discover that you are an almost solitary sufferer,--from climate as
-well as from mental hunger. With amazement and envy you see young girls
-passing to walk right across the island and back before sunset, under
-burdens difficult for a strong man to lift to his shoulder;--the same
-journey on horseback would now weary you for days. You wonder of what
-flesh and blood can these people be made,--what wonderful vitality
-lies in those slender woman-bodies, which, under the terrible sun, and
-despite their astounding expenditure of force, remain cool to the sight
-and touch as bodies of lizards and serpents! And contrasting this savage
-strength with your own weakness, you begin to understand better how
-mighty the working of those powers which temper races and shape race
-habits in accordance with environment.
-
-... Ultimately, if destined for acclimatation, you will cease to suffer
-from these special conditions; but ere this can be, a long period of
-nervous irritability must be endured; and fevers must thin the blood,
-soften the muscles, transform the Northern tint of health to a dead
-brown. You will have to learn that intellectual pursuits can be
-persisted in only at risk of life;--that in this part of the world
-there is nothing to do but to plant cane and cocoa, and make rum,
-and cultivate tobacco,--or open a magazine for the sale of Madras
-handkerchiefs and _foulards_,--and eat, drink, sleep, perspire. You
-will understand why the tropics settled by European races produce no
-sciences, arts, or literature,--why the habits and the thoughts of
-other centuries still prevail where Time itself moves slowly as though
-enfeebled by the heat.
-
-And with the compulsory indolence of your life, the long exacerbation
-of the nervous system, will come the first pain of nostalgia,--the first
-weariness of the tropics. It is not that Nature can become ever less
-lovely to your sight; but that the tantalization of her dangerous
-beauty, which you may enjoy only at a safe distance, exasperates at
-last. The colors that at first bewitched will vex your eyes by their
-violence;--the creole life that appeared so simple, so gentle, will
-reveal dulnesses and discomforts undreamed of. You will ask yourself how
-much longer can you endure the prodigious light, and the furnace heat
-of blinding blue days, and the void misery of sleepless nights, and the
-curse of insects, and the sound of the mandibles of enormous roaches
-devouring the few books in your possession. You will grow weary of the
-grace of the palms, of the gemmy colors of the ever-clouded peaks, of
-the sight of the high woods made impenetrable by lianas and vines and
-serpents. You will weary even of the tepid sea, because to enjoy it as a
-swimmer you must rise and go out at hours while the morning air is
-still chill and heavy with miasma;--you will weary, above all, of tropic
-fruits, and feel that you would gladly pay a hundred francs for the
-momentary pleasure of biting into one rosy juicy Northern apple.
-
-
-
-
-VI
-
-
---But if you believe this disillusion perpetual,--if you fancy the old
-bewitchment has spent all its force upon you,--you do not know this
-Nature. She is not done with you yet: she has only torpefied your
-energies a little. Of your willingness to obey her, she takes no
-cognizance;--she ignores human purposes, knows only molecules and their
-combinations; and the blind blood in your veins,--thick with Northern
-heat and habit,--is still in dumb desperate rebellion against her.
-
-Perhaps she will quell this revolt forever,--thus:--
-
-One day, in the second hour of the afternoon, a few moments after
-leaving home, there will come to you a sensation such as you have never
-known before: a sudden weird fear of the light.
-
-It seems to you that the blue sky-fire is burning down into your
-brain,--that the flare of the white pavements and yellow walls is
-piercing somehow into your life,--creating an unfamiliar mental
-confusion,--blurring out thought.... Is the whole world taking
-fire?... The flaming azure of the sea dazzles and pains like a
-crucible-glow;--the green of the mornes flickers and blazes in some
-amazing way.... Then dizziness inexpressible: you grope with eyes shut
-fast--afraid to open them again in that stupefying torrefaction,--moving
-automatically,--vaguely knowing you must get out of the flaring and
-flashing,--somewhere, anywhere away from the white wrath of the sun,
-and the green fire of the hills, and the monstrous color of the
-sea.... Then, remembering nothing, you find yourself in bed,--with an
-insupportable sense of weight at the back of the head,--a pulse beating
-furiously,--and a strange sharp pain at intervals stinging through your
-eyes.... And the pain grows, expands,--fills all the skull,--forces you
-to cry out, replaces all other sensations except a weak consciousness,
-vanishing and recurring, that you are very sick, more sick than ever
-before in all your life.
-
-
-... And with the tedious ebbing of the long fierce fever, all the heat
-seems to pass from your veins. You can no longer imagine, as before,
-that it would be delicious to die of cold;--you shiver even with all the
-windows closed;--you feel currents of air,--imperceptible to nerves in
-a natural condition,--which shock like a dash of cold water, whenever
-doors are opened and closed; the very moisture upon your forehead is
-icy. What you now wish for are stimulants and warmth. Your blood has
-been changed;--tropic Nature has been good to you: she is preparing you
-to dwell with her.
-
-... Gradually, under the kind nursing of those colored people,--among
-whom, as a stranger, your lot will probably be cast,--you recover
-strength; and perhaps it will seem to you that the pain of lying a
-while in the Shadow of Death is more than compensated by this rare and
-touching experience of human goodness. How tirelessly watchful,--how
-naïvely sympathetic,--how utterly self-sacrificing these women-natures
-are! Patiently, through weeks of stifling days and sleepless
-nights,--cruelly unnatural to them, for their life is in the open
-air,--they struggle to save without one murmur of fatigue, without
-heed of their most ordinary physical wants, without a thought of
-recompense;--trusting to their own skill when the physician abandons
-hope,--climbing to the woods for herbs when medicines prove, without
-avail. The dream of angels holds nothing sweeter than this reality of
-woman's tenderness.
-
-And simultaneously with the return of force, you may wonder whether
-this sickness has not sharpened your senses in some extraordinary
-way,--especially hearing, sight, and smell. Once well enough to
-be removed without danger, you will be taken up into the mountains
-somewhere,--for change of air; and there it will seem to you, perhaps,
-that never before did you feel so acutely the pleasure of perfumes,--of
-color-tones,--of the timbre of voices. You have simply been
-acclimated.... And suddenly the old fascination of tropic Nature seizes
-you again,--more strongly than in the first days;--the _frisson_ of
-delight returns; the joy of it thrills through all your blood,--making a
-great fulness at your heart as of unutterable desire to give thanks....
-
-
-
-
-VII
-
-
-... My friend Felicien had come to the colony fresh from the region of
-the Vosges, with the muscles and energies of a mountaineer, and cheeks
-pink as a French country-girl's;--he had never seemed to me physically
-adapted for acclimation; and I feared much for him on hearing of his
-first serious illness. Then the news of his convalescence came to me as
-a grateful surprise. But I did not feel reassured by his appearance the
-first evening I called at the little house to which he had been removed,
-on the brow of a green height overlooking the town. I found him seated
-in a _berceuse_ on the veranda. How wan he was, and how spectral his
-smile of welcome,--as he held out to me a hand that seemed all of bone!
-
-... We chatted there a while. It had been one of those tropic days whose
-charm interpenetrates and blends with all the subtler life of sensation,
-and becomes a luminous part of it forever,--steeping all after-dreams
-of ideal peace in supernal glory of color,--transfiguring all fancies of
-the pure joy of being. Azure to the sea-line the sky had remained since
-morning; and the trade-wind, warm as a caress, never brought even one
-gauzy cloud to veil the naked beauty of the peaks.
-
-And the sun was yellowing,--as only over the tropics he yellows to
-his death. Lilac tones slowly spread through sea and heaven from the
-west;--mornes facing the light began to take wondrous glowing color,--a
-tone of green so fiery that it looked as though all the rich sap of
-their woods were phosphorescing. Shadows blued;--far peaks took
-tinting that scarcely seemed of earth,--iridescent violets and
-purples interchanging through vapor of gold.... Such the colors of the
-_carangue_, when the beautiful tropic fish is turned in the light, and
-its gem-greens shift to rich azure and prism-purple.
-
-Reclining in our chairs, we watched the strange splendor from the
-veranda of the little cottage,--saw the peaked land slowly steep itself
-in the aureate glow,--the changing color of the verdured mornes, and of
-the sweep of circling sea. Tiny birds, bosomed with fire, were shooting
-by in long curves, like embers flung by invisible hands. From far below,
-the murmur of the city rose to us,--a stormy hum. So motionless we
-remained that the green and gray lizards were putting out their heads
-from behind the columns of the veranda to stare at us,--as if wondering
-whether we were really alive. I turned my head suddenly to look at
-two queer butterflies; and all the lizards hid themselves again.
-_Papillon-lanmò_,--Death's butterflies,--these were called in the speech
-of the people: their broad wings were black like blackest velvet;--as
-they fluttered against the yellow light, they looked like silhouettes of
-butterflies. Always through my memory of that wondrous evening,--when I
-little thought I was seeing my friend's face for the last time,--there
-slowly passes the black palpitation of those wings....
-
-... I had been chatting with Felicien about various things which I
-thought might have a cheerful interest for him; and more than once I
-had been happy to see him smile.... But our converse waned.
-The ever-magnifying splendor before us had been mesmerizing our
-senses,--slowly overpowering our wills with the amazement of its beauty.
-Then, as the sun's disk--enormous,--blinding gold--touched the lilac
-flood, and the stupendous orange glow flamed up to the very zenith, we
-found ourselyes awed at last into silence.
-
-The orange in the west deepened into vermilion. Softly and very swiftly
-night rose like an indigo exhalation from the land,--filling the
-valleys, flooding the gorges, blackening the woods, leaving only the
-points of the peaks a while to catch the crimson glow. Forests
-and fields began to utter a rushing sound as of torrents, always
-deepening,--made up of the instrumentation and the voices of numberless
-little beings: clangings as of hammered iron, ringings as of dropping
-silver upon a stone, the dry bleatings of the _cabritt-bois_, and the
-chirruping of tree-frogs, and the _k-i-i-i-i-i-i_ of crickets. Immense
-trembling sparks began to rise and fall among the shadows,--twinkling
-out and disappearing all mysteriously: these were the fire-flies
-awakening. Then about the branches of the _bois-canon_ black shapes
-began to hover, which were not birds--shapes flitting processionally
-without any noise; each one in turn resting a moment as to nibble
-something at the end of a bough;--then yielding place to another, and
-circling away, to return again from the other side...the _guimbos_, the
-great bats.
-
-But we were silent, with the emotion of sunset still upon us: that
-ghostly emotion which is the transmitted experience of a race,--the sum
-of ancestral experiences innumerable,--the mingled joy and pain
-of a million years.... Suddenly a sweet voice pierced the
-stillness,--pleading:--
-
---"_Pa combiné, chè!--pa combiné conm ça!_" (Do not think, dear!--do not
-think like that!)
-
-... Only less beautiful than the sunset she seemed, this slender
-half-breed, who had come all unperceived behind us, treading soundlessly
-with her slim bare feet.... "And you, Missié", she said to me, in a tone
-of gentle reproach;--"you are his friend! why do you let him think? It
-is thinking that will prevent him getting well."
-
-_Combiné_ in creole signifies to think intently, and therefore to be
-unhappy,--because, with this artless race, as with children, to
-think intensely about anything is possible only under great stress of
-suffering.
-
---"_Pa combiné,--non, chè_," she repeated, plaintively, stroking
-Felicien's hair. "It is thinking that makes us old.... And it is time to
-bid your friend good-night."...
-
---"She is so good," said Felicien, smiling to make her pleased;--"I
-could never tell you how good. But she does not understand. She believes
-I suffer if I am silent. She is contented only when she sees me laugh;
-and so she will tell me creole stories by the hour to keep me amused, as
-if I were a child."...
-
-As he spoke she slipped an arm about his neck.
-
---"_Doudoux_," she persisted;--and her voice was a dove's coo,--"_Si ou
-ainmein moin, pa combiné-non!_"
-
-
-And in her strange exotic beauty, her savage grace, her supple caress,
-the velvet witchery of her eyes,--it seemed to me that I beheld a
-something imaged, not of herself, nor of the moment only,--a something
-weirdly sensuous: the Spirit of tropic Nature made golden flesh, and
-murmuring to each lured wanderer:--"_If thou wouldst love me, do not
-think_"...
-
-
-
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-YÉ
-
-
-I
-
-
-Almost every night, just before bedtime, I hear some group of children
-in the street telling stories to each other. Stories, enigmas or
-_tim-tim_, and songs, and round games, are the joy of child-life
-here,--whether rich or poor. I am particularly fond of listening to the
-stories,--which seem to me the oddest stories I ever heard.
-
-I succeeded in getting several dictated to me, so that I could write
-them;--others were written for me by creole friends, with better
-success. To obtain them in all their original simplicity and naive humor
-of detail, one should be able to write them down in short-hand as fast
-as they are related: they lose greatly in the slow process of dictation.
-The simple mind of the native story-teller, child or adult, is seriously
-tried by the inevitable interruptions and restraints of the dictation
-method;--the reciter loses spirit, becomes soon weary, and purposely
-shortens the narrative to finish the task as soon as possible. It seems
-painful to such a one to repeat a phrase more than once,--at least
-in the same way; while frequent questioning may irritate the most
-good-natured in a degree that shows how painful to the untrained brain
-may be the exercise of memory and steady control of imagination required
-for continuous dictation. By patience, however, I succeeded in obtaining
-many curiosities of oral literature,--representing a group of stories
-which, whatever their primal origin, have been so changed by local
-thought and coloring as to form a distinctively Martinique folk-tale
-circle. Among them are several especially popular with the children of
-my neighborhood; and I notice that almost every narrator embellishes the
-original plot with details of his own, which he varies at pleasure.
-
-I submit a free rendering of one of these tales,--the history of Yé and
-the Devil. The whole story of Yé would form a large book,--so numerous
-the list of his adventures; and this adventure seems to me the most
-characteristic of all. Yé is the most curious figure in Martinique
-folk-lore. Yé is the typical Bitaco,--or mountain negro of the lazy
-kind,--the country black whom city blacks love to poke fun at. As for
-the Devil of Martinique folk-lore, he resembles the _travailleur_ at a
-distance; but when you get dangerously near him, you find that he has
-red eyes and red hair, and two little horns under his _chapeau-Bacouè_,
-and feet like an ape, and fire in his throat. _Y ka sam yon gouôs, gouôs
-macaque_....
-
-
-
-
-II
-
-
-Ça qui pa té eonnaitt Yé?... Who is there in all Martinique who never
-heard of Yé? Everybody used to know the old rascal. He had every fault
-under the sun;--he was the laziest negro in the whole island; he was the
-biggest glutton in the whole world. He had an amazing number of
-children; and they were most of the time all half dead for hunger.
-
-_Ça qui pa té connaitt Yé?_... Who is there in all Martinique who never
-heard of Yé? Everybody used to know the old rascal. He had every fault
-under the sun;--he was the laziest negro in the whole island; he was
-the biggest glutton in the whole world. He had an amazing number[54] of
-children; and they were most of the time all half dead for hunger.
-
-Well, one day Yé went out to the woods to look for something to eat.
-And he walked through the woods nearly all day, till he became ever so
-tired; but he could not find anything to eat. He was just going to
-give up the search, when he heard a queer crackling noise,--at no great
-distance. He went to see what it was,--hiding himself behind the big
-trees as he got nearer to it.
-
-All at once he came to a little hollow in the woods, and saw a great
-fire burning there,--and he saw a Devil sitting beside the fire. The
-Devil was roasting a great heap of snails; and the sound Yé had heard
-was the crackling of the snail-shells. The Devil seemed to be very
-old;--he was sitting on the trunk of a bread-fruit tree; and Yé took a
-good long look at him. After Yé had watched him for a while, Yé found
-out that the old Devil was quite blind.
-
---The Devil had a big calabash in his hand full of _feroce_,--that is
-to say, boiled salt codfish and manioc flour, with ever so many pimentos
-(_épi en pile piment_),--just what negroes like Yé are most fond of. And
-the Devil seemed to be very hungry; and the food was going so fast down
-his throat that it made Yé unhappy to see it disappearing. It made him
-so unhappy that he felt at last he could not resist the temptation to
-steal from the old blind Devil. He crept quite close up to the Devil
-without making any noise, and began to rob him. Every time the Devil
-would lift his hand to his mouth, Yé would slip his own fingers into
-the calabash, and snatch a piece. The old Devil did not even look
-puzzled;--he did not seem to know anything; and Yé thought to himself
-that the old Devil was a great fool. He began to get more and more
-courage;--he took bigger and bigger handfuls out of the calabash;--he
-ate even faster than the Devil could eat. At last there was only one
-little bit left in the calabash. Yé put out his hand to take it,--and
-all of a sudden the Devil made a grab at Yé's hand and caught it! Yé was
-so frightened he could not even cry out, _Aïe-yaïe_. The Devil finished
-the last morsel, threw down the calabash, and said to Yé in a terrible
-voice:--"_Atò, saff!--ou c'est ta moin!_" (I've got you now, you
-glutton;--you belong to me!) Then he jumped on Yé's back, like a great
-ape, and twisted his legs round Yé's neck, and cried out:---"Carry me to
-your cabin,--and walk fast!"
-
-
-... When Yé's poor children saw him coming, they wondered what their
-papa was carrying on his back. They thought it might be a sack of bread
-or vegetables or perhaps a _régime_ of bananas,--for it was getting
-dark, and they could not see well. They laughed and showed their
-teeth and danced and screamed: "Here's papa coming with something to
-eat!--papa's coming with something to eat!" But when Yé had got near
-enough for them to see what he was carrying, they yelled and ran away to
-hide themselves. As for the poor mother, she could only hold up her two
-hands for horror.
-
-When they got into the cabin the Devil pointed to a corner, and said to
-Yé:--"Put me down there!" Yé put him down. The Devil sat there in the
-corner and never moved or spoke all that evening and all that night. He
-seemed to be a very quiet Devil indeed. The children began to look at
-him.
-
-But at breakfast-time, when the poor mother had managed to procure
-something for the children to eat,--just some bread-fruit and yams,--the
-old Devil suddenly rose up from his corner and muttered:--
-
---"_Manman mò!--papa mò!--touttt yche mò!_" (Mamma dead!--papa
-dead!--all the children dead!)
-
-And he blew his breath on them, and they all fell down stiff as if they
-were dead--_raidi-cadave!_. Then the Devil ate up everything there was
-on the table. When he was done, he filled the pots and dishes with dirt,
-and blew his breath again on Yé and all the family, and muttered:--
-
---"_Toutt moune lévé!_" (Everybody get up!)
-
-Then they all got up. Then he pointed to all the plates and dishes full
-of dirt, and said to them:--[55]
-
---"_Gobe-moin ça!_"
-
-And they had to gobble it all up, as he told them.
-
-After that it was no use trying to eat anything. Every time anything was
-cooked, the Devil would do the same thing. It was thus the next day, and
-the next, and the day after, and so every day for a long, long time.
-
-
-Yé did not know what to do; but his wife said she did. If she was only
-a man, she would soon get rid of that Devil. "Yé," she insisted, "go
-and see the Bon-Dié [the Good-God], and ask him what to do. I would go
-myself if I could; but women are not strong enough to climb the great
-morne."
-
-So Yé started off very, very early one morning, before the peep of day,
-and began to climb the Montagne Pelée. He climbed and walked, and walked
-and climbed, until he got at last to the top of the Morne de la Croix.[56]
-
-Then he knocked at the sky as loud as he could till the Good-God put his
-head out of a cloud and asked him what he wanted:--
-
---"_Eh bien!--ça ou ni, Yé fa ou lè?_"
-
-When Yé had recounted his troubles, the Good-God said:--
-
---"_Pauv ma pauv!_ I knew it all before you came, Yé. I can tell you
-what to do; but I am afraid it will be no use--you will never be able to
-do it! Your gluttony is going to be the ruin of you, poor Yé! Still, you
-can try. Now listen well to what I am going to tell you. First of all,
-you must not eat anything before you get home. Then when your wife has
-the children's dinner ready, and you see the Devil getting up, you must
-cry out:--'_Tam ni pou tam ni bé!_' Then the Devil will drop down dead.
-Don't forget not to eat anything--_ou tanne?_"...
-
-Yé promised to remember all he was told, and not to eat anything on his
-way down;--then he said good-bye to the Bon-Dié (_bien conm y faut_),
-and started. All the way he kept repeating the words the Good-God had
-told him: "_Tam ni pou tam ni bé!"--"tam ni pou tam ni bé!_"--over and
-over again.
-
---But before reaching home he had to cross a little stream; and on both
-banks he saw wild guava-bushes growing, with plenty of sour guavas
-upon them;--for it was not yet time for guavas to be ripe. Poor Yé was
-hungry! He did all he could to resist the temptation, but it proved too
-much for him. He broke all his promises to the Bon-Dié: he ate and ate
-and ate till there were no more guavas left,--and then he began to eat
-_zicaques_ and green plums, and all sorts of nasty sour things, till he
-could not eat any more.
-
---By the time he got to the cabin his teeth were so on edge that he
-could scarcely speak distinctly enough to tell his wife to get the
-supper ready.
-
-And so while everybody was happy, thinking that they were going to be
-freed from their trouble, Yé was really in no condition to do anything.
-The moment the supper was ready, the Devil got up from his corner as
-usual, and approached the table. Then Yé tried to speak; but his teeth
-were so on edge that instead of saying,--"_Tam ni pou tam ni bé_," he
-could only stammer out:---"_Anni toqué Diabe-là cagnan_."
-
-This had no effect on the Devil at all: he seemed to be used to it! He
-blew his breath on them all, sent them to sleep, ate up all the supper,
-filled the empty dishes with filth, awoke Yé and his family, and ordered
-them as usual;--
-
---"_Gobe-moin ça!_" And they had to gobble it up,--every bit of it.
-
-
-The family nearly died of hunger and disgust. Twice more Yé climbed the
-Montagne Pelée; twice more he climbed the Morne de la Croix; twice more
-he disturbed the poor Bon-Dié, all for nothing!--since each time on his
-way down he would fill his paunch with all sorts of nasty sour things,
-so that he could not speak right. The Devil remained in the house night
-and day;--the poor mother threw herself down on the ground, and pulled
-out her hair,--so unhappy she was!
-
-But luckily for the poor woman, she had one child as cunning as a
-rat,[57]--a boy called Ti Fonté (little Impudent), who bore his name well.
-When he saw his mother crying so much, he said to her:--
-
---"Mamma, send papa just once more to see the Good-God: I know something
-to do!"
-
-The mother knew how cunning her boy was: she felt sure he meant
-something by his words;--she sent old Yé for the last time to see the
-Bon-Dié.
-
-Yé used always to wear one of those big long coats they call
-_lavalasses_;--whether it was hot or cool, wet or dry, he never went
-out without it. There were two very big pockets in it--one on each side.
-When Ti Fonté saw his father getting ready to go, he jumped _floup!_
-into one of the pockets and hid himself there. Yé climbed all the way
-to the top of the Morne de la Croix without suspecting anything. When he
-got there the little boy put one of his ears out of Yé's pocket,--so as
-to hear everything the Good-God would say.
-
-This time he was very angry,--the Bon-Dié: he spoke very crossly; he
-scolded Yé a great deal. But he was so kind for all that,--he was so
-generous to good-for-nothing Yé, that he took the pains to repeat the
-words over and over again for him:--"_Tam ni pou tam ni bé_."... And
-this time the Bon-Dié was not talking to no purpose: there was somebody
-there well able to remember what he said. Ti Fonté made the most of his
-chance;--he sharpened that little tongue of his; he thought of his mamma
-and all his little brothers and sisters dying of hunger down below. As
-for his father, Yé did as he had done before--stuffed himself with all
-the green fruit he could find.
-
-The moment Yé got home and took off his coat, Ti Fonté jumped out,
-_plapp!_--and ran to his mamma, and whispered:--
-
---"Mamma, get ready a nice, big dinner!--we are going to have it all to
-ourselves to-day: the Good-God didn't talk for nothing,--I heard every
-word he said!"
-
-Then the mother got ready a nice _calalou-crabe_, a _tonton-banane_,
-a _matété-cirique_,--several calabashes of _couss-caye_, two
-_régimes-figues_ (bunches of small bananas),--in short, a very fine
-dinner indeed, with a _chopine_ of tafia to wash it all well down.
-
-The Devil felt as sure of himself that day as he had always felt, and
-got up the moment everything was ready. But Ti Fonté got up too, and
-yelled out just as loud as he could:---"_Tam ni pou tam ni bé!_"
-
-At once the Devil gave a scream so loud that it could be heard right
-down to the bottom of hell,--and he fell dead.
-
-Meanwhile, Yé, like the old fool he was, kept trying to say what the
-Bon-Dié had told him, and could only mumble:--
-
---"_Anni toqué Diabe-là cagnan!_"
-
-He would never have been able to do anything;--and his wife had a great
-mind just to send him to bed at once, instead of letting him sit down to
-eat all those nice things. But she was a kind-hearted soul; and so she
-let Yé stay and eat with the children, though he did not deserve it. And
-they all ate and ate, and kept on eating and filling themselves until
-daybreak--_pauv piti!_
-
-But during this time the Devil had begun to smell badly and he had
-become swollen so big that Yé found he could not move him. Still, they
-knew they must get him out of the way somehow. The children had eaten so
-much that they were all full of strength--_yo tè plein lafòce_; and Yé
-got a rope and tied one end round the Devil's foot; and then he and the
-children--all pulling together--managed to drag the Devil out of the
-cabin and into the bushes, where they left him just like a dead dog.
-They all felt themselves very happy to be rid of that old Devil.
-
-
-But some days after old good-for-nothing Yé went off to hunt for birds.
-He had a whole lot of arrows with him. He suddenly remembered the Devil,
-and thought he would like to take one more look at him. And he did.
-
-_Fouinq!_ what a sight! The Devil's belly had swelled up like a morne:
-it was yellow and blue and green,--looked as if it was going to burst.
-And Yé, like the old fool he always was, shot an arrow up in the air,
-so that it fell down and stuck into the Devil's belly. Then he wanted
-to get the arrow, and he climbed up on the Devil, and pulled and pulled
-till he got the arrow out. Then he put the point of the arrow to his
-nose,--just to see what sort of a smell dead Devils had.
-
-The moment he did that, his nose swelled up as big as the refinery-pot
-of a sugar-plantation.
-
-
-Yé could scarcely walk for the weight of his nose; but he had to go and
-see the Bon-Dié again. The Bon-Dié said to him:--
-
---"Ah! Yé, my poor Yé, you will live and die a fool!--you are certainly
-the biggest fool in the whole world!... Still, I must try to do
-something for you;--I'll help you anyhow to get rid of that nose!...
-I'll tell you how to do it. To-morrow morning, very early, get up and
-take a big _taya_ [whip], and beat all the bushes well, and drive all
-the birds to the Roche de la Caravelle. Then you must tell them that I,
-the Bon-Dié, want them to take off their bills and feathers, and take a
-good bath in the sea. While they are bathing, you can choose a nose for
-yourself out of the heap of bills there."
-
-Poor Yé did just as the Good-God told him; and while the birds were
-bathing, he picked out a nose for himself from the heap of beaks,--and
-left his own refinery-pot in its place.
-
-The nose he took was the nose of the _coulivicou_.[58] And that is why the
-_coulivicou_ always looks so much ashamed of himself even to this day.
-
-
-[Footnote 54: In the patois, "_yon rafale yche_"--"a whirlwind of
-children."]
-
-[Footnote 55: In the original:--"Y té ka monté assous tabe-là, épi y
-té ka fai caca adans toutt plats-à, adans toutt zassiett-là."]
-
-[Footnote 56: A peaklet rising above the verge of the ancient crater now
-filled with water.]
-
-[Footnote 57: The great field-rat of Martinique is, in Martinique
-folklore, the symbol of all cunning, and probably merits its
-reputation.]
-
-[Footnote 58: The _coulivicou_, or "Colin Vicou," is a Martinique bird
-with a long meagre body, and an enormous bill. It has a very tristful
-and taciturn expression.... _Maig conm yon coulivicou_, "thin as a
-coulivicou," is a popular comparison for the appearance of anybody much
-reduced by sickness.]
-
-
-
-
-III
-
-
-... Poor Yé!--you still live for me only too vividly outside of those
-strange folk-tales of eating and of drinking which so cruelly reveal the
-long slave-hunger of your race. For I have seen you cutting cane on peak
-slopes above the clouds;--I have seen you climbing from plantation to
-plantation with your cutlass in your hand, watching for snakes as you
-wander to look for work, when starvation forces you to obey a master,
-though born with the resentment of centuries against all masters;--I
-have seen you prefer to carry two hundred-weight of bananas twenty miles
-to market, rather than labor in the fields;--I have seen you
-ascending through serpent-swarming woods to some dead crater to find
-a cabbage-palm,--and always hungry,--and always shiftless! And you
-are still a great fool, poor Yé!--and you have still your swarm of
-children,--your _rafale yche_,--and they are famished; for you have
-taken into your _ajoupa_ a Devil who devours even more than you can
-earn,--even your heart, and your splendid muscles, and your poor artless
-brain,--the Devil Tafia!... And there is no Bon-Dié to help you rid
-yourself of him now: for the only Bon-Dié you ever really had, your old
-creole master, cannot care for you any more, and you cannot care for
-yourself. Mercilessly moral, the will of this enlightened century has
-abolished forever that patriarchal power which brought you up strong
-and healthy on scanty fare, and scourged you into its own idea of
-righteousness, yet kept you innocent as a child of the law of the
-struggle for life. But you feel that law now;--you are a citizen of the
-Republic! you are free to vote, and free to work, and free to starve
-if you prefer it, and free to do evil and suffer for it;--and this new
-knowledge stupefies you so that you have almost forgotten how to laugh!
-
-
-
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-LYS
-
-I
-
-
-It is only half-past four o'clock: there is the faintest blue light of
-beginning day,--and little Victoire already stands at the bedside with
-my wakening cup of hot black fragrant coffee. What! so early?...
-Then with a sudden heart-start I remember this is my last West Indian
-morning. And the child--her large timid eyes all gently luminous--is
-pressing something into my hand.
-
-Two vanilla beans wrapped in a morsel of banana-leaf,--her poor little
-farewell gift!...
-
-Other trifling souvenirs are already packed away. Almost everybody that
-knows me has given me something. Manm-Robert brought me a tiny packet of
-orange-seeds,--seeds of a "gift-orange": so long as I can keep these
-in my vest-pocket I will never be without money. Cyrillia brought me
-a package of _bouts_, and a pretty box of French matches, warranted
-inextinguishable by wind. Azaline, the blanchisseuse, sent me a little
-pocket looking-glass. Cerbonnie, the _màchanne_, left a little cup of
-guava jelly for me last night. Mimi--dear child!--brought me a little
-paper dog! It is her best toy; but those gentle black eyes would stream
-with tears if I dared to refuse it.... Oh, Mimi! what am I to do with a
-little paper dog? And what am I to do with the chocolate-sticks and the
-cocoanuts and all the sugar-cane and all the cinnamon-apples?...
-
-
-
-II
-
-
-... Twenty minutes past five by the clock of the Bourse. The hill
-shadows are shrinking back from the shore;--the long wharves reach out
-yellow into the sun;--the tamarinds of the Place Bertin, and the pharos
-for half its height, and the red-tiled roofs along the bay are catching
-the glow. Then, over the light-house--on the outermost line depending
-from the southern yard-arm of the semaphore--a big black ball suddenly
-runs up like a spider climbing its own thread.... _Steamer from the
-South!_ The packet has been sighted. And I have not yet been able to
-pack away into a specially purchased wooden box all the fruits and
-vegetable curiosities and odd little presents sent to me. If Radice the
-boatman had not come to help me, I should never be able to get ready;
-for the work of packing is being continually interrupted by friends and
-acquaintances coming to say good-bye. Manm-Robert brings to see me a
-pretty young girl--very fair, with a violet foulard twisted about her
-blonde head. It is little Basilique, who is going to make her _pouémiè
-communion_. So I kiss her, according to the old colonial custom, once on
-each downy cheek;--and she is to pray to _Notre Dame du Bon Port_ that
-the ship shall bear me safely to far-away New York.
-
-And even then the steamer's cannon-call shakes over the town and into
-the hills behind us, which answer with all the thunder of their phantom
-artillery.
-
-
-
-III
-
-
-... There is a young white lady, accompanied by an aged negress, already
-waiting on the south wharf for the boat;--evidently she is to be one
-of my fellow-passengers. Quite a pleasing presence: slight graceful
-figure,--a face not precisely pretty, but delicate and sensitive, with
-the odd charm of violet eyes under black eye-brows....
-
-A friend who comes to see me off tells me all about her. Mademoiselle
-Lys is going to New York to be a governess,--to leave her native island
-forever. A story sad enough, though not more so than that of many a
-gentle creole girl. And she is going all alone, for I see her bidding
-good-bye to old Titine,--kissing her. "_Adié encò, chè;--Bon-Dié ké béni
-ou!_" sobs the poor servant, with tears streaming down her kind black
-face. She takes off her blue shoulder-kerchief, and waves it as the boat
-recedes from the wooden steps.
-
-
-... Fifteen minutes later, Mademoiselle and I find ourselves under the
-awnings shading the saloon-deck of the _Guadeloupe_. There are at least
-fifty passengers,--many resting in chairs, lazy-looking Demerara chairs
-with arm-supports immensely lengthened so as to form rests for the lower
-limbs. Overhead, suspended from the awning-frames, are two tin cages
-containing parrots;--and I see two little greenish monkeys, no bigger
-than squirrels, tied to the wheel-hatch,--two _sakiwinkis_. These are
-from the forests of British Guiana. They keep up a continual thin sharp
-twittering, like birds,--all the while circling, ascending, descending,
-retreating or advancing to the limit of the little ropes attaching them
-to the hatch.
-
-The _Guadeloupe_ has seven hundred packages to deliver at St. Pierre: we
-have ample time,--Mademoiselle Violet-Eyes and I,--to take one last look
-at the "Pays des Revenants."
-
-I wonder what her thoughts are, feeling a singular sympathy for
-her,--for I am in that sympathetic mood which the natural emotion of
-leaving places and persons one has become fond of, is apt to inspire.
-And now at the moment of my going,--when I seem to understand as never
-before the beauty of that tropic Nature, and the simple charm of the
-life to which I am bidding farewell,--the question comes to me: "Does
-she not love it all as I do,--nay, even much more, because of that in
-her own existence which belongs to it?" But as a child of the land,
-she has seen no other skies,--fancies, perhaps, there may be brighter
-ones....
-
-... Nowhere on this earth, Violet-Eyes!--nowhere beneath this sun!...
-Oh! the dawnless glory of tropic morning!--the single sudden leap of the
-giant light over the purpling of a hundred peaks,--over the surging of
-the mornes! And the early breezes from the hills,--all cool out of
-the sleep of the forests, and heavy with vegetal odors thick, sappy,
-savage-sweet!--and the wild high winds that run ruffling and crumpling
-through the cane of the mountain slopes in storms of papery sound!--
-
-And the mighty dreaming of the woods,--green-drenched with silent
-pouring of creepers,--dashed with the lilac and yellow and rosy foam of
-liana flowers!--
-
-And the eternal azure apparition of the all-circling sea,--that as you
-mount the heights ever appears to rise perpendicularly behind you,--that
-seems, as you descend, to sink and flatten before you!--
-
-And the violet velvet distances of evening;--and the swaying of palms
-against the orange-burning,--when all the heaven seems filled with
-vapors of a molten sun!...
-
-
-
-IV
-
-
-How beautiful the mornes and azure-shadowed hollows in the jewel
-clearness of this perfect morning! Even Pelée wears only her very
-lightest head-dress of gauze; and all the wrinklings of her green robe
-take unfamiliar tenderness of tint from the early sun. All the quaint
-peaking of the colored town--sprinkling the sweep of blue bay with red
-and yellow and white-of-cream--takes a sharpness in this limpid light as
-if seen through a diamond lens; and there above the living green of the
-familiar hills I can see even the faces of the statues--the black Christ
-on his white cross, and the White Lady of the Morne d'Orange--among
-curving palms.... It is all as though the island were donning its utmost
-possible loveliness, exerting all its witchery,--seeking by supremest
-charm to win back and hold its wandering child,--Violet-Eyes over
-there!... She is looking too.
-
-I wonder if she sees the great palms of the Voie du Parnasse,--curving
-far away as to bid us adieu, like beautiful bending women. I wonder if
-they are not trying to say something to her; and I try myself to fancy
-what that something is:--
-
---"Child, wilt thou indeed abandon all who love thee!... Listen!--'tis
-a dim grey land thou goest unto,--a land of bitter winds,--a land of
-strange gods,--a land of hardness and barrenness, where even Nature may
-not live through half the cycling of the year! Thou wilt never see us
-there.... And there, when thou shalt sleep thy long sleep, child--that
-land will have no power to lift thee up;--vast weight of stone will
-press thee down forever;--until the heavens be no more thou shalt not
-awake!... But here, darling, our loving roots would seek for thee, would
-find thee: thou shouldst live again!--we lift, like Aztec priests, the
-blood of hearts to the Sun."...
-
-
-
-V
-
-
-... It is very hot.... I hold in my hand a Japanese paper-fan with a
-design upon it of the simplest sort: one jointed green bamboo, with a
-single spurt of sharp leaves, cutting across a pale blue murky double
-streak that means the horizon above a sea. That is all. Trivial to my
-Northern friends this design might seem; but to me it causes a pleasure
-bordering on pain.... I know so well what the artist means; and they
-could not know, unless they had seen bamboos,--and bamboos peculiarly
-situated. As I look at this fan I know myself descending the Morne
-Parnasse by the steep winding road; I have the sense of windy heights
-behind me, and forest on either hand, and before me the blended azure of
-sky and sea with one bamboo-spray swaying across it at the level of
-my eyes. Nor is this all;--I have the every sensation of the very
-moment,--the vegetal odors, the mighty tropic light, the warmth, the
-intensity of irreproducible color.... Beyond a doubt, the artist who
-dashed the design on this fan with his miraculous brush must have had a
-nearly similar experience to that of which the memory is thus aroused in
-me, but which I cannot communicate to others.
-
-... And it seems to me now that all which I have tried to write about
-the _Pays des Revenants_ can only be for others, who have never beheld
-it,--vague like the design upon this fan.
-
-
-
-VI
-
-
-_Brrrrrrrrrrr!_... The steam-winch is lifting the anchor; and the
-_Guadeloupe_ trembles through every plank as the iron torrent of her
-chain-cable rumbles through the hawse-holes.... At last the quivering
-ceases;--there is a moment's silence; and Violet-Eyes seems trying to
-catch a last glimpse of her faithful _bonne_ among the ever-thickening
-crowd upon the quay.... Ah! there she is--waving her foulard.
-Mademoiselle Lys is waving a handkerchief in reply....
-
-Suddenly the shock of the farewell gun shakes heavily through our
-hearts, and over the bay,--where the tall mornes catch the flapping
-thunder, and buffet it through all their circle in tremendous mockery.
-Then there is a great whirling and whispering of whitened water behind
-the steamer--another,--another; and the whirl becomes a foaming stream:
-the mighty propeller is playing!.... All the blue harbor swings slowly
-round;--and the green limbs of the land are pushed out further on the
-left, shrink back upon the right;--and the mountains are moving their
-shoulders. And then the many-tinted façades,--and the tamarinds of the
-Place Bertin,--and the light-house,--and the long wharves with their
-throng of turbaned women,--and the cathedral towers,--and the fair
-palms,--and the statues of the hills,--all veer, change place, and begin
-to float away... steadily, very swiftly.
-
-
-Farewell, fair city,--sun-kissed city,--many-fountained city!--dear
-yellow-glimmering streets,--white pavements learned by heart,--and faces
-ever looked for,--and voices ever loved! Farewell, white towers with
-your golden-throated bells!--farewell, green steeps, bathed in the light
-of summer everlasting!--craters with your coronets of forest!--bright
-mountain paths upwinding 'neath pomp of fern and angelin and feathery
-bamboo!--and gracious palms that drowse above the dead! Farewell,
-soft-shadowing majesty of valleys unfolding to the sun,--green golden
-cane-fields ripening to the sea!...
-
-
-... The town vanishes. The island slowly becomes a green silhouette. So
-might Columbus first have seen it from the deck of his caravel,--nearly
-four hundred years ago. At this distance there are no more signs of life
-upon it than when it first became visible to his eyes: yet there are
-cities there,--and toiling,--and suffering,--and gentle hearts that
-knew me.... Now it is turning blue,--the beautiful shape!--becoming a
-dream....
-
-
-
-VII
-
-
-And Dominica draws nearer,--sharply massing her hills against the vast
-light in purple nodes and gibbosities and denticulations. Closer and
-closer it comes, until the green of its heights breaks through the
-purple here and there,--in flashings and ribbings of color. Then
-it remains as if motionless a while;--then the green lights go out
-again,--and all the shape begins to recede sideward towards the south.
-
-... And what had appeared a pearl-grey cloud in the north slowly
-reveals itself as another island of mountains,--hunched and horned and
-mammiform: Guadeloupe begins to show her double profile. But Martinique
-is still visible;--Pelée still peers high over the rim of the south....
-Day wanes;--the shadow of the ship lengthens over the flower-blue water.
-Pelée changes aspect at last,--turns pale as a ghost,--but will not fade
-away....
-
-... The sun begins to sink as he always sinks to his death in the
-tropics,--swiftly,--too swiftly!--and the glory of him makes golden all
-the hollow west,--and bronzes all the flickering wave-backs. But still
-the gracious phantom of the island will not go,--softly haunting us
-through the splendid haze. And always the tropic wind blows soft and
-warm;--there is an indescribable caress in it! Perhaps some such breeze,
-blowing from Indian waters, might have inspired that prophecy of Islam
-concerning the Wind of the Last Day,--that "Yellow Wind, softer than
-silk, balmier than musk,"--which is to sweep the spirits of the just to
-God in the great Winnowing of Souls....
-
-Then into the indigo night vanishes forever from my eyes the ghost of
-Pelée; and the moon swings up,--a young and lazy moon, drowsing upon her
-back, as in a hammock.... Yet a few nights more, and we shall see this
-slim young moon erect,--gliding upright on her way,--coldly beautiful
-like a fair Northern girl.
-
-
-
-VIII
-
-
-And ever through tepid nights and azure days the _Guadeloupe_ rushes
-on,--her wake a river of snow beneath the sun, a torrent of fire beneath
-the stars,--steaming straight for the North.
-
-Under the peaking of Montserrat we steam,--beautiful Montserrat,
-all softly wrinkled like a robe of greenest velvet fallen from the
-waist!--breaking the pretty sleep of Plymouth town behind its screen
-of palms... young palms, slender and full of grace as creole children
-are;--
-
-And by tall Nevis, with her trinity of dead craters purpling through
-ocean-haze;--by clouded St. Christopher's mountain-giant;--past ghostly
-St. Martin's, far-floating in fog of gold, like some dream of the
-Saint's own Second Summer;--
-
-Past low Antigua's vast blue harbor,--shark-haunted, bounded about by
-huddling of little hills, blue and green.
-
-Past Santa Cruz, the "Island of the Holy Cross,"--all radiant with
-verdure though well nigh woodless,--nakedly beautiful in the tropic
-light as a perfect statue;--
-
-Past the long cerulean reaching and heaping of Porto Rico on the left,
-and past hopeless St. Thomas on the right,--old St. Thomas, watching
-the going and the coming of the commerce that long since abandoned
-her port,--watching the ships once humbly solicitous for patronage now
-turning away to the Spanish rival, like ingrates forsaking a ruined
-patrician;--
-
-And the vapory Vision of, St. John;--and the grey ghost of Tortola,--and
-further, fainter, still more weirdly dim, the aureate phantom of Virgin
-Gorda.
-
-
-
-
-IX
-
-
-Then only the enormous double-vision of sky and sea.
-
-The sky: a cupola of blinding blue, shading down and paling into
-spectral green at the rim of the world,--and all fleckless, save at
-evening. Then, with sunset, comes a light gold-drift of little feathery
-cloudlets into the West,--stippling it as with a snow of fire.
-
-The sea: no flower-tint may now make my comparison for the splendor of
-its lucent color. It has shifted its hue;--for we have entered into the
-Azure Stream: it has more than the magnificence of burning cyanogen....
-
-But, at night, the Cross of the South appears no more. And other changes
-come, as day succeeds to day,--a lengthening of the hours of light, a
-longer lingering of the after-glow,--a cooling of the wind. Each morning
-the air seems a little cooler, a little rarer;--each noon the sky looks
-a little paler, a little further away--always heightening, yet also
-more shadowy, as if its color, receding, were dimmed by distance,--were
-coming more faintly down from vaster altitudes.
-
-
-... Mademoiselle is petted like a child by the lady passengers. And
-every man seems anxious to aid in making her voyage a pleasant one. For
-much of which, I think, she may thank her eyes!
-
-
-
-
-X
-
-
-A dim morning and chill;--blank sky and sunless waters: the sombre
-heaven of the North with colorless horizon rounding in a blind grey
-sea.... What a sudden weight comes to the heart with the touch of the
-cold mist, with the spectral melancholy of the dawn;--and then what
-foolish though irrepressible yearning for the vanished azure left
-behind!
-
-... The little monkeys twitter plaintively, trembling in the chilly air.
-The parrots have nothing to say: they look benumbed, and sit on their
-perches with eyes closed.
-
-... A vagueness begins to shape itself along the verge of the sea, far
-to port: that long heavy clouding which indicates the approach of land.
-And from it now floats to us something ghostly and frigid which makes
-the light filmy and the sea shadowy as a flood of dreams,--the fog of
-the Jersey coast.
-
-At once the engines slacken their respiration. The _Guadeloupe_ begins
-to utter her steam-cry of warning,--regularly at intervals of two
-minutes,--for she is now in the track of all the ocean vessels. And
-from far away we can hear a heavy knelling,--the booming of some great
-fog-bell.
-
-... All in a white twilight. The place of the horizon has vanished;--we
-seem ringed in by a wall of smoke.... Out of this vapory emptiness--very
-suddenly--an enormous steamer rushes, towering like a hill--passes
-so close that we can see faces, and disappears again, leaving the sea
-heaving and frothing behind her.
-
-
-... As I lean over the rail to watch the swirling of the wake, I feel
-something pulling at my sleeve: a hand,--a tiny black hand,--the hand of
-a _sakiwinki_. One of the little monkeys, straining to the full length
-of his string, is making this dumb appeal for human sympathy;--the
-bird-black eyes of both are fixed upon me with the oddest look of
-pleading. Poor little tropical exiles! I stoop to caress them; but
-regret the impulse a moment later: they utter such beseeching cries when
-I find myself obliged to leave them again alone!...
-
-... Hour after hour the _Guadeloupe_ glides on through the white
-gloom,--cautiously, as if feeling her way; always sounding her whistle,
-ringing her bells, until at last some brown-winged bark comes flitting
-to us out of the mist, bearing a pilot.... How strange it must all seem
-to Mademoiselle who stands so silent there at the rail!--how weird this
-veiled world must appear to her, after the sapphire light of her own
-West Indian sky, and the great lazulite splendor of her own tropic sea!
-
-But a wind comes;--it strengthens,--begins to blow very cold. The mists
-thin before its blowing; and the wan blank sky is all revealed again
-with livid horizon around the heaving of the iron-grey sea.
-
-
-... Thou dim and lofty heaven of the North,--grey sky of Odin,--bitter
-thy winds and spectral all thy colors!--they that dwell beneath thee
-know not the glory of Eternal Summer's green,--the azure splendor of
-southern day!--but thine are the lightnings of Thought illuminating for
-human eyes the interspaces between sun and sun. Thine the generations
-of might,--the strivers, the battlers,--the men who make Nature
-tame!--thine the domain of inspiration and achievement,--the larger
-heroisms, the vaster labors that endure, the higher knowledge, and all
-the witchcrafts of science!...
-
-
-But in each one of us there lives a mysterious Something which is Self,
-yet also infinitely more than Self,--incomprehensibly multiple,--the
-complex total of sensations, impulses, timidities belonging to the
-unknown past. And the lips of the little stranger from the tropics have
-become all white, because that Something within her,--ghostly bequest
-from generations who loved the light and rest and wondrous color of a
-more radiant world,--now shrinks all back about her girl's heart
-with fear of this pale grim North.... And lo!--opening mile-wide in
-dream-grey majesty before us,--reaching away, through measureless mazes
-of masting, into remotenesses all vapor-veiled,--the mighty perspective
-of New York harbor!...
-
-
-Thou knowest it not, this gloom about us, little maiden;--'tis only
-a magical dusk we are entering,--only that mystic dimness in which
-miracles must be wrought!... See the marvellous shapes uprising,--the
-immensities, the astonishments! And other greater wonders thou wilt
-behold in a little while, when we shall have become lost to each other
-forever in the surging of the City's million-hearted life!... 'Tis all
-shadow here, thou sayest?--Ay, 'tis twilight, verily, by contrast
-with that glory out of which thou camest, Lys--twilight only,--but the
-Twilight of the Gods!... _Adié, chè!--Bon-Dié ké bént ou!_...
-
-
-
-
-APPENDIX
-
-
-SOME CREOLE MELODIES
-
-
-More than a hundred years ago Thibault de Chanvallon expressed his
-astonishment at the charm and wonderful sense of musical rhythm
-characterizing the slave-songs and slave-dances of Martinique. The
-rhythmical sense of the negroes especially impressed him. "I have seen,"
-he writes, "seven or eight hundred negroes accompanying a wedding-party
-to the sound of song. They would all leap up in the air and come down
-together;--the movement was so exact and general that the noise of their
-fall made but a single sound."
-
-An almost similar phenomenon may be witnessed any Carnival season in St.
-Pierre,--while the Devil makes his nightly round, followed by many
-hundred boys clapping hands and leaping in chorus. It may also be
-observed in the popular malicious custom of the pillard, or, in creole,
-_piyà._ Some person whom it is deemed justifiable and safe to annoy,
-may suddenly find himself followed in the street by a singing chorus of
-several hundred, all clapping hands and dancing or running in perfect
-time, so that all the bare feet strike the ground together. Or the
-_pillard-chorus_ may even take up its position before the residence of
-the party disliked, and then proceed with its performance. An example of
-such a _pillard_ is given further on, in the song entitled _Loéma
-tombé._ The improvisation by a single voice begins the pillard,--which
-in English might be rendered as follows:--
-
-
-(_Single voice_) You little children there!--you who were by the
-river-side!
-Tell me truly this:--Did you see Loéma fall?
-Tell me truly this--
-(_Chorus, opening_) Did you see Loéma fall?
-(_Single voice_) Tell me truly this--
-(_Chorus_) Did you see Loéma fall?
-(_Single voice, more rapidly_) Tell me truly this--
-(_Chorus, more quickly_) Loéma fall!
-(_Single voice_) Tell me truly this--
-(_Chorus_) Loéma fall!
-(_Single voice_) Tell me truly this--
-(_Chorus, always more quickly, and more loudly, all the hands
-clapping together like a fire of musketry_) Loéma fall! etc.
-
-
-The same rhythmic element characterizes many of the games and round
-dances of Martinique children;--but, as a rule, I think it is
-perceptible that the sense of time is less developed in the colored
-children than in the black.
-
-The other melodies which are given as specimens of Martinique music show
-less of the African element,--the nearest approach to it being in _Tant
-sirop_; but all are probably creations of the mixed race.
-_Marie-Clémence_ is a Carnival satire composed not more than four years
-ago. _To-to-to_ is very old--dates back, perhaps, to the time of the
-_belles-affranchies._ It is seldom sung now except by survivors of the
-old régime: the sincerity and tenderness of the emotion that inspired
-it--the old sweetness of heart and simplicity of thought,--are passing
-forever away.
-
-To my friend, Henry Edward Krehbiel, the musical lecturer and
-critic,--at once historian and folklorist in the study of
-race-music,--and to Mr. Frank van der Stucken, the New York musical
-composer, I owe the preparation of these four melodies for voice and
-piano-forte. The arrangements of _To-to-to_ and _Loéma tombé_ are Mr.
-Van der Stucken's.
-
-
-"TO-TO-TO"
-
-(_Creole werds_)
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-MARIE-CLÉMENCE
-
-(_Creole words_)
-
-
-[Illustration]
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-TANT SIROP EST DOUX
-
-(_Negro-French_)
-
-
-[Illustration]
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-LOÉMA TOMBÉ
-
-(_Creole words_)
-
-
-[Illustration]
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-
-End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Two years in the French West Indies, by 
-Lafcadio Hearn
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-<pre>
-
-Project Gutenberg's Two years in the French West Indies, by Lafcadio Hearn
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
-other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
-whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
-the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
-www.gutenberg.org.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
-to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
-
-Title: Two years in the French West Indies
-
-Author: Lafcadio Hearn
-
-Illustrator: Arthur W. Rushmore
-
-Release Date: September 2, 2020 [EBook #63102]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: UTF-8
-
-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TWO YEARS IN THE FRENCH WEST INDIES ***
-
-
-
-
-Produced by Laura Natal Rodrigues at Free Literature (Images
-generously made available by Hathi Trust.)
-
-
-
-
-
-
-</pre>
-
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
-<img src="images/west_cover.jpg" width="500" alt="" />
-</div>
-
-
-<h2>TWO YEARS<br />
-IN THE<br />
-FRENCH WEST INDIES</h2>
-
-<h4>BY</h4>
-
-<h3>LAFCADIO HEARN</h3>
-
-<h5><i>AUTHOR OF "CHITA" ETC.</i></h5>
-
-<h5>WITH MANY ILLUSTRATIONS FROM<br />
-PHOTOGRAPHS BY ARTHUR W. RUSHMORE<br />
-AND DRAWINGS BY MARIE ROYLE</h5>
-
-<h4>HARPER &amp; BROTHERS PUBLISHERS</h4>
-
-<h4>NEW YORK AND LONDON</h4>
-
-<h5>1923</h5>
-
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
-<a id="figure01"></a>
-<img src="images/figure01.jpg" width="400" alt="" />
-<p class="center">LA MONTAGNE PELÉE<br />
-"...<i>Its slopes undulating against the north sky,&mdash;and
-the strange jagging of its ridges,... an extravaganza
-of lava-shapes overpitching and cascading into sea
-and plain."</i></p>
-</div>
-
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<h4>À MON CHER AMI</h4>
-
-<h4>LÉOPOLD ARNOUX</h4>
-
-<h5>NOTAIRE À SAINT PIERRE, MARTINIQUE</h5>
-
-
-
-
-<p class="center"><i>Souvenir de not promenades,&mdash;de nos voyages,&mdash;de nos causeries,&mdash;des<br />
-sympathies échangées,&mdash;de tout le charme d'une amitié<br />
-inaltérable et inoubliable,&mdash;de tout ce qui parle à<br />
-l'âme au doux Pays des Revenants.</i></p>
-
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 300px;">
-<img src="images/figure01a.jpg" width="300" alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 300px;">
-<img src="images/figure02.jpg" width="400" alt="" />
-</div>
-
-
-<h4>CONTENTS</h4>
-
-<p>CHAPTER</p>
-<p><a href="#A_MIDSUMMER_TRIP_TO_THE_TROPICS">A Midsummer Trip to the Tropics</a><br />
-<a href="#MARTINIQUE_SKETCHES">Martinique Sketches:&mdash;</a><br />
-I. <a href="#LES_PORTEUSES">Les Porteuses</a><br />
-II. <a href="#LA_GRANDE_ANSE">La Grande Anse</a><br />
-III. <a href="#UN_REVENANT">Un Revenant</a><br />
-IV. <a href="#LA_GUIABLESSE">La Guiablesse</a><br />
-V. <a href="#LA_VERETTE">La Vérette</a><br />
-VI. <a href="#LES_BLANCHISSEUSES">Les Blanchisseuses</a><br />
-VII. <a href="#LA_PELEE">La Pelée</a><br />
-VIII. <a href="#TI_CANOTIE">'Ti Canotié</a><br />
-IX. <a href="#LA_FILLE_DE_COULEUR">La Fille de Couleur</a><br />
-X. <a href="#BETE-NI-PIE">Bête-ni-pié</a><br />
-XI. <a href="#MA_BONNE">Ma Bonne</a><br />
-XII. <a href="#PA_COMBINE_CHE">"Pa combiné, chè!"</a><br />
-XIII. <a href="#YE">Yé</a><br />
-XIV. <a href="#LYS">Lys</a><br />
-XV. <a href="#APPENDIX_SOME_CREOLE_MELODIES">Appendix:&mdash;Some Creole Melodies</a></p>
-
-
-
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 300px;">
-<img src="images/figure03.jpg" width="300" alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 300px;">
-<img src="images/figure04.jpg" width="400" alt="" />
-</div>
-
-
-<h4>ILLUSTRATIONS</h4>
-
-<p><a href="#figure01">La Montagne Pelée</a><br />
-<a href="#figure09">Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas</a><br />
-<a href="#figure10">Old Sugar Mill, St. Kitts</a><br />
-<a href="#figure11">Belle Fontaine, Martinique</a><br />
-<a href="#figure12">St. Pierre To-day</a><br />
-<a href="#figure13">Suzanne</a><br />
-<a href="#figure14">Cimetière du Mouillage, St. Pierre</a><br />
-<a href="#figure14a">Road to Morne Rouge</a><br />
-<a href="#figure15">St. Pierre&mdash;Street Among the Ruins</a><br />
-<a href="#figure16">The Empress Josephine</a><br />
-<a href="#figure17">The Quay, Bridgetown</a><br />
-<a href="#figure18">Bridgetown, Barbadoes</a><br />
-<a href="#figure19">Country Road, Barbadoes</a><br />
-<a href="#figure20">The Lion or Gun Hill, Barbadoes</a><br />
-<a href="#figure23a">The Devil's Door, Martinique</a><br />
-<a href="#figure24">The Road to St. Pierre</a><br />
-<a href="#figure25">Fort-de-France</a><br />
-<a href="#figure26">Les Porteuses</a><br />
-<a href="#figure29">Cathedral, Fort-de-France</a><br />
-<a href="#figure30">Home from Market, St. Pierre</a><br />
-<a href="#figure33">Le Calvaire</a><br />
-<a href="#figure34">A Wayside Shrine</a><br />
-<a href="#figure37">Pitons du Carbet</a><br />
-<a href="#figure40">Fort-de-France</a><br />
-<a href="#figure43">Les Blanchisseuses</a><br />
-<a href="#figure46">La Pelée</a><br />
-<a href="#figure47">The Cathedral, St. Pierre</a><br />
-<a href="#figure48">Ruins, St. Pierre</a><br />
-<a href="#figure51">Armistice Day, Fort-de-France</a><br />
-<a href="#figure58">Market, Fort-de-France</a><br />
-<a href="#figure59">Creole Women</a><br />
-<a href="#figure62">Didier Springs</a></p>
-
-
-<hr class="chap" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 300px;">
-<img src="images/figure05.jpg" width="400" alt="" />
-</div>
-
-
-
-
-<h4>FOREWORD</h4>
-
-
-<p>CA-ARMINE! Carmine!"</p>
-
-<p>"Oui, madame!"</p>
-
-<p>"Petit garçon, venez donc!"</p>
-
-<p>The high piping quaver of Madame Hardy's voice followed by the soft
-padding sound of bare feet on the tile flagging, the cooing of pigeons
-in the cote in the court below, the ever-present cool gurgling sound of
-the fountain splashing in the pool, are the only sounds that break the
-somnolence of midday in Le Grand Hotel de la Paix. The soft caress of
-the trade winds that careen the palm crests bears the breath of the
-vanilla blossoms and bougainvillea that festoon the rail of the balcony.
-A pair of lizards, flashes of green flame, chase each other in the white
-noon sunshine, or freeze into immobility in a moment of alarm. The shops
-are closed for siesta and the whole town dozes away the golden hours
-from eleven till two. There is no hurry. To-morrow will be time enough.
-<i>Le bon Dieu</i> is prodigal with his sunshine and rain. Food is to be
-had for the picking. A thatch is shelter enough and clothes are but a
-convention, not a necessity. Surely there is no hurry! <i>Mais non,
-missie!</i></p>
-
-<p>So we found life in Fort-de-France, Martinique. The same childlike,
-care-free, laughing spirit that so wholly captivated the artist soul of
-Hearn four decades since weaves its spell about the traveler of to-day.</p>
-
-<p>Since those happy days a generation ago that he described with such
-lyric grace the world at large has changed, become smaller, more
-disillusioned, and in the island itself an occasional hurricane and the
-terrible disaster of St. Pierre in 1902 have wrought havoc unspeakable;
-yet the buoyant hearts of these Creole folk sing as of yore, among the
-flower-decked ruins of the city that Hearn loved so well, the new St.
-Pierre that lies under the brooding shadow of Mt. Pelée.</p>
-
-<p>Change comes slowly in the tropics. Nature's prodigality is no great
-incentive to ambition and one finds in this wrinkled emerald of an
-island set in a sparkling sapphire sea welcome relief from the stress of
-our northern life with its insistent activity. It is as though one were
-in a great greenhouse; the crowding mountain sides are rank with
-exuberant greenery. Every ravine has its bounding rivulet of crystal
-water gleaming like a silver thread woven into the rich pattern of
-verdure. Constant breezes temper the heat and frequent short showers
-wash the air free of dust. The atmosphere is brilliant, as Hearn painted
-it.</p>
-
-<p>The same people are there&mdash;French, Madagascans, Caribs, Senegalese,
-Chinese, Portuguese&mdash;all mingled in a Creole type different from any
-and bearing qualities of all. Tall, slim, graceful, especially the women,
-with lovely heads, thin lipped and deep eyed, with skins of every
-conceivable shade of white, yellow, brown, and red. Long waving raven
-hair tied smartly in their bright "madrases," with little clothing to
-hamper them, they are the picture of grace. They still wear the
-"Josephine" gown, the vast flowing skirts of which they gather up and
-tuck under their arms to-day exactly as Hearn described.</p>
-
-<p>We visited again and again the grim ruin of St. Pierre, now overgrown
-with a rank growth of flowers and vines, a sorry spectacle. High on the
-cliff above the town, dominating the scene of ruin, stands the lovely
-marble statue of the Virgin, all that remained intact in the great
-cathedral that fateful day.</p>
-
-<p>The peculiar nature of the devastating wave of steam and red-hot gas
-which wiped out thirty thousand people in a few minutes, left the front
-and rear walls standing and crushed and demolished the side walls of the
-stone buildings which made up the greater portion of the city. These
-walls, battered and crumbling, still stand, mute evidence of the city's
-size and former beauty. Within these standing walk new homes are
-springing up, giving a weird effect as though in this fecund climate the
-very houses were coming back to life.</p>
-
-<p>The roads which thread the island like a net are constantly cared for.
-Winding in and out and ever upward to dizzy heights, they lead through
-impenetrable jungle, thickets of bamboo and giant tree ferns, affording
-from occasional open spaces glimpses of shadowy ravines and bounding
-torrents hemmed in by farther peaks in serried ranks that beggar
-description, descending again toward the western side through mile upon
-mile of soft gray-green waving cane, till one comes at last to the blue
-Atlantic beating itself into froth upon the sands at Trinité.</p>
-
-<p>French k the only language&mdash;a Creole French different from any on
-earth, sweet and musical to listen to. The innate courtesy one meets
-everywhere, even in the interior where strangers are rare, is most
-delightful. One shakes hands with everyone one meets, though it be a
-half dozen times in a forenoon, and even the smallest purchase cannot be
-made without an exchange of courtesies that would do credit to a
-diplomat. Along the country roads the women carriers with huge panniers
-on their heads will always greet you in their soft, high-keyed voices
-with, "Bon jou', missie," that lingers like a sweet savor and prejudices
-one forever in favor of these pleasant folk.</p>
-
-<p>The numerous illustrations and thumbnail sketches in the present volume
-are from photographs taken during our wanderings in Martinique and other
-islands of the Antilles. They give some hint of the alluring beauty that
-greets one on every hand. The passing years seem powerless to change the
-simple character of these ease-loving Creole folk or the green islets of
-which they are so justly proud.</p>
-
-<p>We sailed away eventually with our minds and hearts full of many new and
-delightful friendships and a great yearning to stay, or at least to some
-day be a "revenant" and come back to this lovely island that Hearn has
-immortalized in the pages that follow.</p>
-
-
-<p style="margin-left: 60%;">ARTHUR W. RUSHMORE.</p>
-
-<p style="margin-left: 10%;">FORT-DE-FRANCE</p>
-<p style="margin-left: 15%;">Martinique, F. W. I.</p>
-<p style="margin-left: 18%;"><i>December, 1922</i></p>
-
-
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-
-<h4>PREFACE</h4>
-
-
-<p>During a trip to the Lesser Antilles in the summer of 1887, the writer
-of the following pages, landing at Martinique, fell under the influence
-of that singular spell which the island has always exercised upon
-strangers, and by which it has earned its poetic name,&mdash;<i>Le Pays des
-Revenants.</i> Even as many another before him, he left its charmed shores
-only to know himself haunted by that irresistible regret,&mdash;unlike any
-other,&mdash;which is the enchantment of the land upon all who wander away
-from it. So he returned, intending to remain some months; but the
-bewitchment prevailed, and he remained two years.</p>
-
-<p>Some of the literary results of that sojourn form the bulk of the
-present volume. Several, or portions of several, papers have been
-published in HARPER'S MAGAZINE; but the majority of the sketches now
-appear in print for the first time.</p>
-
-<p>The introductory paper, entitled "A Midsummer Trip to the Tropics,"
-consists for the most part of notes taken upon a voyage of nearly three
-thousand miles, accomplished in less than two months. During such hasty
-journeying it is scarcely possible for a writer to attempt anything more
-serious than a mere reflection of the personal experiences undergone;
-and, in spite of sundry justifiable departures from simple note-making,
-this paper is offered only as an effort to record the visual and
-emotional impressions of the moment.</p>
-
-<p>My thanks are due to Mr. William Lawless, British Consul at St. Pierre,
-for several beautiful photographs, taken by himself, which have been
-used in the preparation of the illustrations.</p>
-
-<p style="margin-left: 60%;">L.H.</p>
-
-<p style="margin-left: 10%;"><i>Philadelphia, 1889.</i></p>
-
-
-
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 300px;">
-<img src="images/figure05a.jpg" width="300" alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<hr class="chap" />
-
-<h3>A TRIP TO<br />
-THE TROPICS</h3>
-
-
-
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 300px;">
-<img src="images/figure06.jpg" width="300" alt="" />
-</div>
-
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
-<img src="images/figure07.jpg" width="400" alt="" />
-<p class="center">Sketch Map showing
-the places mentioned,
-in TWO YEARS IN THE
-FRENCH WEST INDIES
-by Lafcadio Hearn</p>
-</div>
-
-
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-
-<h4><a id="A_MIDSUMMER_TRIP_TO_THE_TROPICS">A MIDSUMMER TRIP TO<br />
-THE TROPICS</a></h4>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>I</h4>
-
-<div class="figleft" style="width: 60px;">
-<img src="images/figure08.jpg" width="60" height="80" alt="" />
-</div>
-
-
-<p>A long, narrow, graceful steel steamer, with two masts and an
-orange-yellow chimney,&mdash;taking on cargo at Pier 49 East River. Through
-her yawning hatchways a mountainous piling up of barrels is visible
-below;&mdash;there is much rumbling and rattling of steam-winches, creaking
-of derrick-booms, groaning of pulleys as the freight is being lowered in.
-A breezeless July morning, and a dead heat,&mdash;87° already.</p>
-
-<p>The saloon-deck gives one suggestion of past and of coming voyages.
-Under the white awnings long lounge-chairs sprawl here and
-there,&mdash;each with an occupant, smoking in silence, or dozing with head
-drooping to one side. A young man, awaking as I pass to my cabin, turns
-upon me a pair of peculiarly luminous black eyes,&mdash;creole eyes.
-Evidently a West Indian....</p>
-
-<p>The morning is still gray, but the sun is dissolving the haze. Gradually
-the gray vanishes, and a beautiful, pale, vapory blue&mdash;a spiritualized
-Northern blue&mdash;colors water and sky. A cannon-shot suddenly shakes the
-heavy air: it is our farewell to the American shore;&mdash;we move. Back
-floats the wharf, and becomes vapory with a bluish tinge. Diaphanous
-mists seem to have caught the sky color; and even the great red
-storehouses take a faint blue tint as they recede. The horizon now has a
-greenish glow. Everywhere else the effect is that of looking through
-very light-blue glasses....</p>
-
-<p>We steam under the colossal span of the mighty bridge; then for a little
-while Liberty towers above our passing,&mdash;seeming first to turn towards
-us, then to turn away from us, the solemn beauty of her passionless face
-of bronze. Tints brighten:&mdash;the heaven is growing a little bluer. A
-breeze springs up....</p>
-
-<p>Then the water takes on another hue: pale-green lights play through it.
-It has begun to sound. Little waves lift up their heads as though to
-look at us,&mdash;patting the flanks of the vessel, and whispering to one
-another.</p>
-
-<p>Far off the surface begins to show quick white flashes here and there,
-and the steamer begins to swing.... We are hearing Atlantic waters. The
-sun is high up now, almost overhead: there are a few thin clouds in the
-tender-colored sky,&mdash;flossy, long-drawn-out, white things. The horizon
-has lost its greenish glow: it is a spectral blue. Masts, spars,
-rigging,&mdash;the white boats and the orange chimney,&mdash;the bright
-deck-lines, and the snowy rail,&mdash;cut against the colored light in
-almost dazzling relief. Though the sun shines hot the wind is cold: its
-strong irregular blowing fans one into drowsiness. Also the somnolent chant
-of the engines&mdash;<i>do-do, hey! do-do, hey!</i>&mdash;lulls to sleep.</p>
-
-<p>... Towards evening the glaucous sea-tint vanishes,&mdash;the water
-becomes blue. It is full of great flashes, as of seams opening and
-reclosing over a white surface. It spits spray in a ceaseless drizzle.
-Sometimes it reaches up and slaps the side of the steamer with a sound as
-of a great naked hand. The wind waxes boisterous. Swinging ends of cordage
-crack like whips. There is an immense humming that drowns speech,&mdash;a
-humming made up of many sounds: whining of pulleys, whistling of
-riggings, flapping and fluttering of canvas, roar of nettings in the
-wind. And this sonorous medley, ever growing louder, has rhythm,&mdash;a
-<i>crescendo</i> and <i>diminuendo</i> timed by the steamer's regular
-swinging: like a great Voice crying out, "Whoh-oh-oh! whoh-oh-oh!" We are
-nearing the life-centres of winds and currents. One can hardly walk on deck
-against the ever-increasing breath;&mdash;yet now the whole world is
-blue,&mdash;not the least cloud is visible; and the perfect transparency
-and voidness about us make the immense power of this invisible medium seem
-something ghostly and awful.... The log, at every revolution, whines
-exactly like a little puppy;&mdash;one can hear it through all the roar
-fully forty feet away.</p>
-
-<p>... It is nearly sunset. Across the whole circle of the Day we have been
-steaming south. Now the horizon is gold green. All about the falling
-sun, this gold-green light takes vast expansion.... Right on the edge of
-the sea is a tall, gracious ship, sailing sunset ward. Catching the
-vapory fire, she seems to become a phantom,&mdash;a ship of gold mist: all
-her spars and sails are luminous, and look like things seen in dreams.</p>
-
-<p>Crimsoning more and more, the sun drops to the sea. The phantom ship
-approaches him,&mdash;touches the curve of his glowing face, sails right
-athwart it! Oh, the spectral splendor of that vision! The whole great
-ship in full sail instantly makes an acute silhouette against the
-monstrous disk,&mdash;rests there in the very middle of the vermilion sun.
-His face crimsons high above her top-masts,&mdash;broadens far beyond helm
-and bowsprit. Against this weird magnificence, her whole shape changes
-color: hull, masts, and sails turn black&mdash;a greenish black.</p>
-
-<p>Sun and ship vanish together in another minute. Violet the night comes;
-and the rigging of the foremast cuts a cross upon the face of the moon.</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>II</h4>
-
-
-<p>Morning: the second day. The sea is an extraordinary blue,&mdash;looks
-to me something like violet ink. Close by the ship, where the foam-clouds
-are, it is beautifully mottled,&mdash;looks like blue marble with
-exquisite veinings and nebulosities... Tepid wind, and cottony white
-clouds,&mdash;cirri climbing up over the edge of the sea all around. The
-sky is still pale blue, and the horizon is full of a whitish haze.</p>
-
-<p>... A nice old French gentleman from Guadeloupe presumes to say this is
-not blue water;&mdash;he declares it greenish (<i>verdâtre</i>). Because I
-cannot discern the green, he tells me I do not yet know what blue water is.
-<i>Attendez un peu!</i>...</p>
-
-<p>... The sky tone deepens as the sun ascends,&mdash;deepens deliciously.
-The warm wind proves soporific. I drop asleep with the blue light in my
-face,&mdash;the strong bright blue of the noonday sky. As I doze it seems
-to burn like a cold fire right through my eyelids. Waking up with a start,
-I fancy that everything is turning blue, myself included. "Do you not
-call this the real tropical blue?" I cry to my French fellow-traveller.
-"<i>Mon Dieu! non</i>," he exclaims, as in astonishment at the
-question;&mdash;"this is not blue!"... What can be his idea of blue, I
-wonder!</p>
-
-<p>Clots of sargasso float by,&mdash;light-yellow sea-weed. We are nearing
-the Sargasso-sea,&mdash;entering the path of the trade-winds. There is a
-long ground-swell, the steamer rocks and rolls, and the tumbling water
-always seems to me growing bluer; but my friend from Guadeloupe says that
-this color "which I call blue" is only darkness&mdash;only the shadow of
-prodigious depth.</p>
-
-<p>Nothing now but blue sky and what I persist in calling blue sea. The
-clouds have melted away in the bright glow. There is no sign of life in
-the azure gulf above, nor in the abyss beneath;&mdash;there are no wings or
-fins to be seen. Towards evening, under the slanting gold light, the
-color of the sea deepens into ultramarine; then the sun sinks down
-behind a bank of copper-colored cloud.</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>III</h4>
-
-
-<p>Morning of the third day. Same mild, warm wind. Bright blue sky, with
-some very thin clouds in the horizon,&mdash;like puffs of steam. The glow
-of the sea-light through the open ports of my cabin makes them seem filled
-with thick blue glass... It is becoming too warm for New York
-clothing...</p>
-
-<p>Certainly the sea has become much bluer. It gives one the
-idea of  liquefied sky: the foam might be formed of cirrus clouds
-compressed,&mdash;so extravagantly white it looks to-day, like snow in
-the sun. Nevertheless, the old gentleman from Guadeloupe still maintains
-this is not the true blue of the tropics!</p>
-
-
-
-<p>... The sky does not deepen its hue to-day: it brightens it;&mdash;the
-blue glows as if it were taking fire throughout. Perhaps the sea may deepen
-its hue;&mdash;I do not believe it can take more luminous color without
-being set aflame... I ask the ship's doctor whether it is really true that
-the West Indian waters are any bluer than these. He looks a moment at the
-sea, and replies, "yes!" There is such a tone of surprise in his "oh" as
-might indicate that I had asked a very foolish question; and his look
-seems to express doubt whether I am quite in earnest... I think,
-nevertheless, that this water is extravagantly, nonsensically blue!</p>
-
-<p>... I read for an hour or two; fall asleep in the chair; wake up
-suddenly; look at the sea,&mdash;and cry out! This sea is impossibly blue!
-The painter who should try to paint it would be denounced as a
-lunatic... Yet it is transparent; the foam-clouds, as they sink down,
-turn sky-blue,&mdash;a sky-blue which now looks white by contrast with the
-strange and violent splendor of the sea color. It seems as if one were
-looking into an immeasurable dyeing vat, or as though the whole ocean
-had been thickened with indigo. To say this is a mere reflection of the
-sky is nonsense!&mdash;the sky is too pale by a hundred shades for
-that! This must be the natural color of the water,&mdash;a blazing
-azure,&mdash;magnificent, impossible to describe.</p>
-
-<p>The French passenger from Guadeloupe observes that the sea is "beginning
-to become blue."</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>IV</h4>
-
-
-<p>And the fourth day. One awakens unspeakably lazy;&mdash;this must be
-the West Indian languor. Same sky, with a few more bright clouds than
-yesterday;&mdash;always the warm wind blowing. There is a long swell.
-Under this trade-breeze, warm like a human breath, the ocean seems to
-pulse,&mdash;to rise and fall as with a vast inspiration and expiration.
-Alternately its blue circle lifts and falls before us and behind
-us;&mdash;we rise very high; we sink very low,&mdash;but always with a
-slow long motion. Nevertheless the water looks smooth, perfectly smooth;
-the billowings which lift us cannot be seen;&mdash;it is because the
-summits of these swells are mile-broad,&mdash;too broad to be discerned
-from the level of our deck.</p>
-
-<p>... Ten A.M.&mdash;Under the sun the sea is a flaming, dazzling
-lazulite. My French friend from Guadeloupe kindly confesses this is
-<i>almost</i> the color of tropical water.... Weeds floating by, a
-little below the surface, are azured. But the Guadeloupe gentleman says
-he has seen water still more blue. I am sorry,&mdash;I cannot believe
-him.</p>
-
-<p>Mid-day.&mdash;The splendor of the sky is weird! No clouds
-above&mdash;only blue fire! Up from the warm deep color of the
-sea-circle the edge of the heaven glows as if bathed in greenish flame.
-The swaying circle of the resplendent sea seems to flash its jewel-color
-to the zenith.</p>
-
-<p>Clothing feels now almost too heavy to endure; and the warm wind
-brings a languor with it as of temptation.... One feels an irresistible
-desire to drowse on deck;&mdash;the rushing speech of waves, the long
-rocking of the ship, the lukewarm caress of the wind, urge to
-slumber;&mdash;but the light is too vast to permit of sleep. Its blue
-power compels wakefulness. And the brain is wearied at last by this
-duplicated azure splendor of sky and sea. How gratefully comes the
-evening to us,&mdash;with its violet glooms and promises of
-coolness!</p>
-
-<p>All this sensuous blending of warmth and force in winds and waters more
-and more suggests an idea of the spiritualism of elements&mdash;a sense of
-world-life. In all these soft sleepy swayings, these caresses of wind
-and sobbing of waters, Nature seems to confess some passional mood.
-Passengers converse of pleasant tempting things,&mdash;tropical fruits,
-tropical beverages, tropical mountain-breezes, tropical women.... It is
-a time for dreams&mdash;those day-dreams that come gently as a mist with
-ghostly realization of hopes, desires, ambitions.... Men sailing to the
-mines of Guiana dream of gold.</p>
-
-<p>The wind seems to grow continually warmer; the spray feels warm like
-blood. Awnings have to be clewed up, and wind-sails taken in;&mdash;still,
-there are no whitecaps,&mdash;only the enormous swells, too broad to see,
-as the ocean falls and rises like a dreamer's breast....</p>
-
-<p>The sunset comes with a great burning yellow glow, fading up through
-faint greens to lose itself in violet light;&mdash;there is no gloaming.
-The days have already become shorter.... Through the open ports, as we lie
-down to sleep, comes a great whispering,&mdash;the whispering of the seas:
-sounds as of articulate speech under the breath,&mdash;as of women telling
-secrets....</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>V</h4>
-
-
-<p>Fifth day out. Trade-winds from the south-east; a huge tumbling of
-mountain-purple waves;&mdash;the steamer careens under a full spread of
-canvas. There is a sense of spring in the wind to-day,&mdash;something that
-makes one think of the bourgeoning of Northern woods, when naked trees
-first cover themselves with a mist of tender green,&mdash;something that
-recalls the first bird-songs, the first climbings of sap to sun, and
-gives a sense of vital plenitude.</p>
-
-<p>... Evening fills the west with aureate woolly clouds,&mdash;the wool of
-the Fleece of Gold. Then Hesperus beams like another moon, and the stars
-burn very brightly. Still the ship bends under the even pressure
-of the warm wind in her sails; and her wake becomes a trail of fire.
-Large sparks dash up through it continuously, like an effervescence of
-flame;&mdash;and queer broad clouds of pale fire swirl by. Far out, where
-the water is black as pitch, there are no lights: it seems as if the
-steamer were only grinding out sparks with her keel, striking fire with her
-propeller.</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>VI</h4>
-
-
-<p>Sixth day out. Wind tepid and still stronger, but sky very clear. An
-indigo sea, with beautiful white-caps. The ocean color is deepening: it
-is very rich now, but I think less wonderful than before;&mdash;it is an
-opulent pansy hue. Close by the ship it looks black-blue,&mdash;the color
-that bewitches in certain Celtic eyes.</p>
-
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
-<img src="images/figure08a.jpg" width="500" alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<p>There is a feverishness in the air;&mdash;the heat is growing heavy; the
-least exertion provokes perspiration; below-decks the air is like the
-air of an oven. Above-deck, however, the effect of all this light and
-heat is not altogether disagreeable;&mdash;one feels that vast elemental
-powers are near at hand, and that the blood is already aware of their
-approach.</p>
-
-<p>All day the pure sky, the deepening of sea-color, the lukewarm wind.
-Then comes a superb sunset! There is a painting in the west wrought of
-cloud-colors,&mdash;a dream of high carmine cliffs and rocks outlying in a
-green sea, which lashes their bases with a foam of gold....</p>
-
-<p>Even after dark the touch of the wind has the warmth of flesh. There
-is no moon; the sea-circle is black as Acheron; and our phosphor wake
-reappears quivering across it,&mdash;seeming to reach back to the very
-horizon. It is brighter to-night,&mdash;looks like another <i>Via
-Lactea</i>,&mdash;with points breaking through it like stars in a
-nebula. From our prow ripples rimmed with fire keep fleeing away to
-right and left into the night,&mdash;brightening as they run, then
-vanishing suddenly as if they had passed over a precipice. Crests of
-swells seem to burst into showers of sparks, and great patches of spume
-catch flame, smoulder through, and disappear.... The Southern Cross is
-visible,&mdash;sloping backward and sidewise, as if propped against the
-vault of the sky: it is not readily discovered by the unfamiliarized
-eye; it is only after if has been well pointed out to you that you
-discern its position. Then you find it is only the <i>suggestion</i> of
-a cross&mdash;four stars set almost quadrangularly, some brighter than
-others.</p>
-
-<p>For two days there has been little conversation on board. It may be due
-in part to the somnolent influence of the warm wind,&mdash;in part to the
-ceaseless booming of waters and roar of rigging, which drown men's
-voices; but I fancy it is much more due to the impressions of space and
-depth and vastness,&mdash;the impressions of sea and sky, which compel
-something akin to awe.</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>VII</h4>
-
-
-<p>Morning over the Caribbean Sea,&mdash;a calm, extremely dark-blue sea.
-There are lands in sight,&mdash;high lands, with sharp, peaked, unfamiliar
-outlines.</p>
-
-<p>We passed other lands in the darkness: they no doubt resembled the
-shapes towering up around us now; for these are evidently volcanic
-creations,&mdash;jagged, coned, truncated, eccentric. Far off they first
-looked a very pale gray; now, as the light increases, they change hue a
-little,&mdash;showing misty greens and smoky blues. They rise very sharply
-from the sea to great heights&mdash;the highest point always with a cloud
-upon it;&mdash;they thrust out singular long spurs, push up mountain shapes
-that have an odd scooped-out look. Some, extremely far away, seem, as
-they catch the sun, to be made of gold vapor; others have a madderish
-tone: these are colors of clouds. The closer we approach them, the more
-do tints of green make themselves visible. Purplish or bluish masses of
-coast slowly develop green surfaces; folds and wrinkles of land turn
-brightly verdant. Still, the color gleams as through a thin fog.</p>
-
-<p>... The first tropical visitor has just boarded our ship: a wonderful
-fly, shaped like a common fly, but at least five times larger. His body
-is a beautiful shining black; his wings seem ribbed and jointed with
-silver, his head is jewel-green, with exquisitely cut emeralds for eyes.</p>
-
-<p>Islands pass and disappear behind us. The sun has now risen well; the
-sky is a rich blue, and the tardy moon still hangs in it. Lilac tones
-show through the water. In the south there are a few straggling small
-white clouds,&mdash;like a long flight of birds. A great gray mountain
-shape looms up before us. We are steaming on Santa Cruz.</p>
-
-<p>The island has a true volcanic outline, sharp and high: the cliffs sheer
-down almost perpendicularly. The shape is still vapory, varying in
-coloring from purplish to bright gray; but wherever peaks and spurs
-fully catch the sun they edge themselves with a beautiful green glow,
-while interlying ravines seem filled with foggy blue.</p>
-
-<p>As we approach, sunlighted surfaces come out still more luminously
-green. Glens and sheltered valleys still hold blues and grays; but
-points fairly illuminated by the solar glow show just such a fiery green
-as burns in the plumage of certain humming-birds. And just as the
-lustrous colors of these birds shift according to changes of light, so the
-island shifts colors here and there,&mdash;from emerald to blue, and blue
-to gray.... But now we are near: it shows us a lovely heaping of high
-bright hills in front,&mdash;with a further coast-line very low and long
-and verdant, fringed with a white beach, and tufted with spidery
-palm-crests. Immediately opposite, other palms are poised; their trunks
-look like pillars of unpolished silver, their leaves shimmer like
-bronze.</p>
-
-<p>... The water of the harbor is transparent and pale green. One can see
-many fish, and some small sharks. White butterflies are fluttering about
-us in the blue air. Naked black boys are bathing on the beach;&mdash;they
-swim well, but will not venture out far because of the sharks. A boat
-puts off to bring colored girls on board. They are tall, and not uncomely,
-although very dark;&mdash;they coax us, with all sorts of endearing
-words, to purchase bay rum, fruits, Florida water.... We go ashore in
-boats. The water of the harbor has a slightly fetid odor.</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>VIII</h4>
-
-
-<p>Viewed from the bay, under the green shadow of the hills overlooking it,
-Frederiksted has the appearance of a beautiful Spanish town, with its
-Romanesque piazzas, churches, many arched buildings peeping through
-breaks in a line of mahogany, bread-fruit, mango, tamarind, and palm
-trees,&mdash;an irregular mass of at least fifty different tints, from a
-fiery emerald to a sombre bluish-green. But on entering the streets the
-illusion of beauty passes: you find yourself in a crumbling, decaying
-town, with buildings only two stories high. The lower part, of arched
-Spanish design, is usually of lava rock or of brick, painted a light,
-warm yellow; the upper stories are most commonly left unpainted, and are
-rudely constructed of light timber. There are many heavy arcades and
-courts opening on the streets with large archways. Lava blocks have been
-used in paving as well as in building; and more than one of the narrow
-streets, as it slopes up the hill through the great light, is seen to
-cut its way through craggy masses of volcanic stone.</p>
-
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
-<a id="figure09"></a>
-<img src="images/figure09.jpg" width="400" alt="" />
-<p class="center">CHARLOTTE AMALIE, ST. THOMAS<br />
-<i>All red and white against the green hillside; reflected
-as in a mirror by the azure sea.</i></p>
-</div>
-
-
-<p>But all the buildings look dilapidated; the stucco and paint are falling
-or peeling everywhere; there are fissures in the walls, crumbling
-façades, tumbling roofs. The first stories, built with solidity worthy
-of an earthquake region, seem extravagantly heavy by contrast with the
-frail wooden superstructures. One reason may be that the city was burned
-and sacked during a negro revolt in 1878;&mdash;the Spanish basements
-resisted the fire well, and it was found necessary to rebuild only the
-second stories of the buildings; but the work was done cheaply and
-flimsily, not massively and enduringly, as by the first colonial
-builders.</p>
-
-<p>There is great wealth of verdure. Cabbage and cocoa-palms overlook all
-the streets, bending above almost every structure, whether hut or public
-building;&mdash;everywhere you see the splitted green of banana leaves. In
-the court-yards you may occasionally catch sight of some splendid palm
-with silver-gray stem so barred as to look jointed, like the body of an
-annelid.</p>
-
-<p>In the market-place&mdash;a broad paved square, crossed by two rows of
-tamarind-trees, and bounded on one side by a Spanish piazza&mdash;you can
-study a spectacle of savage picturesqueness. There are no benches, no
-stalls, no booths; the dealers stand, sit, or squat upon the ground
-under the sun, or upon the steps of the neighboring arcade. Their wares
-are piled up at their feet, for the most part. Some few have little
-tables, but as a rule the eatables are simply laid on the dusty ground
-or heaped upon the steps of the piazza&mdash;reddish-yellow mangoes, that
-look like great apples squeezed out of shape, bunches of bananas,
-pyramids of bright-green cocoanuts, immense golden-green oranges, and
-various other fruits and vegetables totally unfamiliar to Northern
-eyes.... It is no use to ask questions&mdash;the black dealers speak no
-dialect comprehensible outside of the Antilles: it is a negro-English
-that sounds like some African tongue,&mdash;a rolling current of vowels and
-consonants, pouring so rapidly that the inexperienced ear cannot detach
-one intelligible word. A friendly white coming up enabled me to learn
-one phrase: "Massa, youwancocknerfoobuy?" (Master, do you want to buy a
-cocoanut?)</p>
-
-<p>The market is quite crowded,&mdash;full of bright color under
-the  tremendous noon light. Buyers and dealers are generally
-black;&mdash;very few yellow or brown people are visible in the
-gathering. The greater number present are women; they are very simply,
-almost savagely, garbed&mdash;only a skirt or petticoat, over which is
-worn a sort of calico short dress, which scarcely descends two inches
-below the hips, and is confined about the waist with a belt or a string.
-The skirt bells out like the skirt of a dancer, leaving the feet and
-bare legs well exposed; and the head is covered with a white
-handkerchief, twisted so as to look like a turban. Multitudes of these
-barelegged black women are walking past us,&mdash;carrying bundles or
-baskets upon their heads, and smoking very long cigars.</p>
-
-<p>They are generally short and thick-set, and walk with surprising
-erectness, and with long, firm steps, carrying the bosom well forward.
-Their limbs are strong and finely rounded. Whether walking or standing,
-their poise is admirable,&mdash;might be called graceful, were it not for
-the absence of real grace of form in such compact, powerful little figures.
-All wear brightly colored cottonade stuffs, and the general effect of
-the costume in a large gathering is very agreeable, the dominant hues
-being pink, white, and blue. Half the women are smoking. All chatter
-loudly, speaking their English jargon with a pitch of voice totally
-unlike the English timbre: it sometimes sounds as if they were trying to
-pronounce English rapidly according to French pronunciation and pitch of
-voice.</p>
-
-<p>These green oranges have a delicious scent and amazing juiciness.
-Feeling one of them is sufficient to perfume the skin of the hands for
-the rest of the day, however often one may use soap and water.... We
-smoke Porto Rico cigars, and drink West Indian lemonades, strongly
-flavored with rum. The tobacco has a rich, sweet taste; the rum is
-velvety, sugary, with a pleasant, soothing effect: both have a rich
-aroma. There is a wholesome originality about the flavor of these
-products, a uniqueness which certifies to their <i>naïf</i> purity:
-something as opulent and frank as the juices and odors of tropical
-fruits and flowers.</p>
-
-<p>The streets leading from the plaza glare violently in the strong
-sunlight;&mdash;the ground, almost dead-white, dazzles the eyes.... There
-are few comely faces visible,&mdash;in the streets all are black who pass.
-But through open shop-doors one occasionally catches glimpses of a pretty
-quadroon face,&mdash;with immense black eyes,&mdash;a face yellow like a
-ripe banana.</p>
-
-<p>... It is now after mid-day. Looking up to the hills, or along sloping
-streets towards the shore, wonderful variations of foliage-color meet
-the eye: gold-greens, sap-greens, bluish and metallic greens of many
-tints, reddish-greens, yellowish-greens. The cane-fields are broad
-sheets of beautiful gold-green; and nearly as bright are the masses of
-<i>pomme-cannelle</i> frondescence, the groves of lemon and orange; while
-tamarind and mahoganies are heavily sombre. Everywhere palm-crests soar
-above the wood-lines, and tremble with a metallic shimmering in the blue
-light. Up through a ponderous thickness of tamarind arises the spire of
-the church; a skeleton of open stone-work, without glasses or lattices
-or shutters of any sort for its naked apertures: it is all open to the
-winds of heaven; it seems to be gasping with all its granite mouths for
-breath&mdash;panting in this azure heat. In the bay the water looks greener
-than ever: it is so clear that the light passes under every boat and
-ship to the very bottom; the vessels cast only very thin green
-shadows,&mdash;so transparent that fish can be distinctly seen passing
-through from sunlight to sunlight.</p>
-
-<p>The sunset offers a splendid spectacle of pure color; there is only an
-immense yellow glow in the west,&mdash; a lemon-colored blaze; but when it
-melts into the blue there is an exquisite green fight.... We leave
-to-morrow.</p>
-
-<p>... Morning: the green hills are looming in a bluish vapor: the long
-faint-yellow slope of beach to the left of the town, under the mangoes
-and tamarinds, is already thronged with bathers,&mdash;all men or boys, and
-all naked: black, brown, yellow, and white. The white bathers are Danish
-soldiers from the barracks; the Northern brightness of their skins forms
-an almost startling contrast with the deep colors of the nature about
-them, and with the dark complexions of the natives. Some very slender,
-graceful brown lads are bathing with them,&mdash;lightly built as deer:
-these are probably creoles. Some of the black bathers are clumsy-looking,
-and have astonishingly long legs.... Then little boys come down, leading
-horses;&mdash;they strip, leap naked on the animals' backs, and ride into
-the sea,&mdash;yelling, screaming, splashing, in the morning light. Some
-are a fine brown color, like old bronze. Nothing could be more statuesque
-than the unconscious attitudes of these bronze bodies in leaping,
-wrestling, running, pitching shells. Their simple grace is in admirable
-harmony with that of Nature's green creations about them,&mdash;rhymes
-faultlessly with the perfect self-balance of the palms that poise along the
-shore....</p>
-
-<p>Boom! and a thunder-rolling of echoes. We move slowly out of the harbor,
-then swiftly towards the southeast.... The island seems to turn slowly
-half round; then to retreat from us. Across our way appears a long band
-of green light, reaching over the sea like a thin protraction of color
-from the extended spur of verdure in which the western wind of the
-island terminates. That is a sunken reef, and a dangerous one. Lying
-high upon it, in very sharp relief against the blue light, is a wrecked
-vessel on her beam-ends,&mdash;the carcass of a brig. Her decks have been
-broken in; the roofs of her cabins are gone; her masts are splintered
-off short; her empty hold yawns naked to the sun; all her upper parts
-have taken a yellowish-white color,&mdash;the color of sun-bleached bone.</p>
-
-<p>Behind us the mountains still float back. Their shining green has
-changed to a less vivid hue; they are taking bluish tones here and
-there; but their outlines are still sharp, and along their high soft
-slopes there are white specklings, which are villages and towns. These
-white specks diminish swiftly,&mdash;dwindle to the dimensions of
-salt-grains,&mdash;finally vanish. Then the island grows uniformly bluish;
-it becomes cloudy, vague as a dream of mountains;&mdash;it turns at last
-gray as smoke, and then melts into the horizon-light like a mirage.</p>
-
-<p>Another yellow sunset, made weird by extraordinary black, dense,
-fantastic shapes of cloud. Night darkens, and again the Southern Cross
-glimmers before our prow, and the two Milky Ways reveal
-themselves,&mdash;that of the Cosmos and that ghostlier one which stretches
-over the black deep behind us. This alternately broadens and narrows at
-regular intervals, concomitantly with the rhythmical swing of the
-steamer. Before us the bows spout fire; behind us there is a flaming and
-roaring as of Phlegethon; and the voices of wind and sea become so loud
-that we cannot talk to one another,&mdash;cannot make our words heard even
-by shouting.</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>IX</h4>
-
-
-<p>Early morning: the eighth day. Moored in another blue harbor,&mdash;a
-great semicircular basin, bounded by a high billowing of hills all green
-from the fringe of yellow beach up to their loftiest clouded summit. The
-land has that up-tossed look which tells a volcanic origin. There are
-curiously scalloped heights, which, though emerald from base to crest,
-still retain all the physiognomy of volcanoes: their ribbed sides must
-be lava under that verdure. Out of sight westward&mdash;in successions of
-bright green, pale green, bluish-green, and vapory gray&mdash;stretches a
-long chain of crater shapes. Truncated, jagged, or rounded, all these
-elevations are interunited by their curving hollows of land or by
-filaments,&mdash;very low valleys. And as they grade away in varying color
-through distance, these hill-chains take a curious segmented, jointed
-appearance, like insect forms, enormous ant-bodies.... This is St.
-Kitt's.</p>
-
-<p>We row ashore over a tossing dark-blue water, and leaving the long
-wharf, pass under a great arch and over a sort of bridge into the town
-of Basse-Terre, through a concourse of brown and black people.</p>
-
-<p>It is very tropical-looking; but more sombre than Frederiksted. There
-are palms everywhere,&mdash;cocoa, fan, and cabbage palms; many bread-fruit
-trees, tamarinds, bananas, Indian fig-trees, mangoes, and unfamiliar
-things the negroes call by incomprehensible names,&mdash;"sapsaps,
-dhool-dhools." But there is less color, less reflection of light than in
-Santa Cruz; there is less quaintness; no Spanish buildings, no
-canary-colored arcades. All the narrow streets are gray or
-neutral-tinted; the ground has a dark ashen tone. Most of the dwellings
-are timber, resting on brick props, or elevated upon blocks of lava
-rock. It seems almost as if some breath from the enormous and always
-clouded mountain overlooking the town had begrimed everything, darkening
-even the colors of vegetation.</p>
-
-<p>The population is not picturesque. The costumes are commonplace; the
-tints of the women's attire are dull. Browns and sombre blues and grays
-are commoner than pinks, yellows, and violets. Occasionally you observe
-a fine half-breed type&mdash;some tall brown girl walking by with a swaying
-grace like that of a sloop at sea;&mdash;but such spectacles are not
-frequent. Most of those you meet are black or a blackish brown. Many
-stores are kept by yellowmen with intensely black hair and eyes,&mdash;men
-who do not smile. These are Portuguese. There are some few fine
-buildings; but the most pleasing sight the little town can offer the
-visitors is the pretty Botanical Garden, with its banyans and its palms,
-its monstrous lilies and extraordinary fruit-trees, and its beautiful
-little fountains. From some of these trees a peculiar tillandsia streams
-down, much like our Spanish moss,&mdash;but it is black!</p>
-
-<p>... As we move away southwardly, the receding outlines of the island
-look more and more volcanic. A chain of hills and cones, all very green,
-and connected by strips of valley-land so low that the edge of the
-sea-circle on the other side of the island can be seen through the gaps.
-We steam past truncated hills, past heights that have the look of the
-stumps of peaks cut half down,&mdash;ancient fire-mouths choked by tropical
-verdure.</p>
-
-<p>Southward, above and beyond the deep-green chain, tower other volcanic
-forms,&mdash;very far away, and so pale-gray as to seem like clouds. Those
-are the heights of Nevis,&mdash;another creation of the subterranean
-fires.</p>
-
-<p>It draws nearer, floats steadily into definition: a great mountain
-flanked by two small ones; three summits; the loftiest, with clouds
-packed high upon it, still seems to smoke;&mdash;the second highest
-displays the most symmetrical crater-form I have yet seen. All are still
-grayish-blue or gray. Gradually through the blues break long high gleams
-of green.</p>
-
-<p>As we steam closer, the island becomes all verdant from flood to sky;
-the great dead crater shows its immense wreath of perennial green. On
-the lower slopes little settlements are sprinkled in white, red, and
-brown: houses, windmills, sugar-factories, high chimneys are
-distinguishable;&mdash;cane-plantations unfold gold-green surfaces.</p>
-
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
-<a id="figure10"></a>
-<img src="images/figure10.jpg" width="400" alt="" />
-<p class="center">OLD SUGAR MILL, ST. KITTS<br />
-<i>As the steamer threads its way among the islands one
-sees these old mills dotting the cane fields like abandoned
-watchtowers.</i></p>
-</div>
-
-
-<p>We pass away. The island does not seem to sink behind us, but to become
-a ghost. All its outlines grow shadowy. For a little while it continues
-green;&mdash;but it is a hazy, spectral green, as of colored vapor. The sea
-to-day looks almost black: the south-west wind has filled the day with
-luminous mist; and the phantom of Nevis melts in the vast glow,
-dissolves utterly.... Once more we are out of sight of land,&mdash;in the
-centre of a blue-black circle of sea. The water-line cuts blackly
-against the immense light of the horizon,&mdash;a huge white glory that
-flames up very high before it fades and melts into the eternal blue.</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>X</h4>
-
-
-<p>Then a high white shape like a cloud appears before us,&mdash;on the
-purplish-dark edge of the sea. The cloud-shape enlarges, heightens
-without changing contour. It is not a cloud, but an island! Its outlines
-begin to sharpen,&mdash;with faintest pencillings of color. Shadowy valleys
-appear, spectral hollows, phantom slopes of pallid blue or green. The
-apparition is so like a mirage that it is difficult to persuade oneself
-one is looking at real land,&mdash;that it is not a dream. It seems to have
-shaped itself all suddenly out of the glowing haze. We pass many miles
-beyond it; and it vanishes into mist again.</p>
-
-<p>... Another and a larger ghost; but we steam straight upon it until it
-materializes,&mdash;Montserrat. It bears a family likeness to the islands
-we have already passed&mdash;one dominant height, with massing of bright
-crater shapes about it, and ranges of green hills linked together by low
-valleys. About its highest summit also hovers a flock of clouds. At the
-foot of the vast hill nestles the little white and red town of Plymouth.
-The single salute of our gun is answered by a stupendous broadside of
-echoes.</p>
-
-<p>Plymouth is more than half hidden in the rich foliage that fringes
-the wonderfully wrinkled green of the hills at their base;&mdash;it has
-a curtain of palms before it. Approaching, you discern only one or two
-façades above the sea-wall, and the long wharf projecting through an
-opening in the masonry, over which young palms stand thick as canes on a
-sugar plantation. But on reaching the street that descends towards the
-heavily bowldered shore you find yourself in a delightfully drowsy
-little burgh,&mdash;a miniature tropical town,&mdash;with very
-narrow paved ways,&mdash;steep, irregular, full of odd curves and
-angles,&mdash;and likewise of tiny courts everywhere sending up jets of
-palm-plumes, or displaying above their stone enclosures great
-candelabra-shapes of cacti. All is old-fashioned and quiet and queer and
-small. Even the palms are diminutive,&mdash;slim and delicate; there is
-a something in their poise and slenderness like the charm of young girls
-who have not yet ceased to be children, though soon to become
-women....</p>
-
-<p>There is a glorious sunset,&mdash;a fervid orange splendor, shading
-starward into delicate roses and greens. Then black boatmen come astern and
-quarrel furiously for the privilege of carrying one passenger ashore;
-and as they scream and gesticulate, half naked, their silhouettes
-against the sunset seem forms of great black apes.</p>
-
-<p>... Under steam and sail we are making south again, with a warm wind
-blowing south-east,&mdash;a wind very moist, very powerful, and soporific.
-Facing it, one feels almost cool; but the moment one is sheltered from
-it profuse perspiration bursts out. The ship rocks over immense swells;
-night falls very blackly; and there are surprising displays of
-phosphorescence.</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>XI</h4>
-
-
-<p>... Morning. A gold sunrise over an indigo sea. The wind is a great warm
-caress; the sky a spotless blue. We are steaming on Dominica,&mdash;the
-loftiest of the lesser Antilles. While the silhouette is yet all violet
-in distance, nothing more solemnly beautiful can well be imagined: a
-vast cathedral shape, whose spires are mountain peaks, towering in the
-horizon, sheer up from the sea.</p>
-
-<p>We stay at Roseau only long enough to land the mails, and wonder at
-the loveliness of the island. A beautifully wrinkled mass of green and
-blue and gray;&mdash;a strangely abrupt peaking and heaping of
-the land.  Behind the green heights loom the blues; behind these the
-grays&mdash;all pinnacled against the sky-glow&mdash;thrusting up
-through gaps or behind promontories. Indescribably exquisite the
-foldings and hollowings of the emerald coast. In glen and vale the color
-of cane-fields shines like a pooling of fluid bronze, as if the luminous
-essence of the hill tints had been dripping down and clarifying there.
-Far to our left, a bright green spur pierces into the now turquoise sea;
-and beyond it, a beautiful mountain form, blue and curved like a hip,
-slopes seaward, showing lighted wrinkles here and there, of green. And
-from the foreground, against the blue of the softly outlined shape,
-cocoa-palms are curving,&mdash;all sharp and shining in the sun.</p>
-
-
-<p>... Another hour; and Martinique looms before us. At first it appears
-all gray, a vapory gray; then it becomes bluish-gray; then all green.</p>
-
-<p>It is another of the beautiful volcanic family: it owns the same hill
-shapes with which we have already become acquainted; its uppermost
-height is hooded with the familiar cloud; we see the same gold-yellow
-plains, the same wonderful varieties of verdancy, the same long green
-spins reaching out into the sea,&mdash;doubtless formed by old lava
-torrents. But all this is now repeated for us more imposingly, more
-grandiosely;&mdash;it is wrought upon a larger scale than anything we have
-yet seen. The semicircular sweep of the harbor, dominated by the
-eternally veiled summit of the Montagne Pelée (misnamed, since it is
-green to the very clouds), from which the land slopes down on either
-hand to the sea by gigantic undulations, is one of the fairest sights
-that human eye can gaze upon. Thus viewed, the whole island shape is a
-mass of green, with purplish streaks and shadowings here and there:
-glooms of forest-hollows, or moving umbrages of cloud. The city of St.
-Pierre, on the edge of the land, looks as if it had slid down the hill
-behind it, so strangely do the streets come tumbling to the port in
-cascades of masonry,&mdash;with a red billowing of tiled roofs over all,
-and enormous palms poking up through it,&mdash;higher even than the creamy
-white twin towers of its cathedral.</p>
-
-<p>We anchor in limpid blue water; the cannon-shot is answered by a
-prolonged thunder-dapping of mountain echo.</p>
-
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
-<a id="figure11"></a>
-<img src="images/figure11.jpg" width="400" alt="" />
-<p class="center">BELLE FONTAINE, MARTINIQUE<br />
-<i>In every cove tiny villages nestle. Nets ere drying
-in the sun. There is no sound. Utter peace broods
-in the shadows.</i></p>
-</div>
-
-
-<p>Then from the shore a curious flotilla bears down upon us. There is
-one boat, two or three canoes; but the bulk of the craft are simply
-wooden frames,&mdash;flat-bottomed structures, made from shipping-cases
-or lard-boxes, with triangular ends. In these sit naked boys,&mdash;boys
-between ten and fourteen years of age,&mdash;varying in color from a
-fine clear yellow to a deep reddish-brown or chocolate tint. They row
-with two little square, flat pieces of wood for paddles, clutched in
-each hand; and these lid-shaped things are dipped into the water on
-either side with absolute precision, in perfect time,&mdash;all the
-pairs of little naked arms seeming moved by a single impulse. There is
-much unconscious grace in this paddling, as well as skill. Then all
-about the ship these ridiculous little boats begin to describe
-circles,&mdash;crossing and intercrossing so closely as almost to bring
-them into collision, yet never touching. The boys have simply come out
-to dive for coins they expect passengers to fling to them. All are
-chattering creole, laughing and screaming shrilly; every eye, quick and
-bright as a bird's, watches the faces of the passengers on deck.
-"'Tention-là!" shriek a dozen soprani. Some passenger's fingers have
-entered his vest-pocket, and the boys are on the alert. Through the air,
-twirling and glittering, tumbles an English shilling, and drops into the
-deep water beyond the little fleet. Instantly all the lads leap,
-scramble, topple headforemost out of their little tubs, and dive in
-pursuit. In the blue water their lithe figures look perfectly
-red,&mdash;all but the soles of their upturned feet, which show nearly
-white. Almost immediately they all rise again: one holds up at arm's
-length above the water the recovered coin, and then puts it into his
-mouth for safe-keeping. Coin after coin is thrown in, and as speedily
-brought up; a shower of small silver follows, and not a piece is lost.
-These lads move through the water without apparent effort, with the
-suppleness of fishes. Most are decidedly fine-looking boys, with
-admirably rounded limbs, delicately formed extremities. The best diver
-and swiftest swimmer, however, is a red lad;&mdash;his face is rather
-commonplace, but his slim body has the grace of an antique bronze.</p>
-
-<p><br /></p>
-
-<p>... We are ashore in St. Pierre, the quaintest, queerest, and the
-prettiest withal, among West Indian cities: all stone-built and
-stone-flagged, with very narrow streets, wooden or zinc awnings, and
-peaked roofs of red tile, pierced by gabled dormers. Most of the
-buildings are painted in a clear yellow tone, which contrasts
-delightfully with the burning blue ribbon of tropical sky above; and no
-street is absolutely level; nearly all of them climb hills, descend into
-hollows, curve, twist, describe sudden angles. There is everywhere a
-loud murmur of running Water,&mdash;pouring through the deep gutters
-contrived between the paved thoroughfare and the absurd little
-sidewalks, varying in width from one to three feet. The architecture is
-quite old: it is seventeenth century, probably; and it reminds one a
-great deal of that characterizing the antiquated French quarter of New
-Orleans. All the tints, the forms, the vistas, would seem to have been
-especially selected or designed for aquarelle studies,&mdash;just to please
-the whim of some extravagant artist. The windows are frameless openings
-without glass; some have iron bars; all have heavy wooden shutters with
-movable slats, through which light and air can enter as through Venetian
-blinds. These are usually painted green or bright bluish-gray.</p>
-
-<p>So steep are the streets descending to the harbor,&mdash;by flights
-of old mossy stone steps,&mdash;that looking down them to the azure
-water you have the sensation of gazing from a cliff. From certain
-openings in the main street&mdash;the Rue Victor Hugo&mdash;you can get
-something like a bird's-eye view of the harbor with its shipping. The
-roofs of the street below are under your feet, and other streets are
-rising behind you to meet the mountain roads. They climb at a very steep
-angle, occasionally breaking into stairs of lava rock, all grass-tufted
-and moss-lined.</p>
-
-<p>The town has an aspect of great solidity: it is a creation of
-crag&mdash;looks almost as if it had been hewn out of one mountain
-fragment, instead of having been constructed stone by stone. Although
-commonly consisting of two stories and an attic only, the dwellings have
-walls three feet in thickness;&mdash;on one street, facing the sea, they
-are even heavier, and slope outward like ramparts, so that the
-perpendicular recesses of windows and doors have the appearance of being
-opened between buttresses. It may have been partly as a precaution
-against earthquakes, and partly for the sake of coolness, that the early
-colonial architects built thus;&mdash;giving the city a physiognomy so well
-worthy of its name,&mdash;the name of the Saint of the Rock.</p>
-
-<p>And everywhere rushes mountain water,&mdash;cool and crystal clear,
-washing the streets;&mdash;from time to time you come to some public fountain
-flinging a silvery column to the sun, or showering bright spray over a
-group of black bronze tritons or bronze swarms. The Tritons on the Place
-Bertin you will not readily forget;&mdash;their curving torsos might have
-been modelled from the forms of those ebon men who toil there tirelessly
-all day in the great heat, rolling hogsheads of sugar or casks of rum.
-And often you will note, in the course of a walk, little
-drinking-fountains contrived at the angle of a building, or in the thick
-walls bordering the bulwarks or enclosing public squares: glittering
-threads of water spurting through lion-lips of stone. Some mountain
-torrent, skilfully directed and divided, is thus perpetually refreshing
-the city,&mdash;supplying its fountains and cooling its courts.... This is
-called the Gouyave water: it is not the same stream which sweeps and
-purifies the streets.</p>
-
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
-<a id="figure12"></a>
-<img src="images/figure12.jpg" width="400" alt="" />
-<p class="center">ST. PIERRE&mdash;THE CUT TO-DAY<br />
-<i>The new town is slowly growing in the sinister shadow
-of La Montagne, which seems innocent enough in its
-cap of clouds.</i></p>
-</div>
-
-
-<p>Picturesqueness and color: these are the particular and the
-unrivalled charms of St. Pierre. As you pursue the Grande Rue, or Rue
-Victor Hugo,&mdash;which traverses the town through all its
-length,  undulating over hill-slopes and into hollows and over a
-bridge,&mdash;you become more and more enchanted by the contrast of the
-yellow-glowing walls to right and left with the jagged strip of
-gentian-blue sky overhead. Charming also it is to watch the
-cross-streets climbing up to the fiery green of the mountains behind the
-town. On the lower side of the main thoroughfare other streets open in
-wonderful bursts of blue&mdash;warm blue of horizon and sea. The steps by
-which these ways descend towards the bay are black with age, and
-slightly mossed close to the wall on either side: they have an alarming
-steepness,&mdash;one might easily stumble from the upper into the lower
-street. Looking towards the water through these openings from the Grande
-Rue, you will notice that the sea-line cuts across the blue space just
-at the level of the upper story of the house on the lower street-corner.
-Sometimes, a hundred feet below, you see a ship resting in the azure
-aperture,&mdash;seemingly suspended there in sky-color, floating in blue
-light. And everywhere and always, through sunshine or shadow, comes to
-you the scent of the city,&mdash;the characteristic odor of St.
-Pierre;&mdash;a compound odor suggesting the intermingling of sugar and
-garlic in those strange tropical dishes which creoles love....</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>XII</h4>
-
-
-<p>... A population fantastic, astonishing,&mdash;a population of the
-Arabian Nights. It is many-colored; but the general dominant tint is
-yellow, like that of the town itself&mdash;yellow in the interblending
-of all the hues characterizing <i>mulâtresse, capresse, griffe,
-quarteronne, métisse, chabine</i>,&mdash;a general effect of rich
-brownish yellow. You are among a people of half-breeds,&mdash;the finest
-mixed race of the West Indies.</p>
-
-<p>Straight as palms, and supple and tall, these colored women and men
-impress one powerfully by their dignified carriage and easy elegance of
-movement. They walk without swinging of the shoulders;&mdash;the perfectly
-set torso seems to remain rigid; yet the step is a long full stride, and
-the whole weight is springily poised on the very tip of the bare foot.
-All, or nearly all, are without shoes: the treading of many naked feet
-over the heated pavement makes a continuous whispering sound.</p>
-
-<p>... Perhaps the most novel impression of all is that produced by the
-singularity and brilliancy of certain of the women's costumes. These
-developed, at least a hundred years ago, by some curious sumptuary law
-regulating the dress of slaves and colored people of free
-condition,&mdash;a law which allowed considerable liberty as to material
-and tint, prescribing chiefly form. But some of these fashions suggest
-the Orient: they offer beautiful audacities of color contrast; and the
-full-dress coiffure, above all, is so strikingly Eastern that one might
-be tempted to believe it was first introduced into the colony by some
-Mohammedan slave. It is merely an immense Madras handkerchief, which is
-folded about the head with admirable art, like a turban;&mdash;one
-bright end pushed through at the top in front, being left sticking up
-like a plume. Then this turban, always full of bright canary-color, is
-fastened with golden brooch who never forgives,&mdash;one in front and one at either
-side. As for the remainder of the dress, it is simple enough: an
-embroidered, low-cut chemise with sleeves; a skirt or jupe, very long
-behind, but caught up and fastened in front below the breasts so as to
-bring the hem everywhere to a level with the end of the long chemise;
-and finally a <i>foulard</i>, or silken kerchief, thrown over the
-shoulders. These <i>jupes</i> and <i>foulards</i>, however, are
-exquisite in pattern and color: bright crimson, bright yellow, bright
-blue, bright green,&mdash;lilac, violet, rose,&mdash;sometimes mingled
-in plaidings or checkerings or stripings: black with orange, sky-blue
-with purple. And whatever be the colors of the costume, which vary
-astonishingly, the coiffure must be yellow&mdash;brilliant, flashing
-yellow: the turban is certain to have yellow stripes or yellow squares.
-To this display add the effect of costly and curious jewellry: immense
-ear-rings, each pendant being formed of five gold cylinders joined
-together (cylinders sometimes two inches long, and an inch at least in
-circumference);&mdash;a necklace of double, triple, quadruple, or
-quintuple rows of large hollow gold beads (sometimes smooth, but
-generally graven)&mdash;the wonderful <i>collier-choux.</i> Now, this
-glowing jewellry is not a mere imitation of pure metal: the ear-rings
-are worth one hundred and seventy-five francs a pair; the necklace of a
-Martinique quadroon may cost five hundred or even one thousand
-francs.... It may be the gift of her lover, her <i>doudoux</i>; but such
-articles are usually purchased either on time by small payments, or bead
-by bead singly until the requisite number is made up.</p>
-
-<p>But few are thus richly attired: the greater number of the women
-carrying burdens on their heads,&mdash;peddling vegetables, cakes, fruit,
-ready-cooked food, from door to door,&mdash;are very simply dressed in a
-single plain robe of vivid colors ( douillette) reaching from neck to
-feet, and made with a train, but generally girded well up so as to sit
-dose to the figure and leave the lower limbs partly bare and perfectly
-free. These women can walk all day long up and down hill in the hot sun,
-without shoes, carrying loads of from one hundred to one hundred and
-fifty pounds on their heads; and if their little stock sometimes fails
-to come up to the accustomed weight stones are added to make it heavy
-enough. Doubtless the habit of carrying everything in this way from
-childhood has much to do with the remarkable vigor and erectness of the
-population.... I have seen a grand-piano carried on the heads of four
-men. With the women the load is very seldom steadied with the hand after
-having been once placed in position. The head remains almost motionless;
-but the black, quick, piercing eyes flash into every window and door-way
-to watch for a customer's signal. And the creole street-cries, uttered
-in a sonorous, far-reaching high key, interblend and produce random
-harmonies very pleasant to hear.</p>
-
-<p>... "<i>Çé moune-là, ça qui lè bel mango?</i>" Her basket of
-mangoes certainly weighs as much as herself.... "<i>Ça qui lè bel
-avocat?</i>" The alligator-pear&mdash;cuts and tastes like beautiful
-green cheese.... "<i>Ça qui lè escargot?</i>" Call her, if you like
-snails.... "<i>Ça qui lè titiri?</i>" Minuscule fish, of which a
-thousand would scarcely fill a teacup;&mdash;one of the most delicate
-of Martinique dishes.... "<i>Ça qui lè cannà?&mdash;Ça qui lè
-charbon?&mdash;Ça qui lè di pain aubè?</i>" (Who wants ducks,
-charcoal, or pretty little loaves shaped like cucumbers?)... "<i>Ça qui
-lè pain-mi?</i>" A sweet maize cake in the form of a tiny sugar-loaf,
-wrapped in a piece of banana leaf.... "<i>Ça qui lè fromassé</i>"
-(<i>pharmacie</i>) "<i>lapotécai créole?</i>" She deals in creole
-roots and herbs, and all the leaves that make tisanes or poultices or
-medicines: <i>matriquin, feuill-corossol, balai-doux, manioc-chapelle,
-Marie-Perrine, graine-enba-feuill, zhèbe-gras, bonnet-carré,
-zhèbe-codeinne, zhèbe-à-femme, zhèbe-à-châtte, canne-dleau, poque,
-fleu-papillon, laleigne</i>, and a score of others you never saw or
-heard of before.... "<i>Ça qui lè dicaments?</i>" (overalls for
-laboring-men).... "<i>Çé moune-là, si ou pa lè acheté canari-à
-dans lanmain main, moin ké crazé y.</i>" The vender of red clay
-cooking-pots;&mdash;she has only one left, if you do not buy it she will
-break it!</p>
-
-<p>"<i>Hé! zenfants-lal&mdash;en deho'!</i>" Run out to meet her, little
-children, if you like the sweet rice-cakes.... "<i>Hé! gens pa' enho', gens
-pa' enbas, gens di galtas, moin ni bel gououôs poisson!</i>" Ho! people
-up-stairs, people down-stairs, and all ye good folks who dwell in the
-attics,&mdash;know that she has very big and very beautiful fish to
-sell!... "<i>Hé! ça qui lé mangé yonne?</i>"&mdash;those are
-"akras,"&mdash;flat yellow-brown cakes, made of pounded codfish, or beans,
-or both, seasoned with pepper and fried in butter.... And then comes the
-pastry-seller, black as ebony, but dressed all in white, and white-aproned
-and white-capped like a French cook, and chanting half in French, half in
-creole, with a voice like clarinet:</p>
-
-
-<p><span style="margin-left: 1em;">"C'est louvouier de la pâtisserie qui passe,</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Qui té ka veillé pou' gagner son existence,</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Toujours content,</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Toujours joyeux.</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Oh, qu'ils sont bons!&mdash;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Oh, qu'ils sont doux!"</span></p>
-
-
-<p>It is the pastryman passing by, who has been up all night to gain his
-livelihood,&mdash;always content,&mdash;always happy.... Oh, how good they
-are (the pies)!&mdash;Oh, how sweet they are!</p>
-
-<p>... The quaint stores bordering both sides of the street bear no
-names and no signs over their huge arched doors;&mdash;you must look
-well inside to know what business is being done. Even then you will
-scarcely be able to satisfy yourself as to the nature of the
-commerce;&mdash;for they are selling gridirons and frying-pans in the
-dry goods stores, holy images and rosaries in the notion stores,
-sweet-cakes and confectionery in the crockery stores, coffee and
-stationery in the millinery stores, cigars and tobacco in the china
-stores, cravats and laces and ribbons in the jewellry stores,
-sugar and guava jelly in the tobacco stores! But of all the objects
-exposed for sale the most attractive, because the most exotic, is a
-doll,&mdash;the Martinique <i>poupée.</i> There are two kinds,&mdash;the
-<i>poupée-capresse</i>, of which the body is covered with smooth
-reddish-brown leather, to imitate the tint of the <i>capresse</i> race;
-and the <i>poupée-négresse</i>, covered with black leather. When
-dressed, these dolls range in price from eleven to thirty-five
-francs,&mdash;some, dressed to order, may cost even more; and a good
-<i>poupée-capresse</i> is a delightful curiosity. Both varieties of
-dolls are attired in the costume of the people; but the <i>négresse</i>
-is usually dressed the more simply. Each doll has a broidered
-chemise, a tastefully arranged <i>jupe</i> of bright hues, a silk
-<i>foulard</i>, a <i>collier-choux</i>, ear-rings of five cylinders
-(<i>zanneaux-à-clous</i>), and a charming little yellow-banded Madras
-turban. Such a doll is a perfect costume-model,&mdash;a perfect
-miniature of Martinique fashions, to the smallest details of material
-and color: it is almost too artistic for a toy.</p>
-
-<p><br /></p>
-
-<p>These old costume-colors of Martinique&mdash;always relieved by
-brilliant yellow stripings or checkerings, except in the special violet
-dresses worn on certain religious occasions&mdash;have an indescribable
-luminosity,&mdash;a wonderful power of bringing out the fine warm tints
-of this tropical flesh. Such are the hues of those rich costumes
-Nature  gives to her nearest of kin and her dearest,&mdash;her
-honey-lovers&mdash;her insects: these are wasp-colors. I do not know
-whether the fact ever occurred to the childish fancy of this strange
-race; but there is a creole expression which first suggested it to
-me;&mdash;in the patois, <i>pouend guêpe</i>, "to catch a wasp,"
-signifies making love to a pretty colored girl.... And the more one
-observes these costumes, the more one feels that only Nature could have
-taught such rare comprehension of powers and harmonies among
-colors,&mdash;such knowledge of chromatic witchcrafts and chromatic
-laws.</p>
-
-<p><br /></p>
-
-<p>... This evening, as I write, La Pelée is more heavily coiffed than is
-her wont. Of purple and lilac cloud the coiffure is,&mdash;a magnificent
-Madras, yellow-banded by the sinking sun. La Pelée is in <i>costume de
-fête</i>, like a <i>capresse</i> attired for a baptism or a ball; and in
-her phantom turban one great star glimmers for a brooch.</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>XIII</h4>
-
-
-<p>Following the Rue Victor Hugo in the direction of the Fort,&mdash;crossing
-the Rivière Roxelane, or Rivière des Blanchisseuses, whose rocky bed
-is white with unsoaped linen far as the eye can reach,&mdash;you descend
-through some tortuous narrow streets into the principal market-place.<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a>
-A square&mdash;well paved and well shaded&mdash;with a fountain in the
-midst. Here the dealers are seated in rows;&mdash;one half of the market is
-devoted to fruits and vegetables; the other to the sale of fresh fish and
-meats. On first entering you are confused by the press and deafened by the
-storm of creole chatter;&mdash;then you begin to discern some order in this
-chaos, and to observe curious things.</p>
-
-<p>In the middle of the paved square, about the market fountain, are
-lying boats filled with fish, which have been carried up from the water
-upon men's shoulders,&mdash;or, if very heavy, conveyed on rollers....
-Such fish!&mdash;blue, rosy, green, lilac, scarlet, gold: no spectral
-tints these, but luminous and strong like fire. Here also you see heaps
-of long thin fish looking like piled bars of silver,&mdash;absolutely
-dazzling,&mdash;of almost equal thickness from head to tail;&mdash;near
-by are heaps of flat pink creatures;&mdash;beyond these, again, a mass
-of azure backs and golden bellies. Among the stalls you can study the
-monsters,&mdash;twelve or fifteen feet long,&mdash;the shark, the
-<i>vierge</i>, the sword-fish, the <i>tonne</i>;&mdash;or the
-eccentricities. Some are very thin round disks, with long, brilliant,
-wormy feelers in lieu of fins, flickering in all directions
-like a moving pendant silver fringe;;&mdash;others bristle with
-spines;&mdash;others, serpent-bodied, are so speckled as to resemble
-shapes of red polished granite. These are <i>moringues.</i> The
-<i>balaou, coulio, macriau, tazard, tcha-tcha, bonnique</i>, and
-<i>zorphi</i> severally represent almost all possible tints of blue and
-violet. The <i>souri</i> is rose-color and yellow; the <i>cirurgien</i>
-is black, with yellow and red stripes; the <i>patate</i>, black and
-yellow; the <i>gros-zié</i> is vermilion; the <i>couronné</i>, red and
-black. Their names are not less unfamiliar than their shapes and
-tints;&mdash;the <i>aiguille-de-mer</i>, or sea-needle, long and thin as
-a pencil;&mdash;the <i>Bon-Dié-manié-moin</i> ("the Good-God handled
-me"), which has something like finger-marks upon it;&mdash;the
-<i>lambi</i>, a huge sea-snail;&mdash;the <i>pisquette</i>, the
-<i>laline</i> (the Moon);&mdash;the <i>crapaud-de-mer</i>, or
-sea-toad, with a dangerous dorsal fin;&mdash;the <i>vermeil</i>, the
-<i>jacquot</i>, the <i>chaponne</i>, and fifty others.... As the sun
-gets higher, banana or balisier leaves are laid over the fish.</p>
-
-<p>Even more puzzling, perhaps, are the astonishing varieties of green,
-yellow, and parti-colored vegetables,&mdash;and fruits of all hues and
-forms,&mdash;out of which display you retain only a confused general
-memory of sweet smells and luscious colors. But there are some oddities
-which impress the recollection in a particular way. One is a great
-cylindrical ivory-colored thing,&mdash;shaped like an elephant's tusk,
-except that it is not curved: this is the head of the cabbage-palm, or
-palmiste,&mdash;the brain of one of the noblest trees in the tropics,
-which must be totally destroyed to obtain it. Raw or cooked, it is eaten
-in a great variety of ways,&mdash;in salads, stews, fritters, or
-<i>akras.</i> Soon after this compact cylinder of young germinating
-leaves has been removed, large worms begin to appear in the hollow of
-the dead tree,&mdash;the <i>vers-palmiste.</i> You may see these for
-sale in the market, crawling about in bowls or cans: they are said, when
-fried alive, to taste like almonds, and are esteemed as a great
-luxury.</p>
-
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
-<a id="figure13"></a>
-<img src="images/figure13.jpg" width="400" alt="" />
-<p class="center">SUZANNE<br />
-<i>A creole type, pretty, graceful, raven haired, with
-lovely olive golden skin and wholly likable.</i></p>
-</div>
-
-
-<p>... Then you begin to look about you at the faces of the black,
-brown, and yellow people who are watching you curiously from beneath
-their Madras turbans, or from under the shade of mushroom-shaped hats as
-large as umbrellas. And as you observe the bare backs, bare shoulders,
-bare legs and arms and feet, you will find that the colors of flesh are
-even more varied and surprising than the colors of fruit. Nevertheless,
-it is only with fruit-colors that many of these skin-tints can
-be correctly compared: the only terms of comparison used by the
-colored people themselves being terms of this kind,&mdash;such
-as <i>peau-chapotille</i>, "sapota-skin." The <i>sapota</i> or
-<i>sapotille</i> is a juicy brown fruit with a rind satiny like a human
-cuticle, and just the color, when flushed and ripe, of certain
-half-breed skins. But among the brighter half-breeds, the colors, I
-think, are much more fruit-like;&mdash;there are banana-tints,
-lemon-tones, orange-hues, with sometimes such a mingling of ruddiness as
-in the pink ripening of a mango. Agreeable to the eye the darker skins
-certainly are, and often very remarkable&mdash;all clear tones of bronze
-being represented; but the brighter tints are absolutely beautiful.
-Standing perfectly naked at door-ways, or playing naked in the sun,
-astonishing children may sometimes be seen,&mdash;banana-colored or
-orange babies. There is one rare race-type, totally unlike the rest: the
-skin has a perfect gold-tone, an exquisite metallic yellow; the eyes are
-long, and have long silky lashes;&mdash;the hair is a mass of thick,
-rich, glossy curls that show blue lights in the sun. What mingling of
-races produced this beautiful type?&mdash;there is some strange blood in
-the blending,&mdash;not of coolie, nor of African, nor of Chinese, although
-there are Chinese types here of indubitable beauty.<a name="FNanchor_2_1" id="FNanchor_2_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_1" class="fnanchor">[2]</a></p>
-
-<p>... All this population is vigorous, graceful, healthy: all you see
-passing by are well made&mdash;there are no sickly faces, ho scrawny limbs.
-If by some rare chance you encounter a person who has lost an arm or a
-leg, you can be almost certain you are looking at a victim of the
-fer-de-lance,&mdash;the serpent whose venom putrefies living tissue....
-Without fear of exaggerating facts, I can venture to say that the
-muscular development of the working-men here is something which must be
-seen in order to be believed;&mdash;to study fine displays of it, one
-should watch the blacks and half-breeds working naked to the
-waist,&mdash;on the landings, in the gas-houses and slaughter-houses, or on
-the nearest plantations. They are not generally large men, perhaps not
-extraordinarily powerful; but they have the aspect of sculptural or even
-of anatomical models; they seem absolutely devoid of adipose tissue;
-their muscles stand out with a saliency that astonishes the eye. At a
-tanning-yard, while I was watching a dozen blacks at work, a young
-mulatto with the mischievous face of a faun walked by, wearing nothing
-but a clout (<i>lantcho</i>) about his loins; and never, not even in
-bronze, did I see so beautiful a play of muscles. A demonstrator of anatomy
-could have used him for a class-model;&mdash;a sculptor wishing to shape a
-fine Mercury would have been satisfied to take a cast of such a body
-without thinking of making one modification from neck to heel. "Frugal
-diet is the cause of this physical condition," a young French professor
-assures me; "all these men," he says, "live upon salt codfish and
-fruit." But frugal living alone could new produce such symmetry and
-saliency of muscles: race-crossing, climate, perpetual exercise, healthy
-labor&mdash;many conditions must have combined to cause it. Also it is
-certain that this tropical sun has a tendency to dissolve spare flesh,
-to melt away all superfluous tissue, leaving the muscular fibre dense
-and solid as mahogany.</p>
-
-<p><br /></p>
-
-<p>At the <i>mouillage</i>, below a green <i>morne</i>, is the
-bathing-place. A rocky beach rounding away under heights of tropical
-wood;&mdash;palms curving out above the sand, or bending half-way across
-it. Ships at anchor in blue water, against golden-yellow horizon. A vast
-blue glow. Water clear as diamond, and lukewarm.</p>
-
-<p>It is about one hour after sunrise; and the higher parts of Montagne
-Pelée are still misty blue. Under the palms and among the lava rocks,
-and also in little cabins farther up the slope, bathers are dressing or
-undressing: the water is also dotted with heads of swimmers. Women and
-girls enter it well robed from feet to shoulders;&mdash;men go in very
-sparsely clad;&mdash;there are lads wearing nothing. Young boys&mdash;yellow and
-brown little fellows&mdash;run in naked, and swim out to pointed rocks that
-jut up black above the bright water. They climb up one at a time to dive
-down. Poised for the leap upon the black lava crag, and against the blue
-light of the sky, each lithe figure, gilded by the morning sun, has a
-statuesqueness and a luminosity impossible to paint in words. These
-bodies seem to radiate color; and the azure light intensifies the hue:
-it is idyllic, incredible;&mdash;Coomans used paler colors in his Pompeiian
-studies, and his figures were never so symmetrical. This flesh does not
-look like flesh, but like fruit-pulp....</p>
-
-<p><br /></p>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a>Since this was written the market has been removed to the
-Savane,&mdash;to allow of the erection of a large new market-building on the
-old rite; and the beautiful trees have been cut down.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_2_1" id="Footnote_2_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_1"><span class="label">[2]</span></a>I subsequently learned the mystery of this very strange and
-beautiful mixed race,&mdash;many fine specimens of which may also be seen in
-Trinidad. Three widely diverse elements have combined to form it: European,
-negro, and Indian,&mdash;but, strange to say, it is the most savage
-of these three bloods which creates the peculiar charm.... I cannot
-speak of this comely and extraordinary type without translating a
-passage from Dr. J. J. J. Cornilliac, an eminent Martinique physician,
-who recently published a most valuable series of studies upon the
-ethnology, climatology, and history of the Antilles. In these he writes:</p>
-
-<p>... "When, among the populations of the Antilles, we first notice those
-remarkable <i>métis</i> whose olive skins, elegant and slender figures,
-fine straight profiles, and regular features remind us of the inhabitants
-of Madras or Pondicherry,&mdash;we ask ourselves in wonder, while looking
-at their long eyes, full of a strange and gentle melancholy (especially
-among the women), and at the black, rich, silky-gleaming hair curling in
-abundance over the temples and falling in profusion over the neck,&mdash;to
-what human race can belong this singular variety,&mdash;in which there is a
-dominant characteristic that seems indelible, and always shows more and
-more strongly in proportion as the type is further removed from the
-African element. It is the Carib blood,&mdash;blended with blood of
-Europeans and of blacks,&mdash;which in spite of all subsequent crossings,
-and in spite of the fact that it has not been renewed for more than two
-hundred years, still conserves as markedly as at the time of the first
-interblending, the race-characteristic that invariably reveals its
-presence in the blood of every being through whose veins it
-flows."&mdash;"Recherches chronologiques et historiques sur l'Origine et la
-Propagation de la Fièvre Jaune aux Antilles." Par J. J. J. Cornilliac.
-Fort-de-France: Imprimerie du Gouvernement. 1886.</p>
-
-<p>But I do not think the term "olive" always indicates the color of these
-skins, which seemed to me exactly the tint of gold; and the hair flashes
-with bluish lights, like the plumage of certain black birds.</p></div>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>XIV</h4>
-
-
-<p>... Everywhere crosses, little shrines, wayside chapels, statues of
-saints. You will see crucifixes and statuettes even in the forks or
-hollows of trees shadowing the high-roads. As you ascend these towards
-the interior you will see, every mile or half-mile, some chapel, or a
-cross erected upon a pedestal of masonry, or some little niche contrived
-in a wall, closed by a wire grating, through which the image of a Christ
-or a Madonna is visible. Lamps are kept burning all night before these
-figures. But the village of Morne Rouge&mdash;some two thousand feet above
-the sea, and about an hour's drive from St. Pierre&mdash;is chiefly
-remarkable for such displays: it is a place of pilgrimage as well as a
-health resort. Above the village, upon the steep slope of a higher
-morne, one may note a singular succession of little edifices ascending
-to the summit,&mdash;fourteen little tabernacles, each containing a
-<i>relievo</i> representing some incident of Christ's Passion. This is
-called <i>Le Calvaire</i>: it requires more than a feeble piety to perform
-the religious exercise of climbing the height, and saying a prayer before
-each little shrine on the way. From the porch of the crowning structure the
-village of Morne Rouge appears so far below that it makes one almost dizzy
-to look at it; but even for the profane one ascent is well worth making,
-for the sake of the beautiful view. On all the neighboring heights
-around are votive chapels or great crucifixes.</p>
-
-<p>St. Pierre is less peopled with images than Morne Rouge; but it has
-several colossal ones, which may be seen from any part of the harbor. On
-the heights above the middle quarter, or <i>Centre</i>, a gigantic Christ
-overlooks the bay; and from the Morne d'Orange, which bounds the city on
-the south, a great white Virgin&mdash;Notre Dame de la Garde, patron of
-mariners&mdash;watches above the ships at anchor in the mouillage.</p>
-
-<p>... Thrice daily, from the towers of the white cathedral, a superb chime
-of bells rolls its <i>carillon</i> through the town. On great holidays the
-bells are wonderfully rung;&mdash;the ringers are African, and something of
-African feeling is observable in their impressive but incantatory manner
-of ringing. The bourdon must have cost a fortune. When it is made to
-speak, the effect is startling: all the city vibrates to a weird sound
-difficult to describe,&mdash;an abysmal, quivering moan, producing
-unfamiliar harmonies as the voices of the smaller bells are seized and
-interblended by it.... One will not easily forget the ringing of a
-bel-midi.</p>
-
-<p>... Behind the cathedral, above the peaked city roofs, and at the foot
-of the wood-clad Morne d'Orange, is the <i>Cimetière du Mouillage</i>....
-It is full of beauty,&mdash;this strange tropical cemetery. Most of the low
-tombs are covered with small square black and white tiles, set exactly
-after the fashion of the squares on a chess-board; at the foot of each
-grave stands a black cross, bearing at its centre a little white plaque,
-on which the name is graven in delicate and tasteful lettering. So
-pretty these little tombs are, that you might almost believe yourself in
-a toy cemetery. Here and there, again, are miniature marble chapels
-built over the dead,&mdash;containing white Madonnas and Christs and little
-angels,&mdash;while flowering creepers climb and twine about the pillars.
-Death seems so luminous here that one thinks of it unconsciously as a soft
-rising from this soft green earth,&mdash;like a vapor invisible,&mdash;to
-melt into the prodigious day. Everything is bright and neat and
-beautiful; the air is sleepy with jasmine scent and odor of white lilies;
-and the palm&mdash;emblem of immortality&mdash;lifts its head a hundred
-feet into the blue light. There are rows of these majestic and symbolic
-trees;&mdash;two enormous ones guard the entrance;&mdash;the others rise
-from among the tombs,&mdash;white-stemmed, out-spreading their huge
-parasols of verdure higher than the cathedral towers.</p>
-
-<p>Behind all this, the dumb green life of the morne seems striving to
-descend, to invade the rest of the dead. It thrusts green hands over the
-wall,&mdash;pushes strong roots underneath;&mdash;it attacks every joint of
-the stonework, patiently, imperceptibly, yet almost irresistibly.</p>
-
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
-<a id="figure14"></a>
-<img src="images/figure14.jpg" width="400" alt="" />
-<p class="center">CIMETIÈRE DU MOUILLAGE, ST. PIERRE<br />
-<i>Under the shadow of the mountain the dead sleep as
-peacefully as though nothing had happened.</i></p>
-</div>
-
-
-<p>... Some day there may be a great change in the little city of St.
-Pierre;&mdash;there may be less money and less zeal and less remembrance
-of the lost. Then from the morne, over the bulwark, the green host will
-move down unopposed;&mdash;creepers will prepare the way, dislocating
-the pretty tombs, pulling away the checkered tiling;&mdash;then will
-come the giants, rooting deeper,&mdash;feeling for the dust of hearts,
-groping among the bones;&mdash;and all that love has hidden away shall
-be restored to Nature,&mdash;absorbed into the rich juices of her
-verdure,&mdash;revitalized in her bursts of color,&mdash;resurrected in
-her upliftings of emerald and gold to the great sun....</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>XV</h4>
-
-
-<p>Seen from the bay, the little red-white-and-yellow city forms but one
-multicolored streak against the burning green of the lofty island. There
-is no naked soil, no bare rock: the chains of the mountains, rising by
-successive ridges towards the interior, are still covered with
-forests;&mdash;tropical woods ascend the peaks to the height of four and
-five thousand feet. To describe the beauty of these woods&mdash;even
-of those covering the mornes in the immediate vicinity of St.
-Pierre&mdash;seems to me almost impossible;&mdash;there are forms and colors
-which appear to demand the creation of new words to express. Especially
-is this true in regard to hue;&mdash;the green of a tropical forest is
-something which one familiar only with the tones of Northern vegetation
-can form no just conception of: it is a color that conveys the idea of
-green fire.</p>
-
-<p>You have only to follow the high-road leading out of St. Pierre by
-way of the Savane du Fort to find yourself, after twenty minutes' walk,
-in front of the Morne Parnasse, and before the verge of a high
-wood,&mdash;remnant of the enormous growth once covering all the island.
-What a tropical forest is, as seen from without, you will then begin to
-feel, with a sort of awe, while you watch that beautiful upclimbing of
-green shapes to the height of perhaps a thousand feet overhead. It
-presents one seemingly solid surface of vivid color,&mdash;rugose like a
-cliff. You do not readily distinguish whole trees in the mass;&mdash;you
-only perceive suggestions, dreams of trees, Doresqueries. Shapes that
-seem to be staggering under weight of creepers rise a hundred feet above
-you;&mdash;others, equally huge, are towering above these;&mdash;and
-still higher, a legion of monstrosities are nodding, bending, tossing up
-green arms, pushing out great knees, projecting curves as of backs and
-shoulders, intertwining mockeries of limbs. No distinct head appears
-except where some palm pushes up its crest in the general fight for sun.
-All else looks as if under a veil,&mdash;hidden and half smothered by
-heavy drooping things. Blazing green vines cover every branch and
-stem;&mdash;they form draperies and tapestries and curtains and
-motionless cascades&mdash;pouring down over all projections like a thick
-silent flood: an amazing inundation of parasitic life.... It is a weird
-and awful beauty that you gaze upon; and yet the spectacle is imperfect.
-These woods have been decimated;&mdash;the finest trees have been cut
-down: you see only a ruin of what was. To see the true primeval forest,
-you must ride well into the interior.</p>
-
-<p>The absolutism of green does not, however, always prevail in these
-woods. During a brief season, corresponding to some of our winter
-months, the forests suddenly break into a very conflagration of color,
-caused by the blossoming of the lianas&mdash;crimson, canary-yellow, blue,
-and white. There are other flowerings, indeed; but that of the lianas
-alone has chromatic force enough to change the aspect of a landscape.</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>XVI</h4>
-
-
-<p>... If it is possible for a West Indian forest to be described at all,
-it could not be described more powerfully than it has been by Dr. E.
-Rufz, a creole of Martinique, from one of whose works I venture to
-translate the following remarkable pages:</p>
-
-<p>... "The sea alone, because it is the most colossal of earthly
-spectacles,&mdash;only the sea can afford us any term of comparison for
-the attempt to describe a <i>grand-bois</i>;&mdash;but even then one
-must imagine the sea on a day of storm, suddenly immobilized in the
-expression of its mightiest fury. For the summits of these vast
-woods  repeat all the inequalities of the land they cover; and these
-inequalities are mountains from 4200 to 4800 feet in height, and valleys
-of corresponding profundity. All this is hidden, blended together,
-smoothed over by verdure, in soft and enormous undulations,&mdash;in
-immense billowings of foliage. Only, instead of a blue line at the
-horizon, you have a green line; instead of flashings of blue, you have
-flashings of green,&mdash;and in all the tints, in all the combinations
-of which green is capable: deep green, light green, yellow-green,
-black-green.</p>
-
-<p>"When your eyes grow weary&mdash;if it indeed be possible for them to
-weary&mdash;of contemplating the exterior of these tremendous woods, try
-to penetrate a little into their interior. What an inextricable chaos it
-is! The sands of a sea are not more closely pressed together than the
-trees are here: some straight, some curved, some upright, some
-toppling,&mdash;fallen, or leaning against one another, or heaped high
-upon each other. Climbing lianas, which cross from one tree to the
-other, like ropes passing from mast to mast, help to fill up all the
-gaps in this treillage; and parasites&mdash;not timid parasites like ivy
-or like moss, but parasites which are trees self-grafted upon
-trees&mdash;dominate the primitive trunks, overwhelm them, usurp the
-place of their foliage, and fall back to the ground, forming factitious
-weeping-willows. You do not find here, as in the great forests of the
-North, the eternal monotony of birch and fir: this is the kingdom of
-infinite variety;&mdash;species the most diverse elbow each other,
-interlace, strangle and devour each other: all ranks and orders are
-confounded, as in a human mob. The soft and tender <i>balisier</i> opens
-its parasol of leaves beside the <i>gommier</i>, which is the cedar of
-the colonies;&mdash;you see the <i>acomat</i>, the <i>courbaril</i>, the
-mahogany, the <i>tendre-à-caillou</i>, the iron-wood... but as well
-enumerate by name all the soldiers of an army! Our oak, the balata,
-forces the palm to lengthen itself prodigiously in order to get a few
-thin beams of sunlight; for it is as difficult here for the poor trees
-to obtain one glance from this King of the world, as for us, subjects of
-a monarchy, to obtain one look from our monarch. As for the soil, it is
-needless to think of looking at it: it lies as far below us probably as
-the bottom of the sea;&mdash;it disappeared, ever so long ago, under the
-heaping of débris,&mdash;under a sort of manure that has been
-accumulating there since the creation: you sink into it as into slime;
-you walk upon putrefied trunks, in a dust that has no name! Here indeed
-it is that one can get some comprehension of what vegetable antiquity
-signifies;&mdash;a lurid light (<i>lurida lux</i>), greenish, as wan at
-noon as the light of the moon at midnight, confuses forms and lends them
-a vague and fantastic aspect; a mephitic humidity exhales from all
-parts; an odor of death prevails; and a calm which is not silence (for
-the ear fancies it can hear the great movement of composition and of
-decomposition perpetually going on) tends to inspire you with that old
-mysterious horror which the ancients felt in the primitive forests of
-Germany and of Gaul:"</p>
-
-<p>"'Arboribus suus horror inest.'"<a name="FNanchor_3_1" id="FNanchor_3_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_1" class="fnanchor">[3]</a></p>
-
-<p><br /></p>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_3_1" id="Footnote_3_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_1"><span class="label">[3]</span></a>"Enquête sur le Serpent de la Martinique (Vipère Fer-de-Lance,
-Bothrops Lancéolé, etc.)." Par le Docteur E. Rufs. 2 ed. 1859 Paris:
-Germer-Ballière, pp. 55-57 (note).</p></div>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>XVII</h4>
-
-
-<p>But the sense of awe inspired by a tropic forest is certainly greater
-than the mystic fear which any wooded wilderness of the North could ever
-have created. The brilliancy of colors that seem almost preternatural;
-the vastness of the ocean of frondage, and the violet blackness of rare
-gaps, revealing its inconceived profundity; and the million mysterious
-sounds which make up its perpetual murmur,&mdash;compel the idea of a
-creative force that almost terrifies. Man feels here like an
-insect,&mdash;fears like an insect on the alert for merciless enemies:
-and the fear is not unfounded. To enter these green abysses without a
-guide were folly: even with the best of guides there is peril. Nature is
-dangerous here: the powers that build are also the powers that putrefy;
-here life and death are perpetually interchanging office in the
-never-ceasing transformation of forces,&mdash;melting down and reshaping
-living substance simultaneously within the same vast crucible. There are
-trees distilling venom, there are plants that have fangs, there are
-perfumes that affect the brain, there are cold green creepers
-whose  touch blisters flesh like fire; while in all the recesses
-and the  shadows is a swarming of unfamiliar life, beautiful or
-hideous,&mdash;insect, reptile, bird,&mdash;inter-warring, devouring,
-preying.... But the great peril of the forest&mdash;the danger which
-deters even the naturalist&mdash;is the presence of the terrible
-fer-de-lance (<i>trigonocephalus lanceolatus,&mdash;bothrops
-lanceolatus,&mdash;craspodecephalus</i>),&mdash;deadliest of the
-Occidental thanatophidia, and probably one of the deadliest serpents of
-the known world.</p>
-
-<p>... There are no less than eight varieties of it,&mdash;the most
-common being the dark gray, speckled with black&mdash;precisely the
-color that enables the creature to hide itself among the protruding
-roots of the trees, by simply coiling about them, and concealing its
-triangular head. Sometimes the snake is a clear bright yellow: then it
-is difficult to distinguish it from the bunch of bananas among which it
-conceals itself. Or the creature may be a dark yellow,&mdash;or a
-yellowish brown,&mdash;or the color of wine-lees, speckled pink and
-black,&mdash;or dead black with a yellow belly,&mdash;or black with a
-pink belly: all hues of tropical forest-mould, of old bark, of
-decomposing trees.... The iris of the eye is orange,&mdash;with red
-flashes: it glows at night like burning charcoal.</p>
-
-<p>And the fer-de-lance reigns absolute king over the mountains and the
-ravines; he is lord of the forest and the solitudes by day, and by night
-he extends his dominion over the public roads, the familiar paths, the
-parks, the pleasure resorts. People must remain at home after dark,
-unless they dwell in the city itself: if you happen to be out visiting
-after sunset, only a mile from town, your friends will caution you
-anxiously not to follow the boulevard as you go back, and to keep as
-closely as possible to the very centre of the path. Even in the
-brightest noon you cannot venture to enter the woods without an
-experienced escort; you cannot trust your eyes to detect danger: at any
-moment a seeming branch, a knot of lianas, a pink or gray root, a clump
-of pendent yellow fruit may suddenly take life, writhe, stretch, spring,
-strike.... Then you will need aid indeed, and most quickly; for within
-the span of a few heart-beats the wounded flesh chills, tumefies,
-softens. Soon it changes color, and begins to spot violaceously; while
-an icy coldness creeps through all the blood. If the <i>panseur</i> or the
-physician arrives in time, and no vein has been pierced, there is hope;
-but it more often happens that the blow is received directly on a vein
-of the foot or ankle,&mdash;in which case nothing can save the victim. Even
-when life is saved the danger is not over. Necrosis of the tissues is
-likely to set in: the flesh corrupts, falls from the bone sometimes in
-tatters; and the colors of its putrefaction simulate the hues of
-vegetable decay,&mdash;the ghastly grays and pinks and yellows of trunks
-rotting down into the dark soil which gave them birth. The human victim
-moulders as the trees moulder,&mdash;crumbles and dissolves as crumbles the
-substance of the dead palms and balatas: the Death-of-the-Woods is upon
-him.</p>
-
-<p>To-day a fer-de-lance is seldom found exceeding six feet in length; but
-the dimensions of the reptile, at least, would seem to have been
-decreased considerably by man's warring upon it since the time of Père
-Labat, who mentions having seen a fer-de-lance nine feet long and five
-inches in diameter. He also speaks of a <i>couresse</i>&mdash;a beautiful
-and harmless serpent said to kill the fer-de-lance&mdash;over ten feet long
-and thick as a man's leg; but a large couresse is now seldom seen. The
-negro woodsmen kill both creatures indiscriminately; and as the older
-reptiles are the least likely to escape observation, the chances for the
-survival of extraordinary individuals lessen with the yearly decrease of
-forest-area.</p>
-
-<p>... But it may be doubted whether the number of deadly snakes has been
-greatly lessened since the early colonial period. Each female produces
-viviparously from forty to sixty young at a birth. The favorite haunts
-of the fer-de-lance are to a large extent either inaccessible or
-unexplored, and its multiplication is prodigious. It is really only the
-surplus of its swarming that over-pours into the cane-fields, and makes
-the public roads dangerous after dark;&mdash;yet more than three hundred
-snakes have been killed in twelve months on a single plantation. The
-introduction of the Indian mongoose, or <i>mangouste</i> (ichneumon),
-proved futile as a means of repressing the evil. The mangouste kills the
-fer-de-lance when it has a chance; but it also kills fowls and sucks
-their eggs, which condemns it irrevocably with the country negroes, who
-live to a considerable extent by raising and selling chickens.</p>
-
-<p>... Domestic animals are generally able to discern the presence of
-their deadly enemy long before a human eye can perceive it. If your
-horse rears and plunges in the darkness, trembles and sweats, do not try
-to ride on until you are assured the way is clear. Or your dog may come
-running back, whining, shivering: you will do well to accept his
-warning. The animals kept about country residences usually try to fight
-for their lives; the hen battles for her chickens; the bull endeavors to
-gore and stamp his supple enemy; the pig gives more successful combat;
-but the creature who fears the monster least is the brave cat. Seeing a
-snake, she at once carries her kittens to a place of safety, then boldly
-advances to the encounter. She will walk to the very limit of the
-serpent's striking range, and begin to feint,&mdash;teasing him,
-startling him, trying to draw his blow. How the emerald and the topazine
-eyes glow then!&mdash;they are flames! A moment more and the triangular
-head, hissing from the coil, flashes swift as if moved by wings. But
-swifter still the stroke of the armed paw that dashes the horror aside,
-flinging it mangled in the dust. Nevertheless, pussy does not yet dare
-to spring;&mdash;the enemy, still active, has almost instantly reformed his
-coil;&mdash;but she is again in front of him, watching,&mdash;vertical
-pupil against vertical pupil. Again the lashing stroke; again the
-beautiful countering;&mdash;again the living death is hurled aside; and
-now the scaled skin is deeply torn,&mdash;one eye socket has ceased
-to  flame. Once more the stroke of the serpent; once more the
-light, quick, cutting blow. But the trigonocephalus is blind, is
-stupefied;&mdash;before he can attempt to coil pussy has leaped upon
-him,&mdash;nailing the horrible flat head fast to the ground with her
-two sinewy paws. Now let him lash, writhe, twine, strive to strangle
-her!&mdash;in vain! he will never lift his head: an instant more, and he
-lies still:&mdash;the keen white teeth of the cat have severed the
-vertebra just behind the triangular skull!...</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>XVIII</h4>
-
-
-<p>The Jardin des Plantes is not absolutely secure from the visits of
-the serpent; for the trigonocephalus goes everywhere,&mdash;mounting to
-the very summits of the cocoa-palms, swimming rivers, ascending walls,
-hiding in palm-thatched roofs, breeding in bagasse heaps. But, despite
-what has been printed to the contrary, this reptile fears man and hates
-light: it rarely shows itself voluntarily during the day. Therefore, if
-you desire to obtain some conception of the magnificence of Martinique
-vegetation, without incurring the risk of entering the high woods, you
-can do so by visiting the Jardin des Plantes,&mdash;only taking care to
-use your eyes well while climbing over fallen trees, or picking your way
-through dead branches. The garden is less than a mile from the city, on
-the slopes of the Morne Parnasse; and the primitive forest itself has
-been utilized in the formation of it,&mdash;so that the greater part of
-the garden is a primitive growth. Nature has accomplished here
-infinitely more than art of man (though such art has done much to lend
-the place its charm),&mdash;and until within a very recent time the
-result might have been deemed, without exaggeration, one of the wonders
-of the world.</p>
-
-<p>A moment after passing the gate you are in twilight, though the sun may
-be blinding on the white road without. All about you is a green
-gloaming, up through which you see immense trunks rising. Follow the
-first path that slopes up on your left as you proceed, if you wish to
-obtain the best general view of the place in the shortest possible time.
-As you proceed, the garden on your right deepens more and more into a
-sort of ravine;&mdash;on your left rises a sort of foliage-shrouded cliff;
-and all this in a beautiful crepuscular dimness, made by the foliage of
-great trees meeting overhead. Palms rooted a hundred feet below you hold
-their heads a hundred feet above you; yet they can barely reach the
-light.... Farther on the ravine widens to frame in two tiny lakes,
-dotted with artificial islands, which are miniatures of Martinique,
-Guadeloupe, and Dominica: these are covered with tropical plants, many
-of which are total strangers even here: they are natives of India,
-Senegambia, Algeria, and the most eastern East. Arborescent ferns of
-unfamiliar elegance curve up from path-verge or lake-brink; and the
-great <i>arbre-du-voyageur</i> outspreads its colossal fan. Giant lianas
-droop down over the way in loops and festoons; tapering green cords,
-which are creepers descending to take root, hang everywhere; and
-parasites with stems thick as cables coil about the trees like boas.
-Trunks shooting up out of sight, into the green wilderness above,
-display no bark; you cannot guess what sort of trees they are; they are
-so thickly wrapped in creepers as to seem pillars of leaves. Between you
-and the sky, where everything is fighting for sun, there is an almost
-unbroken vault of leaves, a cloudy green confusion in which nothing
-particular is distinguishable.</p>
-
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
-<a id="figure14a"></a>
-<img src="images/figure14a.jpg" width="400" alt="" />
-<p class="center">ROAD TO MORNE ROUGE<br />
-<i>A riot of green fading off into distant grays, and
-nearly always a glint of blue ocean in the distance.</i></p>
-</div>
-
-
-<p>You come to breaks now and then in the green steep to your
-left,&mdash;openings created for cascades pouring down from one mossed
-basin of brown stone to another,&mdash;or gaps occupied by flights of
-stone steps, green with mosses, and chocolate-colored by age. These
-steps lead to loftier paths; and all the stone-work,&mdash;the grottos,
-bridges, basins, terraces, steps,&mdash;are darkened by time and
-velveted with mossy things.... It is of another century, this garden:
-special ordinances were passed concerning it during the French
-Revolution (<i>An. II.</i>);&mdash;it is very quaint; it suggests an art
-spirit as old as Versailles, or older; but it is indescribably beautiful
-even now.</p>
-
-<p>... At last you near the end, to hear the roar of falling
-water;&mdash;there is a break in the vault of green above the bed of a
-river below you; and at a sudden turn you come in sight of the cascade.
-Before you is the Morne itself; and against the burst of descending
-light you discern a precipice-verge. Over it, down one green furrow in
-its brow, tumbles the rolling foam of a cataract, like falling smoke, to
-be caught below in a succession of moss-covered basins. The first dear
-leap of the water is nearly seventy feet.... Did Josephine ever rest
-upon that shadowed bench near by?... She knew all these paths by heart:
-surely they must have haunted her dreams in the after-time!</p>
-
-<p>Returning by another path, you may have a view of other
-cascades&mdash;though none so imposing. But they are beautiful; and you
-will not soon forget the effect of one,&mdash;flanked at its summit by
-white-stemmed palms which lift their leaves so high into the light that
-the loftiness of them gives the sensation of vertigo.... Dizzy also the
-magnificence of the great colonnade of palmistes and angelins, two
-hundred feet high, through which you pass if you follow the river-path
-from the cascade,&mdash;the famed <i>Allée des duels</i>....</p>
-
-<p>The vast height, the pillared solemnity of the ancient trees in the
-green dimness, the solitude, the strangeness of shapes but half
-seen,&mdash;suggesting fancies of silent aspiration, or triumph, or
-despair,&mdash;all combine to produce a singular impression of awe....
-You are alone; you hear no human voice,&mdash;no sounds but the rushing
-of the river over its volcanic rocks, and the creeping of millions of
-lizards and tree-frogs and little toads. You see no human face; but you
-see all around you the labor of man being gnawed and devoured by
-nature,&mdash;broken bridges, sliding steps, fallen arches, strangled
-fountains with empty basins;&mdash;and everywhere arises the pungent
-odor of decay. This omnipresent odor affects one unpleasantly;&mdash;it
-never ceases to remind you that where Nature is most puissant to charm,
-there also is she mightiest to destroy.</p>
-
-<p>The beautiful garden is now little more than a wreck of what it once
-was: since the fall of the Empire it has been shamefully abused and
-neglected. Some <i>agronome</i> sent out to take charge of it by the
-Republic, began its destruction by cutting down acres of enormous and
-magnificent trees,&mdash;including a superb alley of palms,&mdash;for
-the purpose of experimenting with roses. But the rose-trees would not be
-cultivated there; and the serpents avenged the demolition by making the
-experimental garden unsafe to enter;&mdash;they always swarm into
-underbrush and shrubbery after forest-trees have been cleared away....
-Subsequently the garden was greatly damaged by storms and torrential
-rains; the mountain river overflowed, carrying bridges away and
-demolishing stone-work. No attempt was made to repair these
-destructions; but neglect alone would not have ruined the loveliness of
-the place;&mdash;barbarism was necessary! Under the present
-negro-radical régime orders have been given for the wanton destruction
-of trees older than the colony itself;&mdash;and marvels that could not
-be replaced in a hundred generations were cut down and converted into
-charcoal for the use of public institutions.</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>XIX</h4>
-
-
-<p>... How gray seem the words of poets in the presence of this
-Nature!... The enormous silent poem of color and light&mdash;(you who
-know only the North do not know color, do not know light!)&mdash;of sea
-and sky, of the woods and the peaks, so far surpasses imagination as to
-paralyze it&mdash;mocking the language of admiration, defyingall power
-of expression. That is before you which never can be painted or chanted,
-because there is no cunning of art or speech able to reflect it. Nature
-realizes your most hopeless ideals of beauty, even as one gives toys to
-a child. And the sight of this supreme terrestrial expression of
-creative magic numbs thought. In the great centres of civilization we
-admire and study only the results of mind,&mdash;the products of human
-endeavor: here one views only the work of Nature,&mdash;but Nature in
-all her primeval power, as in the legendary frostless morning of
-creation. Man here seems to bear scarcely more relation to the green
-life about him than the insect; and the results of human effort seem
-impotent by comparison with the operation of those vast blind forces
-which clothe the peaks and crown the dead craters with impenetrable
-forest. The air itself seems inimical to thought,&mdash;soporific, and
-yet pregnant with activities of dissolution so powerful that the
-mightiest tree begins to melt like wax from the moment it has ceased to
-live. For man merely to exist is an effort; and doubtless in the
-perpetual struggle of the blood to preserve itself from fermentation,
-there is such an expenditure of vital energy as leaves little surplus
-for mental exertion.</p>
-
-<p>... Scarcely less than poet or philosopher, the artist, I fancy, would
-feel his helplessness. In the city he may find wonderful picturesqueness
-to invite his pencil, but when he stands face to face alone with Nature
-he will discover that he has no colors! The luminosities of tropic
-foliage could only be imitated in fire. He who desires to paint a West
-Indian forest,&mdash;a West Indian landscape,&mdash;must take his view from
-some great height, through which the colors come to his eye softened and
-subdued by distance,&mdash;toned with blues or purples by the astonishing
-atmosphere.</p>
-
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
-<a id="figure15"></a>
-<img src="images/figure15.jpg" width="400" alt="" />
-<p class="center">ST. PIERRE-STREET AMONG THE RUINS<br />
-<i>Exuberant vegetation has claimed the ruins and invaded
-the beautiful stone-paved streets of the former
-capital.</i></p>
-</div>
-
-
-<p>... It is sunset as I write these lines, and there are witchcrafts of
-color. Looking down the narrow, steep street opening to the bay, I see
-the motionless silhouette of the steamer on a perfectly green
-sea,&mdash;under a lilac sky,&mdash;against a prodigious orange light.</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>XX</h4>
-
-
-<p>In these tropic latitudes Night does not seem "to fall,"&mdash;to
-descend over the many-peaked land: it appears to rise up, like an
-exhalation, from the ground. The coast-lines darken first;&mdash;then the
-slopes and the lower hills and valleys become shadowed;&mdash;then, very
-swiftly, the gloom mounts to the heights, whose very loftiest peak may
-remain glowing like a volcano at its tip for several minutes after the rest
-of the island is veiled in blackness and all the stars are out....</p>
-
-<p>... Tropical nights have a splendor that seems strange to northern eyes.
-The sky does not look so high&mdash;so far away as in the North; but the
-stars are larger, and the luminosity greater.</p>
-
-<p>With the rising of the moon all the violet of the sky
-flushes;&mdash;there is almost such a rose-color as heralds northern
-dawn.</p>
-
-<p>Then the moon appears over the mornes, very large, very
-bright&mdash;brighter certainly than many a befogged sun one sees in
-northern Novembers; and it seems to have a weird magnetism&mdash;this
-tropical moon. Night-birds, insects, frogs,&mdash;everything that can
-sing,&mdash;all sing very low on the nights of great moons. Tropical
-wood-life begins with dark: in the immense white light of a full moon
-this nocturnal life seems afraid to cry out as usual. Also, this moon
-has a singular effect on the nerves. It is very difficult to sleep on
-such bright nights: you feel such a vague uneasiness as the coming of a
-great storm gives....</p>
-
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>XXI</h4>
-
-
-<p>You reach Fort-de-France, the capital of Martinique, by steamer from
-St. Pierre, in about an hour and a half.... There is an overland
-route&mdash;<i>La Trace</i>; but it is a twenty-five-mile ride, and a
-weary one in such a climate, notwithstanding the indescribable beauty of
-the landscapes which the lofty road commands.</p>
-
-<p>... Rebuilt in wood after the almost total destruction by an
-earthquake of its once picturesque streets of stone, Fort-de-France
-(formerly Fort-Royal) has little of outward interest by comparison with
-St. Pierre. It lies in a low, moist plain, and has few remarkable
-buildings: you can walk all over the little town in about half an hour.
-But the Savane,&mdash;the great green public square, with its grand
-tamarinds and <i>sabliers</i>,&mdash;would be worth the visit alone,
-even were it not made romantic by the marble memory of Josephine.</p>
-
-<p>I went to look at the white dream of her there, a creation of
-master-sculptors.... It seemed to me absolutely lovely.</p>
-
-<p>Sea winds have bitten it; tropical rains have streaked it: some
-microscopic growth has darkened the exquisite hollow of the throat. And
-yet such is the human charm of the figure that you almost fancy you are
-gazing at a living presence.... Perhaps the profile is less artistically
-real,&mdash;statuesque to the point of betraying the chisel; but when you
-look straight up into the sweet creole face, you can believe she lives:
-all the wonderful West Indian charm of the woman is there.</p>
-
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
-<a id="figure16"></a>
-<img src="images/figure16.jpg" width="400" alt="" />
-<p class="center">THE EMPRESS JOSEPHINE<br />
-"<i>I went to look at the white dream of her there a
-creation of master-sculptors.... It seems to me absolutely
-lovely.</i>"</p>
-</div>
-
-
-<p>She is standing just in the centre of the Savane, robed in the fashion
-of the First Empire, with gracious arms and shoulders bare: one hand
-leans upon a medallion bearing the eagle profile of Napoleon.... Seven
-tall palms stand in a circle around her, lifting their comely heads into
-the blue glory of the tropic day. Within their enchanted circle you feel
-that you tread holy ground,&mdash;the sacred soil of artist and
-poet;&mdash;here the recollections of memoir-writers vanish away; the
-gossip of history is hushed for you; you no longer care to know how rumor
-has it that she spoke or smiled or wept: only the bewitchment of her lives
-under the thin, soft, swaying shadows of those feminine palms.... Over
-violet space of summer sea, through the vast splendor of azure light, she
-is looking back to the place of her birth, back to beautiful drowsy
-Trois-Islets,&mdash;and always with the same half-dreaming, half-plaintive
-smile,&mdash;unutterably touching....</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>XXII</h4>
-
-
-<p>One leaves Martinique with regret, even after so brief a stay: the old
-colonial life itself, not less than the revelation of tropic nature,
-having in this island a quality of uniqueness, a special charm, unlike
-anything previously seen.... We steam directly for Barbadoes;&mdash;the
-vessel will touch at the intervening islands only on her homeward route.</p>
-
-<p>... Against a hot wind south,&mdash;under a sky always deepening in
-beauty. Towards evening dark clouds begin to rise before us; and by
-nightfall they spread into one pitch-blackness over all the sky. Then
-comes a wind in immense sweeps, lifting the water,&mdash;but a wind that
-is still strangely warm. The ship rolls heavily in the dark for an hour
-or more;&mdash;then torrents of tepid rain make the sea smooth again;
-the clouds pass, and the violet transparency of tropical night
-reappears,&mdash;ablaze with stars.</p>
-
-<p>At early morning a long low land appears on the
-horizon,&mdash;totally unlike the others we have seen; it has no visible
-volcanic forms. That is Barbadoes,&mdash;a level burning coral
-coast,&mdash;a streak of green, white-edged, on the verge of the sea.
-But hours pass before the green line begins to show outlines of
-foliage.</p>
-
-<p>... As we approach the harbor an overhanging black cloud suddenly
-bursts down in illuminated rain,&mdash;through which the shapes of
-moored ships seem magnified as through a golden fog. It ceases as
-suddenly as it began; the cloud vanishes utterly; and the azure is
-revealed unflecked, dazzling, wondrous.... It is a sight worth the whole
-journey,&mdash;the splendor of this noon sky at Barbadoes;&mdash;the horizon
-glow is almost blinding, the sea-line sharp as a razor-edge; and
-motionless upon the sapphire water nearly a hundred ships
-lie,&mdash;masts, spars, booms, cordage, cutting against the amazing
-magnificence of blue.... Meanwhile the island coast has clearly brought
-out all its beauties: first you note the long white winding thread-line
-of beach&mdash;coral and bright sand;&mdash;then the deep green fringe
-of vegetation through which roofs and spires project here and there, and
-quivering feathery heads of palms with white trunks. The general tone of
-this verdure is sombre green, though it is full of lustre: there is a
-glimmer in it as of metal. Beyond all this coast-front long undulations
-of misty pale green are visible,&mdash;far slopes of low hill and plain;
-the highest curving line, the ridge of the island, bears a row of
-cocoa-palms. They are so far that their stems diminish almost to
-invisibility: only the crests are clearly distinguishable,&mdash;like
-spiders hanging between land and sky. But there are no forests: the land
-is a naked unshadowed green far as the eye can reach beyond the
-coast-line. There is no waste space in Barbadoes: it is perhaps one of
-the most densely-peopled places on the globe&mdash;(one thousand and
-thirty-five inhabitants to the square mile);&mdash;and it sends black
-laborers by thousands to the other British colonies every
-year,&mdash;the surplus of its population.</p>
-
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
-<a id="figure17"></a>
-<img src="images/figure17.jpg" width="400" alt="" />
-<p class="center">THE QUAY, BRIDGETOWN<br />
-<i>The bustling, busy air of Barba does is in marked contrast
-to the sleepy indifference of the other islands.</i></p>
-</div>
-
-<p>... The city of Bridgetown disappoints the stranger who expects to
-find any exotic features of architecture or custom,&mdash;disappoints
-more, perhaps, than any other tropical port in this respect. Its
-principal streets give you the impression of walking through an English
-town,&mdash;not an old-time town, but a new one, plain almost to
-commonplaceness, in spite of Nelson's monument. Even the palms are
-powerless to lend the place a redly tropical look;&mdash;the streets are
-narrow without being picturesque, white as lime roads and full of
-glare;&mdash;the manners, the costumes, the style of living, the system
-of business are thoroughly English;&mdash;the population lacks visible
-originality; and its extraordinary activity, so oddly at variance with
-the quiet indolence of other West Indian peoples, seems almost
-unnatural. Pressure of numbers has largely contributed to this
-characteristic; but Barbadoes would be in any event, by reason of
-position alone, a busy colony. As the most windward of the West Indies
-it has naturally become not only the chief port, but also the chief
-emporium of the Antilles. It has railroads, telephones, street-cars,
-fire and life insurance companies, good hotels, libraries and
-reading-rooms, and excellent public schools. Its annual export trade
-figures for nearly $6,000,000.</p>
-
-<p>The fact which seems most curious to the stranger, on his first
-acquaintance with the city, is that most of this business activity is
-represented by black men&mdash;black merchants, shopkeepers, clerks.
-Indeed, the Barbadian population, as a mass, strikes one as the darkest
-in the West Indies. Black regiments march through the street to the
-sound of English music,&mdash;uniformed as Zouaves; black police, in
-white helmets and white duck uniforms, maintain order; black
-postmen  distribute the mails; black cabmen wait for customers at
-a shilling an  hour. It is by no means an attractive population,
-physically,&mdash;rather the reverse, and frankly brutal as
-well&mdash;different as possible from the colored race of Martinique;
-but it has immense energy, and speaks excellent English. One is almost
-startled on hearing Barbadian negroes speaking English with a strong Old
-Country accent. Without seeing the speaker, you could scarcely believe
-such English uttered by black lips; and the commonest negro laborer
-about the port pronounces as well as a Londoner. The purity of Barbadian
-English is partly due, no doubt, to the fact that, unlike most of the
-other islands, Barbadoes has always remained in the possession of Great
-Britain. Even as far back as 1676 Barbadoes was in a very different
-condition of prosperity from that of the other colonies, and offered a
-totally different social aspect&mdash;having a white population of
-50,000. At that time the island could muster 20,000 infantry and 3,000
-horse; there were 80,000 slaves; there were 1500 houses in Bridgetown
-and an immense number of shops; and not less than two hundred ships were
-required to export the annual sugar crop alone.</p>
-
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
-<a id="figure18"></a>
-<img src="images/figure18.jpg" width="400" alt="" />
-<p class="center">BRIDGETOWN, BARBADOES<br />
-<i>A picture of lights and shadows, the glare of coral
-roads relieved by the green palms and the blue and
-violet and yellow houses.</i></p>
-</div>
-
-
-<p>But Barbadoes differs also from most of the Antilles geologically;
-and there can be no question that the nature of its soil has
-considerably influenced the physical character of its inhabitants.
-Although Barbadoes is now known to be also of volcanic origin,&mdash;a
-fact which its low undulating surface could enable no unscientific
-observer to suppose,&mdash;it is superficially a calcareous formation;
-and the remarkable effect of limestone soil upon the bodily development
-of a people is not less marked in this latitude than elsewhere. In most
-of the Antilles the white race degenerates and dwarfs under
-the influence of climate and environment; but the Barbadian
-creole&mdash;tall, muscular, large of bone&mdash;preserves and perpetuates
-in the tropics the strength and sturdiness of his English
-forefathers.</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>XXIII</h4>
-
-
-<p>... Night: steaming for British Guiana;&mdash;we shall touch at no port
-before reaching Demerara.... A strong warm gale, that compels the taking
-in of every awning and wind-sail. Driving tepid rain; and an intense
-darkness, broken only by the phosphorescence of the sea, which to-night
-displays extraordinary radiance.</p>
-
-<p>The steamer's wake is a great broad, seething river of
-fire,&mdash;white like strong moonshine: the glow is bright enough to
-read by. At its centre the trail is brightest;&mdash;towards either edge
-it pales off cloudily,&mdash;curling like smoke of phosphorus. Great
-sharp lights burst up momentarily through it like meteors. Weirder than
-this strange wake are the long slow fires that keep burning about us at
-a distance, out in the dark. Nebulous incandescences mount up from the
-depths, change form, and pass;&mdash;serpentine flames wriggle
-by;&mdash;there are long billowing crests of fire. These seem to be
-formed of millions of tiny sparks, that light all at the same time, glow
-for a while, disappear, reappear, and swirl away in a prolonged
-smouldering.</p>
-
-<p>There are warm gales and heavy rain each night,&mdash;it is the
-hurricane season;&mdash;and it seems these become more violent the
-farther south we sail. But we are nearing those equinoctial regions
-where the calm of nature is never disturbed by storms.</p>
-
-<p>... Morning: still steaming south, through a vast blue day. The azure of
-the heaven always seems to be growing deeper. There is a bluish-white
-glow in the horizon,&mdash;almost too bright to look at. An indigo sea....
-There are no clouds; and the splendor endures until sunset.</p>
-
-<p>Then another night, very luminous and calm. The Southern constellations
-burn whitely.... We are nearing the great shallows of the South American
-coast.</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>XXIV</h4>
-
-
-<p>... It is the morning of the third day since we left Barbadoes, and
-for the first time since entering tropic waters all things seem
-changed. The atmosphere is heavy with strange mists; and the light of an
-orange-colored sun, immensely magnified by vapors, illuminates a
-greenish-yellow sea,&mdash;foul and opaque, as if stagnant.... I remember
-just such a sunrise over the Louisiana gulf-coast.</p>
-
-<p>We are in the shallows, moving very slowly. The line-caster keeps
-calling, at regular intervals: "Quarter less five, sir! And a half four,
-sir!"... There is little variation in his soundings&mdash;a quarter of a
-fathom or half a fathom difference. The warm air has a sickly heaviness,
-like the air of a swamp; the water shows olive and ochreous tones
-alternately;&mdash;the foam is yellow in our wake. These might be the
-colors of a fresh-water inundation....</p>
-
-<p>A fellow-traveller tells me, as we lean over the rail, that this same
-viscous, glaucous sea washes the great penal colony of Cayenne&mdash;which
-he visited. When a convict dies there, the corpse, sewn up in a sack, is
-borne to the water, and a great bell tolled. Then the still surface is
-suddenly broken by fins innumerable,&mdash;black fins of sharks rushing to
-the hideous funeral: they know the Bell!...</p>
-
-<p>There is land in sight&mdash;very low land,&mdash;a thin dark line
-suggestingmarshiness; and the nauseous color of the water always deepens.</p>
-
-<p>As the land draws near, it reveals a beautiful tropical appearance. The
-sombre green line brightens color, sharpens into a splendid fringe of
-fantastic evergreen fronds, bristling with palm crests. Then a mossy
-sea-wall comes into sight&mdash;dull gray stone-work, green-lined at all
-its joints. There is a fort. The steamer's whistle is exactly mocked by a
-queer echo, and the cannon-shot once reverberated&mdash;only once: there
-are no mountains here to multiply a sound. And all the while the water
-becomes a thicker and more turbid green; the wake looks more and more
-ochreous, the foam ropier and yellower. Vessels becalmed everywhere
-speck the glass-level of the sea, like insects sticking upon a mirror.
-It begins, all of a sudden, to rain torrentially; and through the white
-storm of falling drops nothing is discernible.</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>XXV</h4>
-
-
-<p>At Georgetown, steamers entering the river can lie close to the
-wharf;&mdash;we can enter the Government warehouses without getting wet. In
-fifteen minutes the shower ceases; and we leave the warehouses to find
-ourselves in a broad, palm-bordered street illuminated by the most
-prodigious day that yet shone upon our voyage. The rain has cleared the
-air and dissolved the mists; and the light is wondrous.</p>
-
-<p>My own memory of Demerara will always be a memory of enormous light. The
-radiance has an indescribable dazzling force that conveys the idea of
-electric fire;&mdash;the horizon blinds like a motionless sheet of
-lightning; and you dare not look at the zenith.... The brightest summer-day
-in the North is a gloaming to this. Men walk only under umbrellas, or with
-their eyes down; and the pavements, already dry, flare almost
-unbearably.</p>
-
-<p>... Georgetown has an exotic aspect peculiar to itself,&mdash;different
-from that of any West Indian city we have seen; and this is chiefly due to
-the presence of palm-trees. For the edifices, the plan, the general idea
-of the town are modern; the white streets, laid out very broad to the
-sweep of the sea-breeze, and drained by canals running through their
-centres, with bridges at cross-streets, display the value of
-nineteenth-century knowledge regarding house-building with a view to
-coolness as well as to beauty. The architecture might be described as a
-tropicalized Swiss style&mdash;Swiss eaves are developed into veranda
-roofs, and Swiss porches prolonged and lengthened into beautiful piazzas
-and balconies. The men who devised these large cool halls, these admirably
-ventilated rooms, these latticed windows opening to the ceiling, may
-have lived in India; but the physiognomy of the town also reveals a fine
-sense of beauty in the designers: all that is strange and beautiful in
-the vegetation of the tropics has had a place contrived for it, a home
-prepared for it. Each dwelling has its garden; each garden blazes with
-singular and lovely color; but everywhere and always tower the palms.
-There are colonnades of palms, clumps of palms, groves of palms&mdash;sago
-and cabbage and cocoa and fan palms. You can see that the palm is
-cherished here, is loved for its beauty, like a woman. Everywhere you
-find palms, in all stages of development, from the first sheaf of tender
-green plumes rising above the soil to the wonderful colossus that holds
-its head a hundred feet above the roofs; palms border the garden walks
-in colonnades; they are grouped in exquisite poise about the basins of
-fountains; they stand like magnificent pillars at either side of gates;
-they look into the highest windows of public buildings and hotels.</p>
-
-<p>... For miles and miles and miles we drive along avenues of
-palms&mdash;avenues leading to opulent cane-fields, traversing queer coolie
-villages. Rising on either side of the road to the same level, the palms
-present the vista of a long unbroken double colonnade of dead-silver
-trunks, shining tall pillars with deep green plume-tufted summits,
-almost touching, almost forming something like the dream of an
-interminable Moresque arcade. Sometimes for a full mile the trees are
-only about thirty or forty feet high; then, turning into an older alley,
-we drive for half a league between giants nearly a hundred feet in
-altitude. The double perspective lines of their crests, meeting before
-us and behind us in a bronze-green darkness, betray only at long
-intervals any variation of color, where some dead leaf droops like an
-immense yellow feather.</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>XXVI</h4>
-
-
-<p>In the marvellous light, which brings out all the rings of their
-bark, these palms sometimes produce a singular impression of subtle,
-fleshy, sentient life,&mdash;seem to move with a slowly stealthy motion
-as you ride or drive past them. The longer you watch them, the stronger
-this idea becomes,&mdash;the more they seem alive,&mdash;the more their
-long silver-gray articulated bodies seem to poise, undulate, stretch....
-Certainly the palms of a Demerara country-road evoke no such real
-emotion as that produced by the stupendous palms of the Jardin des
-Plantes in Martinique. That beautiful, solemn, silent life upreaching
-through tropical forest to the sun for warmth, for color, for
-power,&mdash;filled me, I remember, with a sensation of awe different
-from anything which I had ever experienced.... But even here in Guiana,
-standing alone under the sky, the palm still seems a creature rather
-than a tree,&mdash;gives you the idea of personality;&mdash;you could
-almost believe each lithe shape animated by a thinking
-force,&mdash;believe that all are watching you with such passionless
-calm as legend lends to beings supernatural.... And I wonder if some
-kindred fancy might not have inspired the name given by the French
-colonists to the male palmiste,&mdash;<i>angelin</i>....</p>
-
-<p><br /></p>
-
-<p>Very wonderful is the botanical garden here. It is new; and there are
-no groves, no heavy timber, no shade; but the finely laid-out
-grounds,&mdash;alternations of lawn and flower-bed,&mdash;offer
-everywhere surprising sights. You observe curious orange-colored shrubs;
-plants speckled with four different colors; plants that look like wigs
-of green hair; plants with enormous broad leaves that seem made of
-colored crystal; plants that do not look like natural growths, but like
-idealizations of plants,&mdash;those beautiful fantasticalities imagined
-by sculptors. All these we see in glimpses from a
-carriage-window,&mdash;yellow, indigo, black, and crimson plants.... We
-draw rein only to observe in the ponds the green navies of the Victoria
-Regia,&mdash;the monster among water-lilies. It covers all the ponds and
-many of the canals. Close to shore the leaves are not extraordinarily
-large; but they increase in breadth as they float farther out, as if
-gaining bulk proportionately to the depth of water. A few yards off,
-they are large as soup-plates; farther out, they are broad as
-dinner-trays; in the centre of the pond or canal they have surface large
-as tea-tables. And all have an upturned edge, a perpendicular rim. Here
-and there you see the imperial flower,&mdash;towering above the
-leaves.... Perhaps, if your hired driver be a good guide, he will show
-you the snake-nut,&mdash;the fruit of an extraordinary tree native to
-the Guiana forests. This swart nut&mdash;shaped almost like a
-clam-shell, and halving in the same way along its sharp edges&mdash;encloses
-something almost incredible. There is a pale envelope about the kernel;
-remove it, and you find between your fingers a little viper,
-triangular-headed, coiled thrice upon itself, perfect in every detail of
-form from head to tail. Was this marvellous mockery evolved for a
-protective end? It is no eccentricity: in every nut the serpent-kernel
-lies coiled the same.</p>
-
-<p>... Yet in spite of a hundred such novel impressions, what a delight it
-is to turn again cityward through the avenues of palms, and to feel once
-more the sensation of being watched, without love or hate, by all those
-lithe, tall, silent, gracious shapes!</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>XXVII</h4>
-
-
-<p>Hindoos; coolies; men, women, and children&mdash;standing, walking, or
-sitting in the sun, under the shadowing of the palms. Men squatting,
-with hands clasped over their black knees, are watching us from under
-their white turbans&mdash;very steadily, with a slight scowl. All these
-Indian faces have the same set, stem expression, the same knitting of
-the brows; and the keen gaze is not altogether pleasant. It borders upon
-hostility; it is the look of measurement&mdash;measurement physical and
-moral. In the mighty swarming of India these have learned the full
-meaning and force of life's law as we Occidentals rarely learn it. Under
-the dark fixed frown the eye glitters like a serpent's.</p>
-
-<p>Nearly all wear the same Indian dress; the thickly folded turban,
-usually white, white drawers reaching but half-way down the thigh,
-leaving the knees and the legs bare, and white jacket. A few don long
-blue robes, and wear a colored head-dress: these are
-babagees&mdash;priests. Most of the men look tall; they are slender and
-small-boned, but the limbs are well turned. They are grave&mdash;talk in
-low tones, and seldom smile. Those you see with heavy black beards are
-probably Mussulmans: I am told they have their mosques here, and that
-the muezzin's call to prayer is chanted three times daily on many
-plantations. Others shave, but the Mohammedans allow all the beard to
-grow.... Very comely some of the women are in their close-clinging soft
-brief robes and tantalizing veils&mdash;a costume leaving shoulders,
-arms, and ankles bare. The dark arm is always tapered and rounded; the
-silver-circled ankle always elegantly knit to the light straight foot.
-Many slim girls, whether standing or walking or in repose, offer
-remarkable studies of grace; their attitude when erect always suggests
-lightness and suppleness, like the poise of a dancer.</p>
-
-<p>... A coolie mother passes, carrying at her hip a very pretty naked
-baby. It has exquisite delicacy of limb: its tiny ankles are circled by
-thin bright silver rings; it looks like a little bronze statuette, a
-statuette of Kama, the Indian Eros. The mother's arms are covered from
-elbow to wrist with silver bracelets,&mdash;some flat and decorated; others
-coarse, round, smooth, with ends hammered into the form of viper-heads.
-She has large flowers of gold in her ears, a small gold flower in her
-very delicate little nose. This nose ornament does not seem absurd; on
-these dark skins the effect is almost as pleasing as it is bizarre. This
-jewellry is pure metal;&mdash;it is thus the coolies carry their
-savings,&mdash;melting down silver or gold coin, and recasting it into
-bracelets, ear-rings, and nose ornaments.</p>
-
-<p>... Evening is brief: all this time the days have been growing shorter:
-it will be black at 6 P.M. One does not regret it;&mdash;the glory of such
-a tropical day as this&mdash;is almost too much to endure for twelve hours.
-The sun is already low, and yellow with a tinge of orange: as he falls
-between the palms his stare colors the world with a strange hue&mdash;such
-a phantasmal light as might be given by a nearly burnt-out sun. The air is
-full of unfamiliar odors. We pass a flame-colored bush; and an
-extraordinary perfume&mdash;strange, rich, sweet&mdash;envelops us like a
-caress: the soul of a red jasmine....</p>
-
-<p>... What a tropical sunset is this&mdash;within two days'
-steam-journey of the equator! Almost to the zenith the sky flames up
-from the sea,&mdash;one tremendous orange incandescence, rapidly
-deepening to vermilion as the sim dips. The indescribable intensity of
-this mighty burning makes one totally unprepared for the spectacle of
-its sudden passing: a seeming drawing down behind the sea of the whole
-vast flare of light.... Instantly the world becomes indigo. The air
-grows humid, weighty with vapor; frogs commence to make a queer bubbling
-noise; and some unknown creature begins in the trees a singular music,
-not trilling, like the note of our cricket, but one continuous shrill
-tone, high, keen, as of a thin jet of steam leaking through a valve.
-Strong vegetal scents, aromatic and novel, rise up. Under the trees of
-our hotel I hear a continuous dripping sound; the drops fall heavily,
-like bodies of clumsy insects. But it is not dew, nor insects; it is a
-thick, transparent jelly&mdash;a fleshy liquor that falls in immense
-drops.... The night grows chill with dews, with vegetable breath; and we
-sleep with windows nearly closed.</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>XXVIII</h4>
-
-
-<p>... Another sunset like the conflagration of a world, as we steam away
-from Guiana;&mdash;another unclouded night; and morning brings back to us
-that bright blue in the sea-water which we missed for the first time on
-our approach to the main-land. There is a long swell all day, and tepid
-winds. But towards evening the water once more shifts its hue&mdash;takes
-olive tint&mdash;the mighty flood of the Orinoco is near.</p>
-
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
-<a id="figure19"></a>
-<img src="images/figure19.jpg" width="400" alt="" />
-<p class="center">COUNTRY ROAD, BARBADOES<br />
-<i>One rides for miles between walls of waving cane.
-The white glare of the coral roads is blinding.</i></p>
-</div>
-
-
-<p>Over the rim of the sea rise shapes faint pink, faint gray&mdash;misty
-shapes that grow and lengthen as we advance. We are nearing Trinidad.</p>
-
-<p>It first takes definite form as a prolonged, undulating, pale gray
-mountain chain,&mdash;the outline of a sierra. Approaching nearer, we
-discern other hill summits rounding up and shouldering away behind the
-chain itself. Then the nearest heights begin to turn faint green&mdash;very
-slowly. Right before the outermost spur of cliff, fantastic shapes of rock
-are rising sheer from the water: partly green, partly reddish-gray where
-the surface remains unclothed by creepers and shrubs. Between them the sea
-leaps and whitens.</p>
-
-<p>... And we begin to steam along a magnificent tropical
-coast,&mdash;before a billowing of hills wrapped in forest from sea to
-summit,&mdash;astonishing forest, dense, sombre, impervious to
-sun&mdash;every gap a blackness as of ink. Giant palms here and there
-overtop the dense, foliage; and queer monster trees rise above the
-forest-level against the blue,&mdash;spreading out huge flat crests from
-which masses of lianas stream down. This forest-front has the apparent
-solidity of a wall, and forty-five miles of it undulate uninterruptedly
-by us&mdash;rising by terraces, or projecting like turret-lines, or
-shooting up into semblance of cathedral forms or suggestions of
-castellated architecture.... But the secrets of these woods have not
-been unexplored;&mdash;one of the noblest writers of our time has so
-beautifully and fully written of them as to leave little for any one
-else to say. He who knows Charles Kingsley's "At Last" probably knows
-the woods of Trinidad far better than many who pass them daily.</p>
-
-<p>Even as observed from the steamer's deck, the mountains and forests
-of Trinidad have an aspect very different from those of the other
-Antilles. The heights are less lofty,&mdash;less jagged and
-abrupt,&mdash;with rounded summits; the peaks of Martinique or Dominica
-rise fully two thousand feet higher. The land itself is a totally
-different formation,&mdash;anciently being a portion of the continent;
-and its flora and fauna are of South America.</p>
-
-<p>... There comes a great cool whiff of wind,&mdash;another and
-another;&mdash;then a mighty breath begins to blow steadily upon
-us,&mdash;the breath of the Orinoco.... It grows dark before we pass
-through the Ape's Mouth, to anchor in one of the calmest harbors in the
-world,&mdash;never disturbed by hurricanes. Over unruffled water the
-lights of Port-of-Spain shoot long still yellow beams.... The night
-grows chill;&mdash;the air is made frigid by the breath of the enormous
-river and the vapors of the great woods.</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>XXIX</h4>
-
-
-<p>... Sunrise: a morning of supernal beauty,&mdash;the sky of a fairy
-tale,&mdash;the sea of a love-poem.</p>
-
-<p>Under a heaven of exquisitely tender blue, the whole smooth sea has a
-perfect luminous dove-color,&mdash;the horizon being filled to a great
-height with greenish-golden haze,&mdash;a mist of unspeakably sweet tint, a
-hue that, imitated in any aquarelle, would be cried out against as an
-impossibility. As yet the hills are nearly all gray, the forests also
-inwrapping them are gray and ghostly, for the sun has just risen above
-them, and vapors hang like a veil between. Then, over the glassy level
-of the flood, bands of purple and violet and pale blue and fluid gold
-begin to shoot and quiver and broaden; these are the currents of the
-morning, catching varying color with the deepening of the day and the
-lifting of the tide.</p>
-
-<p>Then, as the sun rises higher, green masses begin to glimmer among the
-grays; the outlines of the forest summits commence to define themselves
-through the vapory light, to left and right of the great glow. Only the
-city still remains invisible; it lies exactly between us and the
-downpour of solar splendor, and the mists there have caught such
-radiance that the place seems hidden by a fog of fire. Gradually the
-gold-green of the horizon changes to a pure yellow; the hills take soft,
-rich, sensuous colors. One of the more remote has turned a marvellous
-tone&mdash;a seemingly diaphanous aureate color, the very ghost of gold.
-But at last all of them sharpen bluely, show bright folds and ribbings of
-green through their haze. The valleys remain awhile clouded, as if
-filled with something like blue smoke; but the projecting masses of
-cliff and slope swiftly change their misty green to a warmer hue. All
-these tints and colors have a spectral charm, a preternatural
-loveliness; everything seems subdued, softened, semi-vaporized,&mdash;the
-only very sharply defined silhouettes being those of the little becalmed
-ships sprinkling the western water, all spreading colored wings to catch
-the morning breeze.</p>
-
-<p>The more the sun ascends, the more rapid the development of the
-landscape out of vapory blue; the hills all become green-faced, reveal
-the details of frondage. The wind fills the waiting sails&mdash;white, red,
-yellow,&mdash;ripples the water, and turns it green. Little fish begin to
-leap; they spring and fall in glittering showers like opalescent blown
-spray. And at last, through the fading vapor, dew-glittering red-tiled
-roofs reveal themselves: the city is unveiled&mdash;a city full of color,
-somewhat quaint, somewhat Spanish-looking&mdash;a little like St. Pierre, a
-little like New Orleans in the old quarter; everywhere fine tall palms.</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>XXX</h4>
-
-
-<p>Ashore, through a black swarming and a great hum of creole chatter....
-Warm yellow narrow streets under a burning blue day;&mdash;a confused
-impression of long vistas, of low pretty houses and cottages, more or
-less quaint, bathed in sun and yellow-wash,&mdash;-and avenues of
-shade-trees,&mdash;and low garden-walls overtopped by waving banana leaves
-and fronds of palms.... A general sensation of drowsy warmth and vast
-light and exotic vegetation,&mdash;coupled with some vague disappointment
-at the absence of that picturesque humanity that delighted us in the
-streets of St. Pierre, Martinique. The bright costumes of the French
-colonies are not visible here: there is nothing like them in any of the
-English islands. Nevertheless, this wonderful Trinidad is as unique
-ethnologically as it is otherwise remarkable among all the other
-Antilles. It has three distinct creole populations,&mdash;English, Spanish,
-and French,&mdash;besides its German and Madeiran settlers. There is also a
-special black or half-breed element, corresponding to each creole race,
-and speaking the language of each: there are fifty thousand Hindoo
-coolies, and a numerous body of Chinese. Still, this extraordinary
-diversity of race elements does not make itself at once apparent to the
-stranger. Your first impression, as you pass through the black crowd
-upon the wharf, is that of being among a population as nearly African as
-that of Barbadoes; and indeed the black element dominates to such an
-extent that upon the streets white faces look strange by contrast. When
-a white face does appear, it is usually under the shadow of an Indian
-helmet, and heavily bearded, and austere: the physiognomy of one used to
-command. Against the fantastic ethnic background of all this colonial
-life, this strong, bearded English visage takes something of heroic
-relief;&mdash;one feels, in a totally novel way, the dignity of a white
-skin.</p>
-
-<p>... I hire a carriage to take me to the nearest coolie village;&mdash;a
-delightful drive.... Sometimes the smooth white road curves round the
-slope of a forest-covered mountain;&mdash;sometimes overlooks a valley
-shining with twenty different shades of surface green;&mdash;sometimes
-traverses marvellous natural arcades formed by the interweaving and
-intercrossing of bamboos fifty feet high. Rising in vast clumps, and
-spreading out sheaf-wise from the soil towards the sky, the curves of
-their beautiful jointed stems meet at such perfect angles above the way,
-and on either side of it, as to imitate almost exactly the elaborate
-Gothic arch-work of old abbey cloisters. Above the road, shadowing the
-slopes of lofty hills, forests beetle in dizzy precipices of verdure.
-They are green&mdash;burning, flashing green&mdash;covered with parasitic green
-creepers and vines; they show enormous forms, or rather dreams of form,
-fetichistic and startling. Banana leaves flicker and flutter along the
-way-side; palms shoot up to vast altitudes, like pillars of white metal;
-and there is a perpetual shifting of foliage color, from yellow-green to
-orange, from reddish-green to purple, from emerald-green to black-green.
-But the background color, the dominant tone, is like the plumage of a
-green parrot.</p>
-
-<p>... We drive into the coolie village, along a narrower way, lined with
-plantain-trees, bananas, flamboyants, and unfamiliar shrubs with large
-broad leaves. Here and there are cocoa-palms. Beyond the little ditches
-on either side, occupying openings in the natural hedge, are the
-dwellings&mdash;wooden cabins, widely separated from each other. The narrow
-lanes that enter the road are also lined with habitations, half hidden
-by banana-trees. There is a prodigious glare, an intense heat. Around,
-above the trees and the roofs, rise the far hill shapes, some brightly
-verdant, some cloudy blue, some gray. The road and the lanes are almost
-deserted; there is little shade; only at intervals some slender brown
-girl or naked baby appears at a door-way. The carriage halts before a
-shed built against a wall&mdash;a simple roof of palm thatch supported upon
-jointed posts of bamboo.</p>
-
-<p>It is a little coolie temple. A few weary Indian laborers slumber in its
-shadow; pretty naked children, with silver rings round their ankles, are
-playing there with a white dog. Painted over the wall surface, in red,
-yellow, brown, blue, and green designs upon a white ground, are
-extraordinary figures of gods and goddesses. They have several pairs of
-arms, brandishing mysterious things,&mdash;they seem to dance, gesticulate,
-threaten; but they are all very naif,&mdash;remind one of the first efforts
-of a child with the first box of paints. While I am looking at these
-things, one coolie after another wakes up (these men sleep lightly) and
-begins to observe me almost as curiously, and I fear much less kindly,
-than I have been observing the gods. "Where is your babagee?" I inquire.
-No one seems to comprehend my question; the gravity of each dark face
-remains unrelaxed. Yet I would have liked to make an offering unto Siva.</p>
-
-<p><br /></p>
-
-<p>... Outside the Indian goldsmith's cabin, palm shadows are crawling
-slowly to and fro in the white glare, like shapes of tarantulas. Inside,
-the heat is augmented by the tiny charcoal furnace which glows beside a
-ridiculous little anvil set into a wooden block buried level with the
-soil. Through a rear door come odors of unknown flowers and the cool
-brilliant green of banana leaves.... A minute of waiting in the hot
-silence;&mdash;then, noiselessly as a phantom, the nude-limbed smith enters
-by a rear door,&mdash;squats down, without a word, on his little mat beside
-his little anvil,&mdash;and turns towards me, inquiringly, a face half
-veiled by a black beard,&mdash;a turbaned Indian face, sharp, severe, and
-slightly unpleasant in expression. "<i>Vlé béras!</i>" explains my creole
-driver, pointing to his client. The smith opens his lips to utter in the
-tone of a call the single syllable "<i>Ra!</i>" then folds his arms.</p>
-
-<p>Almost immediately a young Hindoo woman enters, squats down on the
-earthen floor at the end of the bench which forms the only furniture of
-the shop, and turns upon me a pair of the finest black eyes I have ever
-seen,&mdash;like the eyes of a fawn. She is very simply clad in a coolie
-robe leaving arms and ankles bare, and clinging about the figure in
-gracious folds; her color is a clear bright brown&mdash;new bronze; her
-face a fine oval, and charmingly aquiline. I perceive a little silver ring,
-in the form of a twisted snake, upon the slender second toe of each bare
-foot; upon each arm she has at least ten heavy silver rings; there are also
-large silver rings about her ankles; a gold flower is fixed by a little
-hook in one nostril, and two immense silver circles, shaped like new
-moons, shimmer in her ears. The smith mutters something to her in his
-Indian tongue. She rises, and seating herself on the bench beside me, in
-an attitude of perfect grace, holds out one beautiful brown arm to me
-that I may choose a ring.</p>
-
-<p>The arm is much more worthy of attention than the rings: it has the
-tint, the smoothness, the symmetry, of a fine statuary's work in
-metal;&mdash;the upper arm, tattooed with a bluish circle of arabesques, is
-otherwise unadorned; all the bracelets are on the fore-arm. Very clumsy
-and coarse they prove to be on closer examination: it was the fine dark
-skin which by color contrast made them look so pretty. I choose the outer
-one, a round ring with terminations shaped like viper heads;&mdash;the
-smith inserts a pair of tongs between these ends, presses outward slowly
-and strongly, and the ring is off. It has a faint musky odor, not
-unpleasant, the perfume of the tropical flesh it clung to. I would have
-taken it thus; but the smith snatches it from me, heats it red in his
-little charcoal furnace, hammers it into a nearly perfect circle again,
-slakes it, and burnishes it.</p>
-
-<p>Then I ask for children's <i>béras</i>, or bracelets; and the young
-mother brings in her own baby girl,&mdash;a little darling just able to
-walk. She has extraordinary eyes;&mdash;the mother's eyes magnified (the
-father's are small and fierce). I bargain for the single pair of thin
-rings on her little wrists;&mdash;while the smith is taking them off,
-the child keeps her wonderful gaze fixed on my face. Then I observe that
-the peculiarity of the eye is the size of the iris rather than the size
-of the ball. These eyes are not soft like the mother's, after all; they
-are ungentle, beautiful as they are; they have the dark and splendid
-flame of the eyes of a great bird&mdash;a bird of prey.</p>
-
-<p><br /></p>
-
-<p>... She will grow up, this little maid, into a slender, graceful woman,
-very beautiful, no doubt; perhaps a little dangerous. She will marry, of
-course: probably she is betrothed even now, according to Indian
-custom,&mdash;pledged to some brown boy, the son of a friend. It will not
-be so many years before the day of their noisy wedding: girls shoot up
-under this sun with as swift a growth as those broad-leaved beautiful
-shapes which fill the open door-way with quivering emerald. And she will
-know the witchcraft of those eyes, will feel the temptation to use
-them,&mdash;perhaps to smile one of those smiles which have power over life
-and death.</p>
-
-<p>And then the old coolie story! One day, in the yellowing cane-fields,
-among the swarm of veiled and turbaned workers, a word is overheard, a
-side glance intercepted;&mdash;there is the swirling flash of a cutlass
-blade; a shrieking gathering of women about a headless corpse in the
-sun; and passing cityward, between armed and helmeted men, the vision of
-an Indian prisoner, blood-crimsoned, walking very steadily, very erect,
-with the solemnity of a judge, the dry bright gaze of an idol....</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>XXXI</h4>
-
-
-<p>... We steam very slowly into the harbor of St. George, Grenada, in dead
-silence. No cannon-signal allowed here.... Some one suggests that the
-violence of the echoes in this harbor renders the firing of cannon
-dangerous; somebody else says the town is in so ruinous a condition that
-the report of a gun would shake it down.</p>
-
-<p>... There are heavy damp smells in the warm air as of mould, or of wet
-clay freshly upturned.</p>
-
-<p>This harbor is a deep clear basin, surrounded and shadowed by immense
-volcanic hills, all green. The opening by which we entered is cut off
-from sight by a promontory, and hill shapes beyond the promontory;&mdash;we
-seem to be in the innermost ring of a double crater. There is a
-continuous shimmering and plashing of leaping fish in the shadow of the
-loftiest height, which reaches half across the water.</p>
-
-<p>As it climbs up the base of the huge hill at a precipitous angle, the
-city can be seen from the steamer's deck almost as in a bird's-eye view.
-A senescent city; mostly antiquated Spanish architecture,&mdash;ponderous
-archways and earthquake-proof walls. The yellow buildings fronting us
-beyond the wharf seem half decayed; they are strangely streaked with
-green, look as if they had been long under water. We row ashore, land in
-a crowd of lazy-looking, silent blacks.</p>
-
-<p>... What a quaint, dawdling, sleepy place it is! All these narrow
-streets are falling into ruin; everywhere the same green stains upon the
-walls, as of slime left by a flood; everywhere disjointed brickwork,
-crumbling roofs, pungent odors of mould. Yet this Spanish architecture
-was built to endure; those yellow, blue, or green walls were constructed
-with the solidity of fortress-work; the very stairs are stone; the
-balustrades and the railings were made of good wrought iron. In a
-Northern clime such edifices would resist the wear and tear of five
-hundred years. But here the powers of disintegration are extraordinary,
-and the very air would seem to have the devouring force of an acid. All
-surfaces and angles are yielding to the attacks of time, weather, and
-microscopic organisms; paint peels, stucco falls, tiles tumble, stones
-slip out of place, and in every chink tiny green things nestle,
-propagating themselves through the jointures and dislocating the masonry.
-There is an appalling mouldiness, an exaggerated mossiness&mdash;the
-mystery and the melancholy of a city deserted. Old warehouses without
-signs, huge and void, are opened regularly every day for so many hours;
-yet the business of the aged merchants within seems to be a
-problem;&mdash;you might fancy those gray men were always waiting for ships
-that sailed away a generation ago, and will never return. You see no
-customers entering the stores, but only a black mendicant from time to
-time. And high above all this, overlooking streets too steep for any
-vehicle, slope the red walls of the mouldering fort, patched with the
-viridescence of ruin.</p>
-
-<p><br /></p>
-
-<p>By a road leading up beyond the city, you reach the cemetery. The
-staggering iron gates by which you enter it are almost rusted from their
-hinges, and the low wall enclosing it is nearly all verdant. Within, you
-see a wilderness of strange weeds, vines, creepers, fantastic shrubs run
-mad, with a few palms mounting above the green confusion;&mdash;only here
-and there a gleam of slabs with inscriptions half erased. Such as you can
-read are epitaphs of seamen, dating back to the years 1800, 1802, 1812.
-Over these lizards are running; undulations in the weeds warn you to
-beware of snakes; toads leap away as you proceed; and you observe
-everywhere, crickets perched&mdash;grass-colored creatures with two ruby
-specks for eyes. They make a sound shrill as the scream of machinery
-bevelling marble. At the farther end of the cemetery is a heavy ruin
-that would seem to have once been part of a church: it is so covered
-with creeping weeds now that you only distinguish the masonry on close
-approach, and high trees are growing within it.</p>
-
-<p>There is something in tropical ruin peculiarly and terribly impressive:
-this luxuriant, evergreen, ever-splendid Nature consumes the results of
-human endeavor so swiftly, buries memories so profoundly, distorts the
-labors of generations so grotesquely, that one feels here, as nowhere
-else, how ephemeral man is, how intense and how tireless the effort
-necessary to preserve his frail creations even a little while from the
-vast unconscious forces antagonistic to all stability, to all factitious
-equilibrium.</p>
-
-<p><br /></p>
-
-<p>... A gloomy road winds high around one cliff overlooking the hollow of
-the bay. Following it, you pass under extraordinarily dark shadows of
-foliage, and over a blackish soil strewn with pretty bright green fruit
-that has fallen from above. Do not touch them even with the tip of your
-finger! Those are manchineel apples; with their milky juice the old
-Caribs were wont to poison the barbs of their parrot-feathered arrows.
-Over the mould, swarming among the venomous fruit, innumerable crabs
-make a sound almost like the murmuring of water. Some are very large,
-with prodigious stalked eyes, and claws white as ivory, and a red
-cuirass; others, very small and very swift in their movements, are
-raspberry-colored; others, again, are apple-green, with queer mottlings
-of black and white. There is an unpleasant odor of decay in the
-air&mdash;vegetable decay.</p>
-
-<p>Emerging from the shadow of the manchineel-trees, you may follow the
-road up, up, up, under beetling cliffs of plutonian rock that seem about
-to topple down upon the path-way. The rock is naked and black near the
-road; higher, it is veiled by a heavy green drapery of lianas, curling
-creepers, unfamiliar vines. All around you are sounds of crawling, dull
-echoes of dropping; the thick growths far up waver in the breathless air
-as if something were moving sinuously through them. And always the odor
-of humid decomposition. Farther on, the road looks wilder, sloping
-between black rocks, through strange vaultings of foliage and
-night-black shadows. Its lonesomeness oppresses; one returns without
-regret, by rusting gate-ways and tottering walls, back to the old West
-Indian city rotting in the sun.</p>
-
-<p>... Yet Grenada, despite the dilapidation of her capital and the seeming
-desolation of its environs, is not the least prosperous of the Antilles.
-Other islands have been less fortunate: the era of depression has almost
-passed for Grenada; through the rapid development of her secondary
-cultures&mdash;coffee and cocoa&mdash;she hopes with good reason to repair
-some of the vast losses involved by the decay of the sugar industry.</p>
-
-<p>Still, in this silence of mouldering streets, this melancholy of
-abandoned dwellings, this invasion of vegetation, there is a suggestion
-of what any West Indian port might become when the resources of the
-island had been exhausted, and its commerce ruined. After all persons of
-means and energy enough to seek other fields of industry and enterprise
-had taken their departure, and the plantations had been abandoned, and
-the warehouses closed up forever, and the voiceless wharves left to rot
-down into the green water, Nature would soon so veil the place as to
-obliterate every outward visible sign of the past. In scarcely more than
-a generation from the time that the last merchant steamer had taken her
-departure some traveller might look for the once populous and busy mart
-in vain: vegetation would have devoured it.</p>
-
-<p>... In the mixed English and creole speech of the black population one
-can discern evidence of a linguistic transition. The original French
-patois is being rapidly forgotten or transformed irrecognizably.</p>
-
-<p>Now, in almost every island the negro idiom is different. So often have
-some of the Antilles changed owners, moreover, that in them the negro
-has never been able to form a true <i>patois.</i> He had scarcely acquired
-some idea of the language of his first masters, when other rulers and
-another tongue were thrust upon him,&mdash;and this may have occurred three
-or four times! The result is a totally incoherent agglomeration of
-speech-forms&mdash;a <i>baragouin</i> fantastic and unintelligible beyond
-the power of any one to imagine who has not heard it....</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>XXXII</h4>
-
-
-<p>... A beautiful fantastic shape floats to us through the morning
-light; first cloudy gold like the horizon, then pearly gray, then
-varying blue, with growing green lights;&mdash;Saint Lucia. Most
-strangely formed of all this volcanic family;&mdash;everywhere
-mountainings sharp as broken crystals. Far off the Pitons&mdash;twin
-peaks of the high coast&mdash;show softer contours, like two black breasts
-pointing against the sky....</p>
-
-<p>... As we enter the harbor of Castries, the lines of the land seem no
-less exquisitely odd, in spite of their rich verdure, than when viewed
-afar off;&mdash;they have a particular pitch of angle.... Other of these
-islands show more or less family resemblance;&mdash;you might readily
-mistake one silhouette for another as seen at a distance, even after
-several West Indian journeys. But Saint Lucia at once impresses you by
-its eccentricity.</p>
-
-<p>Castries, drowsing under palm leaves at the edge of its curving
-harbor,&mdash;perhaps an ancient crater,&mdash;seems more of a village than
-a town: streets of low cottages and little tropic gardens. It has a
-handsome half-breed population: the old French colonial manners have
-been less changed here by English influence than in Saint Kitt's and
-elsewhere;&mdash;the creole <i>patois</i> is still spoken, though the
-costumes have changed.... A more beautiful situation could scarcely be
-imagined,&mdash;even in this tropic world. In the massing of green heights
-about the little town are gaps showing groves of palm beyond; but the
-peak summits catch the clouds. Behind us the harbor mouth seems spanned
-by steel-blue bars: these are lines of currents. Away, on either hand,
-volcanic hills are billowing to vapory distance; and in their nearer
-hollows are beautiful deepenings of color: ponded shades of diaphanous
-blue or purplish tone.... I first remarked this extraordinary coloring
-of shadows in Martinique, where it exists to a degree that tempts one to
-believe the island has a special atmosphere of its own.... A friend
-tells me the phenomenon is probably due to inorganic substances floating
-in the air,&mdash;each substance in diffusion having its own index of
-refraction. Substances so held in suspension by vapors would vary
-according to the nature of soil in different islands, and might thus
-produce special local effects of atmospheric tinting.</p>
-
-<p>... We remain but half an hour at Castries; then steam along the
-coast to take in freight at another port. Always the same delicious
-color-effects as we proceed, with new and surprising visions of hills.
-The near slopes descending to the sea are a radiant green, with streaks
-and specklings of darker verdure;&mdash;the farther-rising hills faint
-blue, with green saliencies catching the sun;&mdash;and beyond these are
-upheavals of luminous gray&mdash;pearl-gray&mdash;sharpened in the
-silver glow of the horizon.... The general impression of the whole
-landscape is one of motion suddenly petrified,&mdash;of an earthquake
-surging and tossing suddenly arrested and fixed: a raging of cones and
-peaks and monstrous truncated shapes.... We approach the Pitons.</p>
-
-<p>Seen afar off, they first appeared twin mammiform peaks,&mdash;naked
-and dark against the sky; but now they begin to brighten a little and
-show color,&mdash;also to change form. They take a lilaceous hue, broken
-by gray and green fights; and as we draw yet nearer they prove
-dissimilar in both shape and tint.... Now they separate before us,
-throwing long pyramidal shadows across the steamer's path. Then, as they
-open to our coming, between them a sea bay is revealed&mdash;a very
-lovely curving bay, bounded by hollow cliffs of fiery green. At either
-side of the gap the Pitons rise like monster pylônes. And a charming
-little settlement, a beautiful sugar-plantation, is nestling there
-between them, on the very edge of the bay.</p>
-
-<p>Out of a bright sea of verdure, speckled with oases of darker foliage,
-these Pitons from the land side tower in sombre vegetation. Very high
-up, on the nearer one, amid the wooded slopes, you can see houses
-perched; and there are bright breaks in the color there&mdash;tiny mountain
-pastures that look like patches of green silk velvet.</p>
-
-<p><br /></p>
-
-<p>... We pass the Pitons, and enter another little craterine harbor, to
-cast anchor before the village of Choiseul. It lies on a ledge above the
-beach and under high hills: we land through a surf, running the boat
-high up on soft yellowish sand. A delicious saline scent of sea-weed.</p>
-
-<p>It is disappointing, the village: it is merely one cross of brief
-streets, lined with blackening wooden dwellings; there are no buildings
-worth looking at, except the queer old French church, steep-roofed and
-bristling with points that look like extinguishers. Over broad reaches
-of lava rock a shallow river flows by the village to the sea,
-gurgling under shadows of tamarind foliage. It passes beside the
-market-place&mdash;a market-place without stalls, benches, sheds, or
-pavements: meats, fruits, and vegetables are simply fastened to the
-trees. Women are washing and naked children bathing in the stream; they
-are bronze-skinned, a fine dark color with a faint tint of red in it....
-There is little else to look at: steep wooded hills cut off the view
-towards the interior.</p>
-
-<p>But over the verge of the sea there is something strange growing
-visible, looming up like a beautiful yellow cloud. It is an island, so
-lofty, so luminous, so phantom-like, that it seems a vision of the
-Island of the Seven Cities. It is only the form of St. Vincent, bathed
-in vapory gold by the sun.</p>
-
-<p><br /></p>
-
-<p>... Evening at La Soufrière: still another semicircular bay in a hollow
-of green hills. Glens hold bluish shadows. The color of the heights is
-very tender; but there are long streaks and patches of dark green,
-marking watercourses and very abrupt surfaces. From the western side
-immense shadows are pitched brokenly across the valley and over half the
-roofs of the palmy town. There is a little river flowing down to the bay
-on the left; and west of it a walled cemetery's visible, out of which
-one monumental palm rises to a sublime height: its crest still bathes in
-the sun, above the invading shadow. Night approaches; the shade of the
-bills inundates all the landscape, rises even over the palm-crest. Then,
-black-towering into the golden glow of sunset, the land loses all its
-color, all its charm; forms of frondage, variations of tint, become
-invisible. Saint Lucia is only a monstrous silhouette; all its billowing
-hills, its volcanic bays, its amphitheatrical valleys, turn black as
-ebony.</p>
-
-<p>And you behold before you a geological dream, a vision of the primeval
-sea: the apparition of the land as first brought forth, all peak-tossed
-and fissured and naked and grim, in the tremendous birth of an
-archipelago.</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>XXXIII</h4>
-
-
-<p>Homeward bound.</p>
-
-<p>Again the enormous poem of azure and emerald unrolls before us, but in
-order inverse; again is the island-Litany of the Saints repeated for us,
-but now backward. All the bright familiar harbors once more open to
-receive us;&mdash;each lovely Shape floats to us again, first golden
-yellow, then vapory gray, then ghostly blue, but always sharply radiant at
-last, symmetrically exquisite, as if chiselled out of amethyst and emerald
-and sapphire. We review the same wondrous wrinkling of volcanic hills, the
-cities that sit in extinct craters, the woods that tower to heaven, the
-peaks perpetually wearing that luminous cloud which seems the breathing
-of each island-life,&mdash;its vital manifestation....</p>
-
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
-<a id="figure20"></a>
-<img src="images/figure20.jpg" width="400" alt="" />
-<p class="center">THE LION OF GUN HILL, BARBADOES<br />
-<i>A heroic statue carved in the native rock by a
-British army officer.</i></p>
-</div>
-
-
-<p>... Only now do the long succession of exotic and unfamiliar
-impressions received begin to group and blend, to form homogeneous
-results,&mdash;general ideas or convictions. Strongest among these is
-the belief that the white race is disappearing from these islands,
-acquired and held at so vast a cost of blood and treasure. Reasons
-almost beyond enumeration have been advanced&mdash;economical, climatic,
-ethnical, political&mdash;all of which contain truth, yet no single one
-of which can wholly explain the fact. Already the white West Indian
-populations are diminishing at a rate that almost staggers credibility.
-In the island paradise of Martinique in 1848 there were 12,000 whites;
-now, against more than 160,000 blacks and half-breeds, there are perhaps
-5000 whites left to maintain the ethnic struggle, and the number of
-these latter is annually growing less. Many of the British islands have
-been almost deserted by their former cultivators: St. Vincent is
-becoming desolate: Tobago is a ruin; St. Martin lies half abandoned; St.
-Christopher is crumbling; Grenada has lost more than half her whites;
-St. Thomas, once the most prosperous, the most active, the most
-cosmopolitan of West Indian ports, is in full decadence. And while the
-white element is disappearing, the dark races are multiplying as never
-before;&mdash;the increase of the negro and half-breed populations has
-been everywhere one of the startling results of emancipation. The
-general belief among the creole whites, of the Lesser Antilles would
-seem to confirm the old prediction that the slave races of the past must
-become the masters of the future. Here and there the struggle may be
-greatly prolonged, but everywhere the ultimate result must be the same,
-unless the present conditions of commerce and production become
-marvellously changed. The exterminated Indian peoples of the Antilles
-have already been replaced by populations equally fitted to cope with
-the forces of the nature about them,&mdash;that splendid and terrible
-Nature of the tropics which consumes the energies of the races of the
-North, which devours all that has been accomplished by their heroism or
-their crimes,&mdash;effacing their cities, rejecting their civilization.
-To those peoples physiologically in harmony with this Nature belong all
-the chances of victory in the contest&mdash;already begun&mdash;for
-racial supremacy.</p>
-
-<p>But with the disappearance of the white populations the ethnical
-problem would be still unsettled. Between the black and mixed peoples
-prevail hatreds more enduring and more intense than any race prejudices
-between whites and freedmen in the past;&mdash;a new struggle for
-supremacy could not fail to begin, with the perpetual augmentation of
-numbers, the ever-increasing competition for existence. And the true
-black element, more numerically powerful, more fertile, more cunning,
-better adapted to pyrogenic climate and tropical environment, would
-surely win. All these mixed races, all these beautiful fruit-colored
-populations, seem doomed to extinction: the future tendency must be to
-universal blackness, if existing conditions continue&mdash;perhaps to
-universal savagery. Everywhere the sins of the past have borne the same
-bruit, have furnished the colonies with social enigmas that mock the
-wisdom of legislators,&mdash;a dragon-crop of problems that no modern
-political science has yet proved competent to deal with. Can it even be
-hoped that future sociologists will be able to answer them, after
-Nature&mdash;who never forgives&mdash;shall have exacted the utmost possible
-retribution for all the crimes and follies of three hundred years?</p>
-
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 300px;">
-<img src="images/figure21.jpg" width="300" alt="" />
-</div>
-
-
-
-
-<hr class="chap" />
-
-
-<h4><a id="MARTINIQUE_SKETCHES">MARTINIQUE<br />
-SKETCHES</a></h4>
-
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 300px;">
-<img src="images/figure22.jpg" width="300" alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4><a id="LES_PORTEUSES">LES PORTEUSES</a></h4>
-
-
-<h4>I</h4>
-
-<div class="figleft" style="width: 60px;">
-<img src="images/figure23.jpg" width="60" height="80" alt="" />
-</div>
-
-
-<p>When you find yourself for the first time, upon some unshadowed day,
-in the delightful West Indian city of St. Pierre,&mdash;supposing that
-you own the sense of poetry, the recollections of a student,&mdash;there
-is apt to steal upon your fancy an impression of having seen it all
-before, ever so long ago,&mdash;you cannot tell where. The sensation of
-some happy dream you cannot wholly recall might be compared to this
-feeling. In the simplicity and solidity of the quaint
-architecture,&mdash;in the eccentricity of bright narrow streets, all
-aglow with warm coloring,&mdash;in the tints of roof and wall,
-antiquated by streakings and patchings of mould greens and
-grays,&mdash;in the startling absence of window-sashes, glass, gas
-lamps, and chimneys,&mdash;in the blossom-tenderness of the blue heaven,
-the splendor of tropic light, and the warmth of the tropic
-wind,&mdash;you find less the impression of a scene of to-day than the
-sensation of something that was and is not. Slowly this feeling
-strengthens with your pleasure in the colorific radiance of
-costume,&mdash;the semi-nudity of passing figures,&mdash;the puissant
-shapeliness of torsos ruddily swart like statue metal,&mdash;the rounded
-outline of limbs yellow as tropic fruit,&mdash;the grace of
-attitudes,&mdash;the unconscious harmony of groupings,&mdash;the
-gathering and folding and falling of light robes that oscillate with
-swaying of free hips,&mdash;the sculptural symmetry of unshod feet. You
-look up and down the lemon-tinted streets,&mdash;down to the dazzling
-azure brightness of meeting sky and sea; up to the perpetual verdure of
-mountain woods&mdash;wondering at the mellowness of tones, the sharpness
-of lines in the light, the diaphaneity of colored shadows; always asking
-memory: "When?... where did I see all this... long ago?"...</p>
-
-<p>Then, perhaps, your gaze is suddenly riveted by the vast
-and solemn beauty of the verdant violet-shaded mass of the dead
-Volcano,&mdash;high-towering above the town, visible from all its ways,
-and umbraged, maybe, with thinnest curlings of cloud,&mdash;like
-spectres of its ancient smoking to heaven. And all at once the secret of
-your dream is revealed, with the rising of many a luminous
-memory,&mdash;dreams of the Idyllists, flowers of old Sicilian song,
-fancies limned upon Pompeiian walls. For a moment the illusion is
-delicious: you comprehend as never before the charm of a vanished
-world,&mdash;the antique life, the story of terra-cottas and graven
-stones and gracious things exhumed: even the sun is not of to-day, but
-of twenty centuries gone;&mdash;thus, and under such a light, walked the
-women of the elder world. You know the fancy absurd;&mdash;that the
-power of the orb has visibly abated nothing in all the eras of
-man,&mdash;that millions are the ages of his almighty glory; but for one
-instant of reverie he seemeth larger,&mdash;even that sun impossible who
-coloreth the words, coloreth the works of artist-lovers of the past,
-with the gold light of dreams.</p>
-
-<p>Too soon the hallucination is broken by modern sounds, dissipated by
-modern sights,&mdash;rough trolling of sailors descending to their
-boats,&mdash;the heavy boom of a packet's signal-gun,&mdash;the passing of
-an American buggy. Instantly you become aware that the melodious tongue
-spoken by the passing throng is neither Hellenic nor Roman: only the
-beautiful childish speech of French slaves.</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>II</h4>
-
-
-<p>But what slaves were the fathers of this free generation? Your
-anthropologists, your ethnologists, seem at fault here: the African
-traits have become transformed; the African characteristics have been so
-modified within little more than two hundred years&mdash;by
-interblending of blood, by habit, by soil and sun and all those natural
-powers which shape the mould of races,&mdash;that you may look in vain
-for verification of ethnological assertions.... No: the heel does
-<i>not</i> protrude;&mdash;the foot is <i>not</i> flat, but finely
-arched;&mdash;the extremities are not large;&mdash;all the limbs taper,
-all the muscles are developed; and prognathism has become so rare that
-months of research may not yield a single striking case of it.... No:
-this is a special race, peculiar to the island as are the shapes of its
-peaks,&mdash;a mountain race; and mountain races are comely.... Compare
-it with the population of black Barbadoes, where the apish grossness of
-African coast types has been perpetuated unchanged;&mdash;and the
-contrast may well astonish!...</p>
-
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>III</h4>
-
-
-<p>The erect carriage and steady swift walk of the women who bear
-burdens is especially likely to impress the artistic observer: it is the
-sight of such passers-by which gives, above all, the antique tone and
-color to his first sensations;&mdash;and the larger part of the female
-population of mixed race are practised carriers. Nearly all the
-transportation of light merchandise, as well as of meats, fruits,
-vegetables, and food stuffs,&mdash;to and from the interior,&mdash;is
-effected upon human heads. At some of the ports the regular local
-packets are loaded and unloaded by women and girls,&mdash;able to carry
-any trunk or box to its destination. At Fort-de-France the great
-steamers of the Compagnie Générale Transatlantique, are entirely
-coaled by women, who carry the coal on their heads, singing as they come
-and go in processions of hundreds; and the work is done with incredible
-rapidity. Now, the creole <i>porteuse</i>, or female carrier, is
-certainly one of the most remarkable physical types in the world; and
-whatever artistic enthusiasm her graceful port, lithe walk, or
-half-savage beauty may inspire you with, you can form no idea, if a
-total stranger, what a really wonderful being she is.... Let me tell you
-something about that highest type of professional female carrier, which
-is to the <i>charbonnière</i>, or coaling-girl, what the thorough-bred
-racer is to the draught-horse,&mdash;the type of porteuse selected for
-swiftness and endurance to distribute goods in the interior parishes, or
-to sell on commission at long distances. To the same class naturally
-belong those country carriers able to act as porteuses of plantation
-produce, fruits, or vegetables,&mdash;between the nearer ports and their
-own interior parishes.... Those who believe that great physical
-endurance and physical energy cannot exist in the tropics do not know
-the creole carrier-girl.</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>IV</h4>
-
-
-<p>At a very early age&mdash;perhaps at five years&mdash;she learns to
-carry small articles upon her head,&mdash;a bowl of rice,&mdash;a
-<i>dobanne</i>, or red earthen decanter, full of water&mdash;even an
-orange on a plate; and before long she is able to balance these
-perfectly without using her hands to steady them. (I have often seen
-children actually run with cans of water upon their heads, and never
-spill a drop.) At nine or ten she is able to carry thus a tolerably
-heavy basket, or a trait (a wooden tray with deep outward sloping sides)
-containing a weight of from twenty to thirty pounds; and is
-able to accompany her mother, sister, or cousin on long peddling
-journeys,&mdash;walking barefoot twelve and fifteen miles a day. At
-sixteen or seventeen she is a tall robust girl,&mdash;lithe, vigorous,
-tough,&mdash;all tendon and hard flesh;&mdash;she carries a tray or a
-basket of the largest size, and a burden of one hundred and twenty to
-one hundred and fifty pounds weight;&mdash;she can now earn about thirty
-francs (about six dollars) a month, <i>by walking fifty miles a day</i>,
-as an itinerant seller.</p>
-
-<p>Among her class there are figures to make you dream of
-Atlanta;&mdash;and all, whether ugly or attractive as to feature, are
-finely shapen as to body and limb. Brought into existence by
-extraordinary necessities of environment, the type is a peculiarly local
-one,&mdash;a type of human thorough-bred representing the true secret of
-grace: economy of force. There are no corpulent porteuses for the long
-interior routes; all are built lightly and firmly as racers. There are
-no old porteuses;&mdash;to do the work even at forty signifies a
-constitution of astounding solidity. After the full force of youth and
-health is spent, the poor carrier must seek lighter labor;&mdash;she can
-no longer compete with the girls. For in this calling the young body is
-taxed to its utmost capacity of strength, endurance, and rapid
-motion.</p>
-
-<p>As a general rule, the weight is such that no well-freighted porteuse
-can, unassisted, either "load" or "unload" (<i>châgé</i> or <i>déchâgé</i>,
-in creole phrase); the effort to do so would burst a blood-vessel,
-wrench a nerve, rupture a muscle. She cannot even sit down under her
-burden without risk of breaking her neck: absolute perfection of the
-balance is necessary for self-preservation. A case came under my own
-observation of a woman rupturing a muscle in her arm through careless
-haste in the mere act of aiding another to unload.</p>
-
-<p>And no one not a brute will ever refuse to aid a woman to lift or to
-relieve herself of her burden;&mdash;you may see the wealthiest merchant,
-the proudest planter, gladly do it;&mdash;the meanness of refusing, or of
-making any conditions for the performance of this little kindness has only
-been imagined in those strange Stories of Devils wherewith the oral and
-uncollected literature of the creole abounds.<a name="FNanchor_4_1" id="FNanchor_4_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_1" class="fnanchor">[4]</a></p>
-
-<p><br /></p>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_4_1" id="Footnote_4_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_1"><span class="label">[4]</span></a><i>Extract from the "Story of Marie," as written from
-dictation</i>:</p>
-
-<p>... Manman-à té ni yon goûte jà à caïe-li. Jà-la té touôp lou'de
-pou Marie. Cé té li menm manman là qui té kallé pouend dileau.
-Yon jou y pouend jà-la pou y té allé pouend dileau. Lhè manman-à
-rivé bé la fontaine, y pa trouvé pésonne pou châgé y. Y rété; y ka crié,
-"Toutt bon Chritien, vini châgé moin!"</p>
-
-<p>... This mamma had a great jar in her house. The jar was too
-heavy for Marie. It was this mamma herself who used to go for
-water. One day she took that jar to go for water. When this
-mamma had got to the fountain, she could not find any one to load
-her. She stood there, crying out, "Any good Christian, come load
-me!"</p>
-
-<p>... Lhè manman rété y ouè pa té ni piess bon Chritien pou châgé
-y. Y rété; y crié: "Pouloss, si pa ni bon Chritien» ni mauvais
-Chritien! toutt mauvais Chritien vini châgé moin!"</p>
-
-<p><br /></p>
-
-<p>Lhè y fini di ça, y ouè yon diabe qui ka vini, ka di conm ça, "Pou
-moin châgé ou ça ou ké baill moin?" Manman-là di,&mdash;y réponne,
-"Moin pa ni arien!" Diabe-la réponne y, "Y fau ba moin
-Marie pou moin pé châgé ou."</p>
-
-<p>... As the mamma stood there she saw there was not a single
-good Christian to help her load. She stood there, and cried out:
-"Well, then, if there are no good Christians, there are bad Christians.
-Any bad Christian, come and load me!"</p>
-
-<p>The moment she said that, she saw a devil coming, who said to
-her, "If I load you what will you give me?" This mamma answered,
-and said, "I have nothing!" The devil answered her, "Must give me
-Marie if you want me to load you."</p></div>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>V</h4>
-
-
-<p>Preparing for her journey, the young <i>màchanne</i> (marchande) puts on
-the poorest and briefest chemise in her possession, and the most worn of
-her light calico robes. These are all she wears. The robe is drawn
-upward and forward, so as to reach a little below the knee, and is
-confined thus by a waist-string, or a long kerchief bound tightly round
-the loins. Instead of a Madras or painted turban-kerchief, she binds a
-plain <i>mouchoir</i> neatly and closely about her head; and if her hair be
-long, it is combed back and gathered into a loop behind. Then, with a
-second mouchoir of coarser quality she makes a pad, or, as she calls it,
-<i>tòche</i>, by winding the kerchief round her fingers as you would coil
-up a piece of string;&mdash;and the soft mass, flattened with a patting of
-the hand, is placed upon her head, over the coiffure. On this the great
-loaded trait is poised.</p>
-
-<p>She wears no shoes! To wear shoes and do her work swiftly and well in
-such a land of mountains would be impossible. She must climb thousands
-and descend thousands of feet every day,&mdash;march up and down slopes
-so steep that the horses of the country all break down after a
-few years  of similar journeying. The girl invariably outlasts the
-horse,&mdash;though carrying an equal weight. Shoes, unless
-extraordinarily well made, would shift place a little with every change
-from ascent to descent, or the reverse, during the march,&mdash;would
-yield and loosen with the ever-varying strain,&mdash;would compress the
-toes,&mdash;produce corns, bunions, raw places by rubbing, and soon
-cripple the porteuse. Remember, she has to walk perhaps fifty miles
-between dawn and dark, under a sun to which a single hour's exposure,
-without the protection of an umbrella, is perilous to any European or
-American&mdash;the terrible sun of the tropics! Sandals are the only
-conceivable foot-gear suited to such a calling as hers; but she needs no
-sandals: the soles of her feet are toughened so as to feel no
-asperities, and present to sharp pebbles a surface at once yielding and
-resisting, like a cushion of solid caoutchouc.</p>
-
-<p>Besides her load, she carries only a canvas purse tied to her girdle on
-the right side, and on the left a very small bottle of rum, or white
-tafia,&mdash;usually the latter, because it is so cheap.... For she may not
-always find the Gouyave water to drink,&mdash;the cold clear pure stream
-conveyed to the fountains of St. Pierre from the highest mountains by a
-beautiful and marvellous plan of hydraulic engineering: she will have to
-drink betimes the common spring-water of the bamboo-fountains on the
-remoter high-roads; and this may cause dysentery if swallowed without a
-spoonful of spirits. Therefore she never travels without a little
-liquor.</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>VI</h4>
-
-
-<p>... So!&mdash;She is ready: "<i>Châgé moin, souplè, chè!</i>" She
-bends to lift the end of the heavy trait: some one takes the
-other,&mdash;<i>yon!&mdash;dè!&mdash;toua!</i>&mdash;it is on her head.
-Perhaps she winces an instant;&mdash;the weight is not perfectly
-balanced; she settles it with her hands,&mdash;gets it in the exact
-place. Then, all steady,&mdash;lithe, light, half naked,&mdash;away she
-moves with a long springy step. So even her walk that the burden never
-sways; yet so rapid her motion that however good a walker you may fancy
-yourself to be you will tire out after a sustained effort of fifteen
-minutes to follow her uphill. Fifteen minutes!&mdash;and she can keep up
-that pace without slackening&mdash;save for a minute to eat and drink at
-midday,&mdash;for at least twelve hours and fifty-six minutes, the
-extreme length of a West Indian day. She starts before dawn; tries to
-reach her resting-place by sunset: after dark, like all her people, she
-is afraid of meeting <i>zombis.</i></p>
-
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
-<a id="figure23a"></a>
-<img src="images/figure23a.jpg" width="400" alt="" />
-<p class="center">THE DEVIL'S DOOR, MARTINIQUE<br />
-<i>Each turn in the road discloses new scenes of tropical
-splendor, beetling cliffs. and verdure-covered slopes.</i></p>
-</div>
-
-
-<p>Let me give you some idea of her average speed under an average
-weight of one hundred and twenty-five pounds,&mdash;estimates based
-partly upon my own observations, partly upon the declarations of the
-trustworthy merchants who employ her, and partly on the assertion of
-habitants of the burghs or cities named&mdash;all of which statements
-perfectly agree. From St. Pierre to Basse-Pointe, by the national road,
-the distance is a trifle less than twenty-seven kilometres and
-three-quarters. She makes the transit easily in three hours and a half;
-and returns in the afternoon, after an absence of scarcely more than
-eight hours. From St. Pierre to Morne Rouge&mdash;two thousand feet up
-in the mountains (an ascent so abrupt that no one able to pay
-carriage-fare dreams of attempting to walk it)&mdash;the distance is
-seven kilometres and three-quarters. She makes it in little more than an
-hour. But this represents only the beginning of her journey. She passes
-on to Grande Anse, twenty-one and three-quarter kilometres away. But she
-does not rest there: she returns at the same pace, and reaches St.
-Pierre before dark. From St. Pierre to Gros-Morne the distance to be
-twice traversed by her is more than thirty-two kilometres. A journey of
-sixty-four kilometres,&mdash;daily, perhaps,&mdash;forty miles! And
-there are many màchannes who make yet longer trips,&mdash;trips of
-three or four days' duration;&mdash;these rest at villages upon their
-route.</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>VII</h4>
-
-
-<p>Such travel in such a country would be impossible but for the excellent
-national roads,&mdash;limestone highways, solid, broad, faultlessly
-graded,&mdash;that wind from town to town, from hamlet to hamlet, over
-mountains, over ravines; ascending by zigzags to heights of twenty-five
-hundred feet; traversing the primeval forests of the interior; now
-skirting the dizziest precipices, now descending into the loveliest
-valleys. There are thirty-one of these magnificent routes, with a total
-length of 488,052 metres (more than 805 miles), whereof the construction
-required engineering talent of the highest order,&mdash;the building of
-bridges beyond counting, and devices the most ingenious to provide
-against dangers of storms, floods and land-slips. Most have
-drinking-fountains along their course at almost regular
-intervals,&mdash;generally made by the negroes, who have a simple but
-excellent plan for turning the water of a spring through bamboo pipes to
-the road-way. Each road is also furnished with milestones, or rather
-kilometre-stones; and the drainage is perfect enough to assure of the
-highway becoming dry within fifteen minutes after the heaviest rain, so
-long as the surface is maintained in tolerably good condition. Well-kept
-embankments of earth (usually covered with a rich growth of mosses,
-vines, and ferns), or even solid walls of masonry, line the side that
-overhangs a dangerous depth. And all these highways pass through
-landscapes of amazing beauty,&mdash;visions of mountains so many-tinted and
-so singular of outline that they would almost seem to have been created
-for the express purpose of compelling astonishment. This tropic Nature
-appears to call into being nothing ordinary: the shapes which she evokes
-are always either gracious or odd,&mdash;and her eccentricities, her
-extravagances, have a fantastic charm, a grotesqueness as of artistic
-whim. Even where the landscape-view is cut off by high woods the forms
-of ancient trees&mdash;the infinite interwreathing of vine growths all on
-fire with violence of blossom-color,&mdash;the enormous green outbursts of
-balisiers, with leaves ten to thirteen feet long,&mdash;the columnar
-solemnity of great palmistes,&mdash;the pliant quivering exquisiteness of
-bamboo,&mdash;the furious splendor of roses run mad&mdash;more than atone
-for the loss of the horizon. Sometimes you approach a steep covered with a
-growth of what, at first glance, looks precisely like fine green fur: it
-is a first-growth of young bamboo. Or you see a hill-side covered with
-huge green feathers, all shelving down and overlapping as in the tail of
-some unutterable bird: these are baby ferns. And where the road leaps
-some deep ravine with a double or triple bridge of white stone, note
-well what delicious shapes spring up into sunshine from the black
-profundity on either hand! Palmiform you might hastily term them,&mdash;but
-no palm was ever so gracile; no palm ever bore so dainty a head of green
-plumes light as lace! These likewise are ferns (rare survivors, maybe,
-of that period of monstrous vegetation which preceded the apparition of
-man), beautiful tree-ferns, whose every young plume, unrolling in a spiral
-from the bud, at first assumes the shape of a crozier,&mdash;a crozier
-of emerald! Therefore are some of this species called "archbishop-trees"
-no doubt.... But one might write for a hundred years of the sights to be
-seen upon such a mountain road.</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>VIII</h4>
-
-
-<p>In every season, in almost every weather, the porteuse makes her
-journey,&mdash;never heeding rain;&mdash;her goods being protected by
-double and triple water-proof coverings well bound down over her trait. Yet
-these tropical rains, coming suddenly with a cold wind upon her heated and
-almost naked body, are to be feared. To any European or unacclimated
-white such a wetting, while the pores are all open during a profuse
-perspiration, would probably prove fatal: even for white natives the
-result is always a serious and protracted illness. But the porteuse
-seldom suffers in consequences: she seems proof against fevers,
-rheumatisms, and ordinary colds. When she does break down, however, the
-malady is a frightful one,&mdash;a pneumonia that carries off the victim
-within forty-eight hours. Happily, among her class, these fatalities are
-very rare.</p>
-
-<p>And scarcely less rare than such sudden deaths are instances of failure
-to appear on time. In one case, the employer, a St. Pierre shopkeeper,
-on finding his marchande more than an hour late, felt so certain
-something very extraordinary must have happened that he sent out
-messengers in all directions to make inquiries. It was found that the
-woman had become a mother when only half-way upon her journey home....
-The child lived and thrived;&mdash;she is now a pretty chocolate-colored
-girl of eight, who follows her mother every day from their mountain ajoupa
-down to the city, and back again,&mdash;bearing a little trait upon her
-head.</p>
-
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
-<a id="figure24"></a>
-<img src="images/figure24.jpg" width="400" alt="" />
-<p class="center">THE ROAD TO ST. PIERRE<br />
-"<i>A hillside covered with huge green feathers... tree-ferns
-whose every young plume, in a spiral from the
-hud, at first assumes the shape of a crozier,&mdash;a crozier
-of emerald!</i>"</p>
-</div>
-
-
-<p>Murder for purposes of robbery is not an unknown crime in Martinique;
-but I am told the porteuses are never molested. And yet some of these
-girls carry merchandise to the value of hundreds of francs; and all
-carry money,&mdash;the money received for goods sold, often a considerable
-sum. This immunity may be partly owing to the fact that they travel
-dining the greater part of the year only by day,&mdash;and usually in
-company. A very pretty girl is seldom suffered to journey unprotected:
-she has either a male escort or several experienced and powerful women
-with her. In the cacao season&mdash;when carriers start from Grande Anse as
-early as two o'clock in the morning, so as to reach St. Pierre by
-dawn&mdash;they travel in strong companies of twenty or twenty-five,
-singing on the way. As a general rule the younger girls at all times go two
-together,&mdash;keeping step perfectly as a pair of blooded fillies; only
-the veterans, or women selected for special work by reason of extraordinary
-physical capabilities, go alone. To the latter class belong certain
-girls employed by the great bakeries of Fort-de-France and St. Pierre:
-these are veritable caryatides. They are probably the heaviest-laden of
-all, carrying baskets of astounding size far up into the mountains
-before daylight, so as to furnish country families with fresh bread at
-an early hour; and for this labor they receive about four dollars
-(twenty francs) a month and one loaf of bread per diem.... While
-stopping at a friend's house among the hills, some two miles from
-Fort-de-France, I saw the local bread-carrier halt before our porch one
-morning, and a finer type of the race it would be difficult for a
-sculptor to imagine. Six feet tall,&mdash;strength and grace united
-throughout her whole figure from neck to heel; with that clear black
-skin which is beautiful to any but ignorant or prejudiced eyes; and the
-smooth, pleasing, solemn features of a sphinx,&mdash;she looked to me, as
-she towered there in the gold light, a symbolic statue of Africa. Seeing me
-smoking one of those long thin Martinique cigars called <i>bouts</i>, she
-begged one; and, not happening to have another, I gave her the price of a
-bunch of twenty,&mdash;ten sous. She took it without a smile, and went her
-way. About an hour and a half later she came back and asked for
-me,&mdash;to present me with the finest and largest mango I had ever seen,
-a monster mango. She said she wanted to see me eat it, and sat down on the
-ground to look on. While eating it, I learned that she had walked a whole
-mile out of her way under that sky of fire, just to bring her little gift
-of gratitude.</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>IX</h4>
-
-
-<p>Forty to fifty miles a day, always under a weight of more than a hundred
-pounds,&mdash;for when the trait has been emptied she puts in stones for
-ballast;&mdash;carrying her employer's merchandise and money over the
-mountain ranges, beyond the peaks, across the ravines, through
-the tropical forest, sometimes through by-ways haunted by the
-fer-de-lance,&mdash;and this in summer or winter, the season of rains or
-the season of heat, the time of fevers or the time of hurricanes, at a
-franc a day!... How does she live upon it?</p>
-
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
-<a id="figure25"></a>
-<img src="images/figure25.jpg" width="400" alt="" />
-<p class="center">FORT-DE-FRANCE<br />
-<i>View from the old fortifications. In the distance
-the bay, and beyond Trois Islets, where
-Josephine was born.</i></p>
-</div>
-
-
-<p>There are twenty sous to the franc. The girl leaves St. Pierre with her
-load at early morning. At the second village, Morne Rouge, she halts to
-buy one, two, or three biscuits at a sou apiece; and reaching
-Ajoupa-Bouillon later in the forenoon, she may buy another biscuit or
-two. Altogether she may be expected to eat five sous of biscuit or bread
-before reaching Grande Anse, where she probably has a meal waiting for
-her. This ought to cost her ten sous,&mdash;especially if there be meat in
-her ragoût: which represents a total expense of fifteen sous for
-eatables. Then there is the additional cost of the cheap liquor, which
-she must mix with her drinking-water, as it would be more than dangerous
-to swallow pure cold water in her heated condition; two or three sous
-more. This almost makes the franc. But such a hasty and really erroneous
-estimate does not include expenses of lodging and clothing;&mdash;she may
-sleep on the bare floor sometimes, and twenty francs a year may keep her
-in clothes; but she must rent the floor and pay for the clothes out of
-that franc. As a matter of fact she not only does all this upon her
-twenty sous a day, but can even economize something which will enable
-her, when her youth and force decline, to start in business for herself.
-And her economy will not seem so wonderful when I assure you that
-thousands of men here&mdash;huge men muscled like bulls and lions&mdash;live upon
-an average expenditure of five sous a day. One sou of bread, two sous of
-manioc flour, one sou of dried codfish, one sou of tafia: such is their
-meal.</p>
-
-<p>There are women carriers who earn more than a franc a day,&mdash;women
-with a particular talent for selling, who are paid on commission&mdash;from ten
-to fifteen per cent. These eventually make themselves independent in many
-instances;&mdash;they continue to sell and bargain in person, but hire a
-young girl to carry the goods.</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>X</h4>
-
-
-<p>... "<i>Ou 'lè mâchonne!</i>" rings out a rich alto, resonant as the
-tone of a gong, from behind the balisiers that shut in our garden. There
-are two of them&mdash;no, three&mdash;Maiyotte, Chéchelle, and Rina.
-Maiyotte and Chéchelle have just arrived from St. Pierre;&mdash;Rina comes
-from Gros-Morne with fruits and vegetables. Suppose we call them all in,
-and see what they have got. Maiyotte and Chéchelle sell on commission; Rina
-sells for her mother, who has a little garden at Gros-Morne.</p>
-
-<p>... "<i>Bonjou', Maiyotte;&mdash;bonjou', Chéchelle! comment ou kallé,
-Rina, chè!</i>"... Throw open the folding-doors to let the great trays
-pass.... Now all three are unloaded by old Théréza and by young
-Adou;&mdash;all the packs are on the floor, and the water-proof wrappings
-are being uncorded, while Ah-Manmzell, the adopted child, brings the rum
-and water for the tall walkers.</p>
-
-<p>... "Oh, what a medley, Maiyotte!"... Inkstands and wooden cows; purses
-and paper dogs and cats; dolls and cosmetics; pins and needles and soap
-and tooth-brushes; candied fruits and smoking-caps; <i>pelotes</i> of
-thread, and tapes, and ribbons, and laces, and Madeira wine; cuffs, and
-collars, and dancing-shoes, and tobacco sachets.... But what is in that
-little flat bundle? Presents for your <i>guêpe</i>, if you have one....
-<i>Jesis-Maïa!</i>&mdash;the pretty foulards! Azure and yellow in
-checkerings; orange and crimson in stripes; rose and scarlet in plaidings;
-and bronze tints, and beetle-tints of black and green.</p>
-
-<p>"Chéchelle, what a <i>bloucoutoum</i> if you should ever let
-that  tray fall&mdash;<i>aïe yaïe yaïe!</i>" Here is a whole
-shop of  crockeries and porcelains;&mdash;plates, dishes,
-cups,&mdash;earthen-ware <i>canaris</i> and <i>dobannes</i>; and
-gift-mugs and cups bearing creole girls' names,&mdash;all names that end
-in <i>ine</i>: "Micheline, Honorine, Prospérine" [you will never sell
-that, Chéchelle: there is not a Prospérine this side of St. Pierre],
-"Azaline, Leontine, Zéphyrine, Albertine, Chrysaline, Florine,
-Coralline, Alexandrine."... And knives and forks, and cheap spoons, and
-tin coffee-pots, and tin rattles for babies, and tin flutes for horrid
-little boys,&mdash;and pencils and note-paper and envelopes!...</p>
-
-<p>... "Oh, Rina, what superb oranges!&mdash;fully twelve inches
-round!... and these, which look something like our mandarins, what do
-you call them? Zorange-macaque!" (monkey-oranges). And here are
-avocados&mdash;beauties!&mdash;guavas of three different
-kinds,&mdash;tropical cherries (which have four seeds instead of
-one),&mdash;tropical raspberries, whereof the entire eatable portion
-comes off in one elastic piece, lined with something like white silk....
-Here are fresh nutmegs: the thick green case splits in equal halves at a
-touch; and see the beautiful heart within,&mdash;deep dark glossy red,
-all wrapped in a bright net-work of flat blood-colored fibre, spun over
-it like branching veins.... This big heavy red-and-yellow thing is a
-<i>pomme-cythère</i>: the smooth cuticle, bitter as gall, covers a
-sweet juicy pulp, interwoven with something that seems like cotton
-thread.... Here is a <i>pomme-cannelle</i>: inside its scaly covering is
-the most delicious yellow custard conceivable with little black seeds
-floating in it. This larger <i>corossol</i> has almost as delicate an
-interior, only the custard is white instead of yellow.... Here are
-<i>christophines</i>,&mdash;great pear-shaped things, white and
-green, according to kind, with a peel prickly and knobby as the
-skin of a homed  toad; but they stew exquisitely. And <i>mélongènes</i>,
-or egg-plants;  and palmiste-pith, and <i>chadèques</i>, and
-<i>pommes-d'Haïti</i>,&mdash;and roots that at first sight look all
-alike, but they are not: there are <i>camanioc</i>, and couscous, and
-<i>choux-caraïbes</i>, and <i>zignames</i>, and various kinds of
-patates among them. Old Théréza's magic will transform these shapeless
-muddy things, before evening, into pyramids of smoking gold,&mdash;into
-odorous porridges that will look like messes of molten amber and liquid
-pearl;&mdash;for Rina makes a good sale.</p>
-
-<p>Then Chéchelle manages to dispose of a tin coffee-pot and a big
-canari.... And Maiyotte makes the best sale of all; for the sight of a
-funny <i>biscuit</i> doll has made Ah-Manmzell cry and smile so at the same
-time that I should feel unhappy for the rest of my life if I did not buy
-it for her. I know I ought to get some change out of that six
-francs;&mdash;and Maiyotte, who is black but comely as the tents of Kedar,
-as the curtains of Solomon, seems to be aware of the fact.</p>
-
-<p>Oh, Maiyotte, how plaintive that pretty sphinx face of yours, now turned
-in profile;&mdash;as if you knew you looked beautiful thus,&mdash;with the
-great gold circlets of your ears glittering and swaying as you bend!
-And why are you so long, so long untying that poor little canvas
-purse?&mdash;fumbling and fingering it?&mdash;is it because you want me to
-think of the weight of that trait and the sixty kilometres you must walk,
-and the heat, and dust, and all the disappointments? Ah, you are cunning,
-Maiyotte! No, I do not want the change!</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>XI</h4>
-
-
-<p>... Travelling together, the porteuses often walk in silence for
-hours at a time;&mdash;this is when they feel weary. Sometimes they
-sing,&mdash;most often when approaching their destination;&mdash;and
-when they chat, it is in a key so high-pitched that their voices can be
-heard to a great distance in this land of echoes and elevations.</p>
-
-<p>But she who travels alone is rarely silent: she talks to herself or to
-inanimate things;&mdash;you may hear her talking to the trees, to the
-flowers,&mdash;talking to the high clouds and the far peaks of changing
-color,&mdash;talking to the setting sun!</p>
-
-<p>Over the miles of the morning she sees, perchance, the mighty Piton
-Gélé, a cone of amethyst in the light; and she talks to it: "<i>Ou
-jojoll, oui!&mdash;moin ni envie monté assou ou, pou main ouè bien,
-bien!</i>" (Thou art pretty, pretty, aye!&mdash;I would I might climb thee,
-to see far, far off!)</p>
-
-<p>By a great grove of palms she passes;&mdash;so thickly mustered they are
-that against the sun their intermingled heads form one unbroken awning of
-green. Many rise straight as masts; some bend at beautiful angles,
-seeming to intercross their long pale single limbs in a fantastic dance;
-others curve like bows: there is one that undulates from foot to crest,
-like a monster serpent poised upon its tail. She loves to look at that
-one,&mdash;<i>joli pié-bois-là!</i>&mdash;talks to it as she goes
-by,&mdash;bids it good-day.</p>
-
-<p>Or, looking back as she ascends, she sees the huge blue dream of the
-sea,&mdash;the eternal haunter, that ever becomes larger as she mounts the
-road; and she talks to it: "<i>Mi lanmé ka gadé main!</i>" (There is the
-great sea looking at me!) "<i>Mâché toujou deïé moin, lamnè!</i>" (Walk
-after me, O Sea!)</p>
-
-<p>Or she views the clouds of Pelée, spreading gray from the invisible
-summit, to shadow against the sun; and she fears the rain, and she talks
-to it: "<i>Pas mouillé moin, laplie-à! Quitté moin rivé avant mouillé
-moin!</i>" (Do not wet me, O Rain! Let me get there before thou wettest
-me!)</p>
-
-<p>Sometimes a dog barks at her, menaces her bare limbs; and she talks to
-the dog. "<i>Chien-a, pas mòdé moin, chien&mdash;anh! Moin pa fé ou arien,
-chien, pou ou mòdé moin!</i>" (Do not bite me, O Dog! Never did I
-anything to thee that thou shouldst bite me, O Dog! Do not bite me,
-dear! Do not bite me, <i>doudoux!</i>)</p>
-
-<p>Sometimes she meets a laden sister travelling the opposite way....
-"<i>Coument ou yé, chè?</i>" she cries. (How art thou, dear?) And the other
-makes answer, "<i>Toutt douce, chè,&mdash;et ou?</i>" (All sweetly,
-dear,&mdash;and thou?) And each passes on without pausing: they have
-no time!</p>
-
-<p>... It is perhaps the last human voice she will hear for many a mile.
-After that only the whisper of the grasses&mdash;<i>graïe-gras,
-graïe-gras!</i>&mdash;and the gossip of the canes&mdash;<i>chououa,
-chououa!</i>&mdash;and the husky speech of the <i>pois-Angole, ka babillé
-conm yon vié fenme</i>,&mdash;that babbles like an old woman;&mdash;and the
-murmur of the <i>filao</i>-trees, like the murmur of the River of the
-Washerwomen.</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>XII</h4>
-
-
-<p>... Sundown approaches: the light has turned a rich yellow;&mdash;long
-black shapes lie across the curving road, shadows of balisier and palm,
-shadows of tamarind and Indian-reed, shadows of ceiba and giant-fern.
-And the porteuses are coming down through the lights and darknesses of
-the way horn far Grande Anse, to halt a moment in this little village.
-They are going to sit down on the road-side here, before the house of
-the baker; and there is his great black workman, Jean-Marie, looking for
-them from the door-way, waiting to relieve them of their loads....
-Jean-Marie is the strongest man in all the Champ-Flore: see what a
-torso,&mdash;as he stands there naked to the waist!... His day's work is
-done; but he likes to wait for the girls, though he is old now, and has
-sons as tall as himself. It is a habit: some say that he had a daughter
-once,&mdash;a porteuse like those coming, and used to wait for her thus at
-that very door-way until one evening that she failed to appear, and
-never returned till he carried her home in his arms dead,&mdash;striken by
-a serpent in some mountain path where there was none to aid.... The roads
-were not as good then as now.</p>
-
-<p>... Here they come, the girls&mdash;yellow, red, black. See the flash of
-the yellow feet where they touch the light! And what impossible tint
-the red limbs take in the changing glow!... Finotte, Pauline,
-Médelle,&mdash;all together, as usual,&mdash;with Ti-Clé trotting behind,
-very tired.... Never mind, Ti-Clé!&mdash;you will outwalk your cousins when
-you are a few years older,&mdash;pretty Ti-Clé.... Here come Cyrillia and
-Zabette, and Féfé and Dodotte and Fevriette. And behind them are coming the
-two <i>chabines</i>,&mdash;golden girls: the twin-sisters who sell silks
-and threads and foulards; always together, always wearing robes and
-kerchiefs of similar color,&mdash;so that you can never tell which is
-Lorrainie and which Édoualise.</p>
-
-<p>And all smile to see Jean-Marie waiting for them, and to hear his deep
-kind voice calling, "<i>Coument ou yé chè? coument ou kallé?</i>"... (How
-art thou, dear?&mdash;how goes it with thee?)</p>
-
-<p>And they mostly make answer, "<i>Toutte douce, chè,&mdash;et ou?</i>"
-(All sweetly, dear,&mdash;and thou?) But some, overweary, cry to him,
-"<i>Ah! déchâgê moin vite, chè! moin lasse, lasse!</i>" (Unload me quickly,
-dear; for I am very, very weary.) Then he takes off their burdens, and
-fetches bread for them, and says foolish little things to make them
-laugh. And they are pleased, and laugh, just like children, as they sit
-right down on the road there to munch their dry bread.</p>
-
-<p><br /></p>
-
-<p>... So often have I watched that scene!... Let me but close my eyes one
-moment, and it will come back to me,&mdash;through all the thousand
-miles,&mdash;over the graves of the days....</p>
-
-<p>Again I see the mountain road in the yellow glow, banded with umbrages
-of palm. Again I watch the light feet coming,&mdash;now in shadow, now in
-sun,&mdash;soundlessly as falling leaves. Still I can hear the voices
-crying, "<i>Ah! déchâgê moin vite, chè!&mdash;moin lasse!</i>"&mdash;and
-see the mighty arms outreach to take the burdens away.</p>
-
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
-<a id="figure26"></a>
-<img src="images/figure26.jpg" width="400" alt="" />
-<p class="center">LES PORTEUSES<br />
-"<i>Again I see the mountain road in the yellow glow.
-... Again I watch the light feet coming,&mdash;now in
-shadow, now in sun,&mdash;soundless as falling leaves.</i>"</p>
-</div>
-
-
-<p>... Only, there is a change,&mdash;I know not what!... All vapory the
-road is, and the fronds, and the comely coming of feet of the bearers, and
-even this light of sunset,&mdash;sunset that is ever larger and nearer to
-us than dawn, even as death than birth. And the weird way appeareth a way
-whose dust is the dust of generations;&mdash;and the Shape that waits is
-never Jean-Marie, but one darker and stronger;&mdash;and these are surely
-voices of tired souls who cry to Thee, thou dear black Giver of the
-perpetual rest, "<i>Ah! déchâgé moin vite, chè!&mdash;moin lasse!</i>"</p>
-
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 300px;">
-<img src="images/figure27.jpg" width="300" alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4><a id="LA_GRANDE_ANSE">LA GRANDE ANSE</a></h4>
-
-
-<h4>I</h4>
-
-
-<div class="figleft" style="width: 60px;">
-<img src="images/figure28.jpg" width="60" height="80" alt="" />
-</div>
-
-
-<p>While, at the village of Morne Rouge, I was frequently impressed by the
-singular beauty of young girls from the north-east coast&mdash;all
-porteuses, who passed almost daily, on their way from Grande Anse to St.
-Pierre and back again,&mdash;a total trip of thirty-five miles.... I knew
-they were from Grande Anse, because the village baker, at whose shop they
-were wont to make brief halts, told me a good deal about them: he knew each
-one by name. Whenever a remarkably attractive girl appeared, and I would
-inquire whence she came, the invariable reply (generally preceded by
-that peculiarly intoned French "Ah!" signifying, "Why, you certainly
-ought to know!") was "Grande Anse."... <i>Ah! c'est de Grande Anse, ça!</i>
-And if any commonplace, uninteresting type showed itself, it would be
-signalled as from somewhere else&mdash;Gros-Morne, Capote, Marigot,
-perhaps,&mdash;but never from Grande Anse. The Grande Anse girls were
-distinguishable by their clear yellow or brown skins, lithe light
-figures, and a particular grace in their way of dressing. Their short
-robes were always of bright and pleasing colors, perfectly contrasting
-with the ripe fruit-tint of nude limbs and faces: I could discern a
-partiality for white stuffs with apricot-yellow stripes, for plaidings
-of blue and violet, and various patterns of pink and mauve. They had a
-graceful way of walking under their trays, with hands clasped behind
-their heads, and arms uplifted in the manner of caryatides. An artist
-would have been wild with delight for the chance to sketch some of
-them.... On the whole, they conveyed the impression that they belonged
-to a particular race, very different from that of the chief city or its
-environs.</p>
-
-<p>"Are they all banana-colored at Grande Anse?" I asked,&mdash;"and all as
-pretty as these?"</p>
-
-<p>"I was never at Grande Anse," the little baker answered, "although I
-have been forty years in Martinique; but I know there is a fine class of
-young girls there: <i>il y a une belle jeunesse là, mon cher!</i>"</p>
-
-<p>Then I wondered why the youth of Grande Anse should be any finer than
-the youth of other places; and it seemed to me that the baker's own
-statement of his never having been there might possibly furnish a clew.
-... Out of the thirty-five thousand inhabitants of St. Pierre and its
-suburbs, there are at least twenty thousand who never have been there,
-and most probably never will be. Few dwellers of the west coast visit
-the east coast: in fact, except among the white creoles, who represent
-but a small percentage of the total population, there are few persons to
-be met with who are familiar with all parts of their native island. It
-is so mountainous, and travelling is so wearisome, that populations may
-live and die in adjacent valleys without climbing the intervening ranges
-to look at one another. Grande Anse is only about twenty miles from the
-principal city; but it requires some considerable inducement to make the
-journey on horseback; and only the professional carrier-girls,
-plantation messengers, and colored people of peculiarly tough
-constitution attempt it on foot. Except for the transportation of sugar
-and rum, there is practically no communication by sea between the west
-and the north-east coast&mdash;the sea is too dangerous&mdash;and thus the
-populations on either side of the island are more or less isolated from
-each other, besides being further subdivided and segregated by the
-lesser mountain chains crossing their respective territories.... In view
-of all these things I wondered whether a community so secluded might not
-assume special characteristics within two hundred years&mdash;might not
-develop into a population of some yellow, red, or brown type, according
-to the predominant element of the original race-crossing.</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>II</h4>
-
-
-<p>I had long been anxious to see the city of the porteuses, when the
-opportunity afforded itself to make the trip with a friend obliged to go
-thither on some important business;&mdash;I do not think I should have ever
-felt resigned to undertake it alone. With a level road the distance
-might be covered very quickly, but over mountains the journey is slow
-and wearisome in the perpetual tropic heat. Whether made on horseback or
-in a carriage, it takes between four and five hours to go from St.
-Pierre to Grande Anse, and it requires a longer time to return, as the
-road is then nearly all uphill. The young porteuse travels almost as
-rapidly; and the barefooted black postman, who carries the mails in a
-square box at the end of a pole, is timed on leaving Morne Rouge at 4
-A.M. to reach Ajoupa-Bouillon a little after six, and leaving
-Ajoupa-Bouillon at half-past six to reach Grande Anse at half-past
-eight, including many stoppages and delays on the way.</p>
-
-<p>Going to Grande Anse from the chief city, one can either hire a horse or
-carriage at St. Pierre, or ascend to Morne Rouge by the public
-conveyance, and there procure a vehicle or animal, which latter is the
-cheaper and easier plan. About a mile beyond Morne Rouge, where the old
-Calebasse road enters the public highway, you reach the highest point of
-the journey,&mdash;the top of the enormous ridge dividing the north-east
-from the western coast, and cutting off the trade-winds from sultry St.
-Pierre. By climbing the little hill, with a tall stone cross on its
-summit, overlooking the Champ-Flore just here, you can perceive the sea
-on both sides of the bland at once&mdash;<i>lapis lazuli</i> blue. From
-this elevation the road descends by a hundred windings and lessening
-undulations to the eastern shore. It sinks between monies wooded to
-their summits,&mdash;bridges a host of torrents and ravines,&mdash;passes
-gorges from whence colossal trees tower far overhead, through heavy
-streaming of lianas, to mingle their green crowns in magnificent gloom. Now
-and then you hear a low long sweet sound like the deepest tone of a silver
-flute,&mdash;a bird-call, the cry of the <i>siffleur-de-montagne</i>; then
-all is stillness. You are not like'y to see a white face again for hours,
-but at intervals a porteuse passes, walking very swiftly, or a field-hand
-heavily laden; and these salute you either by speech or a lifting of the
-hand to the head.... And it b very pleasant to hear the greetings
-and to see the smiles of those who thus pass,&mdash;the fine brown girls
-bearing trays, the dark laborers bowed under great burdens of
-bamboo-grass,&mdash;<i>Bonjou', Missié!</i> Then you should reply, if the
-speaker be a woman and pretty, "Good-day, dear" (<i>bonjou', chè</i>), or,
-"Good-day, my daughter" (<i>mafi</i>) even if she be old; while if the
-passer-by be a man, your proper reply is, "Good-day, my son"
-(<i>monfi</i>).... They are less often uttered now than in other years,
-these kindly greetings, but they still form part of the good and true
-creole manners.</p>
-
-<p>The feathery beauty of the tree-ferns shadowing each brook, the grace of
-bamboo and arborescent grasses, seem to decrease as the road
-descends,&mdash;but the palms grow taller. Often the way skirts a precipice
-dominating some marvellous valley prospect; again it is walled in by
-high green banks or shrubby slopes which cut off the view; and always it
-serpentines so that you cannot see more than a few hundred feet of the
-white track before you. About the fifteenth kilometre a glorious
-landscape opens to the right, reaching to the Atlantic;&mdash;the road
-still winds very high; forests are billowing hundreds of yards below it,
-and rising miles away up the slopes of mornes, beyond which, here and
-there, loom strange shapes of mountain,&mdash;shading off from misty green
-to violet and faintest gray. And through one grand opening in this
-multicolored surging of hills and peaks you perceive the gold-yellow of
-cane-fields touching the sky-colored sea. Grande Anse lies somewhere in
-that direction.... At the eighteenth kilometre you pass a cluster of little
-country cottages, a church, and one or two large buildings framed in
-shade-trees&mdash;the hamlet of Ajoupa-Bouillon. Yet a little farther, and
-you find you have left all the woods behind you. But the road continues
-its bewildering curves around and between low monies covered with cane
-or cocoa plants: it dips down very low, rises again, dips once
-more;&mdash;and you perceive the soil is changing color; it is taking a red
-tint like that of the land of the American cotton-belt. Then you pass the
-Rivière Falaise (marked <i>Filasse</i> upon old maps),&mdash;with its
-shallow crystal torrent flowing through a very deep and rocky
-channel,&mdash;and the Capote and other streams; and over the yellow rim of
-cane-hills the long blue bar of the sea appears, edged landward with a
-dazzling fringe of foam. The heights you have passed are no longer verdant,
-but purplish or gray,&mdash;with Pelée's cloud-wrapped enormity overtopping
-all. A very strong warm wind is blowing upon you&mdash;the trade-wind,
-always driving the clouds west: this is the sunny side of Martinique, where
-gray days and heavy rains are less frequent. Once or twice more the sea
-disappears and reappears, always over canes; and then, after passing a
-bridge and turning a last curve, the road suddenly drops down to the shore
-and into the burgh of Grande Anse.</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>III</h4>
-
-
-<p>Leaving Morne Rouge at about eight in the morning, my friend and I
-reached Grande Anse at half-past eleven. Everything had been arranged to
-make us comfortable. I was delighted with the airy comer room,
-commanding at once a view of the main street and of the sea&mdash;a very
-high room, all open to the trade-winds&mdash;which had been prepared to
-receive me. But after a long carriage ride in the heat of a tropical June
-day, one always feels the necessity of a little physical exercise. I
-lingered only a minute or two in the house, and went out to look at the
-little town and its surroundings.</p>
-
-<p>As seen from the high-road, the burgh of Grande Anse makes a long patch
-of darkness between the green of the coast and the azure of the water:
-it is almost wholly black and gray&mdash;suited to inspire an etching. High
-slopes of cane and meadow rise behind it and on either side, undulating
-up and away to purple and gray tips of mountain ranges. North and south,
-to left and right, the land reaches out in two high promontories, mostly
-green, and about a mile apart&mdash;the Pointe du Rochet and the Pointe de
-Séguinau, or Croche-Mort, which latter name preserves the legend of an
-insurgent slave, a man of color, shot dead upon the cliff. These
-promontories form the semicircular bay of Grande Anse. All this Grande
-Anse, or "Great Creek," valley is an immense basin of basalt; and narrow
-as it is, no less than five streams water it, including the Rivière de
-la Grande Anse.</p>
-
-<p>There are only three short streets in the town. The principal, or Grande
-Rue, is simply a continuation of the national road; there is a narrower
-one below, which used to be called the Rue de la Paille, because the
-cottages lining it were formerly all thatched with cane straw; and there
-is one above it, edging the cane-fields that billow away to the meeting
-of morne and sky. There is nothing of architectural interest, and all is
-sombre,&mdash;walls and roofs and pavements. But after you pass through the
-city and follow the southern route that ascends the Séguinau promontory,
-you can obtain some lovely landscape views&mdash;a grand surging
-of rounded mornes, with farther violet peaks, truncated or homed,
-pushing up their heads in the horizon above the highest flutterings of
-cane; and looking back above the town, you may see Pelée all
-unclouded,&mdash;not as you see it from the other coast, but an enormous
-ghostly silhouette, with steep sides and almost square summit, so pale as
-to seem transparent. Then if you cross the promontory southward, the
-same road will lead you into another very beautiful valley, watered by a
-broad rocky torrent,&mdash;the Valley of the Rivière du Lorrain. This clear
-stream rushes to the sea through a lofty opening in the hills; and
-looking westward between them, you will be charmed by the exquisite
-vista of green shapes piling and pushing up one behind another to reach
-a high blue ridge which forms the background&mdash;a vision of tooth-shaped
-and fantastical mountains,&mdash;part of the great central chain running
-south and north through nearly the whole island. It is over those blue
-summits that the wonderful road called <i>La Trace</i> winds between
-primeval forest walls.</p>
-
-<p>But the more you become familiar with the face of the little town
-itself, the more you are impressed by the strange swarthy tone it
-preserves in all this splendid expanse of radiant tinting. There are only
-two points of visible color in it,&mdash;the church and hospital, built
-of stone, which have been painted yellow: as a mass in the landscape,
-lying between the dead-gold of the cane-clad hills and the delicious
-azure of the sea, it remains almost black under the prodigious blaze of
-light. The foundations of volcanic rock, three or four feet high, on
-which the frames of the wooden dwellings rest, are black; and the
-sea-wind appears to have the power of blackening all timber-work here
-through any coat of paint. Roofs and façades look as if they had been
-long exposed to coal-smoke, although probably no one in Grande Anse ever
-saw coal; and the pavements of pebbles and cement are of a deep
-ash-color, full of micaceous scintillation, and so hard as to feel
-disagreeable even to feet protected by good thick shoes. By-and-by you
-notice walls of black stone, bridges of black stone, and perceive that
-black forms an element of all the landscape about you. On the roads
-leading from the town you note from time to time masses of jagged rock
-or great bowlders protruding through the green of the slopes, and dark
-as ink. These black surfaces also sparkle. The beds of all the
-neighboring rivers are filled with dark gray stones; and many of these,
-broken by those violent floods which dash rocks together,&mdash;deluging
-the valleys, and strewing the soil of the bottom-lands (<i>fonds</i>) with
-dead serpents,&mdash;display black cores. Bare crags projecting from the
-green cliffs here and there are soot-colored, and the outlying rocks of the
-coast offer a similar aspect. And the sand of the beach is funereally
-black&mdash;looks almost like powdered charcoal; and as you walk over it,
-sinking three or four inches every step, you are amazed by the multitude
-and brilliancy of minute flashes in it, like a subtle silver
-effervescence.</p>
-
-<p>This extraordinary sand contains ninety per cent, of natural steel, and
-efforts have been made to utilize it industrially. Some years ago a
-company was formed, and a machine invented to separate the metal from the
-pure sand,&mdash;an immense revolving magnet, which, being set in motion
-under a sand shower, caught the ore upon it. When the covering thus
-formed by the adhesion of the steel became of a certain thickness, the
-simple interruption of an electric current precipitated the metal into
-appropriate receptacles. Fine bars were made from this volcanic steel,
-and excellent cutting tools manufactured from it: French metallurgists
-pronounced the product of peculiar excellence, and nevertheless the
-project of the company was abandoned. Political disorganization
-consequent upon the establishment of universal suffrage frightened
-capitalists who might have aided the undertaking under a better
-condition of affairs; and the lack of large means, coupled with the cost
-of freight to remote markets, ultimately baffled this creditable attempt
-to found a native industry.</p>
-
-<p>Sometimes after great storms bright brown sand is flung up from the
-sea-depths; but the heavy black sand always reappears again to make the
-universal color of the beach.</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>IV</h4>
-
-
-<p>Behind the roomy wooden house in which I occupied an apartment there was
-a small garden-plot surrounded with a hedge strengthened by bamboo
-fencing, and radiant with flowers of the <i>loseille-bois</i>&mdash;the
-creole name for a sort of begonia, whose closed bud exactly resembles a
-pink and white dainty bivalve shell, and whose open blossom imitates the
-form of a butterfly. Here and there, on the grass, were nets drying, and
-<i>nasses</i>&mdash;curious fish-traps made of split bamboos interwoven and
-held in place with <i>mibi</i> stalks (the mibi is a liana heavy and tough
-as copper wire); and immediately behind the garden hedge appeared the white
-flashing of the surf. The most vivid recollection connected with my trip
-to Grande Anse is that of the first time that I went to the end of that
-garden, opened the little bamboo gate, and found myself overlooking the
-beach&mdash;an immense breadth of soot-black sand, with pale green patches
-and stripings here and there upon it&mdash;refuse of cane thatch,
-decomposing rubbish spread out by old tides. The one solitary boat owned in
-the community lay there before me, high and dry. It was the hot period of
-the afternoon; the town slept; there was no living creature in sight;
-and the booming of the surf drowned all other sounds; the scent of the
-warm strong sea-wind annihilated all other odors. Then, very suddenly,
-there came to me a sensation absolutely weird, while watching the strange
-wild sea roaring over its beach of black sand,&mdash;the sensation of
-seeing something unreal, looking at something that had no more tangible
-existence than a memory! Whether suggested by the first white vision of
-the surf over the bamboo hedge,&mdash;or by those old green tide-lines on
-the desolation of the black beach,&mdash;or by some tone of the speaking of
-the sea,&mdash;or something indefinable in the living touch of the
-wind,&mdash;or by all of these, I cannot say;&mdash;but slowly there became
-defined within me the thought of having beheld just such a coast very long
-ago, I could not tell where,&mdash;in those child-years of which the
-recollections gradually become indistinguishable from dreams.</p>
-
-<p><br /></p>
-
-<p>Soon as darkness comes upon Grande Anse the face of the clock in the
-church-tower is always lighted: you see it suddenly burst into yellow
-glow above the roofs and the cocoa-palms,&mdash;just like a pharos. In my
-room I could not keep the candle lighted because of the sea-wind; but it
-never occurred to me to close the shutters of the great broad
-windows,&mdash;sashless, of course, like all the glassless windows of
-Martinique;&mdash;the breeze was too delicious. It seemed full of something
-vitalizing that made one's blood warmer, and rendered one full of
-contentment&mdash;full of eagerness to believe life all sweetness.
-Likewise, I found it soporific&mdash;this pure, dry, warm wind. And I
-thought there could be no greater delight in existence than to lie down at
-night, with all the windows open,&mdash;and the Cross of the South visible
-from my pillow,&mdash;and the sea-wind pouring over the bed,&mdash;and the
-tumultuous whispering and muttering of the surf in one's ears,&mdash;dream
-of that strange sapphire sea white-bursting over its beach of black sand.</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>V</h4>
-
-
-<p>Considering that Grande Anse lies almost opposite to St. Pierre, at a
-distance of less than twenty miles even by the complicated windings of
-the national road, the differences existing in the natural conditions of
-both places are remarkable enough. Nobody in St. Pierre sees the sun
-rise, because the mountains immediately behind the city continue to
-shadow its roofs long after the eastern coast is deluged with light and
-heat. At Grande Anse, on the other hand, those tremendous sunsets which
-delight west coast dwellers are not visible at all; and during the
-briefer West Indian days Grande Anse is all wrapped in darkness as early as
-half-past four,&mdash;or nearly an hour before the orange light has ceased
-to flare up the streets of St. Pierre from the sea;&mdash;since the great
-mountain range topped by Pelée cuts off all the slanting light from the
-east valleys. And early as folks rise in St. Pierre, they rise still
-earlier at Grande Anse&mdash;before the sun emerges from the rim of the
-Atlantic: about half-past four, doors are being opened and coffee is
-ready. At St. Pierre one can enjoy a sea bath till seven or half-past
-seven o'clock, even during the time of the sun's earliest rising,
-because the shadow of the mornes still reaches out upon the bay;&mdash;but
-bathers leave the black beach of Grande Anse by six o'clock; for once
-the sun's face is up, the light, levelled straight at the eyes, becomes
-blinding. Again, at St. Pierre it rains almost every twenty-four hours
-for a brief while, during at least the greater part of the year; at
-Grande Anse it rains more moderately and less often. The atmosphere at
-St. Pierre is always more or less impregnated with vapor, and usually an
-enervating heat prevails, which makes exertion unpleasant; at Grande
-Anse the warm wind keeps the skin comparatively dry, in spite of
-considerable exercise. It is quite rare to see a heavy surf at St.
-Pierre, but it is much rarer not to see it at Grande Anse.... A curious
-fact concerning custom is that few white creoles care to bathe in front
-of the town, notwithstanding the superb beach and magnificent surf, both
-so inviting to one accustomed to the deep still water and rough pebbly
-shore of St. Pierre. The creoles really prefer their rivers as
-bathing-places; and when willing to take a sea bath, they will walk up
-and down hill for kilometres in order to reach some river mouth, so as
-to wash off in the fresh-water afterwards. They say that the effect of
-sea-salt upon the skin gives <i>boutons-chauds</i> (what we call "prickly
-heat"). Friends took me all the way to the mouth of the Lorrain one
-morning that I might have the experience of such a double bath; but
-after leaving the tepid sea, I must confess the plunge into the river
-was something terrible&mdash;an icy shock which cured me of all further
-desire for river baths. My willingness to let the sea-water dry upon me
-was regarded as an eccentricity.</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>VI</h4>
-
-
-<p>It may be said that on all this coast the ocean, perpetually moved by
-the blowing of the trade-winds, never rests&mdash;never hushes its roar.
-Even in the streets of Grande Anse, one must in breezy weather lift one's
-voice above the natural pitch to be heard; and then the breakers come in
-lines more than a mile long, between the Pointe du Rochet and the Pointe
-de Séguinau,&mdash;every unfurling a thunder-clap. There is no travelling
-by sea. All large vessels keep well away from the dangerous coast. There is
-scarcely any fishing; and although the sea is thick with fish, fresh
-fish at Grande Anse is a rare luxury. Communication with St. Pierre is
-chiefly by way of the national road, winding over mountain ridges two
-thousand feet high; and the larger portion of merchandise is transported
-from the chief city on the heads of young women. The steepness of the
-route soon kills draught-horses and ruins the toughest mules. At one
-time the managers of a large estate at Grande Anse attempted the
-experiment of sending their sugar to St. Pierre in iron carts, drawn by
-five mules; but the animals could not endure the work. Cocoa can be
-carried to St. Pierre by the porteuses, but sugar and rum must go by
-sea, or not at all; and the risks and difficulties of shipping these
-seriously affect the prosperity of all the north and north-east coast.
-Planters have actually been ruined by inability to send their products
-to market during a protracted spell of rough weather. A railroad has
-been proposed and planned: in a more prosperous era it might be
-constructed, with the result of greatly developing all the Atlantic side
-of the island, and converting obscure villages into thriving towns.</p>
-
-<p>Sugar is very difficult to ship; rum and tafia can be handled with less
-risk. It is nothing less than exciting to watch a shipment of tafia from
-Grande Anse to St. Pierre.</p>
-
-<p>A little vessel approaches the coast with extreme caution, and anchors
-in the bay some hundred yards beyond the breakers. She is what they call a
-<i>pirogue</i> here, but not at all what is called a pirogue in the United
-States: she has a long narrow hull, two masts, no deck; she has usually
-a crew of five, and can carry thirty barrels of tafia. One of the
-pirogue men puts a great shell to his lips and sounds a call, very
-mellow and deep, that can be heard over the roar of the waves far up
-among the hills. The shell is one of those great spiral shells, weighing
-seven or eight pounds&mdash;rolled like a scroll, fluted and scalloped
-about the edges, and pink-pearled inside,&mdash;such as are sold in America
-for mantel-piece ornaments,&mdash;the shell of a <i>lambi.</i> Here you can
-often see the lambi crawling about with its nacreous house upon its back:
-an enormous sea-snail with a yellowish back and rose-colored belly, with
-big horns and eyes in the tip of each horn&mdash;very pretty eyes, having a
-golden iris. This creature is a common article of food; but its thick
-white flesh is almost compact as cartilage, and must be pounded before
-being cooked.<a name="FNanchor_5_1" id="FNanchor_5_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_1" class="fnanchor">[5]</a></p>
-
-<p>At the sound of the blowing of the lambi-shell, wagons descend to the
-beach, accompanied by young colored men running beside the mules. Each
-wagon discharges a certain number of barrels of tafia, and
-simultaneously the young men strip. They are slight, well built, and
-generally well muscled. Each man takes a barrel of tafia, pushes
-it  before him into the surf, and then begins to swim to the
-pirogue,&mdash;impelling the barrel before him. I have never seen a
-swimmer attempt to convey more than one barrel at a time; but I
-am told  there are experts who manage as many as three barrels
-together,&mdash;pushing them forward in line, with the head of one
-against the bottom of the next. It really requires much dexterity and
-practice to handle even one barrel or cask. As the swimmer advances he
-keeps close as possible to his charge,&mdash;so as to be able to push it
-forward with all his force against each breaker in
-succession,&mdash;making it dive through. If it once glide well out of
-his reach while he is in the breakers, it becomes an enemy, and he must
-take care to keep out of its way,&mdash;for if a wave throws it at him,
-or rolls it over him, he may be seriously injured; but the expert seldom
-abandons a barrel. Under the most favorable conditions, man and barrel
-will both disappear a score of times before the clear swells are
-reached, after which the rest of the journey is not difficult. Men lower
-ropes from the pirogue, the swimmer passes them under his barrel, and it
-is hoisted aboard.</p>
-
-<p>... Wonderful surf-swimmers these men are;&mdash;they will go far out
-for mere sport in the roughest kind of a sea, when the waves, abnormally
-swollen by the peculiar conformation of the bay, come rolling in thirty
-and forty feet high. Sometimes, with the swift impulse of ascending a
-swell, the swimmer seems suspended in air as it passes beneath him,
-before he plunges into the trough beyond. The best swimmer is a young
-capre who cannot weigh more than a hundred and twenty pounds. Few of the
-Grande Anse men are heavily built; they do not compare for stature and
-thew with those longshoremen at St. Pierre who can be seen any busy
-afternoon on the landing, lifting heavy barrels at almost the full reach
-of their swarthy arms.</p>
-
-<p>... There is but one boat owned in the whole parish of Grande
-Anse,&mdash;a fact due to the continual roughness of the sea. It has a
-little mast and sail, and can hold only three men. When the water is
-somewhat less angry than usual, a colored crew take it out for a fishing
-expedition. There is always much interest in this event; a crowd gathers
-on the beach; and the professional swimmers help to bring the little
-craft beyond the breakers. When the boat returns after a disappearance
-of several hours, everybody runs down from the village to meet it. Young
-colored women twist their robes up about their hips, and wade out to
-welcome it: there is a display of limbs of all colors on such occasions,
-which is not without grace, that untaught grace which tempts an artistic
-pencil. Every bonne and every house-keeper struggles for the first
-chance to buy the fish;&mdash;young girls and children dance in the
-water for delight, all screaming, "<i>Rhalé bois-canot!</i>"... Then as
-the boat is pulled through the surf and hauled up on the sand, the
-pushing and screaming and crying become irritating and deafening; the
-fishermen lose patience and say terrible things. But nobody heeds them
-in the general clamoring and haggling and furious bidding for the
-<i>pouèsson-ououge</i>, the <i>dorades</i>, the <i>volants</i>
-(beautiful purple-backed flying-fish with silver bellies, and fins all
-transparent, like the wings of dragon-flies). There is great bargaining
-even for a young shark,&mdash;which makes very nice eating cooked after
-the creole fashion. So seldom can the fishermen venture out that each
-trip makes a memorable event for the village.</p>
-
-<p>The St. Pierre fishermen very seldom approach the bay, but they do
-much fishing a few miles beyond it, almost in front of the Pointe du
-Rochet and the Roche à Bourgaut. There the best flying-fish are
-caught,&mdash;and besides edible creatures, many queer things are often
-brought up by the nets: monstrosities such as the <i>coffre</i>-fish,
-shaped almost like a box, of which the lid is represented by an
-extraordinary conformation of the jaws;&mdash;and the
-<i>barrique-de-vin</i> ("wine cask"), with round boneless body,
-secreting in a curious vesicle a liquor precisely resembling wine
-lees;&mdash;and the "needle-fish" (<i>aiguille de mer</i>), less thick
-than a Faber lead-pencil, but more than twice as long;&mdash;and huge
-cuttle-fish and prodigious eels. One conger secured off this coast
-measured over twenty feet in length, and weighed two hundred and fifty
-pounds&mdash;a veritable sea-serpent.... But even the fresh-water
-inhabitants of Grande Anse are amazing. I have seen crawfish by actual
-measurement fifty centimetres long, but these were not considered
-remarkable. Many are said to much exceed two feet from the tail to the
-tip of the claws and horns. They are of an iron-black color, and have
-formidable pincers with serrated edges and tip-points inwardly
-converging, which cannot crush like the weapons of a lobster, but which
-will cut the flesh and make a small ugly wound. At first sight one not
-familiar with the crawfish of these regions can hardly believe he is not
-viewing some variety of gigantic lobster instead of the common
-fresh-water crawfish of the east coast. When the head, tail, legs, and
-cuirass have all been removed, after boiling, the curved trunk has still
-the size and weight of a large pork sausage.</p>
-
-<p>These creatures are trapped by lantern-light. Pieces of manioc root tied
-fast to large bowlders sunk in the river are the only bait;&mdash;the
-crawfish will flock to eat it upon any dark night, and then they are
-caught with scoop-nets and dropped into covered baskets.</p>
-
-<p><br /></p>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_5_1" id="Footnote_5_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_1"><span class="label">[5]</span></a><i>Y batt li conm lambi</i>&mdash;"he beat him like a lambi"&mdash;is an
-expression that may often be heard in a creole court from witnesses
-testifying in a case of assault and battery. One must have seen a lambi
-pounded to appreciate the terrible picturesqueness of the phrase.</p></div>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>VII</h4>
-
-
-<p>One whose ideas of the people of Grande Anse had been formed only by
-observing the young porteuses of the region on their way to the other
-side of the island, might expect on reaching this little town to find
-its population yellow as that of a Chinese city. But the dominant hue is
-much darker, although the mixed element is everywhere visible; and I was
-at first surprised by the scarcity of those clear bright skins I
-supposed to be so numerous. Some pretty children&mdash;notably a pair of
-twin-sisters, and perhaps a dozen school-girls from eight to ten years
-of age&mdash;displayed the same characteristics I have noted in the adult
-porteuses of Grande Anse; but within the town itself this brighter
-element is in the minority. The predominating race element of the whole
-commune is certainly colored (Grande Anse is even memorable because of
-the revolt of its <i>hommes de couleur</i> some fifty years ago);&mdash;but
-the colored population is not concentrated in the town; it belongs rather
-to the valleys and the heights surrounding the <i>chef-lieu.</i> Most of
-the porteuses are country girls, and I found that even those living in the
-village are seldom visible on the streets except when departing upon a
-trip or returning from one. An artist wishing to study the type might,
-however, pass a day at the bridge of the Rivière Falaise to advantage,
-as all the carrier-girls pass it at certain hours of the morning and
-evening.</p>
-
-<p>But the best possible occasion on which to observe what my friend the
-baker called <i>la belle jeunesse</i>, is a confirmation day,&mdash;when
-the bishop drives to Grande Anse over the mountains, and all the
-population turns out in holiday garb, and the bells are tapped like
-tam-tams, and triumphal arches&mdash;most awry to behold!&mdash;span the
-road-way, bearing in clumsiest lettering the welcome. <i>Vive
-Monseigneur.</i> On that event, the long procession of young girls to be
-confirmed&mdash;all in white robes, white veils, and white satin
-slippers&mdash;is a numerical surprise. It is a moral surprise
-also,&mdash;to the stranger at least; for it reveals the struggle of a
-poverty extraordinary with the self-imposed obligations of a costly
-ceremonialism.</p>
-
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
-<a id="figure29"></a>
-<img src="images/figure29.jpg" width="400" alt="" />
-<p class="center">CATHEDRAL, FORT-DE-FRANCE<br />
-<i>Services begin at daybreak. All day long the ringing
-bells mark the joys and sorrows of creole and white
-alike.</i></p>
-</div>
-
-
-<p>No white children ever appear in these processions: there are not half a
-dozen white families in the whole urban population of about seven
-thousand souls; and those send their sons and daughters to St. Pierre or
-Morne Rouge for their religious training and education. But many
-of the colored children look very charming in their costume of
-confirmation;&mdash;you could not easily recognize one of them as the same
-little bonne who brings your morning cup of coffee, or another as the
-daughter of a plantation <i>commandeur</i> (overseer's assistant),&mdash;a
-brown slip of a girl who will probably never wear shoes again. And many of
-those white shoes and white veils have been obtained only by the hardest
-physical labor and self-denial of poor parents and relatives: fathers,
-brothers, and mothers working with cutlass and hoe in the snake-swarming
-cane-fields;&mdash;sisters walking bare-footed every day to St. Pierre and
-back to earn a few francs a month.</p>
-
-<p>... While watching such a procession it seemed to me that I could
-discern in the features and figures of the young confirmants something
-of a prevailing type and tint, and I asked an old planter beside me if
-he thought my impression correct.</p>
-
-<p>"Partly," he answered; "there is certainly a tendency towards an
-attractive physical type here, but the tendency itself is less stable
-than you imagine; it has been changed during the last twenty years
-within my own recollection. In different parts of the island particular
-types appear and disappear with a generation. There is a sort of
-race-fermentation going on, which gives no fixed result of a positive
-sort for any great length of time. It is true that certain elements
-continue to dominate in certain communes, but the particular
-characteristics come and vanish in the most mysterious way. As to color,
-I doubt if any correct classification can be made, especially by a
-stranger. Your eyes give you general ideas about a red type, a yellow
-type, a brown type; but to the more experienced eyes of a creole,
-accustomed to live in the country districts, every individual of mixed
-race appears to have a particular color of his own. Take, for instance,
-the so-called capre type, which furnishes the finest physical examples
-of all,&mdash;you, a stranger, are at once impressed by the general red
-tint of the variety; but you do not notice the differences of that tint in
-different persons, which are more difficult to observe than
-shade-differences of yellow or brown. Now, to me, every capre or
-capresse has an individual color; and I do not believe that in all
-Martinique there are two half-breeds&mdash;not having had the same father
-and mother&mdash;in whom the tint is precisely the same."</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>VIII</h4>
-
-
-<p>I thought Grande Anse the most sleepy place I had ever visited. I
-suspect it is one of the sleepiest in the whole world. The wind, which
-tans even a creole of St. Pierre to an unnatural brown within
-forty-eight hours of his sojourn in the village, has also a peculiarly
-somnolent effect. The moment one has nothing particular to do, and
-ventures to sit down idly with the breeze in one's face, slumber comes;
-and everybody who can spare the time takes a long nap in the afternoon,
-and little naps from hour to hour. For all that, the heat of the east
-coast is not enervating, like that of St. Pierre; one can take a great
-deal of exercise in the sun without feeling much the worse. Hunting
-excursions, river fishing parties, surf-bathing, and visits to
-neighboring plantations are the only amusements; but these are enough to
-make existence very pleasant at Grande Anse. The most interesting of my
-own experiences were those of a day passed by invitation at one of the
-old colonial estates on the bills near the village.</p>
-
-<p>It is not easy to describe the charm of a creole interior, whether in
-the city or the country. The cool shadowy court, with its wonderful
-plants and fountain of sparkling mountain water, or the lawn, with its
-ancestral trees,&mdash;the delicious welcome of the host, whose
-fraternal easy manner immediately makes you feel at home,&mdash;the
-coming of the children to greet you, each holding up a velvety brown
-cheek to be kissed, after the old-time custom,&mdash;the romance of the
-unconventional chat, over a cool drink, under the palms and the
-ceibas,&mdash;the visible earnestness of all to please the guest, to
-inwrap him in a very atmosphere of quiet happiness,&mdash;combine to
-make a memory which you will never forget. And maybe you enjoy all this
-upon some exquisite site, some volcanic summit, overlooking slopes of a
-hundred greens,&mdash;mountains far winding in blue and pearly
-shadowing,&mdash;rivers singing seaward behind curtains of arborescent
-reeds and bamboos,&mdash;and, perhaps. Pelée, in the horizon, dreaming
-violet dreams under her foulard of vapors,&mdash;and, encircling all,
-the still sweep of the ocean's azure bending to the verge of day.</p>
-
-<p>... My host showed or explained to me all that he thought might
-interest a stranger. He had brought to me a nest of the <i>carouge</i>,
-a bird which suspends its home, hammock-fashion, under the leaves of the
-banana-tree;&mdash;showed me a little fer-de-lance, freshly killed by
-one of his field hands; and a field lizard (<i>zanoli tè</i> in
-creole), not green like the lizards which haunt the roofs of St. Pierre,
-but of a beautiful brown bronze, with shifting tints; and eggs of the
-<i>zanoli</i>, little soft oval things from which the young lizards will
-perhaps run out alive as fast as you open the shells; and the
-<i>matoutou-falaise</i>, or spider of the cliffs, of two varieties, red
-or almost black when adult, and bluish silvery tint when
-young,&mdash;less in size than the tarantula, but equally hairy and
-venomous; and the <i>crabe-c'est-ma-faute</i> (the "Through-my-fault
-crab"), having one very small and one very large claw, which latter it
-carries folded up against its body, so as to have suggested the idea of
-a penitent striking his bosom, and uttering the sacramental words of the
-Catholic confession, "Through my fault, through my fault, through my
-most grievous fault."... Indeed I cannot recollect one-half of the queer
-birds, queer insects, queer reptiles, and queer plants to which my
-attention was called. But speaking of plants, I was impressed by the
-profusion of the <i>zhèbe-moin-misé</i>&mdash;a little sensitive-plant
-I had rarely observed on the west coast. On the hill-sides of Grande
-Anse it prevails to such an extent as to give certain slopes its own
-peculiar greenish-brown color. It has many-branching leaves, only one
-inch and a half to two inches long, but which recall the form of certain
-common ferns; these lie almost flat upon the ground. They fold together
-upward from the central stem at the least touch, and the plant thus
-makes itself almost imperceptible;&mdash;it seems to live so, that you
-fed guilty of murder if you break off a leaf. It is called
-<i>Zhèbe-moin-misé</i>, or "Plant-did-I-amuse-myself," because it is
-supposed to tell naughty little children who play truant, or who delay
-much longer than is necessary in delivering a message, whether they
-deserve a whipping or not. The guilty child touches the plant, and asks,
-"<i>Ess moin amisé morn?</i>" (Did I amuse myself?); and if the plant
-instantly shuts its leaves up, that means, "Yes, you did!" Of course the
-leaves invariably close; but I suspect they invariably tell the truth,
-for all colored children, in Grande Anse at least, are much more
-inclined to play than work.</p>
-
-<p>The kind old planter likewise conducted me over the estate. He took me
-through the sugar-mill, and showed me, among other more recent
-inventions, some machinery devised nearly two centuries ago by the
-ingenious and terrible Père Labat, and still quite serviceable, in
-spite of all modern improvements in sugar-making;&mdash;took me through the
-<i>rhummerie</i>, or distillery, and made me taste some colorless rum which
-had the aroma and something of the taste of the most delicate gin;&mdash;and
-finally took me into the <i>cases-à-vent</i>, or "wind-houses,"&mdash;built
-as places of refuge during hurricanes. Hurricanes are rare, and more rare
-in this century by far than during the previous one; but this part of
-the island is particularly exposed to such visitations, and almost every
-old plantation used to have one or two cases-à-vent. They were always
-built in a hollow, either natural or artificial, below the
-land-level,&mdash;with walls of rock several feet thick, and very strong
-doors, but no windows. My host told me about the experiences of his
-family in some case-à-vent during a hurricane which he recollected. It
-was found necessary to secure the door within by means of strong ropes;
-and the mere task of holding it taxed the strength of a dozen powerful
-men: it would bulge in under the pressure of the awful wind,&mdash;swelling
-like the side of a barrel; and had not its planks been made of a wood
-tough as hickory, they would have been blown into splinters.</p>
-
-<p>I had long desired to examine a plantation drum, and see it played
-upon under conditions more favorable than the excitement of a holiday
-<i>caleinda</i> in the villages, where the amusement is too often
-terminated by a <i>voum</i> (general row) or a <i>goumage</i> (a serious
-fight);&mdash;and when I mentioned this wish to the planter he at once
-sent word to his commandeur, the best drummer in the settlement, to come
-up to the house and bring his instrument with him. I was thus enabled to
-make the observations necessary, and also to take an instantaneous
-photograph of the drummer in the very act of playing.</p>
-
-<p>The old African dances, the <i>caleinda</i> and the <i>bélé</i>
-(which latter is accompanied by chanted improvisation) are danced on
-Sundays to the sound of the drum on almost every plantation in the
-island. The drum, indeed, is an instrument to which the country-folk are
-so much attached that they swear by it,&mdash;<i>Tamboul</i> being the
-oath uttered upon all ordinary occasions of surprise or vexation. But
-the instrument is quite as often called <i>ka</i>, because made out of a
-quarter-barrel, or <i>quart</i>,&mdash;in the patois "ka." Both ends of
-the barrel having been removed, a wet hide, well wrapped about a couple
-of hoops, is driven on, and in drying the stretched skin obtains still
-further tension. The other end of the ka is always left open. Across the
-face of the skin a string is tightly stretched, to which are attached,
-at intervals of about an inch apart, very short thin fragments of bamboo
-or cut feather stems. These lend a certain vibration to the tones.</p>
-
-<p>In the time of Père Labat the negro drums had a somewhat different
-form. There were then two kinds of drums&mdash;a big tamtam and a little
-one, which used to be played together. Both consisted of skins tightly
-stretched over one end of a wooden cylinder, or a section of hollow tree
-trunk. The larger was from three to four feet long with a diameter of
-fifteen to sixteen inches; the smaller, called <i>baboula</i>,<a name="FNanchor_6_1" id="FNanchor_6_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_6_1" class="fnanchor">[6]</a> was of the
-same length, but only eight or nine inches in diameter. Père Labat also
-speaks, in his West Indian travels, of another musical instrument, very
-popular among the Martinique slaves of his time&mdash;"a sort of guitar"
-made out of a half-calabash or <i>couï</i>, covered with some kind of skin.
-It had four strings of silk or catgut, and a very long neck. The tradition
-of this African instrument is said to survive in the modern "<i>banza</i>"
-(<i>banza nèg Guinée</i>).</p>
-
-<p>The skilful player (<i>bel tambouyé</i>) straddles his ka stripped to
-the waist, and plays upon it with the fingertips of both hands
-simultaneously,&mdash;taking care that the vibrating string occupies a
-horizontal position. Occasionally the heel of the naked foot is pressed
-lightly or vigorously against the skin, so as to produce changes of
-tone. This is called "giving heel" to the drum&mdash;<i>baill y talon.</i>
-Meanwhile a boy keeps striking the drum at the uncovered end with a
-stick, so as to produce a dry clattering accompaniment. The sound
-of the drum itself, well played, has a wild power that makes and
-masters all the excitement of the dance&mdash;a complicated double roll,
-with a peculiar billowy rising and falling. The creole onomatopes,
-<i>b'lip-b'lib-b'lib-b'lip</i>, do not fully render the roll;&mdash;for
-each <i>b'lip</i> or <i>b'lib</i> stands really for a series of sounds too
-rapidly filliped out to be imitated by articulate speech. The tapping of a
-ka can be heard at surprising distances; and experienced players often play
-for hours at a time without exhibiting wearisomeness, or in the least
-diminishing the volume of sound produced.</p>
-
-<p>It seems there are many ways of playing&mdash;different measures
-familiar to all these colored people, but not easily distinguished by
-anybody else; and there are great matches sometimes between celebrated
-<i>tambouyé</i> The same <i>commandè</i> whose portrait I took while
-playing told me that he once figured in a contest of this kind, his
-rival being a drummer from the neighboring burgh of Marigot.... "<i>Aie,
-aïe, yaïe! mon chè!&mdash;y fai tambou-à pàlé!</i>" said the
-commandè, describing the execution of his antagonist;&mdash;"my dear,
-he just made that drum talk! I thought I was going to be beaten for
-sure; I was trembling all the time&mdash;<i>aïe, yaïe-yaïe!</i> Then
-he got off that ka. I mounted it; I thought a moment; then I struck up
-the 'River-of-the-Lizard,'&mdash;<i>mais, mon chè, yon larivie-Léza
-toutt pi!</i>&mdash;such a River-of-the-Lizard, ah! just perfectly pure!
-I gave heel to that ka; I worried that ka;&mdash;I made it mad;&mdash;I
-made it crazy;&mdash;I made it talk;&mdash;I won!"</p>
-
-<p>During some dances a sort of chant accompanies the music&mdash;a long
-sonorous cry, uttered at intervals of seven or eight seconds, which
-perfectly times a particular measure in the drum roll. It may be the
-burden of a song, or a mere improvisation:</p>
-
-
-<p><span style="margin-left: 5em;">"<i>Oh! yoïe-yoïe!</i>"</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 14em;"><i>(Drum roll.)</i></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;"><i>"Oh! missié-à!</i>"</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 14em;"><i>(Drum roll.)</i></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;"><i>"Y bel tambouyé!</i>"</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 14em;"><i>(Drum roll.)</i></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;"><i>"Aie, ya, yaie!</i>"</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 14em;"><i>(Drum roll.)</i></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;"><i>"Joli tambouyé!</i>"</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 14em;"><i>(Drum roll.)</i></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;"><i>"Chauffé tambou-à!</i>"</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 14em;"><i>(Drum roll.)</i></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;"><i>"Géné tambou-à!</i>"</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 14em;"><i>(Drum roll.)</i></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;"><i>"Crazé tambou-à!</i>" etc., etc.</span></p>
-
-
-<p>... The crieur, or chanter, is also the leader of the dance. The
-caleinda is danced by men only, all stripped to the waist, and twirling
-heavy sticks in a mock fight. Sometimes, however&mdash;especially at the
-great village gatherings, when the blood becomes overheated by
-tafia&mdash;the mock fight may become a real one; and then even cutlasses
-are brought into play.</p>
-
-<p>But in the old days, those improvisations which gave one form of dance
-its name, <i>bélé</i> (from the French <i>bel air</i>), were often
-remarkable rhymeless poems, uttered with natural simple emotion, and full
-of picturesque imagery. I cite part of one, taken down from the dictation
-of a common field-hand near Fort-de-France. I offer a few lines of the
-creole first, to indicate the form of the improvisation. There is a
-dancing pause at the end of each line during the performance:</p>
-
-
-<p><span style="margin-left: 1em;">Toutt fois lanmou vini lacase moin</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Pou pàlé moin, moin ka reponne:</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"Khé moin deja placé,"</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Moin ka crié, "Sécou! les voisinages!"</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Moin ka crié, "Sécou! la gàde royale!"</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Moin ka crié, "Sécou! la gendàmerie!</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Lanmou pouend yon poignâ pou poignadé moin!"</span></p>
-
-
-<p>The best part of the composition, which is quite long, might be
-rendered as follows:</p>
-
-
-<p><span style="margin-left: 1em;">Each time that Love comes to my cabin</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">To speak to me of love I make answer,</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"My heart is already placed,"</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">I cry out, "Help, neighbors! help!"</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">I cry out, "Help, <i>la Garde Royale!</i>"</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">I cry out, "Help, help, gendarmes!</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Love takes a poniard to stab me;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">How can Love have a heart so hard</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">To thus rob me of my health!"</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">When the officer of police comes to me</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">To hear me tell him the truth,</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">To have him arrest my Love;&mdash;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">When I see the Garde Royale</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Coming to arrest my sweet heart,</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">I fall down at the feet of the Garde Royale,&mdash;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">I pray for mercy and forgiveness.</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"Arrest me instead, but let my dear Love go!"</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">How, alas! with this tender heart of mine,</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Can I bear to see such an arrest made!</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">No, no! I would rather die!</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Dost not remember, when our pillows lay close together,</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">How we told each to the other all that our hearts thought?</span><br />
-.<span style="margin-left: 1em;">.. etc.</span></p>
-
-
-<p>The stars were all out when I bid my host good-bye;&mdash;he sent his
-black servant along with me to carry a lantern and keep a sharp watch for
-snakes along the mountain road.</p>
-
-<p><br /></p>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_6_1" id="Footnote_6_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6_1"><span class="label">[6]</span></a>Moreau de Saint-Méry writes, describing the drums of the
-negroes of Saint Domingue: "Le plus court de ces tambours est nommé
-<i>Bamboula</i>, attendu qu'il est formé quelquefois d'un très-gros
-bambou."&mdash;"Description de la partie française de Saint Domingue," vol.
-I., p. 44.</p></div>
-
-
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
-<a id="figure30"></a>
-<img src="images/figure30.jpg" width="400" alt="" />
-<p class="center">HOME FROM MARKET, ST. PIERRE<br />
-<i>The notion of speed and scarcity of time has not reached
-these dreamy, ease-loving islands.</i></p>
-</div>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>IX</h4>
-
-
-<p>... Assuredly the city of St. Pierre never could have seemed more
-quaintly beautiful than as I saw it on the evening of my return, while
-the shadows were reaching their longest, and sea and sky were turning
-lilac. Palm-heads were trembling and masts swaying slowly against an
-enormous orange sunset,&mdash;yet the beauty of the sight did not touch me!
-The deep level and luminous flood of the bay seemed to me for the first
-time a dead water;&mdash;I found myself wondering whether it could form a
-part of that living tide by which I had been dwelling, full of
-foam-lightnings and perpetual thunder. I wondered whether the air about
-me&mdash;heavy and hot and full of faint smells&mdash;could ever have been
-touched by the vast pure sweet breath of the wind from the sunrising. And I
-became conscious of a profound, unreasoning, absurd regret for the
-somnolent little black village of that bare east coast,&mdash;where there
-are no woods, no ships, no sunset,... only the ocean roaring forever over
-its beach of black sand.</p>
-
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 300px;">
-<img src="images/figure31.jpg" width="300" alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4><a id="UN_REVENANT">UN REVENANT</a></h4>
-
-
-<h4>I</h4>
-
-<div class="figleft" style="width: 60px;">
-<img src="images/figure32.jpg" width="60" height="80" alt="" />
-</div>
-
-
-<p>He who first gave to Martinique its poetical name, <i>Le Pays des
-Revenants</i>, thought of his wonderful island only as "The Country of
-Comers-back," where Native's unspeakable spell bewitches wandering souls
-like the caress of a Circe,&mdash;never as the Land of Ghosts. Yet either
-translation of the name holds equal truth: a land of ghosts it is, this
-marvellous Martinique! Almost every plantation has its familiar
-spirits,&mdash;its phantoms: some may be unknown beyond the particular
-district in which fancy first gave them being;&mdash;but some belong to
-popular song and story,&mdash;to the imaginative life of the whole people.
-Almost every promontory and peak, every village and valley along the
-coast, has its special folk-lore, its particular tradition. The legend
-of Thomasseau of Perinnelle, whose body was taken out of the coffin and
-carried away by the devil through a certain window of the
-plantation-house, which cannot be closed up by human power;&mdash;the
-Demarche legend of the spectral horseman who rides up the hill on bright
-hot days to seek a friend buried more than a hundred years ago;&mdash;the
-legend of the <i>Habitation Dillon</i>, whose proprietor was one night
-mysteriously summoned from a banquet to disappear forever;&mdash;the legend
-of l'Abbé Piot, who cursed the sea with the curse of perpetual
-unrest;&mdash;the legend of Aimée Derivry of Robert, captured by Barbary
-pirates, and sold to become a Sultana-Validé&mdash;(she never existed,
-though you can find an alleged portrait in M. Sidney Darney's history of
-Martinique): these and many similar tales might be told to you even on a
-journey from St. Pierre to Fort-de-France, or from Lamentin to La
-Trinité, according as a rising of some peak into view, or the sudden
-opening of an before the vessel's approach, recalls them to a creole
-companion.</p>
-
-<p>And new legends are even now being made; for in this remote colony, to
-which white immigration has long ceased,&mdash;a country so mountainous
-that people are born and buried in the same valley without ever seeing
-towns but a few hours' journey beyond their native hills, and that distinct
-racial types are forming within three leagues of each other,&mdash;the
-memory of an event or of a name which has had influence enough to send one
-echo through all the forty-nine miles of peaks and craters is apt to create
-legend within a single generation. Nowhere in the world, perhaps, is
-popular imagination more oddly naïve and superstitious; nowhere are
-facts more readily exaggerated or distorted into unrecognizability; and
-the forms of any legend thus originated become furthermore specialized
-in each separate locality where it obtains a habitat. On tracing back
-such a legend or tradition to its primal source, one feels amazed at the
-variety of the metamorphoses which the simplest fact may rapidly assume
-in the childish fancy of this people.</p>
-
-<p>I was first incited to make an effort in this direction by hearing the
-remarkable story of "Missié Bon." No legendary expression is more
-wide-spread throughout the country than <i>temps coudvent Missié Bon</i>
-(in the time of the big wind of Monsieur Bon). Whenever a hurricane
-threatens, you will hear colored folks expressing the hope that it may
-not be like the <i>coudvent Missié Bon.</i> And some years ago, in all the
-creole police-courts, old colored witnesses who could not tell their age
-would invariably try to give the magistrate some idea of it by referring
-to the never-to-be-forgotten <i>temps coudvent Missié Bon.</i></p>
-
-<p>... "<i>Temps coudvent Missié Bon, moin té ka tété encò</i>" (I was a
-child at the breast in the time of the big wind of Missié Bon); or
-"<i>Temps coudvent Missié Bon, moin té toutt piti manmaille,&mdash;moin ka
-souvini y pouend caïe manman moin pòté allé.</i>" (I was a very, very
-little child in the time of the big wind of Missié Bon,&mdash;but I
-remember it blew mamma's cabin away.) The magistrates of those days knew
-the exact date of the <i>coudvent.</i></p>
-
-<p>But all I could learn about Missié Bon among the country-folk was this:
-Missié Bon used to be a great slave-owner and a cruel master. He was a
-very wicked man. And he treated his slaves so terribly that at last the
-Good-God (<i>Bon-Dié</i>) one day sent a great wind which blew away Missié
-Bon and Missié Bon's house and everybody in it, so that nothing was
-ever heard of them again.</p>
-
-<p><br /></p>
-
-<p>It was not without considerable research that I succeeded at last in
-finding some one able to give me the true facts in the case of Monsieur
-Bon. My informant was a charming old gentleman, who represents a New
-York company in the city of St. Pierre, and who takes more interest in
-the history of his native island than creoles usually do. He laughed at
-the legend I had found, but informed me that I could trace it, with
-slight variations, through nearly every canton of Martinique.</p>
-
-<p>"And now," he continued, "I can tell you the real history of 'Missié
-Bon,'&mdash;for he was an old friend of my grandfather; and my grandfather
-related it to me.</p>
-
-<p>"It may have been in 1809&mdash;I can give you the exact date by
-reference to some old papers if necessary&mdash;Monsieur Bon was
-Collector of Customs at St. Pierre: and my grandfather was doing
-business in the Grande Rue. A certain captain, whose vessel had been
-consigned to my grandfather, invited him and the collector to breakfast
-in his cabin. My grandfather was so busy he could not accept the
-invitation;&mdash;but Monsieur Bon went with the captain on board the
-bark."</p>
-
-<p>... "It was a morning like this; the sea was just as blue and the sky as
-clear. All of a sudden, while they were at breakfast, the sea began to
-break heavily without a wind, and clouds came up, with every sign of a
-hurricane. The captain was obliged to sacrifice his anchor; there was no
-time to land his guest: he hoisted a little jib and top-gallant, and
-made for open water, taking Monsieur Bon with him. Then the hurricane
-came; and from that day to this nothing has ever been heard of the bark
-nor of the captain nor of Monsieur Bon."<a name="FNanchor_7_1" id="FNanchor_7_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_7_1" class="fnanchor">[7]</a></p>
-
-<p>"But did Monsieur Bon ever do anything to deserve the reputation he has
-left among the people?" I asked.</p>
-
-<p>"Ah! le pauvre vieux corps!... A kind old soul who never uttered a harsh
-word to human being;&mdash;timid,&mdash;good-natured,&mdash;old-fashioned
-even for those old-fashioned days.... Never had a slave in his life!"</p>
-
-<p><br /></p>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_7_1" id="Footnote_7_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7_1"><span class="label">[7]</span></a>What is known in the West Indies as a hurricane is happily
-rare; it blows with the force of a cyclone, but not always circularly;
-it may come from one direction, and strengthen gradually for days until
-its highest velocity and destructive force are reached. One in the time
-of Père Labat blew away the walls of a fort;&mdash;that of 1780 destroyed
-the lives of twenty-two thousand people in four islands: Martinique,
-Saint Lucia, St. Vincent, and Barbadoes.</p>
-
-<p>Before the approach of such a visitation animals manifest the same signs
-of terror they display prior to an earthquake. Cattle assemble together,
-stamp, and roar; sea-birds fly to the interior; fowl seek the nearest
-crevice they can hide in. Then, while the sky is yet dear, begins the
-breaking of the sea; then darkness comes, and after it the wind.</p></div>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>II</h4>
-
-
-<p>The legend of "Missié Bon" had prepared me to hear without surprise the
-details of a still more singular tradition,&mdash;that of Father Labat....
-I was returning from a mountain ramble with my guide, by way of the
-Ajoupa-Bouillon road;&mdash;the sun had gone down; there remained only a
-blood-red glow in the west, against which the silhouettes of the hills
-took a velvety blackness indescribably soft; and stars were beginning to
-twinkle out everywhere through the violet. Suddenly I noticed on the
-flank of a neighboring morne&mdash;which I remembered by day as an
-apparently uninhabitable wilderness of bamboos, tree-ferns, and
-balisiers&mdash;a swiftly moving point of yellow light. My guide had
-observed it simultaneously;&mdash;he crossed himself, and exclaimed:</p>
-
-<p>"<i>Moinka ka couè c'est fanal Pè Lobatt!</i>" (I believe it is the
-lantern of Père Labat.)</p>
-
-<p>"Does he live there?" I innocently inquired.</p>
-
-<p>"Live there?&mdash;why he has been dead hundreds of years!... <i>Ouill!</i> you
-never heard of Pè Labatt?"...</p>
-
-<p>"Not the same who wrote a book about Martinique?"</p>
-
-<p>"Yes,&mdash;himself.... They say he comes back at night. Ask mother
-about him;&mdash;she knows."...</p>
-
-<p>... I questioned old Théréza as soon as we reached home; and she told
-me all she knew about "Pè Labatt." I found that the father had left a
-reputation far more wide-spread than the recollection of "Missié
-Bon,"&mdash;that his memory had created, in fact, the most impressive
-legend in all Martinique folk-lore.</p>
-
-<p>"Whether you really saw Pè Labatt's lantern," said old Théréza, "I do
-not know;&mdash;there are a great many queer lights to be seen after
-nightfall among these mornes. Some are zombi-fires; and some are
-lanterns carried by living men; and some are lights burning in ajoupas
-so high up that you can only see a gleam coming through the trees now
-and then. It is not everybody who sees the lantern of Pè Labatt; and it
-is not good-luck to see it.</p>
-
-<p>"Pè Labatt was a priest who lived here hundreds of years ago; and he
-wrote a book about what he saw. He was the first person to introduce
-slavery into Martinique; and it is thought that is why he comes back at
-night. It is his penance for having established slavery here.</p>
-
-<p>"They used to say, before 1848, that when slavery should be abolished,
-Pè Labatt's light would not be seen any more. But I can remember very
-well when slavery was abolished; and I saw the light many a time after.
-It used to move up the Morne d'Orange every dear night;&mdash;I could see
-it very well from my window when I lived in St. Pierre. You knew it was Pè
-Labatt, because the light passed up places where no man could walk. But
-since the statue of Notre Dame de la Garde was placed on the Morne
-d'Orange, people tell me that the light is not seen there any more.</p>
-
-<p>"But it is seen elsewhere; and it is not good-luck to see it. Everybody
-is afraid of seeing it.... And mothers tell their children, when the
-little ones are naughty: '<i>Mit main ké fai Pè Lobatt vini pouend
-ou,&mdash;oui!</i>' (I will make Pè Labatt come and take you away.)"...</p>
-
-<p>What old Théréza stated regarding the establishment of slavery in
-Martinique by Père Labat, I knew required no investigation,&mdash;inasmuch
-as slavery was a flourishing institution in the time of Père Du Tertre,
-another Dominican missionary and historian, who wrote his book,&mdash;a
-queer book in old French,<a name="FNanchor_8_1" id="FNanchor_8_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_8_1" class="fnanchor">[8]</a>&mdash;before Labat was born. But it did not take me
-long to find out that such was the general belief about Père Labat's
-sin and penance, and to ascertain that his name is indeed used to
-frighten naughty children. <i>Eh! ti manmaille-là, moin ké fai Pè
-Labatt vini pouend ou!</i>&mdash;is an exclamation often heard in the
-vicinity of ajoupas just about the hour when all good little children ought
-to be in bed and asleep.</p>
-
-<p>... The first variation of the legend I heard was on a plantation in the
-neighborhood of Ajoupa-Bouillon. There I was informed that Père Labat
-had come to his death by the bite of a snake,&mdash;the hugest snake that
-ever was seen in Martinique. Père Labat had believed it possible to
-exterminate the fer-de-lance, and had adopted extraordinary measures for
-its destruction. On receiving his death-wound he exclaimed, "<i>C'est pè
-toutt sépent qui té ka mòdé moin</i>" (It is the Father of all Snakes
-that has bitten me); and he vowed that he would come back to destroy the
-brood, and would haunt the island until there should be not one snake
-left. And the light that moves about the peaks at night is the lantern
-of Père Labat still hunting for snakes.</p>
-
-<p>"<i>Ou pa pè suive ti limié-là press!</i>" continued my informant. "You
-cannot follow that little light at all;&mdash;when you first see it, it is
-perhaps only a kilometre away; the next moment it is two, three or four
-kilometres away."</p>
-
-<p>I was also told that the light is frequently seen near Grande Anse, on
-the other side of the island,&mdash;and on the heights of La Caravelle, the
-long fantastic promontory that reaches three leagues into the sea south
-of the harbor of La Trinité.<a name="FNanchor_9_1" id="FNanchor_9_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_9_1" class="fnanchor">[9]</a> And on my return to St. Pierre I found
-a totally different version of the legend;&mdash;my informant being one
-Manm-Robert, a kind old soul who kept a little <i>boutique-lapacotte</i> (a
-little booth where cooked food is sold) near the precipitous Street of
-the Friendships.</p>
-
-<p>... "<i>Ah! Pè Labatt, oui!</i>" she exclaimed, at my first question,&mdash;"Pè
-Labatt was a good priest who lived here very long ago. And they did him
-a great wrong here;&mdash;they gave him a wicked <i>coup d'langue</i>
-(tongue wound); and the hurt given by an evil tongue is worse than a
-serpent's bite. They lied about him; they slandered him until they got him
-sent away from the country. But before the Government 'embarked' him, when
-he got to that quay, he took off his shoes and he shook the dust of his
-shoe upon that quay, and he said: 'I curse you, O Martinique!&mdash;I curse
-you! There will be food for nothing, and your people will not even be
-able to buy it! There will be clothing material for nothing, and your
-people will not be able to get so much as one dress! And the children
-will beat their mothers!... You banish me;&mdash;but I will come back
-again.'"<a name="FNanchor_10_1" id="FNanchor_10_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_10_1" class="fnanchor">[10]</a></p>
-
-<p>"And then what happened, Manm-Robert?"</p>
-
-<p>"<i>Eh! fouinq! chè</i>, all that Pè Labatt said has come true.
-There is food for almost nothing, and people are starving here in St.
-Pierre; there is clothing for almost nothing, and poor girls cannot earn
-enough to buy a dress. The pretty printed calicoes (<i>indiennes</i>)
-that used to be two francs and a half the metre, now sell at twelve sous
-the metre; but nobody has any money. And if you read our
-papers,&mdash;<i>Les Colonies, La Defense Coloniale</i>,&mdash;you will
-find that there are sons wicked enough to beat their mothers: <i>oui!
-yche ka bait maman!</i> It is the malediction of Pè Labatt."</p>
-
-<p>This was all that Manm-Robert could tell me. Who had related the story
-to her? Her mother. Whence had her mother obtained it? From her
-grandmother.... Subsequently I found many persons to confirm the
-tradition of the curse,&mdash;precisely as Manm-Robert had related it.</p>
-
-<p><br /></p>
-
-<p>Only a brief while after this little interview I was invited to pass an
-afternoon at the home of a gentleman residing upon the Morne
-d'Orange,&mdash;the locality supposed to be especially haunted by Père
-Labat. The house of Monsieur M&mdash;&mdash;stands on the side of the hill,
-fully five hundred feet up, and in a grove of trees: an antiquated
-dwelling, with foundations massive as the walls of a fortress, and huge
-broad balconies of stone. From one of these balconies there is a view of
-the city, the harbor, and Pelée, which I believe even those who have seen
-Naples would confess to be one of the fairest sights in the world....
-Towards evening I obtained a chance to ask my kind host some questions
-about the legend of his neighborhood.</p>
-
-<p>... "Ever since I was a child," observed Monsieur M&mdash;&mdash;, "I
-heard it said that Père Labat haunted this mountain, and I often saw what
-was alleged to be his light. It looked very much like a lantern swinging in
-the hand of some one climbing the hill. A queer fact was that it used to
-come from the direction of Carbet, skirt the Morne d'Orange a few
-hundred feet above the road, and then move up the face of what seemed a
-sheer precipice. Of course somebody carried that light,&mdash;probably a
-negro; and perhaps the cliff is not so inaccessible as it looks: still,
-we could never discover who the individual was, nor could we imagine
-what his purpose might have been.... But the light has not been seen
-here now for years."</p>
-
-<p><br /></p>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_8_1" id="Footnote_8_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8_1"><span class="label">[8]</span></a>"Histoire Générale des Antilles... habités par les
-Français." Par le R. P. Du Tertre, de l'Ordre des Frères Prescheurs.
-Paris: 1661-71. 4 vols. (with illustrations) in 4 to.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_9_1" id="Footnote_9_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_9_1"><span class="label">[9]</span></a>One of the lights seen on the Caravelle was certainly
-carried by a cattle-thief,&mdash;a colossal negro who had the reputation of
-being a sorcerer,&mdash;a <i>quimboiseur.</i> The greater part of the
-mountainous land forming La Caravelle promontory was at that time the
-property of a Monsieur Eustache, who used it merely for cattle-raising
-purposes. He allowed his animals to run wild in the hills; they multiplied
-exceedingly, and became very savage. Notwithstanding their ferocity,
-however, large numbers of them were driven away at night, and secretly
-slaughtered or sold, by somebody who used to practise the art of
-cattle-stealing with a lantern, and evidently without aid. A watch was
-set, and the thief arrested. Before the magistrate he displayed
-extraordinary assurance, asserting that he had never stolen from a poor
-man&mdash;he had stolen only from M. Eustache who could not count his own
-cattle&mdash;<i>yon richard, mon chè!</i> "How many cows did you steal from
-him?" asked the magistrate. "<i>Ess main pè save?&mdash;moin té pouend yon
-savane toutt pleine</i>," replied the prisoner. (How can I tell?&mdash;I
-took a whole savanna-full.)... Condemned on the strength of his own
-confession, he was taken to jail. "<i>Moin pa ké rété la geôle</i>," he
-observed. (I shall not remain in prison.) They put him in irons, but on the
-following morning the irons were found lying on the floor of the cell, and
-the prisoner was gone. He was never seen in Martinique again.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_10_1" id="Footnote_10_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_10_1"><span class="label">[10]</span></a>Y sucoué souyé assous quai-là;&mdash;y ka di: "Moin ka maudi
-ou, Lanmatinique!&mdash;moin ka maudi ou!... Ké ni mangé pou engnien: ou pa
-ké pè menm acheté y! Ké ni touèle pou engnien: ou pa ké pè menm
-acheté yon robe! Epi yche ké batt manman.... Ou banni moin!&mdash;moin ké
-vini encò!"</p></div>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>III</h4>
-
-
-<p>And who was Père Labat,&mdash;this strange priest whose memory, weirdly
-disguised by legend, thus lingers in the oral literature of the colored
-people? Various encyclopædians answer the question, but far less fully
-and less interestingly than Dr. Rufz, the Martinique historian, whose
-article upon him in the <i>Études Statistiques et Historiques</i> has that
-charm of sympathetic comprehension by which a master-biographer
-sometimes reveals himself a sort of necromancer,&mdash;making us feel a
-vanished personality with the power of a living presence. Yet even the
-colorless data given by dictionaries of biography should suffice to
-convince most readers that Jean-Baptiste Labat must be ranked among the
-extraordinary men of his century.</p>
-
-<p><br /></p>
-
-<p>Nearly two hundred years ago&mdash;24th August, 1693&mdash;a traveller
-wearing the white habit of the Dominican order, partly covered by a black
-camlet overcoat, entered the city of Rochelle. He was very tall and robust,
-with one of those faces, at once grave and keen, which bespeak great
-energy and quick discernment. This was the Père Labat, a native of
-Paris, then in his thirtieth year. Half priest, half layman, one might
-have been tempted to surmise from his attire; and such a judgment would
-not have been unjust. Labat's character was too large for his
-calling,&mdash;expanded naturally beyond the fixed limits of the
-ecclesiastical life; and throughout the whole active part of his strange
-career we find in him this dual character of layman and monk. He had
-come to Rochelle to take passage for Martinique. Previously he had been
-professor of philosophy and mathematics at Nancy. While watching a
-sunset one evening from the window of his study, some one placed in his
-hands a circular issued by the Dominicans of the French West Indies,
-calling for volunteers. Death had made many wide gaps in their ranks;
-and various misfortunes had reduced their finances to such an extent
-that ruin threatened all their West Indian establishments. Labat, with
-the quick decision of a mind suffering from the restraints of a life too
-narrow for it, had at once resigned his professorship, and engaged
-himself for the missions.</p>
-
-<p>... In those days, communication with the West Indies was slow,
-irregular, and difficult. Labat had to wait at Rochelle six whole months
-for a ship. In the convent at Rochelle, where he stayed, there were
-others waiting for the same chance,&mdash;including several Jesuits and
-Capuchins as well as Dominicans. These unanimously elected him their
-leader,&mdash;a significant fact considering the mutual jealousy of the
-various religious orders of that period. There was something in the
-energy and frankness of Labat's character which seems to have naturally
-gained him the confidence and ready submission of others.</p>
-
-<p>... They sailed in November; and Labat still found himself in
-the position of a chief on board. His account of the voyage is
-amusing;&mdash;in almost everything except practical navigation, he would
-appear to have regulated the life of passengers and crew. He taught the
-captain mathematics; and invented amusements of all kinds to relieve the
-monotony of a two months' voyage.</p>
-
-<p>... As the ship approached Martinique from the north, Labat first beheld
-the very grimmest part of the lofty coast,&mdash;the region of Macouba; and
-the impression it made upon him was not pleasing. "The island," he
-writes, "appeared to me all one frightful mountain, broken everywhere by
-precipices: nothing about it pleased me except the verdure which
-everywhere met the eye, and which seemed to me both novel and agreeable,
-considering the time of the year."</p>
-
-<p>Almost immediately after his arrival he was sent by the Superior of the
-convent to Macouba, for acclimation; Macouba then being considered the
-healthiest part of the island. Whoever makes the journey on horseback
-thither from St. Pierre to-day can testify to the exactitude of Labat's
-delightful narrative of the trip. So little has that part of the island
-changed since two centuries that scarcely a line of the father's
-description would need correction to adopt it bodily for an account of a
-ride to Macouba in 1889.</p>
-
-<p>At Macouba everybody welcomes him, pets him,&mdash;finally becomes
-enthusiastic about him. He fascinates and dominates the little community
-almost at first sight. "There is an inexpressible charm," says
-Rufz,&mdash;commenting upon this portion of Labat's narrative,&mdash;"in
-the novelty of relations between men: no one has yet been offended, no
-envy has yet been excited;&mdash;it is scarcely possible even to guess
-whence that ill-will you must sooner or later provoke is going to come
-from;&mdash;there are no rivals;&mdash;there are no enemies. You are
-everybody's friend; and many are hoping you will continue to be only
-theirs."... Labat knew how to take legitimate advantage of this
-good-will;&mdash;he persuaded his admirers to rebuild the church at
-Macouba, according to designs made by himself.</p>
-
-<p>At Macouba, however, he was not permitted to sojourn as long as the good
-people of the little burgh would have deemed even reasonable: he had
-shown certain aptitudes which made his presence more than desirable at
-Saint-Jacques, the great plantation of the order on the Capesterre, or
-Windward coast. It was in debt for 700,000 pounds of sugar,&mdash;an
-appalling condition in those days,&mdash;and seemed doomed to get more
-heavily in debt every successive season. Labat inspected everything, and
-set to work for the plantation, not merely as general director, but as
-engineer, architect, machinist, inventor. He did really wonderful
-things. You can see them for yourself if you ever go to Martinique; for
-the old Dominican plantation&mdash;now Government property, and leased at
-an annual rent of 50,000 francs&mdash;remains one of the most valuable in
-the colonies because of Labat's work upon it. The watercourses directed by
-him still excite the admiration of modern professors of hydraulics; the
-mills he built or invented are still good;&mdash;the treatise he wrote on
-sugar-making remained for a hundred and fifty years the best of its
-kind, and the manual of French planters. In less than two years Labat
-had not only rescued the plantation from bankruptcy, but had made it
-rich; and if the monks deemed him veritably inspired, the test of time
-throws no ridicule on their astonishment at the capacities of the
-man.... Even now the advice he formulated as far back as 1720&mdash;about
-secondary cultures,&mdash;about manufactories to establish,&mdash;about
-imports, exports, and special commercial methods&mdash;has lost little of
-its value.</p>
-
-<p>Such talents could not fail to excite wide-spread admiration,&mdash;nor
-to win for him a reputation in the colonies beyond precedent. He was wanted
-everywhere.... Auger, the Governor of Guadeloupe, sent for him to help
-the colonists in fortifying and defending the island against the
-English; and we find the missionary quite as much at home in this new
-rôle&mdash;building bastions, scarps, counterscarps, ravelins,
-etc.,&mdash;as he seemed to be upon the plantation of Saint-Jacques. We
-find him even taking part in an engagement;&mdash;himself conducting an
-artillery duel,&mdash;loading, pointing, and firing no less than twelve
-times after the other French gunners had been killed or driven from their
-posts. After a tremendous English volley, one of the enemy cries out to him
-in French: "White Father, have they told?" (<i>Père Blanc, ont-ils
-porté?</i>) He replies only after returning the fire with a better-directed
-aim, and then repeats the mocking question: "Have they told? Yes, they
-have," confesses the Englishman, in surprised dismay; "but we will pay you
-back for that!"...</p>
-
-<p>... Returning to Martinique with new titles to distinction, Labat was
-made Superior of the order in that island, and likewise Vicar-Apostolic.
-After building the Convent of the Mouillage, at St. Pierre, and many
-other edifices, he undertook that series of voyages in the interests of
-the Dominicans whereof the narration fills six ample volumes. As a
-traveller Père Labat has had few rivals in his own field;&mdash;no one,
-indeed, seems to have been able to repeat some of his feats. All the
-French and several of the English colonies were not merely visited by
-him, but were studied in their every geographical detail. Travel in the
-West Indies is difficult to a degree of which strangers have little
-idea; but in the time of Père Labat there were few roads,&mdash;and a far
-greater variety of obstacles. I do not believe there are half a dozen
-whites in Martinique who thoroughly know their own island,&mdash;who have
-even travelled upon all its roads; but Labat knew it as he knew the palm
-of his hand, and travelled where roads had never been made. Equally well
-he knew Guadeloupe and other islands; and he learned all that it was
-possible to learn in those years about the productions and resources of
-the other colonies. He travelled with the fearlessness and examined with
-the thoroughness of a Humboldt,&mdash;so far as his limited science
-permitted: had he possessed the knowledge of modern naturalists and
-geologists he would probably have left little for others to discover
-after him. Even at the present time West Indian travellers are glad to
-consult him for information.</p>
-
-<p>These duties involved prodigious physical and mental exertion, in a
-climate deadly to Europeans. They also involved much voyaging in waters
-haunted by filibusters and buccaneers. But nothing appears to daunt
-Labat. As for the filibusters, he becomes their comrade and personal
-friend;&mdash;he even becomes their chaplain, and does not scruple to
-make excursions with them. He figures in several sea-fights;&mdash;on
-one occasion he aids in the capture of two English vessels,&mdash;and
-then occupies himself in making the prisoners, among whom are several
-ladies, enjoy the event like a holiday. On another voyage Labat's vessel
-is captured by a Spanish ship. At one moment sabres are raised above his
-head, and loaded muskets levelled at his breast;&mdash;the next, every
-Spaniard is on his knees, appalled by a cross that Labat holds before
-the eyes of the captors,&mdash;the cross worn by officers of the
-Inquisition,&mdash;the terrible symbol of the Holy Office. "It did not
-belong to me," he says, "but to one of our brethren who had left it by
-accident among my effects." He seems always prepared in some way to meet
-any possible emergency. No humble and timid monk this: he has the frame
-and temper of those mediaeval abbots who could don with equal
-indifference the helmet or the cowl. He is apparently even more of a
-soldier than a priest. When English corsairs attempt a descent on the
-Martinique coast at Sainte-Marie they find Père Labat waiting for them
-with all the negroes of the Saint-Jacques plantation, to drive them back
-to their ships.</p>
-
-<p>For other dangers he exhibits absolute unconcern. He studies the
-phenomena of hurricanes with almost pleasurable interest, while his
-comrades on the ship abandon hope. When seized with yellow-fever, then
-known as the Siamese Sickness (<i>mal de Siam</i>), he refuses to stay
-in bed the prescribed time, and rises to say his mass. He faints at the
-altar; yet a few days later we hear of him on horseback again,
-travelling over the mountains in the worst and hottest season of the
-year...</p>
-
-<p>... Labat was thirty years old when he went to the Antilles;&mdash;he
-was only forty-two when his work was done. In less than twelve years he
-made his order the most powerful and wealthy of any in the West
-Indies,&mdash;lifted their property out of bankruptcy to rebuild it upon
-a foundation of extraordinary prosperity. As Rufz observes without
-exaggeration, the career of Père Labat in the Antilles seems to more
-than realize the antique legend of the labors of Hercules. Whithersoever
-he went,&mdash;except in the English colonies,&mdash;his passage was
-memorialized by the rising of chinches, convents, and schools,&mdash;as
-well as mills, forts, and refineries. Even cities claim him as their
-founder. The solidity of his architectural creations is no less
-remarkable than their excellence of design;&mdash;much of what he
-erected still remains; what has vanished was removed by human agency,
-and not by decay; and when the old Dominican church at St. Pierre had to
-be pulled down to make room for a larger edifice, the workmen complained
-that the stones could not be separated,&mdash;that the walls seemed
-single masses of rock. There can be no doubt, moreover, that he largely
-influenced the life of the colonies during those years, and expanded
-their industrial and commercial capacities.</p>
-
-<p>He was sent on a mission to Rome after these things had been done, and
-never returned from Europe. There he travelled more or less in
-after-years; but finally settled at Paris, where he prepared and
-published the voluminous narrative of his own voyages, and other curious
-books;&mdash;manifesting as a writer the same tireless energy he had shown
-in so many other capacities. He does not, however, appear to have been
-happy. Again and again he prayed to be sent back to his beloved
-Antilles, and for some unknown cause the prayer was always refused. To
-such a character, the restraint of the cloister must have proved a slow
-agony; but he had to endure it for many long years. He died at Paris in
-1738, aged seventy-five.</p>
-
-<p>... It was inevitable that such a man should make bitter enemies: his
-preferences, his position, his activity, his business shrewdness, his
-necessary self-assertion, must have created secret hate and jealousy
-even when open malevolence might not dare to show itself. And to these
-natural results of personal antagonism or opposition were afterwards
-superadded various resentments&mdash;irrational, perhaps, but extremely
-violent,&mdash;caused by the father's cynical frankness as a writer. He
-spoke freely about the family origin and personal failings of various
-colonists considered high personages in their own small world; and to
-this day his book has an evil reputation undeserved in those old creole
-communities, where any public mention of a family scandal is never
-forgiven or forgotten.... But probably even before his work appeared it
-had been secretly resolved that he should never be permitted to return
-to Martinique or Guadeloupe after his European mission. The exact
-purpose of the Government in this policy remains a mystery,&mdash;whatever
-ingenious writers may have alleged to the contrary. We only know that M.
-Adrien Dessalles,&mdash;the trustworthy historian of
-Martinique,&mdash;while searching among the old <i>Archives de la
-Marine</i>, found there a ministerial letter to the Intendent de Vaucresson
-in which this statement occurs:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>... "Le Père Labat shall never be suffered to return to the colonies,
-whatever efforts he may make to obtain permission."</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>IV</h4>
-
-
-<p>One rises from the perusal of the "Nouveau Voyage aux Isles de
-l'Amérique" with a feeling approaching regret; for although the six
-pursy little volumes composing it&mdash;full of quaint drawings, plans, and
-odd attempts at topographical maps&mdash;reveal a prolix writer. Père Labat
-is always able to interest. He reminds you of one of those slow,
-precise, old-fashioned conversationalists who measure the weight of
-every word and never leave anything to the imagination of the audience,
-yet who invariably reward the patience of their listeners sooner or
-later by reflections of surprising profundity or theories of a totally
-novel description. But what particularly impresses the reader of these
-volumes is not so much the recital of singular incidents and facts as
-the revelation of the author's personality. Reading him, you divine a
-character of enormous force,&mdash;gifted but unevenly balanced; singularly
-shrewd in worldly affairs, and surprisingly credulous in other respects;
-superstitious and yet cynical; unsympathetic by his positivism, but
-agreeable through natural desire to give pleasure; just by nature, yet
-capable of merciless severity; profoundly devout, but withal tolerant
-for his calling and his time. He is sufficiently free from petty bigotry
-to make fun of the scruples of his brethren in the matter of employing
-heretics; and his account of the manner in which he secured the services
-of a first-class refiner for the Martinique plantation at the Fond
-Saint-Jacques is not the least amusing page in the book. He writes: "The
-religious who had been appointed Superior in Guadeloupe wrote me that he
-would find it difficult to employ this refiner because the man was a
-Lutheran. This scruple gave me pleasure, as I had long wanted to have
-him upon our plantation in the Fond Saint-Jacques, but did not know how
-I would be able to manage it. I wrote to the Superior at once that all
-he had to do was to send the man to me, because it was a matter of
-indifference to me whether the sugar he might make were Catholic or
-Lutheran sugar, provided it were very white."<a name="FNanchor_11_1" id="FNanchor_11_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_11_1" class="fnanchor">[11]</a> He displays equal
-frankness in confessing an error or a discomfiture. He acknowledges that
-while Professor of Mathematics and Philosophy, he used to teach that
-there were no tides in the tropics: and in a discussion as to whether
-the <i>diablotin</i> (a now almost extinct species of West Indian nocturnal
-bird) were fish or flesh, and might or might not be eaten in Lent, he
-tells us that he was fairly worsted,&mdash;(although he could cite the
-celebrated myth of the "barnacle-geese" as a "fact" in justification of
-one's right to doubt the nature of diablotins).</p>
-
-<p>One has reason to suspect that Père Labat, notwithstanding his
-references to the decision of the Church that diablotins were not birds,
-felt quite well assured within himself that they were. There is a sly
-humor in his story of these controversies, which would appear to imply
-that while well pleased at the decision referred to, he knew all about
-diablotins. Moreover, the father betrays certain tendencies to
-gormandize not altogether in harmony with the profession of an
-ascetic.... There were parrots in nearly all of the French Antilles in
-those days;<a name="FNanchor_12_1" id="FNanchor_12_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_12_1" class="fnanchor">[12]</a> and Père Labat does not attempt to conceal his fondness
-for&mdash;cooked parrots. (He does not appear to have cared much for them
-as pets: if they could not talk well, he condemned them forthwith to the
-pot.) "They all live upon fruits and seeds," he writes, "and their flesh
-contracts the odor and color of that particular fruit or seed they feed
-upon. They become exceedingly tat in the season when the guavas are ripe;
-and when they eat the seeds of the <i>Bois d'Inde</i> they have an odor
-of nutmeg and cloves which is delightful (<i>une odeur de muscade et de
-girofle qui fait plaisir</i>)." He recommends four superior ways of
-preparing them, as well as other fowls, for the table, of which the
-first and the best way is "to pluck them alive, then to make them
-swallow vinegar, and then to strangle them while they have the vinegar
-still in their throats by twisting their necks"; and the fourth way is
-"to skin them alive" (<i>de les écorcher tout en vie</i>).... "It is
-certain," he continues, "that these ways are excellent, and that fowls
-that have to be cooked in a hurry thereby obtain an admirable tenderness
-(<i>une tendreté admirable</i>)." Then he makes a brief apology to his
-readers, not for the inhumanity of his recipes, but for a display of
-culinary knowledge scarcely becoming a monk, and acquired only through
-those peculiar necessities which colonial life in the tropics imposed
-upon all alike. The touch of cruelty here revealed produces an
-impression which there is little in the entire work capable of
-modifying. Labat seems to have possessed but a very small quantity of
-altruism; his cynicism on the subject of animal suffering is not offset
-by any visible sympathy with human pain;&mdash;he never compassionates: you
-may seek in vain through all his pages for one gleam of the goodness of
-gentle Père Du Tertre, who, filled with intense pity for the condition
-of the blacks, prays masters to be merciful and just to their slaves for
-the love of God. Labat suggests, on the other hand, that slavery is a
-good means of redeeming negroes from superstition and saving their souls
-from hell: he selects and purchases them himself for the Saint-Jacques
-plantation, never makes a mistake or a bad bargain, and never appears to
-feel a particle of commiseration for their lot. In fact, the emotional
-feeling displayed by Père Du Tertre (whom he mocks slyly betimes) must
-have seemed to him rather condemnable than praiseworthy; for Labat
-regarded the negro as a natural child of the devil,&mdash;a born
-sorcerer,&mdash;an evil being wielding occult power.</p>
-
-<p>Perhaps the chapters on negro sorcery are the most astonishing in the
-book, displaying on the part of this otherwise hard and practical nature
-a credulity almost without limit. After having related how he had a
-certain negro sent out of the country "who predicted the arrival of
-vessels and other things to come,&mdash;in so far, at least, as the devil
-himself was able to know and reveal these matters to him," he plainly
-states his own belief in magic as follows.&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>"I know there are many people who consider as pure imagination, and as
-silly stories, or positive falsehoods, all that is related about
-sorcerers and their compacts with the devil. I was myself for a long
-time of this opinion. Moreover, I am aware that what is said on this
-subject is frequently exaggerated; but I am now convinced it must be
-acknowledged that all which has been related is not entirely false,
-although perhaps it may not be entirely true."...</p>
-
-<p>Therewith he begins to relate stones upon what may have seemed
-unimpeachable authority in those days. The first incident narrated took
-place, he assures us, in the Martinique Dominican convent, shortly
-before his arrival in the colony. One of the fathers, Père Fraise, had
-had brought to Martinique, "from the kingdom of Juda (?) in Guinea," a
-little negro about nine or ten years old. Not long afterwards there was
-a serious drought, and the monks prayed vainly for rain. Then the negro
-child, who had begun to understand and speak a little French, told his
-masters that he was a Rainmaker, that he could obtain them all the rain
-they wanted. "This proposition," says Père Labat, "greatly astonished
-the fathers: they consulted together, and at last, curiosity overcoming
-reason, they gave their consent that this unbaptized child should make
-some rain fall in their garden." The unbaptized child asked them if they
-wanted "a big or a little rain"; they answered that a moderate rain
-would satisfy them. Thereupon the little negro got three oranges, and
-placed them on the ground in a line at a short distance from one
-another, and bowed down before each of them in turn, muttering words in
-an unknown tongue. Then he got three small orange-branches, stuck a
-branch in each orange, and repeated his prostrations and
-mutterings;&mdash;after which he took one of the branches, stood up, and
-watched the horizon. A small cloud appeared, and he pointed the branch
-at it. It approached swiftly, rested above the garden, and sent down a
-copious shower of rain. Then the boy made a hole in the ground, and
-buried the oranges and the branches. The fathers were amazed to find
-that not a single drop of rain had fallen outside their garden. They
-asked the boy who had taught him this sorcery, and he answered them that
-among the blacks on board the slave-ship which had brought him
-over there were some Rain-makers who had taught him. Père Labat
-declares there is no question as to the truth of the occurrence:
-he cites the names of Père Praise Père Rosiè, Père Temple, and Père
-Bournot,&mdash;all members of his own order,&mdash;as trustworthy witnesses of
-this incident.</p>
-
-<p>Père Labat displays equal credulity in his recital of a still more
-extravagant story told him by Madame la Comtesse du Gênes. M. le Comte
-du Gênes, husband of the lady in question, and commander of a French
-squadron, captured the English fort of Gorea in 1696, and made prisoners
-of all the English slaves in the service of the factory there
-established. But the vessel on which these were embarked was unable to
-leave the coast, in spite of a good breeze: she seemed bewitched. Some
-of the slaves finally told the captain there was a negress on board who
-had enchanted the ship, and who had the power to "dry up the hearts" of
-all who refused to obey her. A number of deaths taking place among the
-blacks, the captain ordered autopsies made, and it was found that the
-hearts of the dead negroes were desiccated. The negress was taken on
-deck, tied to a gun and whipped, but uttered no cry;&mdash;the ship's
-surgeon, angered at her stoicism, took a hand in the punishment and
-flogged her "with all his force." Thereupon she told him that inasmuch
-as he had abused her without reason, his heart also should be "dried
-up." He died next day; and his heart was found in the condition
-predicted. All this time the ship could not be made to move in any
-direction; and the negress told the captain that until he should put her
-and her companions on shore he would never be able to sail. To convince
-him of her power she further asked him to place three fresh melons in a
-chest, to lock the chest and put a guard over it; when she should tell
-him to unlock it, there would be no melons there. The captain made the
-experiment. When the chest was opened, the melons appeared to be there;
-but on touching them it was found that only the outer rind remained: the
-interior had been dried up,&mdash;like the surgeon's heart. Thereupon the
-captain put the witch and her friends ashore, and sailed away without
-further trouble.</p>
-
-<p>Another story of African sorcery for the truth of which Père Labat
-earnestly vouches is the following:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>A negro was sentenced to be burned alive for witchcraft at St. Thomas in
-1701: his principal crime was "having made a little figure of baked clay
-to speak." A certain creole, meeting the negro on his way to the place
-of execution, jeeringly observed, "Well, you cannot make your little
-figure talk any more now;&mdash;it has been broken. If the gentleman allow
-me," replied the prisoner, "I will make the cane he carries in his hand
-speak." The creole's curiosity was strongly aroused: he prevailed upon
-the guards to halt a few minutes, and permit the prisoner to make the
-experiment. The negro then took the cane, stuck it into the ground in
-the middle of the road, whispered something to it, and asked the
-gentleman what he wished to know. "I would like to know," answered the
-latter, "whether the ship&mdash;&mdash;has yet sailed from Europe, and when
-she will arrive." "Put your ear to the head of the cane," said the negro.
-On doing so the creole distinctly heard a thin voice which informed him
-that the vessel in question had left a certain French port on such a
-date; that she would reach St. Thomas within three days; that she had
-been delayed on her voyage by a storm which had carried away her foretop
-and her mizzen sail; that she had such and such passengers on board
-(mentioning the names), all in good health.... After this incident the
-negro was burned alive; but within three days the vessel arrived in
-port, and the prediction or divination was found to have been absolutely
-correct in every particular.</p>
-
-<p>... Père Labat in no way disapproves the atrocious sentence
-inflicted upon the wretched negro: in his opinion such predictions were
-made by the power and with the personal aid of the devil; and for those
-who knowingly maintained relations with the devil, he could not have
-regarded any punishment too severe. That he could be harsh enough
-himself is amply shown in various accounts of his own personal
-experience with alleged sorcerers, and especially in the narration of
-his dealings with one&mdash;apparently a sort of African
-doctor&mdash;who was a slave on a neighboring plantation, but used to
-visit the Saint-Jacques quarters by stealth to practise his art. One of
-the slaves of the order, a negress, falling very sick, the wizard was
-sent for; and he came with all his paraphernalia&mdash;little earthen
-pots and fetiches, etc.&mdash;during the night. He began to practise his
-incantations, without the least suspicion that Père Labat was watching
-him through a chink; and, after having consulted his fetiches, he told
-the sick woman she would die within four days. At this juncture the
-priest suddenly burst in the door and entered, followed by several
-powerful slaves. He dashed to pieces the soothsayer's articles, and
-attempted to reassure the frightened negress, by declaring the
-prediction a lie inspired by the devil. Then he had the sorcerer
-stripped and flogged in his presence.</p>
-
-<p>"I had him given," he calmly observes, "about (<i>environ</i>) three
-hundred lashes, which flayed him (<i>l'écorchait</i>) from his
-shoulders to his knees. He screamed like a madman. All the negroes
-trembled, and assured me that the devil would cause my death.... Then I
-had the wizard put in irons, after having had him well washed with a
-<i>pimentade</i>,&mdash;that is to say, with brine in which pimentos and
-small lemons have been crushed. This causes a horrible pain to those
-skinned by the whip; but it is a certain remedy against
-gangrene."...</p>
-
-<p>And then he sent the poor wretch back to his master with a note
-requesting the latter to repeat the punishment,&mdash;a demand that seems
-to have been approved, as the owner of the negro was "a man who feared
-God." Yet Père Labat is obliged to confess that in spite of all his
-efforts, the sick negress died on the fourth day,&mdash;as the sorcerer had
-predicted. This fact must have strongly confirmed his belief that the
-devil was at the bottom of the whole affair, and caused him to doubt
-whether even a flogging of <i>about</i> three hundred lashes, followed by a
-pimentade, was sufficient chastisement for the miserable black. Perhaps
-the tradition of this frightful whipping may have had something to do
-with the terror which still attaches to the name of the Dominican in
-Martinique. The legal extreme punishment was twenty-nine lashes.</p>
-
-<p>Père Labat also avers that in his time the negroes were in the habit of
-carrying sticks which had the power of imparting to any portion of the
-human body touched by them a most severe chronic pain. He at first
-believed, he says, that these pains were merely rheumatic; but after all
-known remedies for rheumatism had been fruitlessly applied, he became
-convinced there was something occult and diabolical in the manner of
-using and preparing these sticks.... A fact worthy of note is that this
-belief is still prevalent in Martinique!</p>
-
-<p>One hardly ever meets in the country a negro who does not carry either a
-stick or a cutlass, or both. The cutlass is indispensable to those who
-work in the woods or upon plantations; the stick is carried both as a
-protection against snakes and as a weapon of offence and defence in
-village quarrels, for unless a negro be extraordinarily drunk he will
-not strike his fellow with a cutlass. The sticks are usually made of a
-strong dense wood: those most sought after of a material termed
-<i>moudongue</i>,<a name="FNanchor_13_1" id="FNanchor_13_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_13_1" class="fnanchor">[13]</a> almost as tough as, but much lighter than, our hickory.
-On inquiring whether any of the sticks thus carried were held to possess
-magic powers, I was assured by many country people that there were men
-who knew a peculiar method of "arranging" sticks so that to touch any
-person with them even lightly, <i>and through any thickness of
-clothing</i>, would produce terrible and continuous pain.</p>
-
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
-<a id="figure33"></a>
-<img src="images/figure33.jpg" width="400" alt="" />
-<p class="center">LE CALVAIRE<br />
-<i>Above the village of Fort-de-France a series of fourteen
-little crosses lines the roadside to the hilltop&mdash;each
-bearing a relievo representing incidents of Christ's
-Passion.</i></p>
-</div>
-
-
-<p>Believing in these things, and withal unable to decide whether the sun
-revolved about the earth, or the earth about the sun,<a name="FNanchor_14_1" id="FNanchor_14_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_14_1" class="fnanchor">[14]</a> Père Labat
-was, nevertheless, no more credulous and no more ignorant than the
-average missionary of his time: it is only by contrast with his
-practical perspicacity in other matters, his worldly rationalism and
-executive shrewdness, that this superstitious naïveté impresses one as
-odd. And how singular sometimes is the irony of Time! All the wonderful
-work the Dominican accomplished has been forgotten by the people; while
-all the witchcrafts that he warred against survive and flourish openly;
-and his very name is seldom uttered but in connection with
-superstitions,&mdash;has been, in fact, preserved among the blacks by the
-power of superstition alone, by the belief in zombis and even
-goblins.... "<i>Mi! ti manmaille-là, main ké fai Pè Labatt vini pouend
-ou!</i>"...</p>
-
-<p><br /></p>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_11_1" id="Footnote_11_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_11_1"><span class="label">[11]</span></a>Vol. III, p. 382-3. Edition of 1722.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_12_1" id="Footnote_12_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_12_1"><span class="label">[12]</span></a>The parrots of Martinique he describes as having been
-green, with slate-colored plumage on the top of the head, mixed with a
-little red, and as having a few red feathers in the wings, throat, and
-tail.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_13_1" id="Footnote_13_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_13_1"><span class="label">[13]</span></a>The creole word <i>moudongue</i> is said to be a corruption of
-<i>Mondongue</i>, the name of an African coast tribe who had the reputation
-of being cannibals. A Mondongue slave on the plantations was generally
-feared by his fellow-blacks of other tribes; and the name of the
-cannibal race became transformed into an adjective to denote anything
-formidable or terrible. A blow with a stick made of the wood described
-being greatly dreaded, the term was applied first to the stick, and
-afterward to the wood itself.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_14_1" id="Footnote_14_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_14_1"><span class="label">[14]</span></a>Accounting for the origin of the trade-winds, he writes:
-"I say that the Trade-Winds do not exist in the Torrid Zone merely by
-chance; forasmuch as the cause which produces them is very necessary,
-very sure, and very continuous, since they result <i>either from the
-movement of the Earth around the Sun, or from the movement of the Sun
-around the Earth, Whether it he the one or the other of these two great
-bodies which moves</i>..." etc.</p></div>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>V</h4>
-
-
-<p>Few habitants of St. Pierre now remember that the beautiful park behind
-the cathedral used to be called the Savanna of the White Fathers,&mdash;and
-the long shadowed meadow beside the Roxelane, the Savanna of the Black
-Fathers: the Jesuits. All the great religious orders have long since
-disappeared from the colony: their edifices have been either converted
-to other uses or demolished; their estates have passed into other
-hands.... Were their labors, then, productive of merely ephemeral
-results?&mdash;was the colossal work of a Père Labat all in vain, so far as
-the future is concerned? The question is not easily answered; but it is
-worth considering.</p>
-
-<p>Of course the material prosperity which such men toiled to obtain for
-their order represented nothing more, even to their eyes, than the means
-of self-maintenance, and the accumulation of force necessary for the
-future missionary labors of the monastic community. The real ultimate
-purpose was, not the acquisition of power for the order, but for the
-Church, of which the orders represented only a portion of the force
-militant; and this purpose did not fail of accomplishment. The orders
-passed away only when their labors had been completed,&mdash;when
-Martinique had become (exteriorly, at least) more Catholic than Rome
-itself,&mdash;after the missionaries had done all that religious zeal
-could do in moulding and remoulding the human material under their
-control. These men could scarcely have anticipated those social and
-political changes which the future reserved for the colonies, and which
-no ecclesiastical sagacity could, in any event, have provided against.
-It is in the existing religious condition of these communities that one
-may observe and estimate the character and the probable duration of the
-real work accomplished by the missions.</p>
-
-<p>... Even after a prolonged residence in Martinique, its visible
-religious condition continues to impress one as something phenomenal. A
-stranger, who has no opportunity to penetrate into the home life of the
-people, will not, perhaps, discern the full extent of the religious
-sentiment; but, nevertheless, however brief his stay, he will observe
-enough of the extravagant symbolism of the cult to fill him with
-surprise. Wherever he may choose to ride or to walk, he is certain to
-encounter shrines, statues of saints, or immense crucifixes. Should he
-climb up to the clouds of the peaks, he will find them all along the
-way;&mdash;he will perceive them waiting for him, looming through the
-mists of the heights; and passing through the loveliest ravines, he will
-see niches hollowed out in the volcanic rocks, above and below him, or
-contrived in the trunks of trees bending over precipices, often in
-places so difficult of access that he wonders how the work could have
-been accomplished. All this has been done by the various property-owners
-throughout the country: it is the traditional custom to do
-it&mdash;brings good-luck! After a longer stay in the island, one
-discovers also that in almost every room of every dwelling&mdash;stone
-residence, wooden cottage, or palm-thatched ajoupa&mdash;there is a
-chapelle: that is, a sort of large bracket fastened to the wall, on
-which crosses or images are placed, with vases of flowers, and lamps or
-wax-tapers to be burned at night. Sometimes, moreover, statues are
-placed in windows, or above door-ways;&mdash;and all passers-by take off
-their hats to these. Over the porch of the cottage in a mountain
-village, where I lived for some weeks, there was an absurd little window
-contrived,&mdash;a sort of purely ornamental dormer,&mdash;and in this a
-Virgin about five inches high had been placed. At a little distance it
-looked like a toy,&mdash;a child's doll forgotten there; and a doll I
-always supposed it to be, until one day that I saw a long procession of
-black laborers passing before the house, every one of whom took off his
-hat to it.... My bedchamber in the same cottage resembled a religious
-museum. On the chapelle there were no less than eight Virgins, varying
-in height from one to sixteen inches,&mdash;a St. Joseph,&mdash;a St.
-John,&mdash;a crucifix,&mdash;and a host of little objects in the shape
-of hearts or crosses, each having some special religious
-significance;&mdash;while the walls were covered with framed
-certificates of baptism, "first-communion," confirmation, and other
-documents commemorating the whole church life of the family for two
-generations.</p>
-
-<p>... Certainly the first impression created by this perpetual display of
-crosses, statues, and miniature chapels is not pleasing,&mdash;particularly
-as the work is often inartistic to a degree bordering upon the
-grotesque, and nothing resembling art is anywhere visible. Millions of
-francs must have been consumed in these creations, which have the
-rudeness of mediævalism without its emotional sincerity, and
-which&mdash;amid the loveliness of tropic nature, the grace of palms, the
-many-colored fire of liana blossoms&mdash;jar on the æsthetic sense with an
-almost brutal violence. Yet there is a veiled poetry in these silent
-populations of plaster and wood and stone. They represent something
-older than the Middle Ages, older than Christianity,&mdash;something
-strangely distorted and transformed, it is true, but recognizably
-conserved by the Latin race from those antique years when every home had
-its beloved ghosts, when every wood or hill or spring had its gracious
-divinity, and the boundaries of all fields were marked and guarded by
-statues of gods.</p>
-
-<p>Instances of iconoclasm are of course highly rare in a country of which
-no native&mdash;rich or poor, white or half-breed&mdash;fails to doff his
-hat before every shrine, cross, or image he may happen to pass. Those
-merchants of St. Pierre or of Fort-de-France living only a few miles out
-of the city must certainly perform a vast number of reverences on their
-way to or from business;&mdash;I saw one old gentleman uncover his white
-head about twenty times in the course of a fifteen minutes' walk. I never
-heard of but one image-breaker in Martinique; and his act was the result
-of superstition, not of any hostility to popular faith or custom: it was
-prompted by the same childish feeling which moves Italian fishermen
-sometimes to curse St. Antony or to give his image a ducking in bad
-weather. This Martinique iconoclast was a negro cattle-driver who one
-day, feeling badly in need of a glass of tafia, perhaps, left the
-animals intrusted to him in care of a plaster image of the Virgin, with
-this menace (the phrase is on record):&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>"<i>Moin ka quitté bef-la ba ou pou gàdé ba moin. Quand moin vini, si
-moin pa trouvé compte-moin, moin ké fouté ou vingt-nèf coudfouètt!</i>"
-(I leave these cattle with you to take care of for me. When I come
-back, if I don't find them all here, I'll give you twenty-nine lashes.)</p>
-
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
-<a id="figure34"></a>
-<img src="images/figure34.jpg" width="400" alt="" />
-<p class="center">A WAYSIDE SHRINE<br />
-"<i>There is a veiled poetry in these silent populations of
-plaster and wood and stone. Something older than
-the Middle Ages, older than Christianity.</i>"</p>
-</div>
-
-
-<p>Returning about half an hour later, he was greatly enraged to find his
-animals scattered in every direction;&mdash;and, rushing at the statue, he
-broke it from the pedestal, fixing it upon the ground, and gave it
-twenty-nine lashes with his bull-whip. For this he was arrested, tried,
-and sentenced to imprisonment, with hard labor, for life! In those days
-there were no colored magistrates;&mdash;the judges were all
-<i>bêkés.</i></p>
-
-<p>"Rather a severe sentence," I remarked to my informant, a planter who
-conducted me to the scene of the alleged sacrilege.</p>
-
-<p>"Severe, yes," he answered;&mdash;"and I suppose the act would seem to
-you more idiotic than criminal. But here, in Martinique, there were large
-questions involved by such an offence. Relying, as we have always done
-to some extent, upon religious influence as a factor in the maintenance
-of social order, the negro's act seemed a dangerous example."...</p>
-
-<p><br /></p>
-
-<p>That the Church remains still rich and prosperous in Martinique there
-can be no question; but whether it continues to wield any powerful
-influence in the maintenance of social order is more than doubtful. A
-Polynesian laxity of morals among the black and colored population, and
-the history of race-hatreds and revolutions inspired by race-hate, would
-indicate that neither in ethics nor in politics does it possess any
-preponderant authority. By expelling various religious orders;&mdash;by
-establishing lay schools, lycées, and other educational institutions
-where the teaching is largely characterized by aggressive antagonism to
-Catholic ideas;&mdash;by the removal of crucifixes and images from public
-buildings, French Radicalism did not inflict any great blow upon Church
-interests. So far as the white, and, one may say, the wealthy,
-population is concerned, the Church triumphs in her hostility to the
-Government schools; and to the same extent she holds an educational
-monopoly. No white creole would dream of sending his children to a lay
-school or a lycée&mdash;notwithstanding the unquestionable superiority of
-the educational system in the latter institutions;&mdash;and, although
-obliged, as the chief tax-paying class, to bear the burden of
-maintaining these establishments, the whites hold them in such horror
-that the Government professors are socially ostracized. No doubt the
-prejudice or pride which abhors mixed schools aids the Church in this
-respect; she herself recognizes race-feeling, keeps her schools unmixed,
-and even in her convents, it is said, obliges the colored nuns to serve
-the white! For more than two centuries every white generation has been
-religiously moulded in the seminaries and convents; and among the native
-whites one never hears an overt declaration of free-thought opinion.
-Except among the colored men educated in the Government schools, or their
-foreign professors, there are no avowed free-thinkers;&mdash;and this,
-not because the creole whites, many of whom have been educated in Paris,
-are naturally narrow-minded, or incapable of sympathy with the mental
-expansion of the age, but because the religious question at Martinique
-has become so intimately complicated with the social and political one,
-concerning which there can be no compromise whatever, that to divorce
-the former from the latter is impossible. Roman Catholicism is an
-element of the cement which holds creole society together; and it is
-noteworthy that other creeds are not represented. I knew of only one
-Episcopalian and one Methodist in the island,&mdash;and heard a sort of
-legend about a solitary Jew whose whereabouts I never could
-discover;&mdash;but these were strangers.</p>
-
-<p>It was only through the establishment of universal suffrage, which
-placed the white population at the mercy of its former slaves, that the
-Roman Church sustained any serious injury. All local positions are
-filled by blacks or men of color; no white creole can obtain a public
-office or take part in legislation; and the whole power of the black
-vote is ungenerously used against the interests of the class thus
-politically disinherited. The Church suffers in consequence: her power
-depended upon her intimate union with the wealthy and dominant class;
-and she will never be forgiven by those now in power for her sympathetic
-support of that class in other years. Politics yearly intensify this
-hostility; and as the only hope for the restoration of the whites to
-power, and of the Church to its old position, lies in the possibility of
-another empire or a revival of the monarchy, the white creoles and their
-Church are forced into hostility against republicanism and the
-republic. And political newspapers continually attack Roman
-Catholicism,&mdash;mock its tenets and teachings,&mdash;ridicule its dogmas
-and ceremonies,&mdash;satirize its priests.</p>
-
-<p>In the cities and towns the Church indeed appears to retain a large
-place in the affection of the poorer classes;&mdash;her ceremonies are
-always well attended; money pours into her coffers; and one can still
-witness the curious annual procession of the "converted,"&mdash;aged women
-of color and negresses going to communion for the first time, all wearing
-snow-white turbans in honor of the event. But among the country people,
-where the dangerous forces of revolution exist, Christian feeling is
-almost stifled by ghastly beliefs of African origin;&mdash;the images and
-crucifixes still command respect, but this respect is inspired by a
-feeling purely fetichistic. With the political dispossession of the
-whites, certain dark powers, previously concealed or repressed, have
-obtained formidable development. The old enemy of Père Labat, the
-wizard (the <i>quimboiseur</i>), already wields more authority than the
-priest, exercises more terror than the magistrate, commands more
-confidence than the physician. The educated mulatto class may affect to
-despise him;&mdash;but he is preparing their overthrow in the dark.
-Astonishing is the persistence with which the African has clung to these
-beliefs and practices, so zealously warred upon by the Church and so
-mercilessly punished by the courts for centuries. He still goes to mass,
-and sends his children to the priest; but he goes more often to the
-quimboiseur and the "<i>magnetise.</i>" He finds use for both beliefs, but
-gives large preference to the savage one,&mdash;just as he prefers the
-pattering of his tamtam to the music of the military band at the <i>Savane
-du Fort</i>.... And should it come to pass that Martinique be ever totally
-abandoned by its white population,&mdash;an event by no means improbable in
-the present order of things,&mdash;the fate of the ecclesiastical fabric so
-toilsomely reared by the monastic orders is not difficult to surmise.</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>VI</h4>
-
-
-<p>From my window in the old Rue du Bois-Morin,&mdash;which climbs the
-foot of Morne Labelle by successions of high stone steps,&mdash;all the
-southern end of the city is visible as in a bird's-eye view. Under me is
-a long peaking of red-scaled roofs,&mdash;gables and
-dormer-windows,&mdash;with clouds of bright green here and
-there,&mdash;foliage of tamarind and corossolier;&mdash;westward purples
-and flames the great circle of the Caribbean Sea;&mdash;east and south,
-towering to the violet sky, curve the volcanic hills, green-clad from
-base to summit;&mdash;and right before me the beautiful Morne d'Orange,
-all palm-plumed and wood-wrapped, trends seaward and southward. And
-every night, after the stars come out, I see moving lights
-there,&mdash;lantern fires guiding the mountain-dwellers home; but I
-look in vain for the light of Père Labat.</p>
-
-<p>And nevertheless,&mdash;although no believer in ghosts,&mdash;I see
-thee very plainly sometimes, thou quaint White Father, moving through
-winter-mists in the narrower Paris of another century; musing upon the
-churches that arose at thy bidding under tropic skies; dreaming of the
-primeval valleys changed by thy will to green-gold seas of
-cane,&mdash;and the strong mill that will bear thy name for two hundred
-years (it stands solid unto this day),&mdash;and the habitations made
-for thy brethren in pleasant palmy places,&mdash;and the luminous peace
-of thy Martinique convent,&mdash;and odor of roasting parrots fattened
-upon <i>grains de bois d'Inde</i> and guavas,&mdash;"<i>l'odeur de
-muscade et de girofle qui fait plaisir</i>"...</p>
-
-<p>Eh, Père Labat!&mdash;what changes there have been since thy day!
-The White Fathers have no place here now; and the Black Fathers, too,
-have been driven from the land, leaving only as a memory of them the
-perfect and ponderous architecture of the Perinnelle
-plantation-buildings, and the appellation of the river still known as
-the Rivière des Pères. Also the Ursulines are gone, leaving only their
-name on the corner of a crumbling street. And there are no more slaves;
-and there are new races of colors thou wouldst deem scandalous though
-beautiful; and there are no more parrots; and there are no more
-diablotins. And the grand woods thou sawest in their primitive and
-inviolate beauty, as if fresh from the Creator's touch in the morning of
-the world, are passing away; the secular trees are being converted into
-charcoal, or sawn into timber for the boat-builders: thou shouldst
-see two hundred men pulling some forest giant down to the sea
-upon the two-wheeled screaming thing they call a "devil" (<i>yon
-diabe</i>),&mdash;cric-crac!&mdash;cric-crac!&mdash;all chanting
-together:&mdash;</p>
-
-
-<p><span style="margin-left: 5em;">"<i>Soh-soh!&mdash;yaïe-yah!</i></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;"><i>Rhâlé bois-canot!</i>"</span></p>
-
-
-<p>And all that ephemeral man has had power to change has been
-changed,&mdash;ideas, morals, beliefs, the whole social fabric. But the
-eternal summer remains,&mdash;and the Hesperian magnificence of azure
-sky and violet sea,&mdash;and the jewel-colors of the perpetual
-hills;&mdash;the same tepid winds that rippled thy cane-fields two
-hundred years ago still blow over Sainte-Marie;&mdash;the same purple
-shadows lengthen and dwindle and turn with the wheeling of the sun.
-God's witchery still fills this land; and the heart of the stranger is
-even yet snared by the beauty of it; and the dreams of him that forsakes
-it will surely be haunted&mdash;even as were thine own. Père Labat&mdash;by
-memories of its Eden-summer: the sudden leap of the light over a
-thousand peaks in the glory of tropic dawn,&mdash;the perfumed peace of
-enormous azure noons,&mdash;and shapes of palm wind-rocked in the
-burning of colossal sunsets,&mdash;and the silent flickering of the
-great fire-flies through the lukewarm darkness, when mothers call their
-children home.... "<i>Mi fanal Pè Labatt!&mdash;mi Pè Labatt ka vini
-pouend oi!</i>"</p>
-
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 300px;">
-<img src="images/figure35.jpg" width="300" alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4><a id="LA_GUIABLESSE">LA GUIABLESSE</a></h4>
-
-
-<h4>I</h4>
-
-
-<div class="figleft" style="width: 60px;">
-<img src="images/figure36.jpg" width="60" height="80" alt="" />
-</div>
-
-
-<p>Night in all countries brings with it vaguenesses and illusions which
-terrify certain imaginations;&mdash;but in the tropics it produces
-effects peculiarly impressive and peculiarly sinister. Shapes of
-vegetation that startle even while the sun shines upon them
-assume, after his setting, a grimness,&mdash;a grotesquery,&mdash;a
-suggestiveness for which there is no name.... In the North a tree is
-simply a tree;&mdash;here it is a personality that makes itself felt; it
-has a vague physiognomy, an indefinable Me: it is an Individual (with a
-capital I); it is a Being (with a capital B).</p>
-
-<p>From the high woods, as the moon mounts, fantastic darknesses descend
-into the roads,&mdash;black distortions, mockeries, bad dreams,&mdash;an
-endless procession of goblins. Least startling are the shadows flung
-down by the various forms of palm, because instantly
-recognizable;&mdash;yet these take the semblance of giant fingers
-opening and closing over the way, or a black crawling of unutterable
-spiders....</p>
-
-<p>Nevertheless, these phasma seldom alarm the solitary and belated
-Bitaco: the darknesses that creep stealthily along the path have no
-frightful signification for him,&mdash;do not appeal to his
-imagination;&mdash;if he suddenly starts and stops and stares, it is not
-because of such shapes, but because he has perceived two specks of
-orange light, and is not yet sure whether they are only fire-flies, or
-the eyes of a trigonocephalus. The spectres of his fancy have nothing in
-common with those indistinct and monstrous umbrages: what he most fears,
-next to the deadly serpent, are human witchcrafts. A white rag, an old
-bone lying in the path, might be a maléfice which, if trodden upon,
-would cause his leg to blacken and swell up to the size of the limb of
-an elephant;&mdash;an unopened bundle of plantain leaves or of bamboo
-strippings, dropped by the way-side, might contain the skin of a
-<i>Soucouyan.</i> But the ghastly being who doffs or dons his skin at
-will&mdash;and the Zombi&mdash;and the <i>Moun-Mò</i>&mdash;may be
-quelled or exorcised by prayer; and the lights of shrines, the white
-gleaming of crosses, continually remind the traveller of his duty to the
-Powers that save. All along the way there are shrines at intervals, not
-very far apart: while standing in the radiance of one niche-lamp, you
-may perhaps discern the glow of the next, if the road be level and
-straight. They are almost everywhere,&mdash;shining along the skirts of
-the woods, at the entrance of ravines, by the verges of
-precipices;&mdash;there is a cross even upon the summit of the loftiest
-peak in the island. And the night-walker removes his hat each time his
-bare feet touch the soft stream of yellow light outpoured from the
-illuminated shrine of a white Virgin or a white Christ. These are good
-ghostly company for him;&mdash;he salutes them, talks to them, tells
-them his pains or fears: their blanched faces seem to him full of
-sympathy;&mdash;they appear to cheer him voicelessly as he strides from
-gloom to gloom, under the goblinry of those woods which tower black as
-ebony under the stars.... And he has other companionship. One of the
-greatest terrors of darkness in other lands does not exist here after
-the setting of the sun,&mdash;the terror of Silence.... Tropical night
-is full of voices;&mdash;extraordinary populations of crickets are trilling;
-nations of tree-frogs are chanting; the <i>Cabri-des-bois</i>,<a name="FNanchor_15_1" id="FNanchor_15_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_15_1" class="fnanchor">[15]</a> or <i>cra-cra</i>, almost deafens you
-with the wheezy bleating sound by which it earned its creole name; birds
-pipe: everything that bells, ululates, drones, clacks, guggles, joins
-the enormous chorus; and you fancy you see all the shadows vibrating to
-the force of this vocal storm. The true life of Nature in the tropics
-begins with the darkness, ends with the light.</p>
-
-<p>And it is partly, perhaps, because of these conditions that the coming
-of the dawn does not dissipate all fears of the supernatural. <i>I ni pè
-zombi mênm gran'-jou</i> (he is afraid of ghosts even in broad daylight)
-is a phrase which does not sound exaggerated in these latitudes,&mdash;not,
-at least, to any one knowing something of the conditions that nourish or
-inspire weird beliefs. In the awful peace of tropical day, in the hush
-of the woods, the solemn silence of the hills (broken only by torrent
-voices that cannot make themselves heard at night), even in the amazing
-luminosity, there is a something apparitional and weird,&mdash;something
-that seems to weigh upon the world like a measureless haunting. So still
-all Nature's chambers are that a loud utterance jars upon the ear brutally,
-like a burst of laughter in a sanctuary. With all its luxuriance of
-color, with all its violence of light, this tropical day has its
-ghostliness and its ghosts. Among the people of color there are many who
-believe that even at noon&mdash;when the boulevards behind the city are
-most deserted&mdash;the zombis will show themselves to solitary
-loiterers.</p>
-
-<p><br /></p>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_15_1" id="Footnote_15_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_15_1"><span class="label">[15]</span></a>In creole, <i>cabritt-bois</i>&mdash;("the Wood-Kid")&mdash;a colossal
-cricket. Precisely at half-past four in the morning it becomes silent;
-and for thousands of early risers too poor to own a dock, the cessation
-of its song is the signal to get up.</p></div>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>II</h4>
-
-
-<p>... Here a doubt occurs to me,&mdash;a doubt regarding the precise
-nature of a word, which I call upon Adou to explain. Adou is the
-daughter of the kind old capresse from whom I rent my room in this
-little mountain cottage. The mother is almost precisely the color of
-cinnamon; the daughter's complexion is brighter,&mdash;the ripe tint of
-an orange.... Adou tells me creole stories and <i>tim-tim.</i> Adou
-knows all about ghosts, and believes in them. So does Adou's
-extraordinarily tall brother, Yébé,&mdash;my guide among the
-mountains.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Adou," I ask, "what is a zombi?"</p>
-
-<p>The smile that showed Adou's beautiful white teeth has instantly
-disappeared; and she answers, very seriously, that she has never seen a
-zombi, and does not want to see one.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"<i>Moin pa té janmain ouè zombi,&mdash;pa 'lè ouè ça,
-moin!</i>"</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"But, Adou, child, I did not ask you whether you ever saw
-It;&mdash;I asked you only to tell me what It is like?"...</p>
-
-<p>Adou hesitates a little, and answers:</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"<i>Zombi? Mais ça fai désòde lanuitt, zombi!</i>"</p>
-
-<p>Ah! it is Something which "makes disorder at night." Still, that is not
-a satisfactory explanation. "Is it the spectre of a dead person, Adou?
-Is it <i>one who comes back?</i>"</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"<i>Non, Misié,&mdash;non; çê pa ça.</i>"</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Not that?... Then what was it you said the other night when you
-were afraid to pass the cemetery on an errand,&mdash;<i>ça ou té ka
-di</i>, Adou?"</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Moin té ka di: 'Moin pa lé k'allé bò cimétiè-là pa ouappò
-moun-mò ké barré moin: moin pa sé pè vini enco.'" (<i>I said, "I do
-not want to goby that cemetery because of the dead folk;&mdash;the dead
-folk will bar the way and I cannot get back again.</i>")</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"And you believe that, Adou?"</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Yes, that is what they say.... And if you go into the
-cemetery at night you cannot come out again: the dead folk will stop
-you&mdash;<i>moun-mò ké barré ou.</i>"...</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"But are the dead folk zombis, Adou?"</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"No; the moun-mò are not zombis. The zombis go everywhere: the
-dead folk remain in the graveyard.... Except on the Night of All Souls:
-then they go to the houses of their people everywhere."</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Adou, if after the doors and windows were locked and barred you
-were to see entering your room in the middle of the night, a Woman fourteen
-feet high?"...</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"<i>Ah! pa pàlé ça!!</i>"...</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"No! tell me, Adou?"</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Why, yes: that would be a zombi. It is the zombis who make all
-those noises at night one cannot understand.... Or, again, if I were to see
-a dog that high [she holds her hand about five feet above the floor]
-coming into our house at night, I would scream: <i>Mi Zombi!</i>"</p>
-
-<p>... Then it suddenly occurs to Adou that her mother knows something
-about zombis.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"<i>Ou! Mannam!</i>"</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"<i>Eti!</i>" answers old Théréza's voice from the little
-out-building where the evening meal is being prepared, over a charcoal
-furnace, in an earthen canari.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"<i>Missié-là ka mandé save ça ça yé yonne zombi;&mdash;vini ti
-bouin!</i>"... The mother laughs, abandons her canari, and comes in to tell
-me all she knows about the weird word.</p>
-
-<p>"<i>I ni pè zombi</i>"&mdash;I find from old Théréza's
-explanations&mdash;is a phrase indefinite as our own vague expressions,
-"afraid of ghosts, afraid of the dark." But the word "Zombi" also has
-special strange meanings.... "Ou passé nans grand chimin lanuitt, épi
-ou ka ouè gouôs difé, épi plis ou ka vini assou difé-à pli ou ka
-ouè difé-à ka màché: çé zombi ka fai ça.... Encò, chouval ka
-passé,&mdash;chouval ka ni anni toua patt: ça zombi." (You pass along
-the high-road at night, and you see a great fire, and the more you walk
-to get to it the more it moves away: it is the zombi makes that.... Or a
-horse <i>with only three legs</i> passes you: that is a zombi.)</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"How big is the fire that the zombi makes?" I ask.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"It fills the whole road," answers Théréza: "<i>li ka rempli
-toutt chimin-là.</i> Folk call those fires the Evil
-Fires,&mdash;<i>mauvai difé</i>,&mdash;and if you follow them they will
-lead you into chasms,&mdash;<i>ou ké tombé adans labîme.</i>"...</p>
-
-<p>And then she tells me this:</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Baidaux was a mad man of color who used to live at St. Pierre,
-in the Street of the Precipice. He was not dangerous,&mdash;never did any
-harm;&mdash;his sister used to take care of him. And what I am going to
-relate is true,&mdash;<i>çe zhistouè veritabe!</i></p>
-
-<p>"One day Baidaux said to his sister: 'Moin ni yonne yche,
-va!&mdash;ou pa connaitt li! [I have a child, ah!&mdash;you never saw
-it!] His sister paid no attention to what he said that day; but the next
-day he said it again, and the next, and the next, and every day
-after,&mdash;so that his sister at last became much annoyed by it, and
-used to cry out: 'Ah! mais pé guiole ou, Baidaux! ou fou pou embêté
-moin conm ça!&mdash;ou bien fou!'... But he tormented her that way for
-months and for years.</p>
-
-<p>"One evening he went out, and only came home at midnight leading a child
-by the hand,&mdash;a black child he had found in the street; and he said to
-his sister:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>"'Mi yche-là moin mené ba ou! Tou léjou moin té ka di ou moin tini
-yonne yche: ou pa té 'lè couè,&mdash;eh, ben! MI Y!' [Look at the child I
-have brought you! Every day I have been telling you I had a child: you
-would not believe me,&mdash;very well, look at him!]</p>
-
-<p>"The sister gave one look, and cried out: 'Baidaux, oti ou pouend
-yche-là?'... For the child was growing taller and taller every
-moment.... And Baidaux,&mdash;because he was mad,&mdash;kept saying: 'Çé
-yche-moin! çé yche moin!' [It is my child!]</p>
-
-<p>"And the sister threw open the shutters and screamed to all the
-neighbors,&mdash;'<i>Sécou, sécou, sécou! Vint oué ça Baidaux mené ba
-moin!</i>' [Help! help! Come see what Baidaux has brought in here!] And the
-child said to Baidaux: '<i>Ou ni bonhè ou fou!</i>' [You are lucky that you
-are mad!]... Then all the neighbors came running in; but they could not
-see anything: the Zombi was gone."...</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>III</h4>
-
-
-<p>... As I was saying, the hours of vastest light have their weirdness
-here;&mdash;and it is of a Something which walketh abroad under the eye of
-the sun, even at high noontide, that I desire to speak, while the
-impressions of a morning journey to the scene of Its last alleged
-apparition yet remains vivid in my recollection.</p>
-
-<p>You follow the mountain road leading from Calebasse over long
-meadowed levels two thousand feet above the ocean, into the woods of La
-Couresse, where it begins to descend slowly, through deep green
-shadowing, by great zigzags. Then, at a turn, you find yourself
-unexpectedly looking down upon a planted valley, through plumy fronds of
-arborescent fern. The surface below seems almost like a lake of
-gold-green water,&mdash;especially when long breaths of mountain-wind
-set the miles of ripening cane a-ripple from verge to verge: the
-illusion is marred only by the road, fringed with young cocoa-palms,
-which serpentines across the luminous plain. East, west, and north the
-horizon is almost wholly hidden by surging of hills: those nearest are
-softly shaped and exquisitely green; above them loftier undulations take
-hazier verdancy and darker shadows; farther yet rise silhouettes of blue
-or violet tone, with one beautiful breast-shaped peak thrusting up in
-the midst;&mdash;while, westward, over all, topping even the Piton, is a
-vapory huddling of prodigious shapes&mdash;wrinkled, fissured, horned,
-fantastically tall.... Such at least are the tints of the morning....
-Here and there, between gaps in the volcanic chain, the land hollows
-into gorges, slopes down into ravines;&mdash;and the sea's vast disk of
-turquoise flames up through the interval. Southwardly those deep woods,
-through which the way winds down, shut in the view.... You do not see
-the plantation buildings till you have advanced some distance into the
-valley;&mdash;they are hidden by a fold of the land, and stand in a
-little hollow where the road turns: a great quadrangle of low gray
-antiquated edifices, heavily walled and buttressed, and roofed with red
-tiles. The court they form opens upon the main route by an immense
-archway. Farther along ajoupas begin to line the way,&mdash;the dwellings of
-the field hands,&mdash;tiny cottages built with trunks of the
-arborescent fern or with stems of bamboo, and thatched with cane-straw:
-each in a little garden planted with bananas, yams, couscous, camanioc,
-choux-caraibes, or other things,&mdash;and hedged about with roseaux
-d'Inde and various flowering shrubs.</p>
-
-<p>Thereafter, only the high whispering wildernesses of cane on either
-hand,&mdash;the white silent road winding between its swaying
-cocoa-trees,&mdash;and the tips of hills that seem to glide on before you
-as you walk, and that take, with the deepening of the afternoon light, such
-amethystine color as if they were going to become transparent.</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>IV</h4>
-
-
-<p>... It is a breezeless and cloudless noon. Under the dazzling downpour
-of light the hills seem to smoke blue: something like a thin yellow fog
-haloes the leagues of ripening cane,&mdash;a vast reflection. There is no
-stir in all the green mysterious front of the vine-veiled woods. The
-palms of the roads keep their heads quite still, as if listening. The
-canes do not utter a single susurration. Rarely is there such absolute
-stillness among them: upon the calmest days there are usually rustlings
-audible, thin cracklings, faint creepings: sounds that betray the
-passing of some little animal or reptile&mdash;a rat or a manicou, or a
-zanoli or couresse,&mdash;more often, however, no harmless lizard or snake,
-but the deadly fer-de-lance. To-day, all these seem to sleep; and there
-are no workers among the cane to clear away the weeds,&mdash;to uproot the
-<i>pié-treffe, pié-poule, pié-balai, zhèbe-en-mè</i>: it is the hour of
-rest.</p>
-
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
-<a id="figure37"></a>
-<img src="images/figure37.jpg" width="400" alt="" />
-<p class="center">PITONS DU CARBET<br />
-"<i>The horizon is almost wholly hidden by surging of
-hills: silhouettes of blue and violet... a vapory huddling
-of prodigious shapes.</i>"</p>
-</div>
-
-
-<p>A woman is coming along the road,&mdash;young, very swarthy, very tall,
-and barefooted, and black-robed: she wears a high white turban with dark
-stripes, and a white foulard is thrown about her fine shoulders; she
-bears no burden, and walks very swiftly and noiselessly.... Soundless as
-shadow the motion of all these naked-footed people is. On any quiet
-mountain-way, full of curves, where you fancy yourself alone, you may
-often be startled by something you <i>feel</i>, rather than hear, behind
-you,&mdash;surd steps, the springy movement of a long lithe body, dumb
-oscillations of raiment;&mdash;and ere you can turn to look, the haunter
-swiftly passes with creole greeting of "bonjou'" or "bonsouè, Missié."
-This sudden "becoming aware" in broad daylight of a living presence
-unseen is even more disquieting than that sensation which, in absolute
-darkness, makes one halt all breathlessly before great solid objects,
-whose proximity has been revealed by some mute blind emanation of force
-alone. But it is very seldom, indeed, that the negro or half-breed is
-thus surprised: he seems to divine an advent by some specialized
-sense,&mdash;like an animal,&mdash;and to become conscious of a look
-directed upon him from any distance or from behind any covert;&mdash;to
-pass within the range of his keen vision unnoticed is almost impossible....
-And the approach of this woman has been already observed by the
-habitants of the ajoupas;&mdash;dark faces peer out from windows and
-door-ways;&mdash;one half-nude laborer even strolls out to the road-side
-under the sun to watch her coming. He looks a moment, turns to the hut
-again, and calls:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Ou-ou! Fafa!"</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Êti! Gabou!"</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Vini ti bouin!&mdash;mi bel négresse!"</p>
-
-<p>Out rushes Fafa, with his huge straw hat in his hand: "Oti, Gabou?"</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Mi!"</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Ah! quimbé moin!" cries black Fafa, enthusiastically; "fouinq!
-li bel!&mdash;Jésis-Maïa! li doux!"... Neither ever saw that woman before;
-and both feel as if they could watch her forever.</p>
-
-<p>There is something superb in the port of a tall young mountain-griffone,
-or negress, who is comely and knows that she is comely: it is a black
-poem of artless dignity, primitive grace, savage exultation of
-movement.... "Ou marché tête enlai cornu couresse qui ka passé
-lariviè" (<i>You walk with, your head in the air, like the
-couresse-serpent swimming a river</i>) is a creole comparison which
-pictures perfectly the poise of her neck and chin. And in her walk there
-is also a serpentine elegance, a sinuous charm: the shoulders do not
-swing; the cambered torso seems immobile;&mdash;but alternately from waist
-to heel, and from heel to waist, with each long full stride, an
-indescribable undulation seems to pass; while the folds of her loose
-robe oscillate to right and left behind her, in perfect libration, with
-the free swaying of the hips. With us, only a finely trained dancer
-could attempt such a walk;&mdash;with the Martinique woman of color it is
-natural as the tint of her skin; and this allurement of motion
-unrestrained is most marked in those who have never worn shoes and are
-clad lightly as the women of antiquity,&mdash;in two very thin and simple
-garments;&mdash;chemise and <i>robe-d'indienne</i>.... But whence is
-she?&mdash;of what canton? Not from Vauclin, nor from Lamentin, nor from
-Marigot,&mdash;from Case-Pilote or from Case-Navire: Fafa knows all the
-people there. Never of Sainte-Anne, nor of Sainte-Luce, nor of
-Sainte-Marie, nor of Diamant, nor of Gros-Morne, nor of Carbet,&mdash;the
-birthplace of Gabou. Neither is she of the village of the Abysms, which is
-in the Parish of the Preacher,&mdash;nor yet of Ducos nor of François,
-which are in the Commune of the Holy Ghost....</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>V</h4>
-
-
-<p>... She approaches the ajoupa: both men remove their big straw hats; and
-both salute her with a simultaneous "Bonjou', Manzell."</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Bonjou', Missié," she responds, in a sonorous alto, without
-appearing to notice Gabou,&mdash;but smiling upon Fafa as she passes, with
-her great eyes turned full upon his face.... All the libertine blood of
-the man flames under that look;&mdash;he feels as if momentarily wrapped in
-a blaze of black lightning.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Ça ka fai moin pè," exclaims Gabou, turning his face towards the
-ajoupa. Something indefinable in the gaze of the stranger has terrified
-him.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"<i>Pa ka fai moin pè&mdash;fouinq!</i>" (She does not make me
-afraid) laughs Fafa, boldly following her with a smiling swagger.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Fafa!" cries Gabou, in alarm. "<i>Fafa, pa ça!</i>"</p>
-
-<p>But Fafa does not heed. The strange woman has slackened her pace, as if
-inviting pursuit;&mdash;another moment and he is at her side.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Oti ou ka rété, chè?" he demands, with the boldness of one who
-knows himself a fine specimen of his race.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Zaffai cabritt pa zaffai lapin," she answers, mockingly.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Mais pouki ou rhabillé toutt noué conm ça."</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Moin pòté deil pou name moin mò."</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Ale ya yaïe!... Non, voué!&mdash;ça ou kallé atouèlement?"</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Lanmou pàti: moin pàti delé lanmou."</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Ho!&mdash;ou ni guêpe, anh?"</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Zanoli bail yon bal; épi maboya rentré ladans."</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Di moin oti ou kallé, doudoux?"</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Jouq lariviè Lezà."</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Fouinq!&mdash;ni plis passé trente kilomett!"</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Eh ben?&mdash;ess ou 'lè vini épi moin?"<a name="FNanchor_16_1" id="FNanchor_16_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_16_1" class="fnanchor">[16]</a></p>
-
-<p>And as she puts the question she stands still and gazes at
-him;&mdash;her voice is no longer mocking: it has taken another
-tone,&mdash;a tone soft as the long golden note of the little brown
-bird  they call the <i>siffleur-de-montagne</i>, the mountain-whistler....
-Yet Fafa hesitates. He hears the clear clang of the plantation
-bell recalling him to duty;&mdash;he sees far down the
-road&mdash;(<i>Ouill!</i> how fast they have been walking!)&mdash;a
-white and black speck in the sun: Gabou, uttering through his joined
-hollowed hands, as through a horn, the <i>ouklé</i>, the rally call.
-For an instant he thinks of the overseer's anger,&mdash;of the
-distance,&mdash;of the white road glaring in the dead heat: then he
-looks again into the black eyes of the strange woman, and answers:</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Oui;&mdash;moin ké vini épi ou."</p>
-
-<p>With a burst of mischievous laughter, in which Fafa joins, she walks
-on,&mdash;Fafa striding at her side.... And Gabou, far off, watches them
-go,&mdash;and wonders that, for the first time since ever they worked
-together, his comrade failed to answer his <i>ouklé.</i></p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Coument yo ka crié ou, chè?" asks Fafa, curious to know her
-name.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Châché nom moin ou-menm, duviné."</p>
-
-<p>But Fafa never was a good guesser,&mdash;never could guess the simplest
-of tim-tim.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Ess Cendrine?"</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Non, çé pa ça."</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Ess Vitaline?"</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Non, çé pa ça."</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Ess Aza?"</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Non, çé pa ça."</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Ess Nini?"</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Chaché encò."</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Ess Tité?"</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Ou pa save,&mdash;tant pis pou ou!"</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Ess Youma?"</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Pouki ou 'lè save nom moin?&mdash;ça ou ké fai épi y?"</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Ess Yaiya?"</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Non, çé pa y."</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Ess Maiyotte?"</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Non! ou pa ké janmain trouvé y!"</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Ess Sounoune?&mdash;ess Loulouze?"</p>
-
-<p>She does not answer, but quickens her pace and begins to sing,&mdash;not
-as the half-breed, but as the African sings,&mdash;commencing with a low
-long weird intonation that suddenly breaks into fractions of notes
-inexpressible, then rising all at once to a liquid purling bird-tone,
-and descending as abruptly again to the first deep quavering strain:&mdash;</p>
-
-
-<p><span style="margin-left: 5em;">"À tè&mdash;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 8em;">moin ka dòmi toute longue;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Yon paillasse sé fai moin bien,</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 11em;">Doudoux!</span><br />
-
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">À tè&mdash;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 8em;">moin ka dòmi toute longue;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Yon robe biésé sé fai moin bien,</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 11em;">Doudoux!</span><br />
-
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">À tè&mdash;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 8em;">moin ka dòmi toute longue;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Dè jolis foulà sé fai moin bien,</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 11em;">Doudoux!</span><br />
-
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">À tè&mdash;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 8em;">moin ka dòmi toute longue;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Yon joli madras sé fai moin bien,</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 11em;">Doudoux!</span><br />
-
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">À tè&mdash;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 8em;">moin ka dòmi toute longue:</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Çé à tè..."</span></p>
-
-
-<p>... Obliged from the first to lengthen his stride in order to keep up
-with her, Fafa has found his utmost powers of walking overtaxed, and has
-been left behind. Already his thin attire is saturated with sweat; his
-breathing is almost a panting;&mdash;yet the black bronze of his
-companion's skin shows no moisture; her rhythmic step, her silent
-respiration, reveal no effort: she laughs at his desperate straining to
-remain by her side.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Marché toujou' deïé moin,&mdash;anh, chè?&mdash;marché toujou'
-deïé!"...</p>
-
-<p>And the involuntary laggard&mdash;utterly bewitched by the supple
-allurement of her motion, by the black flame of her gaze, by the savage
-melody of her chant&mdash;wonders more and more who she may be, while she
-waits for him with her mocking smile.</p>
-
-<p>But Gabou&mdash;who has been following and watching from afar off, and
-sounding his fruitless ouklé betimes&mdash;suddenly starts, halts, turns,
-and hurries back, fearfully crossing himself at every step.</p>
-
-<p>He has seen the sign by which She is known....</p>
-
-<p><br /></p>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_16_1" id="Footnote_16_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_16_1"><span class="label">[16]</span></a>&mdash;"Where dost stay, dear?"</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Affaire of the goat are not affaire of the rabbit."</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"But why art thou dressed all in black thus?"</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"I wear mourning for my dead soul."</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"<i>Aïe ya yaïe!</i>... No, true!... where art thou going
-now?"</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Love is gone: I go after love."</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Ho! thou hast a Wasp [lover]&mdash;eh?"</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"The zanoli gives a ball; the maboya enters unasked."</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Tell me where thou art going, sweetheart?"</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"As far as the River of the Lizard."</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"<i>Fouinq!</i>&mdash;there are more than thirty kilometres!"</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"What of that?&mdash;do t thou want to come with me?"</p></div>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>VI</h4>
-
-
-<p>... None ever saw her by night. Her hour is the fulness of the sun's
-flood-tide: she comes in the dead hush and white flame of windless
-noons,&mdash;when colors appear to take a very unearthliness of
-intensity,&mdash;when even the flash of some colibri, bosomed with living
-fire, shooting hither and thither among the grenadilla blossoms, seemeth
-a spectral happening because of the great green trance of the land....</p>
-
-<p>Mostly she haunts the mountain roads, winding from plantation to
-plantation, from hamlet to hamlet,&mdash;sometimes dominating huge sweeps
-of azure sea, sometimes shadowed by mornes deep-wooded to the sky. But
-close to the great towns she sometimes walks: she has been seen at
-mid-day upon the highway which overlooks the Cemetery of the Anchorage,
-behind the cathedral of St. Pierre.... A black Woman, simply clad, of
-lofty stature and strange beauty, silently standing in the light,
-<i>keeping her eyes fixed upon the Sun!</i>...</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>VII</h4>
-
-
-<p>Day wanes. The further western altitudes shift their pearline gray to
-deep blue where the sky is yellowing up behind them; and in the
-darkening hollows of nearer mornes strange shadows gather with the
-changing of the light&mdash;dead indigoes, fuliginous purples,
-rubifications as of scoriæ,&mdash;ancient volcanic colors momentarily
-resurrected by the illusive haze of evening. And the fallow of the canes
-takes a faint warm ruddy tinge. On certain far high slopes, as the sun
-lowers, they look like thin golden hairs against the glow,&mdash;blond down
-upon the skin of the living hills.</p>
-
-<p>Still the Woman and her follower walk together,&mdash;chatting loudly,
-laughing, chanting snatches of song betimes. And now the valley is well
-behind them;&mdash; they climb the steep road crossing the eastern
-peaks,&mdash;through woods that seem to stifle under burdening of creepers.
-The shadow of the Woman and the shadow of the man,&mdash;broadening from
-their feet,&mdash;lengthening prodigiously,&mdash;sometimes, mixing, fill
-all the way; sometimes, at a turn, rise up to climb the trees. Huge
-masses of frondage, catching the failing light, take strange fiery
-color;&mdash;the sun's rim almost touches one violet hump in the western
-procession of volcanic silhouettes....</p>
-
-<p><br /></p>
-
-<p>Sunset, in the tropics, is vaster than sunrise.... The dawn, upflaming
-swiftly from the sea, has no heralding erubescence, no awful
-blossoming&mdash;as in the North: its fairest hues are fawn-colors,
-dove-tints, and yellows,&mdash;pale yellows as of old dead gold, in horizon
-and flood. But after the mighty heat of day has charged all the blue air
-with translucent vapor, colors become strangely changed, magnified,
-transcendentalized when the sun falls once more below the verge of
-visibility. Nearly an hour before his death, his light begins to turn
-tint; and all the horizon yellows to the color of a lemon. Then this hue
-deepens, through tones of magnificence unspeakable, into orange; and the
-sea becomes lilac. Orange is the light of the world for a little space;
-and as the orb sinks, the indigo darkness comes&mdash;not descending, but
-rising, as if from the ground&mdash;all within a few minutes. And during
-those brief minutes peaks and mornes, purpling into richest velvety
-blackness, appear outlined against passions of fire that rise half-way
-to the zenith,&mdash;enormous furies of vermilion.</p>
-
-<p><br /></p>
-
-<p>... The Woman all at once leaves the main road,&mdash;begins to mount a
-steep narrow path leading up from it through the woods upon the left. But
-Fafa hesitates,&mdash;halts a moment to look back. He sees the sun's huge
-orange face sink down,&mdash;sees the weird procession of the peaks vesture
-themselves in blackness funereal,&mdash;sees the burning behind them
-crimson into awfulness; and a vague fear comes upon him as he looks again
-up the darkling path to the left. Whither is she now going?</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Oti ou kallé là?" he cries.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Mais conm ça!&mdash;chimin tala plis cou't,&mdash;coument?"</p>
-
-<p>It may be the shortest route, indeed;&mdash;but then, the
-fer-de-lance!...</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Ni sèpent ciya,&mdash;en pile."</p>
-
-<p>No: there is not a single one, she avers; she has taken
-that path too often not to know:</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Pa ni sèpent piess! Moin ni coutime passé là;&mdash;pa ni
-piess!"</p>
-
-<p>... She leads the way.... Behind them the tremendous glow
-deepens;&mdash;before them the gloom. Enormous gnarled forms of ceiba,
-balata, acoma, stand dimly revealed as they pass; masses of viny
-drooping things take, by the failing light, a sanguine tone. For a
-little while Fafa can plainly discern the figure of the Woman before
-him;&mdash;then, as the path zigzags into shadow, he can descry only the
-white turban and the white foulard;&mdash;and then the boughs meet overhead:
-he can see her no more, and calls to her in alarm:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Oti ou?&mdash;moin pa pè ouè arien!"</p>
-
-<p>Forked pending ends of creepers trail cold across his face. Huge
-fire-flies sparkle by,&mdash;like atoms of kindled charcoal thudding, blown
-by a wind.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Içitt!&mdash;quimbé lanmain-moin!"...</p>
-
-<p>How cold the hand that guides him!... She walks swiftly, surely, as one
-knowing the path by heart. It zigzags once more; and the incandescent
-color flames again between the trees;&mdash;the high vaulting of foliage
-fissures overhead, revealing the first stars. A <i>cabritt-bois</i> begins
-its chant. They reach the summit of the morne under the clear sky.</p>
-
-<p>The wood is below their feet now; the path curves on eastward between a
-long swaying of ferns sable in the gloom,&mdash;as between a waving of
-prodigious black feathers. Through the further purpling, loftier
-altitudes dimly loom; and from some viewless depth, a dull vast rushing
-sound rises into the night.... Is it the speech of hurrying waters, or
-only some tempest of insect voices from those ravines in which the night
-begins?...</p>
-
-<p>Her face is in the darkness as she stands;&mdash;Fafa's eyes are turned
-to the iron-crimson of the western sky. He still holds her hand, fondles
-it,&mdash;murmurs something to her in undertones.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Ess ou ainmein moin conm ça?" she asks, almost in a whisper.</p>
-
-<p>Oh! yes, yes, yes!... more than any living being he loves her!... How
-much? Ever so much,&mdash;<i>gouôs conm caze!</i>... Yet she seems to doubt
-him,&mdash;repeating her question over and over:</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Ess ou ainmein moin?"</p>
-
-<p>And all the while,&mdash;gently, caressingly, imperceptibly,&mdash;she
-draws him a little nearer to the side of the path, nearer to the black
-waving of the ferns, nearer to the great dull rushing sound that rises
-from beyond them:</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Ess ou ainmein moin?"</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Oui, oui!" he responds,&mdash;"ou save ça!&mdash;oui, chè
-doudoux, ou save ça!"...</p>
-
-<p>And she, suddenly,&mdash;turning at once to him and to the last red
-light, the goblin horror of her face transformed,&mdash;shrieks with a
-burst of hideous laughter:</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"<i>Atò, bô!</i>"<a name="FNanchor_17_1" id="FNanchor_17_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_17_1" class="fnanchor">[17]</a></p>
-
-<p>For the fraction of a moment he knows her name:&mdash;then, smitten to
-the brain with the sight of her, reels, recoils, and, backward falling,
-crashes two thousand feet down to his death upon the rocks of a mountain
-torrent.</p>
-
-<p><br /></p>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_17_1" id="Footnote_17_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_17_1"><span class="label">[17]</span></a>"Kiss me now!"</p></div>
-
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 300px;">
-<img src="images/figure38.jpg" width="300" alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4><a id="LA_VERETTE">LA VÉRETTE</a></h4>
-
-
-<h4>I</h4>
-
-
-<div class="figleft" style="width: 60px;">
-<img src="images/figure39.jpg" width="60" height="80" alt="" />
-</div>
-
-
-<p style="margin-left: 60%;">&mdash;St. Pierre, <i>1887.</i></p>
-
-
-<p>One returning from the country to the city in the Carnival season is
-lucky to find any comfortable rooms for rent. I have been happy to
-secure one even in a rather retired street,&mdash;so steep that it is really
-dangerous to sneeze while descending it, lest one lose one's balance and
-tumble right across the town. It is not a fashionable street, the Rue du
-Morne Mirait; but, after all, there is no particularly fashionable
-street in this extraordinary city, and the poorer the neighborhood, the
-better one's chance to see something of its human nature.</p>
-
-<p>One consolation is that I have Manm-Robert for a next-door neighbor, who
-keeps the best bouts in town (those long thin Martinique cigars of which
-a stranger soon becomes fond), and who can relate more queer stories and
-legends of old times in the island than anybody else I know of.
-Manm-Robert is <i>yon màchonne lapacotte</i>, a dealer in such cheap
-articles of food as the poor live upon: fruits and tropical vegetables,
-manioc-flour, "macadam" (a singular dish of rice stewed with salt
-fish&mdash;<i>diri épi coubouyon lamori</i>), akras, etc.; but her bouts
-probably bring her the largest profit&mdash;they are all bought up by the
-békés. Manm-Robert is also a sort of doctor: whenever any one in the
-neighborhood falls sick she is sent for, and always comes, and very
-often cures,&mdash;as she is skilled in the knowledge and use of medical
-herbs, which she gathers herself upon the mornes. But for these services
-she never accepts any remuneration: she is a sort of Mother of the poor
-in her immediate vicinity. She helps everybody, listens to everybody's
-troubles, gives everybody some sort of consolation, trusts everybody,
-and sees a great deal of the thankless side of human nature without
-seeming to feel any the worse for it. Poor as she must really be, she
-appears to have everything that everybody wants; and will lend anything
-to her neighbors except a scissors or a broom, which it is thought
-bad-luck to lend. And, finally, if anybody is afraid of being bewitched
-(<i>guimboisé</i>) Manm-Robert can furnish him or her with something that
-will keep the bewitchment away....</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>II</h4>
-
-<p style="margin-left: 60%;"><i>February 15th.</i></p>
-
-
-<p>... Ash-Wednesday. The last masquerade will appear this afternoon,
-notwithstanding; for the Carnival lasts in Martinique a day longer than
-elsewhere.</p>
-
-<p>All through the country districts since the first week of January
-there have been wild festivities every Sunday&mdash;dancing on the
-public highways to the pattering of tamtams,&mdash;African dancing, too,
-such as is never seen in St. Pierre. In the city, however, there has
-been less merriment than in previous years;&mdash;the natural gaiety of
-the population has been visibly affected by the advent of a terrible and
-unfamiliar visitor to the island,&mdash;<i>La Vérette</i>: she came by
-steamer from Colon.</p>
-
-<p>... It was in September. Only two cases had been reported when every
-neighboring British colony quarantined against Martinique. Then other
-West Indian colonies did likewise. Only two cases of small-pox. "But
-there may be two thousand in another month," answered the governors and
-the consuls to many indignant protests. Among West Indian populations
-the malady has a signification unknown in Europe or the United States:
-it means an exterminating plague.</p>
-
-<p>Two months later the little capital of Fort-de-France was swept by the
-pestilence as by a wind of death. Then the evil began to spread. It
-entered St. Pierre in December, about Christmas time. Last week 173
-cases were reported; and a serious epidemic is almost certain. There
-were only 8500 inhabitants in Fort-de-France; there are 28,000 in the
-three quarters of St. Pierre proper, not including her suburbs; and
-there is no saying what ravages the disease may make here.</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>III</h4>
-
-
-<p>... Three o'clock, hot and clear.... In the distance there is a heavy
-sound of drums, always drawing nearer: <i>tam!&mdash;tam!&mdash;tamtamtam!</i>
-The Grande Rue is lined with expectant multitudes; and its tiny
-square,&mdash;the Batterie d'Esnotz,&mdash;thronged with
-békés.&mdash;<i>Tam!&mdash;tam!&mdash;tamtamtam!</i>... In our own street the
-people are beginning to gather at door-ways, and peer out of
-windows,&mdash;prepared to descend to the main thoroughfare at the first
-glimpse of the procession.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"<i>Oti masque-à?</i>" Where are the maskers?</p>
-
-<p>It is little Mimi's voice: she is speaking for two besides herself, both
-quite as anxious as she to know where the maskers are,&mdash;Maurice, her
-little fair-haired and blue-eyed brother, three years old; and
-Gabrielle, her child-sister, aged four,&mdash;two years her junior.</p>
-
-<p>Every day I have been observing the three, playing in the door-way of
-the house across the street. Mimi, with her brilliant white skin, black
-hair, and laughing black eyes, is the prettiest,&mdash;though all are
-unusually pretty children. Were it not for the fact that their mother's
-beautiful brown hair is usually covered with a violet foulard, you would
-certainly believe them white as any children in the world. Now there are
-children whom every one knows to be white, living not very far from
-here, but in a much more silent street, and in a rich house full of
-servants,&mdash;children who resemble these as one fleur-d'amour blossom
-resembles another;&mdash;there is actually another Mimi (though she is not
-so called at home) so like this Mimi that you could not possibly tell one
-from the other,&mdash;except by their dress. And yet the most unhappy
-experience of the Mimi who wears white satin slippers was certainly that
-punishment given her for having been once caught playing in the street
-with this Mimi, who wears no shoes at all. What mischance could have
-brought them thus together?&mdash;and the worst of it was they had fallen
-in love with each other at first sight!... It was not because the other
-Mimi must not talk to nice little colored girls, or that this one may
-not play with white children of her own age: it was because there are
-cases.... It was not because the other children I speak of are prettier
-or sweeter or more intelligent than these now playing before me;&mdash;or
-because the finest microscopist in the world could or could not detect
-any imaginable race difference between those delicate satin skins. It
-was only because human nature has little changed since the day that
-Hagar knew the hate of Sarah, and the thing was grievous in Abraham's
-sight because of his son....</p>
-
-<p>... The father of these children loved them very much: he had provided a
-home for them,&mdash;a house in the Quarter of the Fort, with an allowance
-of two hundred francs monthly; and he died in the belief their future was
-secured. But relatives fought the will with large means and shrewd
-lawyers, and won!... Yzore, the mother, found herself homeless and
-penniless, with three children to care for. But she was brave;&mdash;she
-abandoned the costume of the upper class forever, put on the douilette
-and the foulard,&mdash;the attire that is a confession of race,&mdash;and
-went to work. She is still comely, and so white that she seems only to be
-masquerading in that violet head-dress and long loose robe....</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"<i>Vini ouè!&mdash;vini ouè!</i>" cry the children to one
-another,&mdash;"come and see!" The drums are drawing near;&mdash;everybody is
-running to the Grande Rue....</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>IV</h4>
-
-
-<p><i>Tam!&mdash;tam!&mdash;tamtamtam!</i> ... The spectacle is
-interesting from the Batterie d'Esnotz. High up the Rue
-Peysette,&mdash;up all the precipitous streets that ascend the
-mornes,&mdash;a far gathering of showy color appears: the massing of
-maskers in rose and blue and sulphur-yellow attire.... Then what a
-<i>degringolade</i> begins!&mdash;what a tumbling, leaping, cascading of
-color as the troupes descend. Simultaneously from north and south, from
-the Mouillage and the Fort, two immense bands enter the Grande
-Rue;&mdash;the great dancing societies these,&mdash;the
-<i>Sans-souci</i> and the <i>Intrépides.</i> They are rivals; they are
-the composers and singers of those Carnival songs,&mdash;cruel satires
-most often, of which the local meaning is unintelligible to those
-unacquainted with the incident inspiring the improvisation,&mdash;of
-which the words are too often coarse or obscene,&mdash;whose burdens
-will be caught up and re-echoed through all the burghs of the island.
-Vile as may be the motive, the satire, the malice, these chants are
-preserved for generations by the singular beauty of the airs; and the
-victim of a Carnival song need never hope that his failing or his wrong
-will be forgotten: it will be sung of long after he is in his grave.</p>
-
-
-<p>... Ten minutes more, and the entire length of the street is thronged
-with a shouting, shrieking, laughing, gesticulating host of maskers.
-Thicker and thicker the press becomes;&mdash;the drums are silent: all are
-waiting for the signal of the general dance. Jests and practical jokes
-are being everywhere perpetrated; there is a vast hubbub, made up of
-screams, cries, chattering, laughter. Here and there snatches of Carnival
-song are being sung:&mdash;"<i>Cambronne, Cambronne</i>;" or "<i>Ti
-fenm-là doux, li doux, li doux!</i>"... "Sweeter than sirup the little
-woman is";&mdash;this burden will be remembered when the rest of the song
-passes out of fashion. Brown hands reach out from the crowd of masks,
-pulling the beards and patting the faces of white spectators.... "<i>Main
-connaitt! ou, chè!&mdash;moin connaitt ou, doudoux! ba moin ti d'mi
-franc!</i>" It is well to refuse the half-franc,&mdash;though you do not
-know what these maskers might take a notion to do to-day.... Then all the
-great drums suddenly boom together; all the bands strike up; the mad medley
-kaleidoscopes into some sort of order; and the immense processional
-dance begins. Prom the Mouillage to the Fort there is but one continuous
-torrent of sound and color: you are dazed by the tossing of peaked caps,
-the waving of hands, and twinkling of feet;&mdash;and all this passes with a
-huge swing,&mdash;a regular swaying to right and left.... It will take at
-least an hour for all to pass; and it is an hour well worth passing.
-Band after band whirls by; the musicians all garbed as women or as monks in
-canary-colored habits;&mdash;before them the dancers are dancing backward,
-with a motion as of skaters; behind them all leap and wave hands as in
-pursuit. Most of the bands are playing creole airs,&mdash;but that of the
-<i>Sans-souci</i> strikes up the melody of the latest French song in
-vogue,&mdash;<i>Petits amoureux aux plumes</i> ("Little feathered lovers"<a name="FNanchor_18_1" id="FNanchor_18_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_18_1" class="fnanchor">[18]</a>).
-Everybody now seems to know this song by heart; you hear children only
-five or six years old singing it: there are pretty lines in it, although
-two out of its four stanzas are commonplace enough, and it is certainly
-the air rather than the words which accounts for its sudden popularity.</p>
-
-<p><br /></p>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_18_1" id="Footnote_18_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_18_1"><span class="label">[18]</span></a><span style="margin-left: 5em;">"Petits amoureux aux plumes,</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 7em;">Enfants d'un brillant séjour</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Vous ignorez l'amertume,</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 7em;">Vous parlez souvent d'amour:...</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Vous méprisez la dorure,</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 7em;">Les salons, et les bijoux;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Vous chérissez la Nature,</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 7em;">Petits oiseaux, becquetez-vous!</span><br />
-<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">"Voyez là bas, dans cette église,</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 7em;">Auprès d'un confessional,</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Le prêtre, qui veut faire croire à Lise,</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 7em;">Qu'un baiser est un grand mal;&mdash;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Pour prouver à la mignonne</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 7em;">Qu'un baiser bien fait, bien doux,</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">N'a jamais damné personne</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 7em;">Petits oiseaux, becquetez-vous!"</span></p>
-
-<p>[<i>Translation.</i>]</p>
-<p><span style="margin-left: 5em;">Little feathered lovers, cooing,</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 7em;">Children of the radiant air,</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Sweet your speech,&mdash;the speech of wooing;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 7em;">Ye have ne'er a grief to bear!</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Gilded ease and jewelled fashion</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 7em;">Never own a charm for you;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Ye love Nature's truth with passion.</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 7em;">Pretty birdlings, bill and coo!</span><br />
-<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">See that priest who, Lise confessing,</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 7em;">Wants to make the girl believe</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">That a kiss without a blessing</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 7em;">Is a fault for which to grieve!</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Now to prove, to his vexation,</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 7em;">That no tender kiss and true</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Ever caused a soul's damnation,</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 7em;">Pretty birdlings, bill and coo!</span></p></div>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>V</h4>
-
-
-<p>... Extraordinary things are happening in the streets through which
-the procession passes. Pest-smitten women rise from their beds to
-costume themselves,&mdash;to mask face already made unrecognizable by
-the hideous malady,&mdash;and stagger out to join the dancers.... They
-do this in the Rue Longchamps, in the Rue St. Jean-de-Dieu, in the Rue
-Peysette, in the Rue de Petit Versailles. And in the Rue Ste.-Marthe
-there are three young girls sick with the disease, who hear the blowing
-of the horns and the pattering of feet and clapping of hands in
-chorus;&mdash;they get up to look through the slats of their windows on
-the masquerade,&mdash;and the creole passion of the dance comes upon
-them. "Ah!" cries one,&mdash;"<i>nou ké amieusé nou!&mdash;c'est
-zaffai si nou mò!</i>" [We will have our fill of fun: what matter if we
-die after!] And all mask, and join the rout, and dance down to the
-Savane, and over the river bridge into the high streets of the Fort,
-carrying contagion with them!... No extraordinary example, this: the
-ranks of the dancers hold many and many a <i>verrettier.</i></p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>VI</h4>
-
-
-<p>... The costumes are rather disappointing,&mdash;though the mummery
-has some general characteristics that are not unpicturesque;&mdash;for
-example, the predominance of crimson and canary-yellow in choice of
-color, and a marked predilection for pointed hoods and high-peaked
-head-dresses. Mock religious costumes also form a striking element in
-the general tone of the display,&mdash;Franciscan, Dominion, or Penitent
-habits,&mdash;usually crimson or yellow, rarely sky-blue. There are no
-historical costumes, few eccentricities or monsters: only a few
-"vampire-bat" head-dresses abruptly break the effect of the peaked caps
-and the hoods.... Still there are some decidedly local ideas in dress
-which deserve notice,&mdash;the <i>congo</i>, the <i>bébé</i> (or
-<i>ti-manmaille</i>), the <i>ti nègue gouos-sirop</i> ("little
-molasses-negro"); and the <i>diablesse.</i></p>
-
-<p>The congo is merely the exact reproduction of the dress worn by
-workers on the plantations. For the women, a gray calico shirt and
-coarse petticoat of percaline; with two coarse handkerchiefs
-(<i>mouchoirs fatas</i>), one for her neck, and one for the head, over
-which is worn a monstrous straw hat;&mdash;she walks either barefoot or
-shod with rude native sandals, and she carries a hoe. For the man the
-costume consists of a gray shirt of rough material, blue canvas
-pantaloons, a large mouchoir fatas to tie around his waist, and a
-<i>chapeau Bacoué</i>,&mdash;an enormous hat of Martinique palm-straw.
-He walks barefooted and carries a cutlass.</p>
-
-<p>The sight of a troupe of young girls en <i>bébé</i>, in baby-dress, is
-really pretty. This costume comprises only a loose embroidered chemise,
-laoe-edged pantalettes, and a child's cap; the whole being decorated
-with bright ribbons of various colors. As the dress is short and leaves
-much of the lower limbs exposed, there is ample opportunity for display
-of tinted stockings and elegant slippers.</p>
-
-<p>The "molasses-negro" wears nothing but a cloth around his
-loins;&mdash;his whole body and face being smeared with an atrocious
-mixture of soot and molasses. He is supposed to represent the original
-African ancestor.</p>
-
-<p>The <i>devilesses</i> (<i>diablesses</i>)are few in number; for it
-requires a very tall woman to play deviless. These are robed all in
-black, with a white turban and white foulard; they wear black masks.
-They also carry <i>boms</i> (large tin cans), which they allow to fall
-upon the pavement from time to time; and they walk barefoot....
-The deviless (in true Bitaco idiom, "<i>guiablesse</i>") represents
-a singular Martinique superstition. It is said that sometimes
-at noonday a  beautiful negress passes silently through some
-isolated  plantation,&mdash;smiling at the workers in the
-cane-fields,&mdash;tempting men to follow her. But he who follows her
-never comes back again; and when a field hand mysteriously disappears,
-his fellows say, "<i>Y té ka ouè la Guiablesse!</i>"... The tallest
-among the devilesses always walks first, chanting the question, "<i>Jou
-ouvè?</i>" (Is it yet daybreak?) And all the others reply in chorus,
-"<i>Jou pa'ncò ouvè.</i>" (It is not yet day.)</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;The masks worn by the multitude include very few grotesques: as a
-rule, they are simply white wire masks, having the form of an oval and
-regular human face;&mdash;and they disguise the wearer absolutely, although
-they can be seen through perfectly well from within. It struck me at
-once that this peculiar type of wire mask gave an indescribable tone of
-ghostliness to the whole exhibition. It is not in the least comical; it
-is neither comely nor ugly; it is colorless as mist,&mdash;expressionless,
-void, dead;&mdash;it lies on the face like a vapor, like a cloud,&mdash;creating
-the idea of a spectral vacuity behind it....</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>VII</h4>
-
-
-<p>... Now comes the band of the <i>Intrépides</i>, playing the
-<i>bouèné.</i> It is a dance melody,&mdash;also the name of a mode of
-dancing, peculiar and unrestrained;&mdash;the dancers advance and
-retreat face to face; they hug each other, press together, and separate
-to embrace again. A very old dance, this,&mdash;of African origin;
-perhaps the same of which Père Labat wrote in 1722:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"It is not modest. Nevertheless, it has not failed to become so
-popular with the Spanish Creoles of America, and so much in vogue among
-them, that it now forms the chief of their amusements, and that it
-enters even into their devotions. They dance it even in their Churches,
-and in their Processions; and the Nuns seldom fail to dance it Christmas
-Night, upon a stage erected in their Choir and immediately in front of
-their iron grating, which is left open, so that the People may share in
-the joy manifested by these good souls for the birth of the
-Saviour."<a name="FNanchor_19_1" id="FNanchor_19_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_19_1" class="fnanchor">[19]</a>...</p>
-
-<p><br /></p>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_19_1" id="Footnote_19_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_19_1"><span class="label">[19]</span></a>... "Cette danse est opposée à la pudeur. Avec tout
-cela, elle ne laisse pas d'être tellement du goût des Espagnols
-Créolles de l'Amérique, &amp; si fort en usage parmi eux, qu'elle fait la
-meilleure partie de leurs divertissements, &amp; qu'elle entre même dans
-leurs devotions. Ils la dansent même dans leurs Églises &amp; à leurs
-processions; et les Religieuses ne manquent guère de la danser la Nuit
-de Noël, sur un théâtre élevé dans leur Chœur, vis-à-vis de leur
-grille, qui est ouverte, afin que le Peuple ait sa part dans la joye que
-ces bonnes âmes témoignent pour la naissance du Sauveur."</p></div>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>VIII</h4>
-
-
-<p>... Every year, on the last day of the Carnival, a droll ceremony
-used to take place called the "Burial of the Bois-bois,"&mdash;the
-bois-bois being a dummy, a guy, caricaturing the most unpopular thing in
-city life or in politics. This bois-bois, after having been paraded with
-mock solemnity through all the ways of St. Pierre, was either interred
-or "drowned,"&mdash;flung into the sea.... And yesterday the dancing
-societies had announced their intention to bury a <i>bois-bois
-laverette</i>,&mdash;a manikin that was to represent the plague. But
-this bois-bois does not make its appearance. <i>La Vérette</i> is too
-terrible a visitor to be made fun of, my friends;&mdash;you will not
-laugh at her, because you dare not....</p>
-
-<p>No: there is one who has the courage,&mdash;a yellow goblin crying from
-behind his wire mask, in imitation of the màchannes: "<i>Ça qui 'lè
-quatòze graines laverette pou yon sou?</i>" (Who wants to buy fourteen
-verette-spots for a sou?)</p>
-
-<p>Not a single laugh follows that jest.... And just one week from to-day,
-poor mocking goblin, you will have a great many more than quatorze
-graines, which will not cost you even a sou, and which will disguise you
-infinitely better than the mask you now wear;&mdash;and they will pour
-quick-lime over you, ere ever they let you pass through this street
-again&mdash;in a seven franc coffin!...</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>IX</h4>
-
-
-<p>And the multicolored clamoring stream rushes by,&mdash;swerves off at
-last through the Rue des Ursulines to the Savane,&mdash;rolls over the new
-bridge of the Roxelane to the ancient quarter of the Fort.</p>
-
-<p>All of a sudden there is a hush, a halt;&mdash;the drums stop beating,
-the songs cease. Then I see a sudden scattering of goblins and demons and
-devilesses in all directions: they run into houses, up alleys,&mdash;hide
-behind door-ways. And the crowd parts; and straight through it, walking
-very quickly, conies a priest in his vestments, preceded by an acolyte
-who rings a little bell. <i>C'est Bon-Dié ka passé!</i> ("It is the
-Good-God who goes by!") The father is bearing the "viaticum" to some
-victim of the pestilence: one must not appear masked as a devil or a
-deviless in the presence of the Bon-Dié.</p>
-
-<p>He goes by. The flood of maskers recloses behind the ominous
-passage;&mdash;the drums boom again; the dance recommences; and all the
-fantastic mummery ebbs swiftly out of sight.</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>X</h4>
-
-
-<p>Night falls;&mdash;the maskers crowd to the ball-rooms to dance strange
-tropical measures that will become wilder and wilder as the hours pass.
-And through the black streets, the Devil makes his last Carnival-round.</p>
-
-<p>By the gleam of the old-fashioned oil lamps hung across the
-thoroughfares I can make out a few details of his costume. He is clad in
-red, wears a hideous blood-colored mask, and a cap of which the four
-sides are formed by four looking-glasses;&mdash;the whole head-dress being
-surmounted by a red lantern. He has a white wig made of horse-hair, to
-make him look weird and old,&mdash;since the Devil is older than the world!
-Down the street he comes, leaping nearly his own height,&mdash;chanting
-words without human signification,&mdash;and followed by some three hundred
-boys, who form the chorus to his chant&mdash;all clapping hands together
-and giving tongue with a simultaneity that testifies how strongly the sense
-of rhythm enters into the natural musical feeling of the African,&mdash;a
-feeling powerful enough to impose itself upon, all Spanish-America, and
-there create the unmistakable characteristics of all that is called
-"creole music."</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Bimbolo!"</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Zimabolo!"</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Bimbolo!"</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Zimabolo!"</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Et zimbolo!"</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Et bolo-po!"</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;sing the Devil and his chorus. His chant is cavernous,
-abysmal,&mdash;booms from his chest like the sound of a drum beaten in
-the bottom of a well.... <i>Ti maillelà, baill moin lavoix!</i> ("Give
-me voice, little folk,&mdash;give me voice!") And all chant after him,
-in a chanting like the rushing of many waters, and with triple clapping
-of hands:&mdash;"<i>Ti marmaille-là, baill moin lavoix!</i>"... Then he
-halts before a dwelling in the Rue Peysette, and thunders:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"<i>Eh! Marie-sans-dent!&mdash;mi! diabe-là derhò!</i>"</p>
-
-<p>That is evidently a piece of spite-work: there is somebody living there
-against whom he has a grudge.... "Hey! Marie-without-teeth! look! the
-Devil is outside!" And the chorus catch the clue.</p>
-
-<p>DEVIL.&mdash;"<i>Eh! Marie-sans-dent!</i>"...</p>
-
-<p>CHORUS.&mdash;"<i>Marie-sans-dent! mi!&mdash;diabe-là derhò!</i>"</p>
-
-<p>D.&mdash;"<i>Eh! Marie-sans-dent!</i>"...</p>
-
-<p>C.&mdash;"<i>Marie-sans-dent! mi!&mdash;diabe-là derhò!</i>"</p>
-
-<p>D.&mdash;"<i>Eh! Marie-sans-dent!</i>"... etc.</p>
-
-<p>The Devil at last descends to the main street, always singing the same
-song;&mdash;I follow the chorus to the Savanna, where the rout makes for
-the new bridge over the Roxelane, to mount the high streets of the old
-quarter of the Fort; and the chant changes as they cross over:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>DEVIL.&mdash;"<i>Oti ouè diabe-là passé lariviè?</i>" (Where did you see
-the Devil going over the river?) And all the boys repeat the words, falling
-into another rhythm with perfect regularity and ease:&mdash;"<i>Oti ouè
-diabe-là passé lariviè?</i>"</p>
-
-<p>DEVIL.&mdash;"<i>Oti ouè diabe?</i>"...</p>
-
-<p>CHORUS.&mdash;"<i>Oti ouè diabe-là passé lariviè?</i>"</p>
-
-<p>D.&mdash;"<i>Oti ouè diabe?</i>"</p>
-
-<p>C.&mdash;"<i>Oti ouè diabe-là passé lariviè?</i>"</p>
-
-<p>D.&mdash;"<i>Oti ouè diabe?</i>"... etc.</p>
-
-<p><br /></p>
-
-<p>About midnight the return of the Devil and his following arouses me from
-sleep:&mdash;all are chanting a new refrain, "The Devil and the zombis
-sleep anywhere and everywhere!" (<i>Diabe épi zombi ka dòmi
-tout-pàtout.</i>) The voices of the boys are still clear, shrill,
-fresh,&mdash;clear as a chant of frogs;&mdash;they still clap hands with
-a precision of rhythm that is simply wonderful,&mdash;making each time a
-sound almost exactly like the bursting of a heavy wave:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>DEVIL.&mdash;"<i>Diabe épi zombi.</i>"...</p>
-
-<p>CHORUS.&mdash;"<i>Diabe épi zombi ka dàmi tout-pàtout!</i>"</p>
-
-<p>D.&mdash;"<i>Diabe épi zombi.</i>"...</p>
-
-<p>C.&mdash;"<i>Diabe épi zombi ka dòmi tout-pàtout!</i>"</p>
-
-<p>D.&mdash;"<i>Diabe épi zombi.</i>"... etc.</p>
-
-<p>... What is this after all but the old African method of chanting at
-labor. The practice of carrying the burden upon the head left the hands
-free for the rhythmic accompaniment of clapping. And you may still hear
-the women who load the transatlantic steamers with coal at
-Fort-de-France thus chanting and clapping....</p>
-
-<p>Evidently the Devil is moving very fast; for all the boys are
-running;&mdash;the pattering of bare feet upon the pavement sounds like a
-heavy shower.... Then the chanting grows fainter in distance; the
-Devil's immense basso becomes inaudible;&mdash;one only distinguishes at
-regular intervals the crescendo of the burden,&mdash;a wild swelling of
-many hundred boy-voices all rising together,&mdash;a retreating storm of
-rhythmic song, wafted to the ear in gusts, in rafales of contralto....</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>XI</h4>
-
-<p style="margin-left: 60%;"><i>February 17th.</i></p>
-
-
-<p>... Yzore is a <i>calendeuse.</i></p>
-
-<p>The calendeuses are the women who make up the beautiful Madras
-turbans and color them; for the amazingly brilliant yellow of these
-head-dresses is not the result of any dyeing process: they are all
-painted by hand. When purchased the Madras is simply a great oblong
-handkerchief, having a pale green or pale pink ground, and checkered or
-plaided by intersecting bands of dark blue, purple, crimson, or maroon.
-The calendeuse lays the Madras upon a broad board placed across her
-knees,&mdash;then, taking a camel's-hair brush, she begins to fill in
-the spaces between the bands with a sulphur-yellow paint, which is
-always mixed with gum-arabic. It requires a sure eye, very steady
-fingers, and long experience to do this well.... After the Madras has
-been "calendered" (<i>calendé</i>) and has become quite stiff and dry,
-it is folded about the head of the purchaser after the comely Martinique
-fashion,&mdash;which varies considerably from the modes popular in
-Guadeloupe or Cayenne,&mdash;is fixed into the form thus obtained; and
-can thereafter be taken off or put on without arrangement or
-disarrangement, like a cap. The price for calendering a Madras is now
-two francs and fifteen sous;&mdash;and for making-up the turban, six
-sous additional, except in Carnival-time, or upon holiday occasions,
-when the price rises to twenty-five sous.... The making-up of the
-Madras into a turban is called "tying a head" (<i>marré yon tête</i>);
-and a prettily folded turban is spoken of as "a head well tied" (<i>yon
-tête bien marré</i>).... However, the profession of calendeuse is far
-from being a lucrative one: it is two or three days' work to calendar a
-single Madras well...</p>
-
-<p>But Yzore does not depend upon calendering alone for a living: she
-earns much more by the manufacture of moresques and of chinoises than by
-painting Madras turbans.... Everybody in Martinique who can afford it
-wears moresques and chinoises. The moresques are large loose comfortable
-pantaloons of thin printed calico (<i>indienne</i>),&mdash;having
-colored designs representing birds, frogs, leaves, lizards, flowers,
-butterflies, or kittens,&mdash;or perhaps representing nothing in
-particular, being simply arabesques. The chinoise is a loose
-body-garment, very much like the real Chinese blouse, but always of
-brightly colored calico with fantastic designs. These things are worn at
-home during siestas, after office-hours, and at night. To take a nap
-during the day with one's ordinary clothing on means always a terrible
-drenching from perspiration, and an after-feeling of exhaustion almost
-indescribable&mdash;best expressed, perhaps, by the local term: <i>corps
-écrasé.</i> Therefore, on entering one's room for the siesta, one
-strips, puts on the light moresques and the chinoise, and dozes in
-comfort. A suit of this sort is very neat, often quite pretty, and very
-cheap (costing only about six francs);&mdash;the colors do not fade out
-in washing, and two good suits will last a year.... Yzore can make two
-pair of moresques and two chinoises in a single day upon her
-machine.</p>
-
-<p>... I have observed there is a prejudice here against treadle
-machines;&mdash;the creole girls are persuaded they injure the health. Most
-of the sewing-machines I have seen among this people are operated by
-hand,&mdash;with a sort of little crank....</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>XII</h4>
-
-<p style="margin-left: 60%;"><i>February 22d.</i></p>
-
-
-<p>... Old physicians indeed predicted it; but who believed them?...</p>
-
-<p>It is as though something sluggish and viewless, dormant and deadly, had
-been suddenly upstirred to furious life by the wind of robes and tread
-of myriad dancing feet,&mdash;by the crash of cymbals and heavy vibration
-of drums! Within a few days there has been a frightful increase of the
-visitation, an almost incredible expansion of the invisible poison: the
-number of new cases and of deaths has successively doubled, tripled,
-quadrupled....</p>
-
-<p>... Great caldrons of tar are kindled now at night in the more thickly
-peopled streets,&mdash;about one hundred paces apart, each being tended by
-an Indian laborer in the pay of the city: this is done with the idea of
-purifying the air. These sinister fires are never lighted but in times
-of pestilence and of tempest: on hurricane nights, when enormous waves
-roll in from the fathomless sea upon one of the most fearful coasts in
-the world, and great vessels are being driven ashore, such is the
-illumination by which the brave men of the coast make desperate efforts
-to save the lives of shipwrecked men, often at the cost of their
-own.<a name="FNanchor_20_1" id="FNanchor_20_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_20_1" class="fnanchor">[20]</a></p>
-
-<p><br /></p>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_20_1" id="Footnote_20_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_20_1"><span class="label">[20]</span></a>During a hurricane, several years ago, a West Indian
-steamer was disabled at a dangerously brief distance from the coast of
-the island by having her propeller fouled. Some broken and drifting
-rigging had become wrapped around it. One of the crew, a Martinique
-mulatto, tied a rope about his waist, took his knife between his teeth,
-dived overboard, and in that tremendous sea performed the difficult feat
-of disengaging the propeller, and thus saving the steamer from otherwise
-certain destruction.... This brave fellow received the Cross of the
-Legion of Honor....</p></div>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>XIII</h4>
-
-<p style="margin-left: 60%;"><i>February 23d.</i></p>
-
-
-<p>A coffin passes, balanced on the heads of black men. It bolds the body
-of Pascaline Z&mdash;&mdash;, covered with quick-lime.</p>
-
-<p>She was the prettiest, assuredly, among the pretty shop-girls of the
-Grande Rue,&mdash;a rare type of <i>sang-mêlée.</i> So oddly pleasing, the
-young face, that once seen, you could never again dissociate the
-recollection of it from the memory of the street. But one who saw it last
-night before they poured quick-lime upon it could discern no
-features,&mdash;only a dark brown mass, like a fungus, too frightful to
-think about.</p>
-
-<p>... And they are all going thus, the beautiful women of color. In the
-opinion of physicians, the whole generation is doomed.... Yet a curious
-fact is that the young children of octoroons are suffering least: these
-women have their children vaccinated,&mdash;though they will not be
-vaccinated themselves. I see many brightly colored children, too,
-recovering from the disorder: the skin is not pitted, like that of the
-darker classes; and the rose-colored patches finally disappear
-altogether, leaving no trace.</p>
-
-<p>... Here the sick are wrapped in banana leaves, after having been
-smeared with a certain unguent....</p>
-
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
-<a id="figure40"></a>
-<img src="images/figure40.jpg" width="400" alt="" />
-<p class="center">FORT-DE-FRANCE<br />
-<i>The city from the heights of Le Calvaire, behind
-the town.</i></p>
-</div>
-
-
-<p>There is an immense demand for banana leaves. In ordinary times these
-leaves&mdash;especially the younger ones, still unrolled, and tender and
-soft beyond any fabric possible for man to make&mdash;are used for
-poultices of all kinds, and sell from one to two sous each, according to
-size and quality.</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>XIV</h4>
-
-<p style="margin-left: 60%;"><i>February 29th.</i></p>
-
-
-<p>... The whites remain exempt from the malady.</p>
-
-<p>One might therefore hastily suppose that liability to contagion would
-be diminished in proportion to the excess of white blood over African;
-but such is far from being the case;&mdash;St. Pierre is losing its
-handsomest octoroons. Where the proportion of white to black blood is
-116 to 8, as in the type called <i>mamelouc</i>;&mdash;or 122 to 4, as
-in the <i>quarteronné</i> (not to be confounded with the quarteron or
-quadroon);&mdash;or even 127 to 1, as in the <i>sang-mêlé</i>, the
-liability to attack remains the same, while the chances of recovery are
-considerably less than in the case of the black. Some few striking
-instances of immunity appear to offer a different basis for argument;
-but these might be due to the social position of the individual rather
-than to any constitutional temper: wealth and comfort, it must be
-remembered, have no small prophylactic value in such times.
-Still,&mdash;although there is reason to doubt whether mixed races
-have a constitutional vigor comparable to that of the original
-parent-races,&mdash;the liability to diseases of this class is decided
-less, perhaps, by race characteristics than by ancestral experience. The
-white peoples of the world have been practically inoculated, vaccinated,
-by experience of centuries;&mdash;while among these visibly mixed or
-black populations the seeds of the pest find absolutely fresh soil in
-which to germinate, and its ravages are therefore scarcely less terrible
-than those it made among the American-Indian or the Polynesian races in
-other times. Moreover, there is an unfortunate prejudice against
-vaccination here. People even now declare that those vaccinated die just
-as speedily of the plague as those who have never been;&mdash;and they
-can cite cases in proof. It is useless to talk to them about averages of
-immunity, percentage of liability, etc.;&mdash;they have seen with their
-own eyes persons who had been well vaccinated die of the verette, and
-that is enough to destroy their faith in the system... Even the priests,
-who pray their congregations to adopt the only known safeguard against
-the disease, can do little against this scepticism.</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>XV</h4>
-
-<p style="margin-left: 60%;"><i>March 5th.</i></p>
-
-
-<p>... The streets are so narrow in this old-fashioned quarter that even a
-whisper is audible across them; and after dark I hear a great many
-things,&mdash;sometimes sounds of pain, sobbing, despairing cries as Death
-makes his nightly round,&mdash;sometimes, again, angry words, and laughter,
-and even song,&mdash;always one melancholy chant: the voice has that
-peculiar metallic timbre that reveals the young negress:&mdash;</p>
-
-
-<p><span style="margin-left: 5em;">"<i>Paw' ti Lélé</i>,</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;"><i>Paw' ti Lélé!</i></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;"><i>Li gagnin doulè, doulè, doulè</i>,&mdash;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;"><i>Li gagnin doulè</i></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;"><i>Tout-pàtout!</i>"</span></p>
-
-
-<p>I want to know who little Lélé was, and why she had pains "all
-over";&mdash;for however artless and childish these creole songs seem, they
-are invariably originated by some real incident. And at last somebody
-tells me that "poor little Lélé" had the reputation in other years of
-being the most unlucky girl in St. Pierre; whatever she tried to do
-resulted only in misfortune;&mdash;when it was morning she wished it were
-evening, that she might sleep and forget; but when the night came she
-could not sleep for thinking of the trouble she had had during the day,
-so that she wished it were morning....</p>
-
-<p>More pleasant it is to hear the chatting of Yzore's children across the
-way, after the sun has set, and the stars come out.... Gabrielle always
-wants to know what the stars are:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"<i>Ça qui ka clairé conm, ça, manman?</i>" (What is it that
-shines like that?)</p>
-
-<p>And Yzore answers:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"<i>Ça, mafi,&mdash;c'est ti limiè Bon-Dié.</i>" (Those are the
-little lights of the Good-God.)</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"It is so pretty,&mdash;eh, mamma? I want to count them."</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"You cannot count them, child."</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"One&mdash;two&mdash;three&mdash;four&mdash;five&mdash;six&mdash;seven."
-Gabrielle can only count up to seven. "<i>Moin pride!</i>&mdash;I am lost,
-mamma!"</p>
-
-<p>The moon comes up;&mdash;she cries:&mdash;"<i>Mi! manman!&mdash;gàdé
-gouôs difé qui adans ciel-à!</i>" (Look at the great fire in the sky!)</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"It is the Moon, child!... Don't you see St. Joseph in it,
-carrying a bundle of wood?"</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Yes, mamma! I see him!... A great big bundle of wood!"...</p>
-
-<p>But Mimi is wiser in moon-lore: she borrows half a franc from her mother
-"to show to the Moon." And holding it up before the silver light, she
-sings:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Pretty Moon, I show you my little money;&mdash;now let me always
-have money so long as you shiner!"<a name="FNanchor_21_1" id="FNanchor_21_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_21_1" class="fnanchor">[21]</a></p>
-
-<p>Then the mother takes them up to bed;&mdash;and in a little while there
-floats to me, through the open window, the murmur of the children's
-evening prayer:&mdash;</p>
-
-
-<p><span style="margin-left: 5em;">"Ange-gardien,</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Veillez sur moi."</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 8em;">* * * *</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">"Ayez pitié de ma faiblesse;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Couchez-vous sur mon petit lit;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Suivez-moi sans cesse."<a name="FNanchor_22_1" id="FNanchor_22_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_22_1" class="fnanchor">[22]</a>...</span></p>
-
-
-<p>I can only catch a line here and there.... They do not sleep
-immediately;&mdash;they continue to chat in bed. Gabrielle wants to know
-what a guardian-angel is like. And I hear Mimi's voice replying in
-creole:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"<i>Zange-gàdien, c'est yon jeine fi, touts bel.</i>" (The
-guardian-angel is a young girl, all beautiful.)</p>
-
-<p>A little while, and there is silence; and I see Yzore come out,
-barefooted, upon the moonlit balcony of her little room,&mdash;looking up
-and down the hushed street, looking at the sea, looking up betimes at the
-high flickering of stars,&mdash;moving her lips as in prayer.... And,
-standing there white-robed, with her rich dark hair loose-falling, there
-is a weird grace about her that recalls those long slim figures of
-guardian-angels in French religious prints....</p>
-
-<p><br /></p>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_21_1" id="Footnote_21_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_21_1"><span class="label">[21]</span></a><i>Bel ladine, moin ka montré ou ti pièce moin!&mdash;ba moin
-làgent toutt tempe ou ka clairé!</i>"... This little invocation is
-supposed to have most power when ottered on the first appearance of the
-new moon.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_22_1" id="Footnote_22_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_22_1"><span class="label">[22]</span></a>"Guardian-angel, watch over me;&mdash;have pity upon my
-weakness; lie down on my little bed with me; follow me whithersoever I
-go."... The prayers are always said in French. Metaphysical and
-theological terms cannot be rendered in the patois; and the authors of
-creole catechisms have always been obliged to borrow and explain French
-religious phrases in order to make their texts comprehensible.</p></div>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>XVI</h4>
-
-<p style="margin-left: 60%;"><i>March 6th.</i></p>
-
-
-<p>This morning Manm-Robert brings me something queer,&mdash;something hard
-tied up in a tiny piece of black cloth, with a string attached to hang it
-round my neck. I must wear it, she says.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"<i>Ça ça yè, Manm-Robert?</i>"</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"<i>Pou empêché ou pouend laverette</i>" she answers. It is to
-keep me from catching the verette!... And what is inside it?</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"<i>Toua graines maïs, épi dicamfre.</i>" (Three grains of corn,
-with a bit of camphor!)...</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>XVII</h4>
-
-<p style="margin-left: 60%;"><i>March 8th.</i></p>
-
-
-<p>... Rich households throughout the city are almost helpless for the
-want of servants. One can scarcely obtain help at any price: it is true
-that young country-girls keep coming into town to fill the places of the
-dead; but these new-comers fall a prey to the disease much more readily
-than those who preceded them. And such deaths often represent more than
-a mere derangement in the mechanism of domestic life. The creole bonne
-bears a relation to the family of an absolutely peculiar sort,&mdash;a
-relation of which the term "house-servant" does not convey the faintest
-idea. She is really a member of the household: her association with its
-life usually begins in childhood, when she is barely strong enough to
-carry a dobanne of water up-stairs;&mdash;and in many cases she has the
-additional claim of having been born in the house. As a child, she plays
-with the white children,&mdash;shares their pleasures and presents. She
-is very seldom harshly spoken to, or reminded of the fact that she is a
-servitor: she has a pet name;&mdash;she is allowed much
-familiarity,&mdash;is often permitted to join in conversation when there
-is no company present, and to express her opinion about domestic
-affairs. She costs very little to keep; four or five dollars a year will
-supply her with all necessary clothing;&mdash;she rarely wears
-shoes;&mdash;she sleeps on a little straw mattress (<i>paillasse</i>) on
-the floor, or perhaps upon a paillasse supported upon an "elephant"
-(<i>léfan</i>)&mdash;two thick square pieces of hard mattress placed
-together so as to form an oblong. She is only a nominal expense to the
-family; and she is the confidential messenger, the nurse, the
-chamber-maid, the water-carrier,&mdash;everything, in short, except cook
-and washer-woman. Families possessing a really good bonne would not part
-with her on any consideration. If she has been brought up in the
-household, she is regarded almost as a kind of adopted child. If she
-leave that household to make a home of her own, and have ill-fortune
-afterwards, she will not be afraid to return with her baby, which will
-perhaps be received and brought up as she herself was, under the old
-roof. The stranger may feel puzzled at first by this state of affairs;
-yet the cause is not obscure. It is traceable to the time of the
-formation of creole society&mdash;to the early period of slavery. Among
-the Latin races,&mdash;especially the French,&mdash;slavery preserved in
-modern times many of the least harsh features of slavery in the antique
-world,&mdash;where the domestic slave, entering the <i>famillia</i>,
-actually became a member of it.</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>XVIII</h4>
-
-<p style="margin-left: 60%;"><i>March 10th.</i></p>
-
-
-<p>... Yzore and her little ones are all in Manm-Robert's shop;&mdash;she
-is recounting her troubles,&mdash;fresh troubles: forty-seven francs' worth
-of work delivered on time, and no money received.... So much I hear as I
-enter the little boutique myself, to buy a package of "bouts."</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"<i>Assise!</i>" says Manm-Robert, handing me her own
-chair;&mdash;she is always pleased to see me, pleased to chat with me
-about creole folk-lore. Then observing a smile exchanged between myself
-and Mimi, she tells the children to bid me good-day:&mdash;"<i>Allé di
-bonjou' Missié-à!</i>"</p>
-
-<p>One after another, each holds up a velvety cheek to kiss. And Mimi, who
-has been asking her mother the same question over and over again for at
-least five minutes without being able to obtain an answer, ventures to
-demand of me on the strength of this introduction:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"<i>Missié, oti masque-à?</i>"</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"<i>Y ben fou, pouloss!</i>" the mother cries out;&mdash;"Why,
-the child must be going out of her senses!... <i>Mimi pa 'mbêté moune conm
-ça!&mdash;pa ni piess masque: c'est la-vérette qui ni.</i>" (Don't annoy
-people like that!&mdash;there are no maskers now; there is nothing but the
-verette!)</p>
-
-<p><br /></p>
-
-<p>[You are not annoying me at all, little Mimi; but I would not like to
-answer your question truthfully. I know where the maskers are,&mdash;most
-of them, child; and I do not think it would be well for you to know. They
-wear no masks now; but if you were to see them for even one moment, by
-some extraordinary accident, pretty Mimi, I think you would feel more
-frightened than you ever felt before.]...</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"<i>Toutt la nuite y k'anni rêvé masque-à</i>," continues
-Yzore.... I am curious to know what Mimi's dreams are like;&mdash;wonder
-if I can coax her to tell me....</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>XIX</h4>
-
-
-<p>... I have written Mimi's last dream from the child's
-dictation:&mdash;<a name="FNanchor_23_1" id="FNanchor_23_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_23_1" class="fnanchor">[23]</a></p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"I saw a ball," she says. "I was dreaming: I saw everybody
-dancing with masks on;&mdash;I was looking at them. And all at once I
-saw that the folks who were dancing were all made of pasteboard. And I
-saw a commandeur: he asked me what I was doing there. I answered him:
-'Why, I saw a ball, and I came to look&mdash;what of it?' He answered
-me:&mdash;'Since you are so curious to come and look at other folks'
-business, you will have to stop here and dance too!' I said to
-him:&mdash;'No! I won't dance with people made of pasteboard;&mdash;I am
-afraid of them!'... And I ran and ran and ran,&mdash;I was so much
-afraid. And I ran into a big garden, where I saw a big cherry-tree that
-had only leaves upon it; and I saw a man sitting under the cherry-tree.
-He asked me:&mdash;'What are you doing here?' I said to him:&mdash;'I am
-trying to find my way out.' He said:&mdash;'You must stay here.' I
-said:&mdash;'No, no!'&mdash;and I said, in order to be able to get
-away:&mdash;'Go up there!&mdash;you will see a fine ball: all pasteboard
-people dancing there, and a pasteboard commandeur commanding them!'...
-And then I got so frightened that I awoke."...</p>
-
-<p>... "And why were you so afraid of them, Mimi?" I ask.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"<i>Pace yo té toutt vide endedans!</i>" answers Mimi.
-(<i>Because they were all hollow inside!</i>)</p>
-
-<p><br /></p>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_23_1" id="Footnote_23_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_23_1"><span class="label">[23]</span></a>&mdash;"Moin té ouè yon bal;&mdash;moin rêvé: moin té ka ouè toutt
-moune ka dansé masqué; moin té ka gàdé. Et toutt-à-coup moin ka ouè c'est
-bonhomme-càton ka dansé. Et main ka ouè yon Commandè: y ka mandé moin
-ça moin ka fai là. Moin reponne y conm ça:&mdash;'Moin ouè yon bal, moin
-gàdé-coument!' Y ka réponne moin:&mdash;'Pisse ou si quirièse pou vini gàdé
-baggaïe moune, faut rété là pou dansé 'tou.' Moin réponne y:&mdash;'Non!
-moin pa dansé épi bonhomme-càton!&mdash;moin pè!'... Et moin ka couri, moin
-ka couri, main ka couri à fòce moin te ni pè. Et moin rentré adans grand
-jàdin; et moin ouè gouôs pié-cirise qui té chàgé anni feuill; et moin ka
-ouè yon nhomme assise enba cirise-à. Y mandé moin:&mdash;'Ça ou ka fai là?'
-Moin di y:&mdash;'Moin ka châché chimin pou moin allé.' Y di
-moin:&mdash;'Faut rété içitt.' Et moin di y:&mdash;'Non!'&mdash;et pou
-chappé cò moin, moin di y:&mdash;'Allé enhaut-là: ou ké ouè yon bel
-bal,&mdash;toutt bonhomme-càton ka dansé, épi yon Commande-en-càton ka
-coumandé yo.'... Epi moin levé, à fòce moin té pè."...</p></div>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>XX</h4>
-
-<p style="margin-left: 60%;"><i>Mardi 19th.</i></p>
-
-
-<p>... The death-rate in St. Pierre is now between three hundred and
-fifty and four hundred a month. Our street is being depopulated. Every
-day men come with immense stretchers,&mdash;covered with a sort of
-canvas awning,&mdash;to take somebody away to the <i>lazaretto.</i> At
-brief intervals, also, coffins are carried into houses empty, and
-carried out again followed by women who cry so loud that their sobbing
-can be heard a great way off.</p>
-
-<p>... Before the visitation few quarters were so densely peopled: there
-were living often in one small house as many as fifty. The poorer
-classes had been accustomed from birth to live as simply as
-animals,&mdash;wearing scarcely any clothing, sleeping on bare floors,
-exposing themselves to all changes of weather, eating the cheapest and
-coarsest food. Yet, though living under such adverse conditions, no
-healthier people could be found, perhaps, in the world,&mdash;nor a more
-cleanly. Every yard having its fountain, almost everybody could bathe
-daily,&mdash;and with hundreds it was the custom to enter the river every
-morning at daybreak or to take a swim in the bay (the young women here
-swim as well as the men).... But the pestilence, entering among so dense
-and unprotected a life, made extraordinarily rapid havoc; and bodily
-cleanliness availed little against the contagion. Now all the bathing
-resorts are deserted,&mdash;because the lazarettos infect the bay with
-refuse, and because the clothing of the sick is washed in the Roxelane.</p>
-
-<p>... Guadeloupe, the sister colony, now sends aid;&mdash;the sum total is
-less than a single American merchant might give to a charitable
-undertaking: but it is a great deal for Guadeloupe to give. And far
-Cayenne sends money too; and the mother-country will send one hundred
-thousand francs.</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>XXI</h4>
-
-<p style="margin-left: 60%;"><i>March 20th.</i></p>
-
-
-<p>... The infinite goodness of this colored population to one another is
-something which impresses with astonishment those accustomed to the
-selfishness of the world's great cities. No one is suffered to go to the
-pesthouse who has a bed to lie upon, and a single relative or tried
-friend to administer remedies;&mdash;the multitude who pass through the
-lazarettos are strangers,&mdash;persons from the country who have no home
-of their own, or servants who are not permitted to remain sick in houses of
-employers.... There are, however, many cases where a mistress will not
-suffer her bonne to take the risks of the pest-house,&mdash;especially in
-families where there are no children: the domestic is carefully nursed;
-a physician hired for her, remedies purchased for her....</p>
-
-<p>But among the colored people themselves the heroism displayed is
-beautiful, is touching,&mdash;something which makes one doubt all accepted
-theories about the natural egotism of mankind, and would compel the most
-hardened pessimist to conceive a higher idea of humanity. There is never
-a moment's hesitation in visiting a stricken individual: every relative,
-and even the most intimate friends of every relative, may be seen
-hurrying to the bedside. They take turns at nursing, sitting up all
-night, securing medical attendance and medicines, without ever a thought
-of the danger,&mdash;nay, of the almost absolute certainty of contagion. If
-the patient have no means, all contribute: what the sister or brother
-has not, the uncle or the aunt, the godfather or godmother, the cousin,
-brother-in-law, or sister-in-law, may be able to give. No one dreams of
-refusing money or linen or wine or anything possible to give, lend, or
-procure on credit. Women seem to forget that they are beautiful, that
-they are young, that they are loved,&mdash;to forget everything but the
-sense of that which they hold to be duty. You see young girls of remarkably
-elegant presence,&mdash;young colored girls well educated and
-<i>élevées-en-chapeau</i><a name="FNanchor_24_1" id="FNanchor_24_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_24_1" class="fnanchor">[24]</a> (that is to say, brought up like white creole
-girls, dressed and accomplished like them), voluntarily leave rich homes
-to nurse some poor mulatress or capresse in the indigent quarters of the
-town, because the sick one happens to be a distant relative. They will not
-trust others to perform this for them;&mdash;they feel bound to do it in
-person. I heard such a one say, in reply to some earnest protest about
-thus exposing herself (she had never been vaccinated):&mdash;"<i>Ah! quand
-il s'agit du devoir, la vie ou la mort c'est pour moi la même chose.</i>"</p>
-
-<p>... But without any sanitary law to check this self-immolation, and with
-the conviction that in the presence of duty, or what is believed to
-be duty, "life or death is the same thing," or ought to be so
-considered,&mdash;you can readily imagine how soon the city must become one
-vast hospital.</p>
-
-<p><br /></p>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_24_1" id="Footnote_24_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_24_1"><span class="label">[24]</span></a>Lit.,&mdash;"brought-up-in-a-hat." To wear the madras is to
-acknowledge oneself of color;&mdash;to follow the European style of dressing
-the hair and adopt the costume of the white creoles indicate a desire to
-affiliate with the white class.</p></div>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>XXII</h4>
-
-
-<p>... By nine o'clock, as a general rule, St. Pierre becomes silent: every
-one here retires early and rises with the sun. But sometimes, when the
-night is exceptionally warm, people continue to sit at their doors and
-chat until a far later hour; and on such a night one may hear and see
-curious things, in this period of plague....</p>
-
-<p>It is certainly singular that while the howling of a dog at night has no
-ghastly signification here (nobody ever pays the least attention to the
-sound, however hideous), the moaning and screaming of cats is believed
-to bode death; and in these times folks never appear to feel too sleepy
-to rise at any hour and drive them away when they begin their cries....
-To-night&mdash;a night so oppressive that all but the sick are sitting
-up&mdash;almost a panic is created in our street by a screaming of
-cats;&mdash;and long after the creatures have been hunted out of sight and
-hearing, everybody who has a relative ill with the prevailing malady
-continues to discuss the omen with terror.</p>
-
-<p>... Then I observe a colored child standing barefooted in the moonlight,
-with her little round arms uplifted and hands joined above her head. A
-more graceful little figure it would be hard to find as she appears thus
-posed; but, all unconsciously, she is violating another superstition by
-this very attitude; and the angry mother shrieks:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"<i>Ti manmaille-là!&mdash;tiré lanmain-ou assous tête-ou, foute!
-pisse moin encò là!... Espéré moin allé lazarett avant metté lanmain
-conm ça!</i>" (Child, take down your hands from your head... because I am
-here yet! Wait till I go to the lazaretto before you put up your hands
-like that!)</p>
-
-<p>For it was the savage, natural, primitive gesture of mourning,&mdash;of
-great despair.</p>
-
-<p>... Then all begin to compare their misfortunes, to relate their
-miseries;&mdash;they say grotesque things,&mdash;even make jests about
-their troubles. One declares:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"<i>Si moin té ka venne chapeau, à fòce moin ni malhè, toutt
-manman sé fai yche yo sans tête.</i>" (I have that ill-luck, that if I were
-selling hats all the mothers would have children without heads!)</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;Those who sit at their doors, I observe, do not sit, as a rule,
-upon the steps, even when these are of wood. There is a superstition which
-checks such a practice. "<i>Si ou assise assous pas-lapòte, ou ké pouend
-doulè toutt moune.</i>" (If you sit upon the door-step, you will take the
-pain of all who pass by.)</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>XXIII</h4>
-
-<p style="margin-left: 60%;"><i>March 30th.</i></p>
-
-
-<p>Good Friday....</p>
-
-<p>The bells have ceased to ring,&mdash;even the bells for the dead; the
-hours are marked by cannon-shots. The ships in the harbor form crosses with
-their spars, turn their flags upside down. And the entire colored
-population put on mourning:&mdash;it is a custom among them centuries
-old.</p>
-
-<p>You will not perceive a single gaudy robe to-day, a single calendered
-Madras: not a speck of showy color is visible through all the ways of
-St. Pierre. The costumes donned are all similar to those worn for the
-death of relatives: either full mourning,&mdash;a black robe with violet
-foulard, and dark violet-banded headkerchief; or half-mourning,&mdash;a
-dark violet robe with black foulard and turban;&mdash;the half-mourning
-being worn only by those who cannot afford the more sombre costume. From
-my window I can see long processions climbing the mornes about the city,
-to visit the shrines and crucifixes, and to pray for the cessation of the
-pestilence.</p>
-
-<p>... Three o'clock. Three cannon-shots shake the hills: it is the
-supposed hour of the Saviour's death. All believers&mdash;whether in the
-churches, on the highways, or in their homes&mdash;bow down and kiss the
-cross thrice, or, if there be no cross, press their lips three times to
-the ground or the pavement, and utter those three wishes which if
-expressed precisely at this traditional moment will surely, it is held,
-be fulfilled. Immense crowds are assembled before the crosses on the
-heights, and about the statue of Notre Dame de la Garde.</p>
-
-<p>... There is no hubbub in the streets; there is not even the customary
-loud weeping to be heard as the coffins go by. One must not complain
-to-day, nor become angry, nor utter unkind words,&mdash;any fault committed
-on Good Friday is thought to obtain a special and awful magnitude in the
-sight of Heaven.... There is a curious saying in vogue here. If a son
-or daughter grows up vicious,&mdash;become a shame to the family and a
-curse to the parents,&mdash;it is observed of such:&mdash;"<i>Ça, c'est yon
-péché Vendredi-Saint!</i>" (Must be a <i>Good-Friday sin!</i>)</p>
-
-<p>There are two other strange beliefs connected with Good Friday. One is
-that it always rains on that day,&mdash;that the sky weeps for the death of
-the Saviour; and that this rain, if caught in a vessel, will never
-evaporate or spoil, and will cure all diseases.</p>
-
-<p>The other is that only Jesus Christ died precisely at three o'clock.
-Nobody else ever died exactly at that hour;&mdash;they may die a second
-before or a second after three, but never exactly at three.</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>XXIV</h4>
-
-<p style="margin-left: 60%;"><i>Mardi 31st.</i></p>
-
-
-<p>... Holy Saturday morning;&mdash;nine o'clock. All the bells suddenly
-ring out; the humming of the bourdon blends with the thunder of a hundred
-guns: this is the <i>Gloria!</i>... At this signal it is a religious custom
-for the whole coast-population to enter the sea, and for those living
-too far from the beach to bathe in the rivers. But rivers and sea are
-now alike infected;&mdash;all the linen of the lazarettos has been washed
-therein; and to-day there are fewer bathers than usual.</p>
-
-<p>But there are twenty-seven burials. Now they are burying the dead two
-together: the cemeteries are overburdened....</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>XXV</h4>
-
-
-<p>... In most of the old stone houses you will occasionally see spiders of
-terrifying size,&mdash;measuring across perhaps as much as six inches from
-the tip of one outstretched leg to the tip of its opposite fellow, as
-they cling to the wall. I never heard of any one being bitten by them;
-and among the poor it is deemed unlucky to injure or drive them away....
-But early this morning Yzore swept her house clean, and ejected through
-the door-way quite a host of these monster insects. Manm-Robert is quite
-dismayed:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"<i>Jesis-Maïa!&mdash;ou 'lè malhè éncò fou fai ça, chè?</i>"
-(You want to have still more bad luck, that you do such a thing?)</p>
-
-<p>And Yzore answers:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"<i>Toutt moune içitt pa ni yon soul&mdash;ça fil zagrignin, et
-moin pa menm mangé! Epi laverette encò.... Main couè toutt ça ka pòté
-malhè!</i>" (No one here has a sou!&mdash;heaps of cobwebs like that, and
-nothing to eat yet; and the verette into the bargain.... I think those
-things bring bad luck.)</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Ah! you have not eaten yet!" cries Manm-Robert. "<i>Vini épi
-moin!</i>" (Come with me!)</p>
-
-<p>And Yzore&mdash;already feeling a little remorse for her treatment of
-the spiders&mdash;murmurs apologetically as she crosses over to
-Manm-Robert's little shop:&mdash;"<i>Moin pa tchoué yo; moin chassé
-yo&mdash;ké vini encò.</i>" (I did not kill them; I only put them
-out;&mdash;they will come back again.)</p>
-
-<p>But long afterwards, Manm-Robert remarked to me that they never went
-back....</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>XXVI</h4>
-
-<p style="margin-left: 60%;"><i>April 5th.</i></p>
-
-
-<p>&mdash;"<i>Toutt bel bois ka allé</i>," says Manm-Robert. (All the
-beautiful trees are going.)... I do not understand.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"<i>Toutt bel bois&mdash;toutt bel moune ka allé</i>," she adds,
-interpretatively. (All the "beautiful trees,"&mdash;all the handsome
-people,&mdash;are passing away.)... As in the speech of the world's
-primitive poets, so in the creole patois is a beautiful woman compared with
-a comely tree: nay, more than this, the name of the object is actually
-substituted for that of the living being. <i>Yon bel bois</i> may mean a
-fine tree: it more generally signifies a graceful woman: this is the very
-comparison made by Ulysses looking upon Nausicas, though more naïvely
-expressed.... And now there comes to me the recollection of a creole
-ballad illustrating the use of the phrase,&mdash;a ballad about a youth of
-Fort-de-France sent to St. Pierre by his father to purchase a stock of
-dobannes,<a name="FNanchor_25_1" id="FNanchor_25_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_25_1" class="fnanchor">[25]</a> who, falling in love with a handsome colored girl, spent
-all his father's mopey in buying her presents and a wedding
-outfit:&mdash;</p>
-
-
-<p><span style="margin-left: 5em;">"Moin descenne Saint-Piè</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Acheté dobannes</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Auliè ces dobannes</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">C'est yon <i>bel-bois</i> moin mennein monté!"</span></p>
-
-
-<p>("I went down to Saint-Pierre to buy dobannes: instead of the dobannes,
-'tis a pretty tree&mdash;a charming girl&mdash;that I bring back
-with me.")</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Why, who is dead now, Manm-Robert?"</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"It is little Marie, the porteuse, who has got the vérette. She
-is gone to the lazaretto."</p>
-
-<p><br /></p>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_25_1" id="Footnote_25_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_25_1"><span class="label">[25]</span></a>Red earthen-ware jars for keeping drinking-water cool. The
-origin of the word is probably to be sought in the name of the town,
-near Marseilles, where they are made,&mdash;"Aubagne."</p></div>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>XXVII</h4>
-
-<p style="margin-left: 60%;"><i>April 7th.</i></p>
-
-
-<p>&mdash;<i>Toutt bel bois ka allé</i>.... News has just come that Ti
-Marie died last night at the lazaretto of the Fort: she was attacked by
-what they call the <i>lavérette-pouff</i>,&mdash;a form of the disease
-which strangles its victim within a few hours.</p>
-
-<p>Ti Marie was certainly the neatest little màchanne I ever knew. Without
-being actually pretty, her face had a childish charm which made it a
-pleasure to look at her;&mdash;and she had a clear chocolate-red skin, a
-light compact little figure, and a remarkably symmetrical pair of little
-feet which had never felt the pressure of a shoe. Every morning I used to
-hear her passing cry, just about daybreak:&mdash;"<i>Qui 'lè
-café?&mdash;qui 'lè sirop?</i>" (Who wants coffee?&mdash;who wants syrup?)
-She looked about sixteen, but was a mother. "Where is her husband?" I ask.
-"<i>Nhomme-y mò laverette 'tou.</i>" (Her man died of the verette also.)
-"And the little one, her <i>yche? Y lazarett.</i>" (At the lazaretto.)...
-But only those without friends or relatives in the city are suffered to go
-to the lazaretto;&mdash;Ti Marie cannot have been of St. Pierre?</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"No: she was from Vauclin," answers Manm-Robert. "You do not
-often see pretty red girls who are natives of St. Pierre. St. Pierre has
-pretty <i>sang-mêlées.</i> The pretty red girls mostly come from Vauclin.
-The yellow ones, who are really bel-bois, are from Grande Anse: they are
-banana-colored people there. At Gros-Morne they are generally black."...</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>XXVIII</h4>
-
-
-<p>... It appears that the red race here, the race <i>capresse</i>, is
-particularly liable to the disease. Every family employing capresses for
-house-servants loses them;&mdash;one family living at the next corner has
-lost four in succession....</p>
-
-<p>The tint is a cinnamon or chocolate color;&mdash;the skin is naturally
-clear, smooth, glossy: it is of the capresse especially that the term
-"sapota-skin" (<i>peau-chapoti</i>) is used,&mdash;coupled with all curious
-creole adjectives to express what is comely,&mdash;<i>jojoll, beaujoll</i>,<a name="FNanchor_26_1" id="FNanchor_26_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_26_1" class="fnanchor">[26]</a> etc.
-The hair is long, but bushy; the limbs light and strong, and admirably
-shaped.... I am told that when transported to a colder climate, the
-capre or capresse partly loses this ruddy tint. Here, under the tropic
-sun, it has a beauty only possible to imitate in metal.... And because
-photography cannot convey any idea of this singular color, the capresse
-hates a photograph.&mdash;"<i>Moin pas noué</i>," she says;&mdash;"<i>moin
-ouôuge: ou fai moin nouè nans pàtrait-à.</i>" (I am not black: I am
-red:&mdash;you make me black in that portrait.) It is difficult to make her
-pose before the camera: she is red, as she avers, beautifully red; but the
-malicious instrument makes her gray or black&mdash;<i>noué conm
-poule-zo-nouè</i> ("black as a blackboned hen!")</p>
-
-<p>... And this red race is disappearing from St. Pierre &mdash;doubtless also
-from other plague-striken centres.</p>
-
-<p><br /></p>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_26_1" id="Footnote_26_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_26_1"><span class="label">[26]</span></a>I
-may cite in this relation one stanza of a creole song&mdash;very popular in
-St. Pierre&mdash;celebrating the charms of a little capresse:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p><span style="margin-left: 5em;">"Moin toutt jeine,</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Goufa, gouàs, vaillant,</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Peau di chapoti</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Ka fai plaisi;&mdash;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Lapeau moin</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Li bien poli;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Et moin ka plai</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Mêmn toutt nhomme grave!"</span></p>
-
-<p>&mdash;Which might be freely rendered thus:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p><span style="margin-left: 5em;">"I am dimpled, young,</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Round-limbed, and strong,</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">With sapota-skin</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">That is good to see:</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">All glossy-smooth</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Is this skin of mine;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">And the gravest men</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Like to look to me!"</span></p></div>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>XXIX</h4>
-
-<p style="margin-left: 60%;"><i>April 10th.</i></p>
-
-
-<p>... Manm-Robert is much annoyed and puzzled because the American
-steamer&mdash;the <i>bom-mangé</i>, as she calls it&mdash;does not come. It
-used to bring regularly so many barrels of potatoes and beans, so much lard
-and cheese and garlic and dried pease&mdash;everything, almost of which she
-keeps a stock. It is now nearly eight weeks since the cannon of a New York
-steamer aroused the echoes of the harbor. Every morning Manm-Robert has
-been sending out her little servant Louis to see if there is any sign of
-the American packet:&mdash;"<i>Allé ouè Batterie d'Esnotz si bom-mangé-à
-pas vini.</i>" But Louis always returns with the same rueful
-answer:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"<i>Manm-Robert, pa ni piess bom-mangé</i>" (there is not so
-much as a bit of a <i>bom-mangé</i>).</p>
-
-<p>... "No more American steamers for Martinique:" that is the news
-received by telegraph! The disease has broken out among the shipping;
-the harbors have been declared infected. United States mail-packets drop
-their Martinique mails at St. Kitt's or Dominica, and pass us by. There
-will be suffering now among the canotiers, the caboteurs, all those who
-live by stowing or unloading cargo;&mdash;great warehouses are being closed
-up, and strong men discharged, because there will be nothing for them to
-do.</p>
-
-<p>... They are burying twenty-five <i>verettiers</i> per day in the
-city.</p>
-
-<p>But never was this tropic sky more beautiful;&mdash;never was this
-circling sea more marvellously blue;&mdash;never were the mornes more
-richly robed in luminous green, under a more golden day.... And it seems
-strange that Nature should remain so lovely....</p>
-
-<p><br /></p>
-
-<p>... Suddenly it occurs to me that I have not seen Yzore nor her children
-for some days; and I wonder if they have moved away.... Towards evening,
-passing by Manm-Robert's, I ask about them. The old woman answers me
-very gravely:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"<i>Aid, mon chè, c'est Yzore qui ni lavérette!</i>"</p>
-
-<p>The mother has been seized by the plague at last. But Manm-Robert will
-look after her; and Manm-Robert has taken charge of the three little
-ones, who are not now allowed to leave the house, for fear some one
-should tell them what it were best they should not know.... <i>Pauv ti
-manmaille!</i></p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>XXX</h4>
-
-<p style="margin-left: 60%;"><i>April 13th.</i></p>
-
-
-<p>... Still the vérette does not attack the native whites. But the whole
-air has become poisoned; the sanitary condition of the city becomes
-unprecedentedly bad; and a new epidemic makes its appearance,&mdash;typhoid
-fever. And now the békés begin to go, especially the young and strong;
-and bells keep sounding for them, and the tolling bourdon fills the city
-with its enormous hum all day and far into the night. For these are
-rich; and the high solemnities of burial are theirs&mdash;the coffin of
-acajou, and the triple ringing, and the Cross of Gold to be carried
-before them as they pass to their long sleep under the palms,&mdash;saluted
-for the last time by all the population of St. Pierre, standing
-bareheaded in the sun....</p>
-
-<p>... Is it in times like these, when all the conditions are febrile, that
-one is most apt to have queer dreams?</p>
-
-<p>Last night it seemed to me that I saw that Carnival dance
-again,&mdash;the hooded musicians, the fantastic torrent of peaked caps,
-and the spectral masks, and the swaying of bodies and waving of
-arms,&mdash;but soundless as a passing of smoke. There were figures I
-thought I knew;&mdash;hands I had somewhere seen reached out and touched
-me in silence;&mdash;and then, all suddenly, a Viewless Something seemed
-to scatter the shapes as leaves are blown by a wind.... And waking, I
-thought I heard again,&mdash;plainly as on that last Carnival
-afternoon,&mdash;the strange cry of fear:&mdash;"<i>C'est Bon-Dié ka
-passé!</i>"...</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>XXXI</h4>
-
-<p style="margin-left: 60%;"><i>April 20th.</i></p>
-
-
-<p>... Very early yesterday morning Yzore was carried away under a covering
-of quick-lime: the children do not know; Manm-Robert took heed they
-should not see. They have been told their mother has been taken to the
-country to get well,&mdash;that the doctor will bring her back soon.... All
-the furniture is to be sold at auction to pay the debts;&mdash;the landlord
-was patient, he waited four months; the doctor was kindly: but now these
-must have their due. Everything will be bidden off, except the chapelle,
-with its Virgin and angels of porcelain: <i>yo pa ka pè venne Bon-Dié</i>
-(the things of the Good-God must not be sold). And Manm-Robert will take
-care of the little ones.</p>
-
-<p>The bed&mdash;a relic of former good-fortune,&mdash;a great Martinique
-bed of carved heavy native wood,&mdash;<i>a lit-à-bateau</i> (boat-bed), so
-called because shaped almost like a barge, perhaps&mdash;will surely bring
-three hundred francs;&mdash;the armoire, with its mirror doors, not less
-than two hundred and fifty. There is little else of value: the whole will
-not fetch enough to pay all the dead owes.</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>XXXII</h4>
-
-<p style="margin-left: 60%;"><i>April 28th.</i></p>
-
-
-<p>&mdash;<i>Tam-tam-tam!&mdash;tam-tam-tam!</i>... It is the booming of
-the auction-drum from the Place: Yzore's furniture is about to change
-hands.</p>
-
-<p>The children start at the sound, so vividly associated in their minds
-with the sights of Carnival days, with the fantastic mirth of the great
-processional dance: they run to the sunny street, calling to each
-other,&mdash;<i>Vini ouè!</i>&mdash;they look up and down. But there is a
-great quiet in the Rue du Morne Mirail;&mdash;the street is empty.</p>
-
-<p>... Manm-Robert enters very weary: she has been at the sale, trying to
-save something for the children, but the prices were too high. In
-silence she takes her accustomed seat at the worn counter of her little
-shop; the young ones gather about her, caress her;&mdash;Mimi looks up
-laughing into the kind brown face, and wonders why Manm-Robert will not
-smile. Then Mimi becomes afraid to ask where the maskers are,&mdash;why
-they do not come. But little Maurice, bolder and less sensitive, cries
-out:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"<i>Manm-Robert, oti masque-à?</i>"</p>
-
-<p><br /></p>
-
-<p>Manm-Robert does not answer;&mdash;she does not hear. She is gazing
-directly into the young faces clustered about her knee,&mdash;yet she does
-not see them: she sees far, far beyond them,&mdash;into the hidden years.
-And, suddenly, with a savage tenderness in her voice, she utters all the
-dark thought of her heart for them:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"<i>Toua ti blancs sans lesou!&mdash;quitté main châché papa-ou
-qui adans cimétiè pou vint pouend ou tou!</i>" (Ye three little penniless
-white ones!&mdash;let me go call your father, who is in the cemetery, to
-come and take you also away!)</p>
-
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 300px;">
-<img src="images/figure41.jpg" width="300" alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4><a id="LES_BLANCHISSEUSES">LES BLANCHISSEUSES</a></h4>
-
-
-<h4>I</h4>
-
-
-<div class="figleft" style="width: 60px;">
-<img src="images/figure42.jpg" width="60" height="80" alt="" />
-</div>
-
-
-<p>Whoever stops for a few months in St. Pierre is certain, sooner or
-later, to pass an idle half-hour in that charming place of Martinique
-idlers,&mdash;the beautiful Savane du Fort,&mdash;and, once there, is
-equally certain to lean a little while over the mossy parapet of the
-river-wall to watch the <i>blanchisseuses</i> at work. It has a curious
-interest, this spectacle of primitive toil: the deep channel of the
-Roxelane winding under the palm-crowned heights of the Fort; the
-blinding whiteness of linen laid out to bleach for miles upon the huge
-bowlders of porphyry and prismatic basalt; and the dark bronze-limbed
-women, with faces hidden under immense straw hats, and knees in the
-rushing torrent,&mdash;all form a scene that makes one think of the
-earliest civilizations. Even here, in this modern colony, it is nearly
-three centuries old; and it will probably continue thus at the Rivière
-des Blanchisseuses for fully another three hundred years. Quaint as
-certain weird Breton legends whereof it reminds you,&mdash;especially if
-you watch it before daybreak while the city sleeps,&mdash;this fashion
-of washing is not likely to change. There is a local prejudice against
-new methods, new inventions, new ideas;&mdash;several efforts at
-introducing a less savage style of washing proved unsuccessful; and an
-attempt to establish a steam-laundry resulted in failure. The public
-were quite contented with the old ways of laundrying, and saw no
-benefits to be gained by forsaking them;&mdash;while the washers and
-ironers engaged by the laundry proprietor at higher rates than they had
-ever obtained before soon wearied of in-door work, abandoned their
-situations, and returned with a sense of relief to their ancient way of
-working out in the blue air and the wind of the hills, with their feet
-in the mountain-water and their heads in the awful sun.</p>
-
-<p>... It is one of the sights of St. Pierre,&mdash;this daily scene at
-the River of the Washerwomen: everybody likes to watch it;&mdash;the
-men, because among the blanchisseuses there are not a few decidedly
-handsome girls; the women, probably because a woman feels always
-interested in woman's work. All the white bridges of the Roxelane are
-dotted with lookers-on during fine days, and particularly in the
-morning, when every bonne on her way to and from the market stops a
-moment to observe or to greet those blanchisseuses whom she knows. Then
-one hears such a calling and clamoring,&mdash;such an intercrossing of
-cries from the bridge to the river, and the river to the bridge....
-"Ouill! Noémi!" ... "Coument ou yé, chè?"... "Eh! Pascaline!"...
-"Bonjou', Youtte!&mdash;Dédé!&mdash;Fifi!&mdash;Henrillia!"...
-"Coument ou kallé, Cyrillia?"... "Toutt douce, chè!&mdash;et Ti
-Mémé?"... "Y bien;&mdash;oti Ninotte?"... "Bo ti manmaille pou moin,
-chè&mdash;ou tanne?"... But the bridge leading to the market of the
-Fort is the poorest point of view; for the better classes of
-blanchisseuses are not there: only the lazy, the weak, or
-non-professionals&mdash;house-servants, who do washing at the river two
-or three times a month as part of their family-service&mdash;are apt to
-get so far down. The experienced professionals and early risers secure
-the best places and choice of rocks; and among the hundreds at work you
-can discern something like a physical gradation. At the next bridge the
-women look better, stronger; more young faces appear; and the further
-you follow the river-course towards the Jardin des Plantes, the more the
-appearance of the blanchisseuses improves,&mdash;so that within the
-space of a mile you can see well exemplified one natural law of life's
-struggle,&mdash;the best chances to the best constitutions.</p>
-
-<p>You might also observe, if you watch long enough, that among the
-blanchisseuses there are few sufficiently light of color to be classed
-as bright mulâtresses;&mdash;the majority are black or of that dark
-copper-red race which is perhaps superior to the black creole in
-strength and bulk; for it requires a skin insensible to sun as well as
-the toughest of constitutions to be a blanchisseuse. A porteuse can
-begin to make long trips at nine or ten years; but no girl is strong
-enough to learn the washing-trade until she is past twelve. The
-blanchisseuse is the hardest worker among the whole
-population;&mdash;her daily labor is rarely less than thirteen hours;
-and during the greater part of that time she is working in the sun, and
-standing up to her knees in water that descends quite cold from the
-mountain peaks. Her labor makes her perspire profusely; and she can
-never venture to cool herself by further immersion without serious
-danger of pleurisy. The trade is said to kill all who continue at it
-beyond a certain number of years:&mdash;"<i>Nou ka mò toutt dleau</i>"
-(we all die of the water), one told me, replying to a question. No
-feeble or light-skinned person can attempt to do a single day's work of
-this kind without danger; and a weak girl, driven by necessity to do her
-own washing, seldom ventures to go to the river. Yet I saw an instance
-of such rashness one day. A pretty sang-mêlée, perhaps about eighteen
-or nineteen years old,&mdash;whom I afterwards learned had just lost her
-mother and found herself thus absolutely destitute,&mdash;began to
-descend one of the flights of stone steps leading to the river, with a
-small bundle upon her head; and two or three of the blanchisseuses
-stopped their work to look at her. A tall capresse inquired
-mischievously:&mdash;</p>
-
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
-<a id="figure43"></a>
-<img src="images/figure43.jpg" width="400" alt="" />
-<p class="center">LES BLANCHISSEUSES<br />
-"<i>Their daily labor is rarely less than thirteen hours,&mdash;during
-the greater part of the time in the sun and up to
-their knees in water that descends quite cold from the
-mountain peaks.</i>"</p>
-</div>
-
-
-<p>&mdash;"<i>Ou vini pou pouend yon bain?</i>" (Coming to take a bath?)
-For the river is a great bathing-place.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"<i>Non; moin vini lavé.</i>" (No; I am coming to wash.)</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"<i>Aïe! aïe! aïe!&mdash;y vini lavé!</i>"... And all within
-hearing laughed together. "Are you crazy, girl?&mdash;<i>ess ou fou?</i>"
-The tall capresse snatched the bundle from her, opened it, threw a garment
-to her nearest neighbor, another to the next one, dividing the work among a
-little circle of friends, and said to the stranger, "Non ké lavé toutt ça
-ba ou bien vite chè,&mdash;va, amisé ou!" (We'll wash this for you very
-quickly, dear&mdash;go and amuse yourself!) These kind women even did more
-for the poor girl;&mdash;they subscribed to buy her a good breakfast, when
-the food-seller&mdash;the màchanne-mangé&mdash;made her regular round among
-them, with fried fish and eggs and manioc flour and bananas.</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>II</h4>
-
-
-<p>All of the multitude who wash clothing at the river are not professional
-blanchisseuses. Hundreds of women, too poor to pay for laundrying, do
-their own work at the Roxelane;&mdash;and numerous bonnes there wash the
-linen of their mistresses as a regular part of their domestic duty. But
-even if the professionals did not always occupy a certain well-known
-portion of the channel, they could easily be distinguished from others
-by their rapid and methodical manner of work, by the ease with which
-immense masses of linen are handled by them, and, above all, by their
-way of whipping it against the rocks. Furthermore, the greater number of
-professionals are likewise teachers, mistresses (<i>bou'geoises</i>), and
-have their apprentices beside them,&mdash;young girls from twelve to
-sixteen years of age. Among these <i>apprenti</i>, as they are called in
-the patois, there are many attractive types, such as idlers upon the
-bridges like to look at.</p>
-
-<p>If, after one year of instruction, the apprentice fails to prove a good
-washer, it is not likely she will ever become one; and there are some
-branches of the trade requiring a longer period of teaching and of
-practice. The young girl first learns simply to soap and wash the linen
-in the river, which operation is called "rubbing" (<i>frotté</i> in
-creole);&mdash;after she can do this pretty well, she is taught the curious
-art of whipping it (<i>fessé</i>). You can hear the sound of the fessé a
-great way off, echoing and re-echoing among the mornes: it is not a
-sharp smacking noise, as the name might seem to imply, but a heavy
-hollow sound exactly like that of an axe splitting dry timber. In fact,
-it so closely resembles the latter sound that you are apt on first
-hearing it to look up at the mornes with the expectation of seeing
-woodmen there at work. And it is not made by striking the linen with
-anything, but only by lashing it against the sides of the rocks....
-After a piece has been well rubbed and rinsed, it is folded up into a
-peculiar sheaf-shape, and seized by the closely gathered end for the
-fessé. Then the folding process is repeated on the reverse, and the
-other end whipped. This process expels suds that rinsing cannot remove:
-it must be done very dexterously to avoid tearing or damaging the
-material. By an experienced hand the linen is never torn; and even pearl
-and bone buttons are much less often broken than might be supposed. The
-singular echo is altogether due to the manner of folding the article for
-the fessé.</p>
-
-<p>After this, all the pieces are spread out upon the rocks, in the sun,
-for the "first bleaching" (<i>poumèmiè lablanie</i>). In the evening they
-are gathered into large wooden trays or baskets, and carried to what is
-called the "lye-house" (<i>locaïe lessive</i>)&mdash;overlooking the river
-from a point on the Fort bank opposite to the higher end of the Savane.
-Here each blanchisseuse hires a small or a large vat, or even
-several,&mdash;according to the quantity of work done,&mdash;at two, three
-or ten sous, and leaves her washing to steep in lye (<i>coulé</i> is the
-creole word used) during the night. There are watchmen to guard it. Before
-daybreak it is rinsed in warm water; then it is taken back to the
-river,&mdash;is rinsed again, bleached again, blued and starched. Then it
-is ready for ironing. To press and iron well is the most difficult part of
-the trade. When an apprentice is able to iron a gentleman's shirt
-nicely, and a pair of white pantaloons, she is considered to have
-finished her time;&mdash;she becomes a journey-woman (<i>ouvouïyé</i>).</p>
-
-<p>Even in a country where wages are almost incredibly low, the
-blanchisseuse earns considerable money. There is no fixed scale of
-prices: it is even customary to bargain with these women beforehand.
-Shirts and white pantaloons figure at six and eight cents in laundry
-bills; but other washing is much cheaper. I saw a lot of thirty-three
-pieces&mdash;including such large ones as sheets, bed-covers, and several
-douillettes (the long Martinique trailing robes of one piece from neck
-to feet)&mdash;for which only three francs was charged. Articles are
-frequently stolen or lost by house-servants sent to do washing at the
-river; but very seldom indeed by the regular blanchisseuses. Few of them
-can read or write or understand owners' marks on wearing apparel; and
-when you see at the river the wilderness of scattered linen, the
-seemingly enormous confusion, you cannot understand how these women manage
-to separate and classify it all. Yet they do this admirably,&mdash;and
-for that reason perhaps more than any other, are able to charge fair
-rates;&mdash;it is false economy to have your washing done by the
-house-servant;&mdash;with the professionals your property is safe. And
-cheap as her rates are, a good professional can make from twenty-five to
-thirty francs a week; averaging fully a hundred francs a month,&mdash;as
-much as many a white clerk can earn in the stores of St. Pierre, and quite
-as much (considering local differences in the purchasing power of money) as
-$60 per month would represent in the United States.</p>
-
-<p>Probably the ability to earn large wages often tempts the blanchisseuse
-to continue at her trade until it kills her. The "water-disease," as she
-calls it (<i>maladie-dleau</i>), makes its appearance after middle-life:
-the feet, lower limbs, and abdomen swell enormously, while the face becomes
-almost fleshless;&mdash;then, gradually tissues give way, muscles yield,
-and the whole physical structure crumbles.</p>
-
-<p>Nevertheless, the blanchisseuse is essentially a sober
-liver,&mdash;never a drunkard. In fact, she is sober from rigid
-necessity: she would not dare to swallow one mouthful of spirits while
-at work with her feet in the cold water;&mdash;everybody else in
-Martinique, even the little children, can drink rum; the blanchisseuse
-cannot unless she wishes to die of a congestion. Her strongest
-refreshment is <i>mabi</i>,&mdash;a mild, effervescent, and, I think,
-rather disagreeable, beer made from molasses.</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>III</h4>
-
-
-<p>Always before daybreak they rise to work, while the vapors of the
-monies fill the air with scent of mouldering vegetation,&mdash;clayey
-odors,&mdash;grassy smells: there is only a faint gray light, and the
-water of the river is very chill. One by one they arrive, barefooted,
-under their burdens built up tower-shape on their trays;&mdash;silently
-as ghosts they descend the steps to the river-bed, and begin to unfold
-and immerse their washing. They greet each other as they come, then
-become silent again; there is scarcely any talking: the hearts of all
-are heavy with the heaviness of the hour. But the gray light turns
-yellow; the sun climbs over the peaks: light changes the dark water to
-living crystal; and all begin to chatter a little. Then the city
-awakens; the currents of its daily life circulate again,&mdash;thinly
-and slowly at first, then swiftly and strongly,&mdash;up and down every
-yellow street, and through the Savane, and over the bridges of the
-river. Passers-by pause to look down, and cry "<i>bonjou', chè!</i>"
-Idle men stare at some pretty washer, till she points at them and
-cries:&mdash;"<i>Godé Missié-à ka guetté
-nou!&mdash;anh!&mdash;anh!&mdash;anh!</i>" And all the others look up
-and repeat the groan&mdash;"<i>anh!&mdash;anh!&mdash;anh!</i>" till the
-starers beat a retreat. The air grows warmer; the sky blue takes fire:
-the great light makes joy for the washers; they shout to each other from
-distance to distance, jest, laugh, sing.</p>
-
-
-<p>Gusty of speech these women are: long habit of calling to one another
-through the roar of the torrent has given their voices a singular
-sonority and force: it is well worth while to hear them sing. One starts
-the song,&mdash;the next joins her; then another and another, till all the
-channel rings with the melody from the bridge of the Jardin des Plantes
-to the Pont-bois:&mdash;</p>
-
-
-<p><span style="margin-left: 5em;">"C'est moin qui té ka lavé,</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Passé, raccommodé:</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Y té néf hè disouè</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Ou metté moin derhò,&mdash;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Yche moin assous bouas moin;&mdash;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Laplie té ka tombé&mdash;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Léfan moin assous tète moin!</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Doudoux, ou m'abandonne!</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Moin pa ni pèsonne pou soigné moin."<a name="FNanchor_27_1" id="FNanchor_27_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_27_1" class="fnanchor">[27]</a></span></p>
-
-
-<p>... A melancholy chant&mdash;originally a Carnival improvisation made
-to bring public shame upon the perpetrator of a cruel act;&mdash;but it
-contains the story of many of these lives&mdash;the story of industrious
-affectionate women temporarily united to brutal and worthless men in a
-country where legal marriages are rare. Half of the creole songs which I
-was able to collect during a residence of nearly two years in the island
-touch upon the same sad theme. Of these, "Chè Manman Moin," a great
-favorite still with the older blanchisseuses, has a simple pathos
-unrivalled, I believe, in the oral literature of this people. Here is an
-attempt to translate its three rhymeless stanzas into prose; but the
-childish sweetness of the patois original is lost:&mdash;</p>
-
-
-<h5>CHÈ MANMAN MOIN</h5>
-
-
-<h5>I</h5>
-
-
-<p>... "Dear mamma, once you were young like I;&mdash;dear papa, you also
-have been young;&mdash;dear great elder brother, you too have been young. Ah! let
-me cherish this sweet friendship!&mdash;so sick my heart is&mdash;yes, 'tis very,
-very ill, this heart of mine: love, only love can make it well
-again."...</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h5>II</h5>
-
-
-<p>"O cursed eyes he praised that led me to him! O cursed lips of mine
-which ever repeated his name! O cursed moment in which I gave up my
-heart to the ingrate who no longer knows how to love."...</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h5>III</h5>
-
-
-<p>"Doudoux, you swore to me by Heaven!&mdash;doudoux, you swore to me by
-your faith!... And now you cannot come to me?... Oh! my heart is withering
-with pain!... I was passing by the cemetery;&mdash;I saw my name upon a
-stone&mdash;all by itself. I saw two white roses; and in a moment one faded
-and fell before me.... So my forgotten heart will be!"...</p>
-
-<p>The air is not so charming, however, as that of a little song which
-every creole knows, and which may be often heard still at the river: I
-think it is the prettiest of all creole melodies. "To-to-to" (patois for
-the French <i>toc</i>) is an onomatope for the sound of knocking at a
-door.</p>
-
-
-<p><span style="margin-left: 5em;">"<i>To, to, to!</i>&mdash;'Ça qui là?'</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">&mdash;'C'est moin-mênme, lanmou;&mdash;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Ouvé lapott ba moin!'</span><br />
-<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">"<i>To, to, to!</i>&mdash;'Ça qui là?'</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">&mdash;'C'est moin-mênme, lanmou;&mdash;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Qui ka ba ou khè moin!'</span><br />
-<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">"<i>To, to, to!</i>&mdash;'Ça qui là?'</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">&mdash;'C'est moin-mênme, anmou;&mdash;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Laplie ka mouillé moin!'"</span></p>
-
-<p>[<i>To-to-to</i>... "Who taps there?"&mdash;"'Tis mine own self
-Love: open the door for me."</p>
-
-<p><i>To-to-to</i>... "Who taps there?"&mdash;"'Tis mine own self
-Love, who give my heart to thee."</p>
-
-<p><i>To-to-to</i>... "Who taps there?"&mdash;"Tis mine own self
-Love: open thy door to me;&mdash;the rain is wetting me!"...]</p>
-
-<p><br /></p>
-
-<p>... But it is more common to hear the blanchisseuses singing merry,
-jaunty, sarcastic ditties,&mdash;Carnival compositions,&mdash;in which the
-African sense of rhythmic melody is more marked:&mdash;"Marie-Clémence
-maudi, Loéma tombé, Quand ou ni ti mari jojoll."<a name="FNanchor_28_1" id="FNanchor_28_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_28_1" class="fnanchor">[28]</a></p>
-
-<p>&mdash;At mid-day the màchanne-mangé comes, with her
-girls,&mdash;carrying trays of fried fish, and <i>akras</i>, and cooked
-beans, and bottles of mabi. The blanchisseuses buy, and eat with their
-feet in the water, using rocks for tables. Each has her little tin cup
-to drink her mabi in.... Then the washing and the chanting and the
-booming of the fessé begin again. Afternoon wanes;&mdash;school-hours
-close; and children of many beautiful colors come to the river, and leap
-down the steps crying, "<i>Eti!
-manman!"&mdash;"Sésé!"&mdash;"Nenneine!</i>" calling their elder
-sisters, mothers, and godmothers: the little boys strip naked to play in
-the water a while.... Towards sunset the more rapid and active workers
-begin to gather in their linen, and pile it on trays. Large patches of
-bald rock appear again.... By six o'clock almost the whole bed of the
-river is bare;&mdash;the women are nearly all gone. A few linger a while
-on the Savane, to watch the last-comer. There is always a great laugh at
-the last to leave the channel: they ask her if she has not forgotten "to
-lock up the river."</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"<i>Ou fèmé lapòte lariviè, chè&mdash;anh?</i>"</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"<i>Ah! oui, chè!&mdash;moin fèmé y, ou tanne?&mdash;moin ni
-laclé-à!</i>" (Oh yes, dear. I locked it up,&mdash;you hear?&mdash;I've got
-the key!)</p>
-
-<p><br /></p>
-
-<p>But there are days and weeks when they do not sing,&mdash;times of
-want or of plague, when the silence of the valley is broken only by the
-sound of linen beaten upon the rocks, and the great voice of the
-Roxelane, which will sing on when the city itself shall have ceased to
-be, just as it sang one hundred thousand years ago.... "Why do they not
-sing to-day?" I once asked during the summer of 1887,&mdash;a year of
-pestilence. "<i>Yo ka pensé toutt lanmizè yo,&mdash;toutt lapeine
-yo</i>," I was answered. (They are thinking of all their trouble, all
-their misery.) Yet in all seasons, while youth and strength stay with
-them, they work on in wind and sun, mist and rain, washing the linen of
-the living and the dead,&mdash;white wraps for the newly born, white
-robes for the bride, white shrouds for them that pass into the Great
-Silence. And the torrent that wears away the ribs of the perpetual hills
-wears away their lives,&mdash;sometimes slowly, slowly as black basalt
-is worn,&mdash;sometimes suddenly,&mdash;in the twinkling of an eye.</p>
-
-<p>For a strange danger ever menaces the blanchisseuse,&mdash;the
-treachery of the stream!... Watch them working, and observe how often
-they turn their eyes to the high north-east, to look at Pelée. Pelée
-gives them warning betimes. When all is sunny in St. Pierre, and the
-harbor lies blue as lapis-lazuli, there may be mighty rains in the
-region of the great woods and the valleys of the higher peaks; and thin
-streams swell to raging floods which burst suddenly from the altitudes,
-rolling down rocks and trees and wreck of forests, uplifting crags,
-devastating slopes. And sometimes, down the ravine of the Roxelane,
-there comes a roar as of eruption, with a rush of foaming water like a
-moving mountain-wall; and bridges and buildings vanish with its passing.
-In 1865 the Savane, high as it lies above the river-bed, was
-flooded;&mdash;and all the bridges were swept into the sea.</p>
-
-<p>So the older and wiser blanchisseuses keep watch upon Pelée; and if
-a blackness gather over it, with lightnings breaking through,
-then&mdash;however fair the sun shine on St. Pierre&mdash;the alarm is
-given, the miles of bleaching linen vanish from the rocks in a few
-minutes, and every one leaves the channel. But it has occasionally
-happened that Pelée gave no such friendly signal before the river rose:
-thus lives have been lost. Most of the blanchisseuses are swimmers, and
-good ones,&mdash;I have seen one of these girls swim almost out of sight
-in the harbor, during an idle hour;&mdash;but no swimmer has any chances
-in a rising of the Roxelane: all overtaken by it are stricken by rocks
-and drift;&mdash;<i>yo crazé</i>, as a creole term expresses
-it,&mdash;a term signifying to crush, to bray, to dash to pieces.</p>
-
-<p>... Sometimes it happens that one who has been absent at home for a
-brief while returns to the river only to meet her comrades fleeing from
-it,&mdash;many leaving their linen behind them. But she will not abandon
-the linen intrusted to her: she makes a run for it,&mdash;in spite of
-warning screams,&mdash;in spite of the vain clutching of kind rough
-fingers. She gains the river-bed:&mdash;the flood has already reached
-her waist, but she is strong; she reaches her linen,&mdash;snatches it
-up, piece by piece, scattered as it
-is&mdash;"one!&mdash;two!&mdash;five!&mdash;seven!";&mdash;there is a
-roaring in her ears&mdash;"eleven!&mdash;thirteen!" she has it all...
-but now the rocks are moving! For one instant she strives to reach the
-steps, only a few yards off;&mdash;another, and the thunder of the
-deluge is upon her,&mdash;and the crushing crags,&mdash;and the spinning
-trees....</p>
-
-<p>Perhaps before sundown some canotier may find her floating far in the
-bay,&mdash;drifting upon her face in a thousand feet of
-water,&mdash;with faithful dead hands still holding fast the property of
-her employer.</p>
-
-<p><br /></p>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_27_1" id="Footnote_27_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_27_1"><span class="label">[27]</span></a>It
-was I who washed and ironed and mended;&mdash;at nine o'clock at night thou
-didst put me out-of-doors, with my child in my arms,&mdash;the rain was
-falling,&mdash;with my poor straw mattress upon my head!... Doudoux! thou
-dost abandon me!... I have none to care for
-me.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_28_1" id="Footnote_28_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_28_1"><span class="label">[28]</span></a>See
-Appendix for specimens of creole music.</p></div>
-
-
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 300px;">
-<img src="images/figure44.jpg" width="300" alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4><a id="LA_PELEE">LA PELÉE</a></h4>
-
-
-<h4>I</h4>
-
-
-<div class="figleft" style="width: 60px;">
-<img src="images/figure45.jpg" width="60" height="80" alt="" />
-</div>
-
-
-<p>The first attempt made to colonize Martinique was abandoned almost as
-soon as begun, because the leaders of the expedition found the country
-"too rugged and too mountainous," and were "terrified by the prodigious
-number of serpents which covered its soil." Landing on June 25, 1635,
-Olive and Duplessis left the island after a few hours' exploration, or,
-rather, observation, and made sail for Guadeloupe,&mdash;according to the
-quaint and most veracious history of Père Du Tertre, of the Order of
-Friars-Preachers.</p>
-
-<p>A single glance at the topographical map of Martinique would suffice to
-confirm the father's assertion that the country was found to be <i>trop
-haché et trop montueux</i>: more than two-thirds of it is peak and
-mountain;&mdash;even to-day only 42,445 of its supposed 98,782 hectares
-have been cultivated; and on page 426 of the last "Annuaire" (1887) I find
-the statement that in the interior there are extensive Government lands
-of which the area is "not exactly known." Yet mountainous as a country
-must be which&mdash;although scarcely forty-nine miles long and twenty miles
-in average breath&mdash;remains partly unfamiliar to its own inhabitants
-after nearly three centuries of civilization (there are not half a dozen
-creoles who have travelled all over it), only two elevations in
-Martinique bear the name <i>montagne.</i> These are La Montagne Pelée, in
-the north, and La Montagne du Vauclin, in the south. The term <i>morne</i>,
-used throughout the French West Indian colonies to designate certain
-altitudes of volcanic origin, a term rather unsatisfactorily translated
-in certain dictionaries as "a small mountain," is justly applied to the
-majority of Martinique hills, and unjustly sometimes even to its
-mightiest elevation,&mdash;called Morne Pelé, or Montagne Pelée, or simply
-"La Montagne," according, perhaps, to the varying degree of respect it
-inspires in different minds. But even in the popular nomenclature one
-finds the orography of Martinique, as well as of other West Indian
-islands, regularly classified by <i>pitons, mornes</i>, and <i>monts</i> or
-<i>montagnes.</i> Mornes usually have those beautiful and curious forms
-which bespeak volcanic origin even to the unscientific observer: they are
-most often pyramidal or conoid up to a certain height; but have summits
-either rounded or truncated;&mdash;their sides, green with the richest
-vegetation, rise from valley-levels and coastlines with remarkable
-abruptness, and are apt to be curiously ribbed or wrinkled. The pitons,
-far fewer in number, are much more fantastic in form;&mdash;volcanic cones,
-or volcanic upheavals of splintered strata almost at right
-angles,&mdash;sometimes sharp of lines as spires, and mostly too steep for
-habitation. They are occasionally mammiform, and so symmetrical that one
-might imagine them artificial creations,&mdash;particularly when they occur
-in pairs. Only a very important mass is dignified by the name
-<i>montagne</i>: there are, as I have already observed, but two thus called
-in all Martinique,&mdash;Pelée, the head and summit of the island; and La
-Montagne du Vauclin, in the south-east. Vauclin is inferior in height and
-bulk to several mornes and pitons of the north and north-west,&mdash;and
-owes its distinction probably to its position as centre of a system of
-ranges: but in altitude and mass and majesty. Pelée far outranks
-everything in the island, and well deserves its special appellation, "La
-Montagne."</p>
-
-<p>No description could give the reader a just idea of what Martinique is,
-configuratively, so well as the simple statement that, although less
-than fifty miles in extreme length, and less than twenty in average
-breadth, there are upwards of <i>four hundred mountains</i> in this little
-island, or of what at least might be termed mountains elsewhere. These
-again are divided and interpeaked, and bear hillocks on their
-slopes;&mdash;and the lowest hillock in Martinique is fifty metres high.
-Some of the peaks are said to be totally inaccessible: many mornes are so
-on one or two or even three sides. Ninety-one only of the principal
-mountains have been named; and among these several bear similar
-appellations: for example, there are two Mornes-Rouges, one in the north
-and one in the south; and there are four or five Gros-Mornes. All the
-elevations belong to six great groups, clustering about or radiating
-from six ancient volcanic centres,&mdash;1. La Pelée; 2. Pitons du Carbet;
-3. Roches Carrées;<a name="FNanchor_29_1" id="FNanchor_29_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_29_1" class="fnanchor">[29]</a> 4.
-Vauclin; 5. Marin; 6. Morne de la Plaine. Forty-two distinct
-mountain-masses belong to the Carbet system alone,&mdash;that of Pelée
-including but thirteen; and the whole Carbet area has a circumference of
-120,000 metres,&mdash;much more considerable than that of Pelée. But its
-centre is not one enormous pyramidal mass like that of "La Montagne"; it is
-marked only by a group of five remarkable porphyritic cones,&mdash;the
-Pitons of Carbet;&mdash;while Pelée, dominating everything, and filling the
-north, presents an aspect and occupies an area scarcely inferior to those
-of Ætna.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;Sometimes, while looking at La Pelée, I have wondered if the
-enterprise of the great Japanese painter who made the Hundred Views of
-Fusiyama could not be imitated by some creole artist equally proud of
-his native hills, and fearless of the heat of the plains or the snakes
-of the slopes. A hundred views of Pelée might certainly be made: for
-the enormous mass is omnipresent to dwellers in the northern part of the
-island, and can be seen from the heights of the most southern mornes. It
-is visible from almost any part of St. Pierre,&mdash;which nestles in a
-fold of its rocky skirts. It overlooks all the island ranges, and overtops
-the mighty Pitons of Carbet by a thousand feet;&mdash;you can only lose
-sight of it by entering gorges, or journeying into the valleys of the
-south.... But the peaked character of the whole country, and the hot
-moist climate, oppose any artistic undertaking of the sort suggested:
-even photographers never dream of taking views in the further interior,
-nor on the east coast. Travel, moreover, is no less costly than
-difficult: there are no inns or places of rest for tourists; there are,
-almost daily, sudden and violent rains, which are much dreaded (since a
-thorough wetting, with the pores all distended by heat, may produce
-pleurisy); and there are serpents! The artist willing to devote a few
-weeks of travel and study to Pelée, in spite of these annoyances and
-risks, has not yet made his appearance in Martinique.<a name="FNanchor_30_1" id="FNanchor_30_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_30_1" class="fnanchor">[30]</a></p>
-
-<p>Huge as the mountain looks from St. Pierre, the eye underestimates its
-bulk; and when you climb the mornes about the town, Labelle, d'Orange,
-or the much grander Parnasse, you are surprised to find how much vaster
-Pelée appears from these summits. Volcanic hills often seem higher, by
-reason of their steepness, than they really are; but Pelée deludes in
-another manner. From surrounding valleys it appears lower, and from
-adjacent mornes higher than it really is: the illusion in the former
-case being due to the singular slope of its contours, and the remarkable
-breadth of its base, occupying nearly all the northern end of the
-island; in the latter, to misconception of the comparative height of the
-eminence you have reached, which deceives by the precipitious pitch of
-its sides. Pelée is not very remarkable in point of altitude, however:
-its height was estimated by Moreau de Jonnés at 1600 metres; and by
-others at between 4400 and 4500 feet. The sum of the various imperfect
-estimates made justifies the opinion of Dr. Cornilliac that the extreme
-summit is over 5000 feet above the sea&mdash;perhaps 5200.<a name="FNanchor_31_1" id="FNanchor_31_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_31_1" class="fnanchor">[31]</a> The clouds of
-the summit afford no indication to eyes accustomed to mountain scenery
-in northern countries; for in these hot moist latitudes clouds hang very
-low, even in fair weather. But in bulk Pelée is grandiose: it spurs out
-across the island from the Caribbean to the Atlantic: the great chains
-of mornes about it are merely counter-forts; the Piton Pierreux and the
-Piton Pain-à-Sucre (<i>Sugar-loaf Peak</i>), and other elevations varying
-from 800 to 2100 feet, are its volcanic children. Nearly thirty rivers
-have their birth in its flanks,&mdash;besides many thermal springs,
-variously mineralized. As the culminant point of the island. Pelée is also
-the ruler of its météorologie life,&mdash;cloud-herder, lightning-forger,
-and rain-maker. During clear weather you can see it drawing to itself all
-the white vapors of the land,&mdash;robbing lesser eminences of their
-shoulder-wraps and head-coverings;&mdash;though the Pitons of Carbet (3700
-feet) usually manage to retain about their middle a cloud-clout,&mdash;a
-<i>lantchô.</i> You will also see that the clouds run in a circle about
-Pelée,&mdash;gathering bulk as they turn by continual accessions from other
-points. If the crater be totally bare in the morning, and shows the
-broken edges very sharply against the blue, it is a sign of foul rather
-than of fair weather to come.<a name="FNanchor_32_1" id="FNanchor_32_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_32_1" class="fnanchor">[32]</a></p>
-
-<p>Even in bulk, perhaps, Pelée might not impress those who know the
-stupendous scenery of the American ranges; but none could deny it
-special attractions appealing to the senses of form and color. There is
-an imposing fantasticality in its configuration worth months of artistic
-study: one does not easily tire of watching its slopes undulating against
-the north sky,&mdash;and the strange jagging of its ridges,&mdash;and the
-succession of its terraces crumbling down to other terraces, which again
-break into ravines here and there bridged by enormous buttresses of
-basalt: an extravaganza of lava-shapes overpitching and cascading into
-sea and plain. All this is verdant wherever surfaces catch the sun: you
-can divine what the frame is only by examining the dark and ponderous
-rocks of the torrents. And the hundred tints of this verdure do not form
-the only colorific charms of the landscape. Lovely as the long upreaching
-slopes of cane are,&mdash;and the loftier bands of forest-growths,
-so far off that they look like belts of moss,&mdash;and the more
-tender-colored masses above, wrinkling and folding together up to the
-frost-white clouds of the summit,&mdash;you will be still more delighted by
-the shadow-colors,&mdash;opulent, diaphanous. The umbrages lining the
-wrinkles, collecting in the hollows, slanting from sudden projections,
-may become before your eyes almost as unreally beautiful as the
-landscape colors of a Japanese fan;&mdash;they shift most generally during
-the day from indigo-blue through violets and paler blues to final lilacs
-and purples; and even the shadows of passing clouds have a faint blue
-tinge when they fall on Pelée.</p>
-
-<p>.... Is the great volcano dead?... Nobody knows. Less than forty years
-ago it rained ashes over all the roofs of St. Pierre;&mdash;within twenty
-years it has uttered mutterings. For the moment, it appears to sleep;
-and the clouds have dripped into the cup of its highest crater till it
-has become a lake, several hundred yards in circumference. The crater
-occupied by this lake&mdash;called L'Étang, or "The Pool"&mdash;has never
-been active within human memory. There are others,&mdash;difficult and
-dangerous to visit because opening on the side of a tremendous gorge; and
-it was one of these, no doubt, which has always been called <i>La
-Soufrière</i>, that rained ashes over the city in 1851.</p>
-
-<p>The explosion was almost concomitant with the last of a series of
-earthquake shocks, which began in the middle of May and ended in the
-first week of August,&mdash;all much more severe in Guadeloupe than in
-Martinique. In the village Au Prêcheur, lying at the foot of the
-western slope of Pelée, the people had been for some time complaining
-of an oppressive stench of sulphur,&mdash;or, as chemists declared it,
-sulphuretted hydrogen,&mdash;when, on the 4th of August, much trepidation
-was caused by a long and appalling noise from the mountain,&mdash;a noise
-compared by planters on the neighboring slopes to the hollow roaring
-made by a packet blowing off steam, but infinitely louder. These sounds
-continued through intervals until the following night, sometimes
-deepening into a rumble like thunder. The mountain guides declared:
-"<i>C'est la Soufrière qui bout!</i>" (the Souffrière is boiling); and a
-panic seized the negroes of the neighboring plantations. At 11 P.M. the
-noise was terrible enough to fill all St. Pierre with alarm; and on the
-morning of the 6th the city presented an unwonted aspect, compared by
-creoles who had lived abroad to the effect of a great hoar-frost. All
-the roofs, trees, balconies, awnings, pavements, were covered with a
-white layer of ashes. The same shower blanched the roofs of Monte Rouge,
-and all the villages about the chief city,&mdash;Carbet, Fond-Corré, and Au
-Prêcheur; also whitening the neighboring country: the mountain was
-sending up columns of smoke or vapor; and it was noticed that the
-Rivière Blanche, usually of a glaucous color, ran black into the sea
-like an outpouring of ink, staining its azure for a mile. A committee
-appointed to make an investigation, and prepare an official report,
-found that a number of rents had either been newly formed, or suddenly
-become active, in the flank of the mountain: these were all situated in
-the immense gorge sloping westward from that point now known as the
-Morne de la Croix. Several were visited with much difficulty,&mdash;members
-of the commission being obliged to lower themselves down a succession of
-precipices with cords of lianas; and it is noteworthy that their
-researches were prosecuted in spite of the momentary panic created by
-another outburst. It was satisfactorily ascertained that the main force
-of the explosion had been exerted within a perimeter of about one
-thousand yards; that various hot springs had suddenly gushed out,&mdash;the
-temperature of the least warm being about 37° Réaumur (116°
-F.);&mdash;that there was no change in the configuration of the
-mountain;&mdash;and that the terrific sounds had been produced only by the
-violent outrush of vapor and ashes from some of the rents. In hope of
-allaying the general alarm, a creole priest climbed the summit of the
-volcano, and there planted the great cross which gives the height its
-name and still remains to commemorate the event.</p>
-
-<p>There was an extraordinary emigration of serpents from the high woods,
-and from the higher to the lower plantations,&mdash;where they were killed
-by thousands. For a long time Pelée continued to send up an immense column
-of white vapor; but there were no more showers of ashes; and the
-mountain gradually settled down to its present state of quiescence.</p>
-
-<p><br /></p>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_29_1" id="Footnote_29_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_29_1"><span class="label">[29]</span></a>Also called <i>La Barre de l'Isle</i>,&mdash;a long high
-mountain-wall interlinking the northern and southern system of
-ranges,&mdash;and only two metres broad at the summit. The "Roches-Carrées"
-display a geological formation unlike anything discovered in the rest of
-the Antillesian system, excepting in Grenada,&mdash;columnar or prismatic
-basalts.... In the plains of Marin curious petrifactions exist;&mdash;I saw
-a honey-comb so perfect that the eye alone could scarcely divine the
-transformation.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_30_1" id="Footnote_30_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_30_1"><span class="label">[30]</span></a>Thibault de Chanvallon, writing of Martinique in 1751,
-declared:&mdash;"All possible hindrances to study are encountered here
-(<i>tout s'oppose à l'étude</i>): if the Americans (creoles) do not devote
-themselves to research, the fact must not be attributed solely to
-indifference or indolence. On the one hand, the overpowering and
-continual heat,&mdash;the perpetual succession of mornes and
-acclivities,&mdash;the difficulty of entering forests rendered almost
-inaccessible by the lianas interwoven across all openings, and the prickly
-plants which oppose a barrier to the naturalist,&mdash;the continual
-anxiety and fear inspired by serpents also;&mdash;on the other hand, the
-disheartening necessity of having to work alone, and the discouragement
-of being unable to communicate one's ideas or discoveries to persons
-having similar tastes. And finally, it must be remembered that these
-discouragements and dangers are never mitigated by the least hope of
-personal consideration, or by the pleasure of emulation,&mdash;since such
-study is necessarily unaccompanied either by the one or the other in a
-country where nobody undertakes it."&mdash;(<i>Voyage à la
-Martinique.</i>)... The conditions have scarcely changed since De
-Chanvallon's day, despite the creation of Government roads, and the
-thinning of the high woods.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_31_1" id="Footnote_31_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_31_1"><span class="label">[31]</span></a>Humboldt believed the height to be not less than 800 taint
-(1 toise=6 feet 4.73 inches), or about 5115 feet.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_32_1" id="Footnote_32_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_32_1"><span class="label">[32]</span></a>There used to be a strange popular belief that however
-heavily veiled by clouds the mountain might be prior to an earthquake,
-these would always vanish with the first shock. But Thibault de
-Chanvallon took pains to examine into the truth of this alleged
-phenomenon; and found that during a number of earthquake shocks the
-clouds remained over the crater precisely as usual.... There was more
-foundation, however, for another popular belief, which still
-exists,&mdash;that the absolute purity of the atmosphere about Pelée, and
-the perfect exposure of its summit for any considerable tinny might be
-regarded as an omen of hurricane.</p></div>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>II</h4>
-
-
-<p>From St. Pierre, trips to Pelée can be made by several routes;&mdash;the
-most popular is that by way of Morne Rouge and the Calebasse; but the
-summit can be reached in much less time by making the ascent from
-different points along the coast-road to Au Prêcheur,&mdash;such as the
-Morne St. Martin, or a well-known path further north, passing near the
-celebrated hot springs (<i>Fontaines Chaudes</i>). You drive towards Au
-Prêcheur, and begin the ascent on foot, through cane-plantations....
-The road by which you follow the north-west coast round the skirts of
-Pelée is very picturesque:&mdash;you cross the Roxelane, the Rivière des
-Pères, the Rivière Sèche (whose bed is now occupied only by a
-motionless torrent of rocks);&mdash;passing first by the suburb of
-Fond-Corré, with its cocoa groves, and broad beach of iron-gray
-sand,&mdash;a bathing resort;&mdash;then Pointe Prince, and the Fond de
-Canonville, somnolent villages that occupy wrinkles in the hem of
-Pelée's lava robe. The drive ultimately rises and lowers over the
-undulations of the cliff, and is well shadowed along the greater part of
-its course: you will admire many huge <i>fromagers</i>, or silk-cotton
-trees, various heavy lines of tamarinds, and groups of <i>flamboyants</i>
-with thick dark feathery foliage, and cassia-trees with long pods pending
-and blackening from every branch, and hedges of campêche, or logwood, and
-calabash-trees, and multitudes of the pretty shrubs bearing the fruit
-called in creole <i>raisins-bò-lanmè</i>, or "sea-side grapes." Then you
-reach Au Prêcheur: a very antiquated village, which boasts a stone
-church and a little public square with a fountain in it. If you have
-time to cross the Rivière du Prêcheur, a little further on, you can
-obtain a fine view of the coast, which, rising suddenly to a grand
-altitude, sweeps round in a semicircle over the Village of the Abysses
-(<i>Aux Abymes</i>),&mdash;whose name was doubtless suggested by the
-immense depth of the sea at that point.... It was under the shadow of those
-cliffs that the Confederate cruiser <i>Alabama</i> once, hid herself, as a
-fish hides in the shadow of a rock, and escaped from her pursuer, the
-Iroquois. She had long been blockaded in the harbor of St. Pierre by the
-Northern man-of-war,&mdash;anxiously awaiting a chance to pounce upon her
-the instant she should leave French waters;&mdash;and various Yankee
-vessels in port were to send up rocket-signals should the <i>Alabama</i>
-attempt to escape under cover of darkness. But one night the privateer took
-a creole pilot on board, and steamed out southward, with all her lights
-masked, and her chimneys so arranged that neither smoke nor sparks could
-betray her to the enemy in the offing. However, some Yankee vessels near
-enough to discern her movements through the darkness at once shot
-rockets south; and the Iroquois gave chase. The <i>Alabama</i> hugged the
-high shore as far as Carbet, remaining quite invisible in the shadow of
-it: then she suddenly turned and recrossed the harbor. Again Yankee
-rockets betrayed her manœuvre to the <i>Iroquois</i>; but she gained Aux
-Abymes, laid herself dose to the enormous black cliff, and there
-remained indistinguishable; the <i>Iroquois</i> steamed by north without
-seeing her. Once the Confederate cruiser found her enemy well out of
-sight, she put her pilot ashore and escaped into the Dominica channel.
-The pilot was a poor mulatto, who thought himself well paid with five
-hundred francs!</p>
-
-<p>... The more popular route to Pelée by way of Morne Rouge is otherwise
-interesting.... Anybody not too much afraid of the tropic sun must find
-it a delightful experience to follow the mountain roads leading to the
-interior from the city, as all the mornes traversed by them command
-landscapes of extraordinary beauty. According to the zigzags of the way,
-the scenery shifts panoramically. At one moment you are looking down
-into valleys a thousand feet below, at another, over luminous leagues of
-meadow or cane-field, you see some far crowding of cones and cratered
-shapes&mdash;sharp as the teeth of a saw, and blue as sapphire,&mdash;with
-further eminences ranging away through pearline color to high-peaked
-remotenesses of vapory gold. As you follow the windings of such a way as
-the road of the Morne Labelle, or the Morne d'Orange, the city
-disappears and reappears many times,&mdash;always diminishing, till at last
-it looks no bigger than a chess-board. Simultaneously distant mountain
-shapes appear to unfold and lengthen;&mdash;and always, always the sea
-rises with your rising. Viewed at first from the bulwark (boulevard)
-commanding the roofs of the town, its horizon-line seemed straight and
-keen as a knife-edge;&mdash;but as you mount higher, it elongates, begins
-to curve; and gradually the whole azure expanse of water broadens out
-roundly like a disk. From certain very lofty summits further inland you
-behold the immense blue circle touching the sky all round you,&mdash;except
-where a still greater altitude, like that of Pelée or the Pitons,
-breaks the ring; and this high vision of the sea has a phantasmal effect
-hard to describe, and due to vapory conditions of the atmosphere. There
-are bright cloudless days when, even as seen from the city, the
-ocean-verge has a spectral vagueness; but on any day, in any season,
-that you ascend to a point dominating the sea by a thousand feet, the
-rim of the visible world takes a ghostliness that startles,&mdash;because
-the prodigious light gives to all near shapes such intense sharpness of
-outline and vividness of color.</p>
-
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
-<a id="figure46"></a>
-<img src="images/figure46.jpg" width="400" alt="" />
-<p class="center">LA PELÉE<br />
-"<i>Over luminous leagues of meadow or cane field, you
-see far crowding of cones and cratered shapes&mdash;sharp
-as the teeth of a saw, and blue as a sapphire.</i>"</p>
-</div>
-
-
-<p>Yet wonderful as are the perspective beauties of those mountain
-routes from which one can keep St. Pierre in view, the road to Morne
-Rouge surpasses them, notwithstanding that it almost immediately leaves
-the city behind, and out of sight. Excepting only <i>La
-Trace</i>,&mdash;the long routs winding over mountain ridges and between
-primitive forests south to Fort-de-France,&mdash;there is probably no
-section of national highway in the island more remarkable than the Morne
-Rouge road. Leaving the Grande Rue by the public conveyance, you drive
-out through the Savane du Fort, with its immense mango and tamarind
-trees, skirting the Roxelane. Then reaching the boulevard, you pass high
-Morne Labelle,&mdash;and then the Jardin des Plantes on the right, where
-white-stemmed palms are lifting their heads two hundred feet,&mdash;and
-beautiful Parnasse, heavily timbered to the top;&mdash;while on your
-left the valley of the Roxelane shallows up, and Pelée shows less and
-less of its tremendous base. Then you pass through the sleepy, palmy,
-pretty Village of the Three Bridges (<i>Trois Ponts</i>),&mdash;where a
-Fahrenheit thermometer shows already three degrees of temperature lower
-than at St. Pierre;&mdash;and the national road, making a sharp turn to
-the right, becomes all at once very steep&mdash;so steep that the horses
-can mount only at a walk. Around and between the wooded hills it ascends
-by zigzags,&mdash;occasionally overlooking the sea,&mdash;sometimes
-following the verges of ravines. Now and then you catch glimpses of the
-road over which you passed half an hour before undulating far below,
-looking narrow as a tape-line,&mdash;and of the gorge of the
-Roxelane,&mdash;and of Pelée always higher, now thrusting out long
-spurs of green and purple land into the sea. You drive under cool
-shadowing of mountain woods&mdash;under waving bamboos like enormous
-ostrich feathers dyed green,&mdash;and exquisite tree-ferns thirty to
-forty feet high,&mdash;and imposing ceibas, with strangely buttressed
-trunks,&mdash;and all sorts of broadleaved forms: cachibous, balisiers,
-bananiers.... Then you reach a plateau covered with cane, whose yellow
-expanse is bounded on the right by a demilune of hills sharply angled as
-crystals;&mdash;on the left it dips seaward; and before you Pelée's
-head towers over the shoulders of intervening monies. A strong cool wind
-is blowing; and the horses can trot a while. Twenty minutes, and the
-road, leaving the plateau, becomes steep again;&mdash;you are
-approaching the volcano over the ridge of a colossal spur. The way turns
-in a semicircle,&mdash;zigzags,&mdash;once more touches the edge of a
-valley,&mdash;where the clear fall might be nearly fifteen hundred feet.
-But narrowing more and more, the valley becomes an ascending gorge; and
-across its chasm, upon the brow of the opposite cliff, you catch sight
-of houses and a spire seemingly perched on the verge, like so many
-birds'-nests,&mdash;the village of Morne Rouge. It is two thousand feet
-above the sea; and Pelée, although looming high over it, looks a trifle
-less lofty now.</p>
-
-<p>One's first impression of Morne Rouge is that of a single straggling
-street of gray-painted cottages and shops (or rather booths), dominated
-by a plain church, with four pursy-bodied palmistes facing the main
-porch. Nevertheless, Morne Rouge is not a small place, considering its
-situation;&mdash;there are nearly five thousand inhabitants; but in
-order to find out where they live, you must leave the public road, which
-is on a ridge, and explore the high-hedged lanes leading down from it on
-either side. Then you will find a veritable city of little wooden
-cottages,&mdash;each screened about with banana-trees, Indian-reeds, and
-<i>pommiers-roses.</i> You will also see a number of handsome private
-residences&mdash;country-houses of wealthy merchants; and you will find
-that the church, though uninteresting exteriorly, is rich and impressive
-within: it is a famous shrine, where miracles are alleged to have been
-wrought. Immense processions periodically wend their way to it from St.
-Pierre,&mdash;starting at three or four o'clock in the morning, so as to
-arrive before the sun is well up.... But there are no woods
-here,&mdash;only fields. An odd tone is given to the lanes by a local
-custom of planting hedges of what are termed <i>roseaux d'Inde</i>,
-having a dark-red foliage; and there is a visible fondness for
-ornamental plants with crimson leaves. Otherwise the mountain summit is
-somewhat bare; trees have a scrubby aspect. You must have noticed while
-ascending that the palmistes became smaller as they were situated
-higher: at Morne Rouge they are dwarfed,&mdash;having a short stature,
-and very thick trunks.</p>
-
-<p>In spite of the fine views of the sea, the mountain-heights, and the
-valley-reaches, obtainable from Morne Rouge, the place has a somewhat
-bleak look. Perhaps this is largely owing to the universal slate-gray
-tint of the buildings,&mdash;very melancholy by comparison with the apricot
-and banana yellows tinting the walls of St. Pierre. But this cheerless
-gray is the only color which can resist the climate of Morne Rouge,
-where people are literally dwelling in the clouds. Rolling down like
-white smoke from Pelée, these often create a dismal fog; and Morne
-Rouge is certainly one of the rainiest places in the world. When it is
-dry everywhere else, it rains at Morne Rouge. It rains at least three
-hundred and sixty days and three hundred and sixty nights of the year.
-It rains almost invariably once in every twenty-four hours; but oftener
-five or six times. The dampness is phenomenal. All mirrors become
-patchy; linen moulds in one day; leather turns white; woollen goods feel
-as if saturated with moisture; new brass becomes green; steel crumbles
-into red powder: wood-work rots with astonishing rapidity; salt is
-quickly transformed into brine; and matches, unless kept in a very warm
-place, refuse to light. Everything moulders and peels and decomposes;
-even the frescos of the church-interior lump out in immense blisters;
-and a microscopic vegetation, green or brown, attacks all exposed
-surfaces of timber or stone. At night it is often really cold;&mdash;and it
-is hard to understand how, with all this dampness and coolness and
-mouldiness, Morne Rouge can be a healthy place. But it is so, beyond any
-question: it is the great Martinique resort for invalids; strangers
-debilitated by the climate of Trinidad or Cayenne come to it for
-recuperation.</p>
-
-<p>Leaving the village by the still uprising road, you will be
-surprised, after a walk of twenty minutes northward, by a magnificent
-view,&mdash;the vast valley of the Champ-Flore, watered by many
-torrents, and bounded south and west by double, triple, and quadruple
-surging of mountains,&mdash;mountains broken, peaked, tormented-looking,
-and tinted (<i>irisées</i>, as the creoles say) with all those
-gem-tones distance gives in a West Indian atmosphere. Particularly
-impressive is the beauty of one purple cone in the midst of this
-many-colored chain: the Piton Gélé. All the valley-expanse of rich
-land is checkered with alternations of meadow and cane and
-cacao,&mdash;except northwestwardly, where woods billow out of sight
-beyond a curve. Facing this landscape, on your left, are mornes of
-various heights,&mdash;among which you will notice La Calebasse,
-overtopping everything but Pelée shadowing behind it;&mdash;and a
-grass-grown road leads up westward from the national highway towards the
-volcano. This is the Calebasse route to Pelée.</p>
-
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>III</h4>
-
-
-<p>One must be very sure of the weather before undertaking the ascent of
-Pelée; for if one merely selects some particular leisure day in
-advance, one's chances of seeing anything from the summit are
-considerably less than an astronomer's chances of being able to make a
-satisfactory observation of the next transit of Venus. Moreover, if the
-heights remain even partly clouded, it may not be safe to ascend the
-Morne de la Croix,&mdash;a cone-point above the crater itself, and
-ordinarily invisible below. And a cloudless afternoon can never be
-predicted from the aspect of deceitful Pelée: when the crater edges are
-quite clearly cut against the sky at dawn, you may be tolerably certain
-there will be bad weather during the day; and when they are all bare at
-sundown, you have no good reason to believe they will not be hidden next
-morning. Hundreds of tourists, deluded by such appearances, have made
-the weary trip in vain,&mdash;found themselves obliged to return without
-having seen anything but a thick white cold fog. The sky may remain
-perfectly blue for weeks in every other direction, and Pelée's head
-remain always hidden. In order to make a successful ascent, one must not
-wait for a period of dry weather,&mdash;one might thus wait for years!
-What one must look for is a certain periodicity in the diurnal
-rains,&mdash;a regular alternation of sun and cloud; such as
-characterizes a certain portion of the hivernage, or rainy summer
-season, when mornings and evenings are perfectly limpid, with very heavy
-sudden rains in the middle of the day. It is of no use to rely on the
-prospect of a dry spell. There is no really dry weather, notwithstanding
-there recurs&mdash;in books&mdash;a <i>Saison de la Sécheresse.</i> In
-fact, there are no distinctly marked seasons in Martinique:&mdash;a
-little less heat and rain from October to July, a little more rain and
-heat from July to October: that is about all the notable difference!
-Perhaps the official notification by cannon-shot that the hivernage, the
-season of heavy rains and hurricanes, begins on July 15th, is no more
-trustworthy than the contradictory declarations of Martinique authors
-who have attempted to define the vague and illusive limits of the tropic
-seasons. Still, the Government report on the subject is more
-satisfactory than any: according to the "Annuaire," there are these
-seasons:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>1. <i>Saison fraîche.</i> December to March. Rainfall, about 475
-millimeters.</p>
-
-<p>2. <i>Saison chaude et sèche.</i> April to July. Rainfall, about 140
-millimeters.</p>
-
-<p>3. <i>Saison chaude et pluvieuse.</i> July to November. Rainfall
-average, 1121 millimeters.</p>
-
-<p>Other authorities divide the <i>saison chaude et sèche</i> into two
-periods, of which the latter, beginning about May, is called the
-<i>Renouveau</i>; and it is at least true that at the time indicated
-there is a great burst of vegetal luxuriance. But there is always rain,
-there are almost always clouds, there is no possibility of marking and
-dating the beginnings and the endings of weather in this country where
-the barometer is almost useless, and the thermometer mounts in
-the sun  to twice the figure it reaches in the shade. Long and
-patient  observation has, however, established the fact that
-during the hivernage, if the heavy showers have a certain fixed
-periodicity,&mdash;falling at mid-day or in the heated part of the
-afternoon,&mdash;Pelée is likely to be clear early in the morning; and
-by starting before daylight one can then have good chances of a fine
-view from the summit.</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>IV</h4>
-
-
-<p>At five o'clock of a September morning, warm and starry, I leave St.
-Pierre in a carriage with several friends, to make the ascent by the
-shortest route of all,&mdash;that of the Morne St. Martin, one of
-Pelée's western counterforts. We drive north along the shore for about
-half an hour; then, leaving the coast behind, pursue a winding mountain
-road, leading to the upper plantations, between leagues of cane. The sky
-begins to brighten as we ascend, and a steely glow announces that day
-has begun on the other side of the island. Miles up, the crest of the
-volcano cuts sharp as a saw-edge against the growing light: there is not
-a cloud visible. Then the light slowly yellows behind the vast cone; and
-one of the most beautiful dawns I ever saw reveals on our right an
-immense valley through which three rivers flow. This deepens very
-quickly as we drive; the mornes about St. Pierre, beginning to catch the
-light, sink below us in distance; and above them, southwardly, an
-amazing silhouette begins to rise,&mdash;all blue,&mdash;a mountain wall
-capped with cusps and cones, seeming high as Pelée itself in the
-middle, but sinking down to the sea-level westward. There are a number
-of extraordinary acuminations; but the most impressive shape is the
-nearest,&mdash;a tremendous conoidal mass crowned with a group of peaks,
-of which two, taller than the rest, tell their name at once by the
-beauty of their forms,&mdash;the Pitons of Carbet. They wear their
-girdles of cloud, though Pelée is naked to-day. All this is blue: the
-growing light only deepens the color, does not dissipate it;&mdash;but
-in the nearer valleys gleams of tender yellowish green begin to appear.
-Still the sun has not been able to show himself;&mdash;it will take him
-some time yet to climb Pelée.</p>
-
-<p>Reaching the last plantation, we draw rein in a village of small wooden
-cottages,&mdash;the quarters of the field hands,&mdash;and receive from the
-proprietor, a personal friend of my friends, the kindest welcome. At his
-house we change clothing and prepare for the journey;&mdash;he provides for
-our horses, and secures experienced guides for us,&mdash;two young colored
-men belonging to the plantation. Then we begin the ascent. The guides
-walk before, barefoot, each carrying a cutlass in his hand and a package
-on his head&mdash;our provisions, photographic instruments, etc.</p>
-
-<p>The mountain is cultivated in spots up to twenty-five hundred feet; and
-for three-quarters of an hour after leaving the planter's residence we
-still traverse fields of cane and of manioc. The light is now strong in
-the valley; but we are in the shadow of Pelée. Cultivated fields end at
-last; the ascending path is through wild cane, wild guavas, guinea-grass
-run mad, and other tough growths, some bearing pretty pink blossoms. The
-forest is before us. Startled by our approach, a tiny fer-de-lance
-glides out from a bunch of dead wild-cane, almost under the bare feet of
-our foremost guide, who as instantly decapitates it with a touch of his
-cutlass. It is not quite fifteen inches long, and almost the color of
-the yellowish leaves under which it had been hiding.... The
-conversation turns on snakes as we make our first halt at the verge of
-the woods.</p>
-
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
-<a id="figure47"></a>
-<img src="images/figure47.jpg" width="400" alt="" />
-<p class="center">THE CATHEDRAL, ST. PIERRE
-<i>Completely destroyed by the catastrophe of 1902 except
-for a marble statue of the Virgin. This has been set
-high on a cliff above the town and may be seen from
-far out at sea.</i></p>
-</div>
-
-
-<p>Hundreds may be hiding around us; but a snake never shows himself by
-daylight except under the pressure of sudden alarm. We are not likely,
-in the opinion of all present, to meet another. Every one in the party,
-except myself, has some curious experience to relate. I hear for the
-first time about the alleged inability of the trigonocephalus to wound
-except at a distance from his enemy of not less than one-third of his
-length;&mdash;about M. A&mdash;&mdash;, a former director of the Jardin
-des Plantes, who used to boldly thrust his arm into holes where he knew
-snakes were, and pull them out,&mdash;catching them just behind the head
-and wrapping the tail round his arm,&mdash;and place them alive in a
-cage without ever getting bitten;&mdash;about M. B&mdash;&mdash;, who,
-while hunting one day, tripped in the coils of an immense
-trigonocephalus, and ran so fast in his fright that the serpent,
-entangled round his leg, could not bite him;&mdash;about M.
-C&mdash;&mdash;, who could catch a fer-de-lance by the tail, and "crack
-it like a whip" until the head would fly off;&mdash;about an old white
-man living in the Champ-Flore, whose diet was snake-meat, and who always
-kept in his ajoupa "a keg of salted serpents" (<i>yon ka
-sèpent-salé</i>);&mdash;about a monster eight feet long which killed,
-near Morne Rouge, M. Charles Fabre's white cat, but was also killed by
-the cat after she had been caught in the folds of the
-reptile;&mdash;about the value of snakes as protectors of the sugar-cane
-and cocoa-shrub against rats;&mdash;about an unsuccessful effort made,
-during a plague of rats in Guadeloupe, to introduce the fer-de-lance
-there;&mdash;about the alleged power of a monstrous toad, the
-<i>crapaud-ladre</i>, to cause the death of the snake that swallows
-it;&mdash;and, finally, about the total absence of the idyllic and
-pastoral elements in Martinique literature, as due to the presence of
-reptiles everywhere. "Even the flora and fauna of the country remain to
-a large extent unknown,"&mdash;adds the last speaker, an amiable old
-physician of St. Pierre,&mdash;"because the existence of the
-fer-de-lance renders all serious research dangerous in the extreme."</p>
-
-<p>My own experiences do not justify my taking part in such a
-conversation;&mdash;I never saw alive but two very small specimens of
-the trigonocephalus. People who have passed even a considerable time in
-Martinique may have never seen a fer-de-lance except in a jar of
-alcohol, or as exhibited by negro snake-catchers, tied fast to a bamboo.
-But this is only because strangers rarely travel much in the interior of
-the country, or find themselves on country roads after sundown. It is
-not correct to suppose that snakes are uncommon even in the neighborhood
-of St. Pierre: they are often killed on the bulwarks behind the city and
-on the verge of the Savane; they have been often washed into the streets
-by heavy rains; and many washer-women at the Roxelane have been bitten
-by them. It is considered very dangerous to walk about the bulwarks
-after dark;&mdash;for the snakes, which travel only at night, then
-descend from the mornes towards the river. The Jardin des Plantes
-shelters great numbers of the reptiles; and only a few days prior to the
-writing of these lines a colored laborer in the garden was stricken and
-killed by a fer-de-lance measuring one metre and sixty-seven centimetres
-in length. In the interior much larger reptiles are sometimes seen: I
-saw one freshly killed measuring six feet five inches, and thick as a
-man's leg in the middle. There are few planters in the island who have
-not some of their hands bitten during the cane-cutting and
-cocoa-gathering seasons;&mdash;the average annual mortality among the
-class of travailleurs from serpent bite alone is probably fifty<a name="FNanchor_33_1" id="FNanchor_33_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_33_1" class="fnanchor">[33]</a>,&mdash;always
-fine young men or women in the prime of life. Even among the wealthy whites
-deaths from this cause are less rare than might be supposed: I know one
-gentleman, a rich citizen of St. Pierre, who in ten years lost three
-relatives by the trigonocephalus,&mdash;the wound having in each case been
-received in the neighborhood of a vein. When the vein has been pierced,
-cure is impossible.</p>
-
-<p><br /></p>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_33_1" id="Footnote_33_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_33_1"><span class="label">[33]</span></a>"De la piqûre du serpent de la Martinique," par Auguste
-Charriez, Médecin de la Marine. Paris: Moquet, 1875.</p></div>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>V</h4>
-
-
-<p>... We look back over the upreaching yellow fan-spread of
-cane-fields, and winding of tortuous valleys, and the sea expanding
-beyond an opening in the west. It has already broadened surprisingly,
-the sea,&mdash;appears to have risen up, not as a horizontal plane, but
-like an immeasurable azure precipice: what will it look like when we
-shall have reached the top? Far down we can distinguish a line of
-field-hands&mdash;the whole <i>atelier</i>, as it is called, of a
-plantation&mdash;slowly descending a slope, hewing the canes as they go.
-There is a woman to every two men, a binder (<i>amarreuse</i>): she
-gathers the canes as they are cut down, binds them with their own tough
-long leaves into a sort of sheaf, and carries them away on her
-head;&mdash;the men wield their cutlasses so beautifully that it is a
-delight to watch them. One cannot often enjoy such a spectacle nowadays;
-for the introduction of the piece-work system has destroyed the
-picturesqueness of plantation labor throughout the island, with rare
-exceptions. Formerly the work of cane-cutting resembled the march of an
-army;&mdash;first advanced the cutlassers in line, naked to the waist;
-then the amarreuses, the women who tied and carried; and behind these
-the <i>ka</i>, the drum,&mdash;with a paid <i>crieur</i> or
-<i>crieuse</i> to lead the song;&mdash;and lastly the black Commandeur,
-for general. And in the old days, too, it was not unfrequent that the
-sudden descent of an English corsair on the coast converted this
-soldiery of labor into veritable military: more than one attack was
-repelled by the cutlasses of a plantation atelier.</p>
-
-<p>At this height the chatting and chanting can be heard, though not
-distinctly enough to catch the words. Suddenly a voice, powerful as a
-bugle, rings out,&mdash;the voice of the Commandeur: he walks along the
-line, looking, with his cutlass under his arm. I ask one of our guides
-what the cry is:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"<i>Y ka coumandé yo pouend gàde pou sèpent</i>," he replies. (He
-is telling them to keep watch for serpents.) The nearer the cutlassers
-approach the end of their task, the greater the danger: for the
-reptiles, retreating before them to the last clump of cane, become
-massed there, and will fight desperately. Regularly as the
-ripening-time, Death gathers his toll of human lives from among the
-workers. But when one falls, another steps into the vacant
-place,&mdash;perhaps the Commandeur himself: these dark swordsmen never
-retreat; all the blades swing swiftly as before; there is hardly any
-emotion; the travailleur is a fatalist....<a name="FNanchor_34_1" id="FNanchor_34_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_34_1" class="fnanchor">[34]</a></p>
-
-<p><br /></p>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_34_1" id="Footnote_34_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_34_1"><span class="label">[34]</span></a>M. Francard Baya delle, overseer of the Presbourg
-plantation at Grande Anse, tells me that the most successful treatment
-of snakebite consists in severe local cupping and bleeding; the
-immediate application of twenty to thirty leeches (when these can be
-obtained), and the administration of alkali as an internal medicine. He
-has saved several lives by these methods.</p>
-
-<p>The negro <i>panseur's</i> method is much more elaborate and, to some
-extent, mysterious. He cups and bleeds, using a small <i>couï</i>, or
-half-calabash, in lieu of a glass; and then applies cataplasms of
-herbs,&mdash;orange-leaves, cinnamon-leaves, clove-leaves,
-<i>chardon-béni, charpentier</i>, perhaps twenty other things, all
-mingled together;&mdash;this poulticing being continued every day for a
-month. Meantime the patient is given all sorts of absurd things to
-drink, in tafia and sour-orange juice&mdash;such as old clay pipes
-ground to powder, or <i>the head of the fer-de-lance itself</i>, roasted
-dry and pounded.... The plantation negro has no faith in any other
-system of cure but that of the panseur;&mdash;he refuses to let the
-physician try to save him, and will scarcely submit to be treated even
-by an experienced white overseer.</p></div>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>VI</h4>
-
-
-<p>... We enter the <i>grands-bois</i>,&mdash;the primitive
-forest,&mdash;the "high woods."</p>
-
-<p>As seen with a field-glass from St. Pierre, these woods present only
-the appearance of a band of moss belting the volcano, and following all
-its corrugations,&mdash;so densely do the leafy crests intermingle. But
-on actually entering them, you find yourself at once in green twilight,
-among lofty trunks uprising everywhere like huge pillars wrapped with
-vines;&mdash;and the inter-spaces between these bulks are all occupied
-by lianas and parasitic creepers,&mdash;some monstrous,&mdash;veritable
-parasite-trees,&mdash;ascending at all angles, or dropping straight down
-from the tallest crests to take root again. The effect in the dim light
-is that of innumerable black ropes and cables of varying thicknesses
-stretched taut from the soil to the tree-tops, and also from branch to
-branch, like rigging. There are rare and remarkable trees
-here,&mdash;acomats, courbarils, balatas, ceibas or fromages, acajous,
-gommiers;&mdash;hundreds have been cut down by charcoal-makers; but the
-forest is still grand. It is to be regretted that the Government has
-placed no restriction upon the barbarous destruction of trees by the
-<i>charbonniers</i>, which is going on throughout the island. Many
-valuable woods are rapidly disappearing. The courbaril, yielding a
-fine-grained, heavy, chocolate-colored timber; the balata, giving a wood
-even heavier, denser, and darker; the acajou, producing a rich red wood,
-with a strong scent of cedar; the bois-de-fer; the bois d'Inde; the
-superb acomat,&mdash;all used to flourish by tens of thousands upon
-these volcanic slopes, whose productiveness is eighteen times greater
-than that of the richest European soil. All Martinique furniture used to
-be made of native woods; and the colored cabinet-makers still produce
-work which would probably astonish New York or London manufacturers. But
-today the island exports no more hard woods: it has even been found
-necessary to import much from neighboring islands;&mdash;and yet the
-destruction of forests still goes on. The domestic fabrication of
-charcoal from forest-trees has been estimated at 1,400,000 hectolitres
-per annum. Primitive forest still covers the island to the extent of
-21.37 per cent; but to find precious woods now, one must climb heights
-like those of Pelée and Carbet, or penetrate into the mountains of the
-interior.</p>
-
-<p>Most common formerly on these slopes were the gommiers, from which
-canoes of a single piece, forty-five feet long by seven wide, used to be
-made. There are plenty of gommiers still; but the difficulty of
-transporting them to the shore has latterly caused a demand for the
-gommiers of Dominica. The dimensions of canoes now made from these trees
-rarely exceed fifteen feet in length by eighteen inches in width: the
-art of making them is an inheritance from the ancient Caribs. First the
-trunk is shaped to the form of the canoe, and pointed at both ends; it
-is then hollowed out. The width of the hollow does not exceed six inches
-at the widest part; but the cavity is then filled with wet sand, which
-in the course of some weeks widens the excavation by its weight, and
-gives the boat perfect form. Finally gunwales of plank are fastened on;
-seats are put in&mdash;generally four;&mdash;and no boat is more durable or
-more swift.</p>
-
-<p><br /></p>
-
-<p>... We climb. There is a trace rather than a footpath;&mdash;no visible
-soil, only vegetable detritus, with roots woven over it in every direction.
-The foot never rests on a flat surface,&mdash;only upon surfaces of roots;
-and these are covered, like every protruding branch along the route,
-with a slimy green moss, slippery as ice. Unless accustomed to walking
-in tropical woods, one will fall at every step. In a little while I find
-it impossible to advance. Our nearest guide, observing my predicament,
-turns, and without moving the bundle upon his head, cuts and trims me an
-excellent staff with a few strokes of his cutlass. This staff not only
-saves pie from dangerous slips, but also serves at times to probe the
-way; for the further we proceed, the vaguer the path becomes. It was
-made by the <i>chasseurs-de-choux</i> (cabbage-hunters),&mdash;the negro
-mountaineers who live by furnishing heads of young cabbage-palm to the
-city markets; and these men also keep it open,&mdash;otherwise the woods
-would grow over it in a month. Two chasseurs-de-choux stride past as we
-advance, with their freshly gathered palm-salad upon their heads,
-wrapped in cachibou or balisier leaves, and tied with lianas. The
-palmiste-franc reaches a stature of one hundred feet; but the young
-trees are so eagerly sought for by the chasseurs-de-choux that in these
-woods few reach a height of even twelve feet before being cut.</p>
-
-<p>... Walking becomes more difficult;&mdash;there seems no termination to
-the grands-bois: always the same faint green light, the same rude natural
-stair-way of slippery roots,&mdash;half the time hidden by fern leaves and
-vines. Sharp ammoniacal scents are in the air; a dew, cold as ice-water,
-drenches our clothing. Unfamiliar insects make trilling noises in dark
-places; and now and then a series of soft clear notes ring out, almost
-like a thrush's whistle: the chant of a little tree-frog. The path
-becomes more and more overgrown; and but for the constant excursions of
-the cabbage-hunters, we should certainly have to cutlass every foot of
-the way through creepers and brambles. More and more amazing also is the
-interminable interweaving of roots: the whole forest is thus spun
-together&mdash;not underground so much as overground. These tropical trees
-do not strike deep, although able to climb steep slopes of porphyry and
-basalt: they send out great far-reaching webs of roots,&mdash;each such web
-interknotting with others all round it, and these in turn with further
-ones; while between their reticulations lianas ascend and descend: and a
-nameless multitude of shrubs as tough as india-rubber push up, together
-with mosses, grasses, and ferns. Square miles upon square miles of woods
-are thus interlocked and interbound into one mass solid enough to resist
-the pressure of a hurricane; and where there is no path already made,
-entrance into them can only be effected by the most dexterous
-cutlassing.</p>
-
-<p>An inexperienced stranger might be puzzled to understand how this
-cutlassing is done. It is no easy feat to sever with one blow a liana
-thick as a man's arm; the trained cutlasser does it without apparent
-difficulty: moreover, he cuts horizontally, so as to prevent the severed
-top presenting a sharp angle and proving afterwards dangerous. He never
-appears to strike hard,&mdash;only give light taps with his blade, which
-flickers continually about him as he moves. Our own guides in cutlassing
-are not at all inconvenienced by their loads; they walk perfectly
-upright, never stumble, never slip, never hesitate, and do not even seem
-to perspire: their bare feet are prehensile. Some creoles in our party,
-habituated to the woods, walk nearly as well in their shoes; but they
-carry no loads.</p>
-
-<p>... At last we are rejoiced to observe that the trees are becoming
-smaller;&mdash;there are no more colossal trunks;&mdash;there are frequent
-glimpses of sky: the sun has risen well above the peaks, and sends
-occasional beams down through the leaves. Ten minutes, and we reach a
-clear space,&mdash;a wild savane, very steep, above which looms a higher
-belt of woods. Here we take another short rest.</p>
-
-<p>Northward the view is cut off by a ridge covered with herbaceous
-vegetation;&mdash;but to the south-west it is open, over a gorge of which
-both sides are shrouded in sombre green&mdash;crests of trees forming a
-solid curtain against the sun. Beyond the outer and lower cliff
-valley-surfaces appear miles away, flinging up broad gleams of
-cane-gold; further off greens disappear into blues, and the fantastic
-masses of Carbet loom up far higher than before. St. Pierre, in a curve
-of the coast, is a little red-and-yellow semicircular streak, less than
-two inches long. The interspaces between far mountain chains,&mdash;masses
-of pyramids, cones, single and double humps, queer blue angles as of raised
-knees under coverings,&mdash;resemble misty lakes: they are filled with
-brume;&mdash;the sea-line has vanished altogether. Only the horizon,
-enormously heightened, can be discerned as a circling band of faint
-yellowish light,&mdash;auroral, ghostly,&mdash;almost on a level with the
-tips of the Pitons. Between this vague horizon and the shore, the sea no
-longer looks like sea, but like a second hollow sky reversed. All the
-landscape has unreal beauty:&mdash;there are no keen lines; there are no
-definite beginnings or endings; the tints are half-colors only;&mdash;peaks
-rise suddenly from mysteries of bluish fog as from a flood; land melts into
-sea the same hue. It gives one the idea of some great aquarelle
-unfinished,&mdash;abandoned before tones were deepened and details brought
-out.</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>VII</h4>
-
-
-<p>We are overlooking from this height the birthplaces of several rivers;
-and the rivers of Pelée are the clearest and the coolest of the island.</p>
-
-<p>From whatever direction the trip be undertaken, the ascent of the
-volcano must be made over some one of those many immense ridges sloping
-from the summit to the sea west, north, and east,&mdash;like buttresses
-eight to ten miles long,&mdash;formed by ancient lava-torrents. Down the
-deep gorges between them the cloud-fed rivers run,&mdash;receiving as
-they descend the waters of countless smaller streams gushing from either
-side of the ridge. There are also cold springs,&mdash;one of which
-furnishes St. Pierre with her <i>Eau-de-Gouyave</i> (guava-water), which
-is always sweet, clear, and cool in the very hottest weather. But the
-water of almost every one of the seventy-five principal rivers of
-Martinique is cool and clear and sweet. And these rivers are curious in
-their way. Their average fall has been estimated at nine inches to every
-six feet;&mdash;many are cataracts;&mdash;the Rivière de Case-Navire has a
-fall of nearly 150 feet to every fifty yards of its upper course.
-Naturally these streams cut for themselves channels of immense depth.
-Where they flow through forests and between monies, their banks vary
-from 1200 to 1600 feet high,&mdash;so as to render their beds
-inaccessible; and many enter the sea through a channel of rock with
-perpendicular walls from 150 to 200 feet high. Their waters are
-necessarily shallow in normal weather; but during rainstorms they become
-torrents thunderous and terrific beyond description. In order to
-comprehend their sudden swelling, one must know what tropical rain is.
-Col. Boyer Peyreleau, in 1823, estimated the annual rainfall in these
-colonies at 150 inches on the coast, to 350 on the
-mountains,&mdash;while the annual fall at Paris was only eighteen
-inches. The character of such rain is totally different from that of
-rain in the temperate zone: the drops are enormous, heavy like
-hailstones,&mdash;one will spatter over the circumference of a
-saucer!&mdash;and the shower roars so that people cannot hear each other
-speak without shouting. When there is a true storm, no roofing seems
-able to shut out the cataract; the best-built houses leak in all
-directions; and objects but a short distance off become invisible behind
-the heavy curtain of water. The ravages of such rain may be imagined!
-Roads are cut away in an hour; trees are overthrown as if blown
-down;&mdash;for there are few West Indian trees which plunge their roots
-even as low as two feet; they merely extend them over a large diameter;
-and isolated trees will actually slide under rain. The swelling of
-rivers is so sudden that washer-women at work in the Roxelane and other
-streams have been swept away and drowned without the least warning of
-their danger; the shower occurring seven or eight miles off.</p>
-
-<p>Most of these rivers are well stocked with fish, of which the <i>tétart,
-banane, loche</i>, and <i>dormeur</i> are the principal varieties. The
-tétart (best of all) and the loche climb the torrents to the height of 2500
-and even 3000 feet: they have a kind of pneumatic sucker, which enables
-them to cling to rocks. Under stones in the lower basins crawfish of the
-most extraordinary size are taken; some will measure thirty-six inches from
-claw to tail. And at all the river-mouths, during July and August, are
-caught vast numbers of <i>titiri</i><a name="FNanchor_35_1" id="FNanchor_35_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_35_1" class="fnanchor">[35]</a>,&mdash;tiny
-white fish, of which a thousand might be put into one teacup. They are
-delicious when served in oil,&mdash;infinitely more delicate than the
-sardine. Some regard them as a particular species: others believe them to
-be only the fry of larger fish,&mdash;as their periodical appearance and
-disappearance would seem to indicate. They are often swept by millions into
-the city of St. Pierre, with the flow of mountain-water which purifies the
-streets: then you will see them swarming in the gutters, fountains, and
-bathing-basins;&mdash;and on Saturdays, when the water is temporarily shut
-off to allow of the pipes being cleansed, the titiri may die in the
-gutters in such numbers as to make the air offensive.</p>
-
-<p>The mountain-crab, celebrated for its periodical migrations, is also
-found at considerable heights. Its numbers appear to have been
-diminished extraordinarily by its consumption as an article of negro
-diet; but in certain islands those armies of crabs described by the old
-writers are still occasionally to be seen. The Père Du Tertre relates
-that in 1640, at St. Christophe, thirty sick emigrants, temporarily left
-on the beach, were attacked and devoured alive during the night by a
-similar species of crab. "They descended from the mountains in such
-multitude," he tells us, "that they were heaped higher than houses over
-the bodies of the poor wretches... whose bones were picked so clean that
-not one speck of flesh could be found upon them."...</p>
-
-<p><br /></p>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_35_1" id="Footnote_35_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_35_1"><span class="label">[35]</span></a>The sheet-lightnings which play during the nights
-of July  and August are termed in creole <i>Zéclai-tiriri</i>, or
-"titiri-lightnings";&mdash;it is believed these give notice that the titiri
-have begun to swarm in the rivers. Among the colored population there
-exists an idea of some queer relation between the lightning and the
-birth of the little fish;&mdash;it is commonly said, "Zéclai-à ka fai yo
-écloré" (the lightning hatches them).</p></div>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>VIII</h4>
-
-
-<p>... We enter the upper belt of woods&mdash;green twilight again.
-There are as many lianas as ever: but they are less massive in
-stem;&mdash;the trees, which are stunted, stand closer together; and the
-web-work of roots is finer and more thickly spun. These are called the
-<i>petits-bois</i> (little woods), in contradistinction to the
-grands-bois, or high woods. Multitudes of balisiers, dwarf-palms,
-arborescent ferns, wild guavas, mingle with the lower growths on either
-side of the path, which has narrowed to the breadth of a wheel-rut, and
-is nearly concealed by protruding grasses and fern leaves. Never does
-the sole of the foot press upon a surface large as itself,&mdash;always
-the slippery backs of roots crossing at all angles, like loop-traps,
-over sharp fragments of volcanic rock or pumice-stone. There are abrupt
-descents, sudden acclivities, mud-holes, and fissures;&mdash;one grasps
-at the ferns on both sides to keep from falling; and some ferns are
-spiked sometimes on the under surface, and tear the hands. But the
-barefooted guides stride on rapidly, erect as ever under their
-loads,&mdash;chopping off with their cutlasses any branches that hang
-low. There are beautiful flowers here,&mdash;various unfamiliar species
-of lobelia;&mdash;pretty red and yellow blossoms belonging to plants
-which the creole physician calls <i>Bromeliaceœ</i>; and a plant like
-the <i>Guy Lussacia</i> of Brazil, with violet-red petals. There is an
-indescribable multitude of ferns,&mdash;a very museum of ferns! The
-doctor, who is a great woodsman, says that he never makes a trip to the
-hills without finding some new kind of fern; and he had already a
-collection of several hundred.</p>
-
-<p>The route is continually growing steeper, and makes a number of turns
-and windings: we reach another bit of savane, where we have to walk over
-black-pointed stones that resemble slag;&mdash;then more petits-bois,
-still more dwarfed, then another opening. The naked crest of the volcano
-appears like a peaked precipice, dark-red, with streaks of green, over a
-narrow but terrific chasm on the left: we are almost on a level with the
-crater, but must make a long circuit to reach it, through a wilderness
-of stunted timber and bush. The creoles call this undergrowth
-<i>razié</i>: it is really only a prolongation of the low jungle which
-carpets the high forests below, with this difference, that there are
-fewer creepers and much more fern.... Suddenly we reach a black gap in
-the path about thirty inches wide&mdash;half hidden by the tangle of
-leaves,&mdash;<i>La Fente.</i> It is a volcanic fissure which divides
-the whole ridge, and is said to have no bottom: for fear of a possible
-slip, the guides insist upon holding our hands while we cross it.
-Happily there are no more such clefts; but there are mud-holes, snags,
-roots, and loose rocks beyond counting. Least disagreeable are the
-<i>boubiers</i>, in which you sink to your knees in black or gray slime.
-Then the path descends into open light again;&mdash;and we find
-ourselves at the Étang,&mdash;in the dead Crater of the Three
-Palmistes.</p>
-
-<p><br /></p>
-
-<p>An immense pool, completely encircled by high green walls of rock, which
-shut out all further view, and shoot up, here and there, into cones, or
-rise into queer lofty humps and knobs. One of these elevations at the
-opposite side has almost the shape of a blunt horn: it is the Morne de
-la Croix. The scenery is at once imposing and sinister: the shapes
-towering above the lake and reflected in its still surface have the
-weirdness of things seen in photographs of the moon. Clouds are circling
-above them and between them;&mdash;one descends to the water, haunts us a
-moment, blurring everything; then rises again. We have travelled too
-slow; the clouds have had time to gather.</p>
-
-<p>I look in vain for the Three Palmistes which gave the crater a name:
-they were destroyed long ago. But there are numbers of young ones
-scattered through the dense ferny covering of the lake-slopes,&mdash;just
-showing their heads like bunches of great dark-green feathers.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;The estimate of Dr. Rufz, made in 1851, and the estimate of
-the last "Annuaire" regarding the circumference of the lake, are
-evidently both at fault. That of the "Annuaire," 150 metres, is a gross
-error: the writer must have meant the diameter,&mdash;following Rufz,
-who estimated the circumference at something over 300 paces. As we find
-it, the Étang, which is nearly circular, must measure 200 yards
-across;&mdash;perhaps it has been greatly swollen by the extraordinary
-rains of this summer. Our guides say that the little iron cross
-projecting from the water about two yards off was high and dry on the
-shore last season. At present there is only one narrow patch of grassy
-bank on which we can rest, between the water and the walls of the
-crater.</p>
-
-<p>The lake is perfectly clear, with a bottom of yellowish shallow mud,
-which rests&mdash;according to investigations made in 1851&mdash;upon a
-mass of pumice-stone mixed in places with ferruginous sand; and the
-yellow mud itself is a detritus of pumice-stone. We strip for a
-swim.</p>
-
-<p>Though at an elevation of nearly 5000 feet, this water is not so cold as
-that of the Roxelane, nor of other rivers of the north-west and
-north-east coasts. It has an agreeable fresh taste, like dew. Looking
-down into it, I see many lame of the maringouin, or large mosquito: no
-fish. The maringouins themselves are troublesome,&mdash;whirring around us
-and stinging. On striking out for the middle, one is surprised to feel
-the water growing slightly warmer. The committee of investigation in
-1851 found the temperature of the lake, in spite of a north wind, 20.5
-Centigrade, while that of the air was but 19 (about 69 F. for the water,
-and 66.2 for the air). The depth in the centre is over six feet; the
-average is scarcely four.</p>
-
-<p>Regaining the bank, we prepare to ascend the Morne de la Croix. The
-circular path by which it is commonly reached is now under water; and we
-have to wade up to our waists. All the while clouds keep passing over us
-in great slow whirls. Some are white and half-transparent; others opaque
-and dark gray;&mdash;a dark cloud passing through a white one looks like a
-goblin. Gaining the opposite shore, we find a very rough path over
-splintered stone, ascending between the thickest fern-growths possible
-to imagine. The general tone of this fern is dark green; but there are
-paler cloudings of yellow and pink,&mdash;due to the varying age of the
-leaves, which are pressed into a cushion three or four feet high, and
-almost solid enough to sit upon. About two hundred and fifty yards from
-the crater edge, the path rises above this tangle, and zigzags up the
-morne, which now appears twice as lofty as from the lake, where we had a
-curiously foreshortened view of it. It then looked scarcely a hundred
-feet high; it is more than double that. The cone is green to the top
-with moss, low grasses, small fern, and creeping pretty plants, like
-violets, with big carmine flowers. The path is a black line: the rock
-laid bare by it looks as if burned to the core. We have now to use our
-hands in climbing; but the low thick ferns give a good hold. Out of
-breath, and drenched in perspiration, we reach the apex,&mdash;the highest
-point of the island. But we are curtained about with clouds,&mdash;moving
-in dense white and gray masses: we cannot see fifty feet away.</p>
-
-<p>The top of the peak has a slightly slanting surface of perhaps twenty
-square yards, very irregular in outline;&mdash;southwardly the morne
-pitches sheer into a frightful chasm, between the converging of two of
-those long corrugated ridges already described as buttressing the
-volcano on all sides. Through a cloud-rift we can see another
-crater-lake twelve hundred feet below&mdash;said to be five times larger
-than the Étang we have just left: it is also of more irregular outline.
-This is called the <i>Étang Sec</i>, or "Dry Pool," because dry in less
-rainy seasons. It occupies a more ancient crater, and is very rarely
-visited: the path leading to it is difficult and dangerous,&mdash;a
-natural ladder of roots and lianas over a series of precipices. Behind
-us the Crater of the Three Palmistes now looks no larger than the
-surface on which we stand;&mdash;over its further boundary we can see
-the wall of another gorge, in which there is a third crater-lake. West
-and north are green peakings, ridges, and high lava walls steep as
-fortifications. All this we can only note in the intervals between
-passing of clouds. As yet there is no landscape visible
-southward;&mdash;we sit down and wait.</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>IX</h4>
-
-
-<p>... Two crosses are planted nearly at the verge of the precipice; a
-small one of iron; and a large one of wood&mdash;probably the same put up
-by the Abbé Lespinasse during the panic of 1851, after the eruption. This
-has been splintered to pieces by a flash of lightning; and the fragments
-are clumsily united with cord. There is also a little tin plate let into
-a slit in a black post: it bears a date,&mdash;<i>8 Avril, 1867</i>.... The
-volcanic vents, which were active in 1851, are not visible from the
-peak: they are in the gorge descending from it, at a point nearly on a
-level with the Étang Sec.</p>
-
-<p>The ground gives out a peculiar hollow sound when tapped, and is
-covered with a singular lichen,&mdash;all composed of round overlapping
-leaves about one-eighth of an inch in diameter, pale green, and tough as
-fish-scales. Here and there one sees a beautiful branching growth, like
-a mass of green coral: it is a gigantic moss. <i>Cabane-Jésus</i>
-("bed-of-Jesus") the patois name is: at Christmas-time, in all the
-churches, those decorated cribs in which the image of the Child-Saviour
-is laid are filled with it. The creeping crimson violet is also here.
-Fire-flies with bronze-green bodies are crawling about;&mdash;I notice
-also small frogs, large gray crickets, and a species of snail with a
-black shell. A solitary humming-bird passes, with a beautiful blue head,
-flaming like sapphire.</p>
-
-<p>All at once the peak vibrates to a tremendous sound from somewhere
-below.... It is only a peal of thunder; but it startled at first,
-because the mountain rumbles and grumbles occasionally.... From the
-wilderness of ferns about the lake a sweet long low whistle
-comes&mdash;three times;&mdash;a <i>siffleur-de-montagne</i> has its nest
-there.</p>
-
-<p>There is a rain-storm over the woods beneath us: clouds now hide
-everything but the point on which we rest; the crater of the Palmistes
-becomes invisible. But it is only for a little while that we are thus
-befogged: a wind conies, blows the clouds over us, lifts them up and
-folds them like a drapery, and slowly whirls them away northward. And
-for the first time the view is clear over the intervening gorge,&mdash;now
-spanned by the rocket-leap of a perfect rainbow.</p>
-
-<p>... Valleys and mornes, peaks and ravines,&mdash;succeeding each other
-swiftly as surge succeeds surge in a storm,&mdash;a weirdly tossed world,
-but beautiful as it is weird: all green the foreground, with all tints of
-green, shadowing off to billowy distances of purest blue. The sea-line
-remains invisible as ever: you know where it is only by the zone of pale
-light ringing the double sphericity of sky and ocean. And in this double
-blue void the island seems to hang suspended: far peaks seem to come up
-from nowhere, to rest on nothing&mdash;like forms of mirage. Useless to
-attempt photography;&mdash;distances take the same color as the sea.
-Vauclin's truncated mass is recognizable only by the shape of its indigo
-shadows. All is vague, vertiginous;&mdash;the land still seems to quiver
-with the prodigious forces that upheaved it.</p>
-
-<p>High over all this billowing and peaking tower the Pitons of Carbet,
-gem-violet through the vapored miles,&mdash;the tallest one filleted
-with a single soft white band of cloud. Through all the wonderful chain
-of the Antilles you might seek in vain for other peaks exquisite of form
-as these. Their beauty no less surprises the traveller to-day than it
-did Columbus three hundred and eighty-six years ago, when&mdash;on the
-thirteenth day of June, 1502&mdash;his caravel first sailed into sight
-of them, and he asked his Indian guide the name of the unknown land, and
-the names of those marvellous shapes. Then, according to Pedro Martyr de
-Anghiera, the Indian answered that the name of the island was Madiana;
-that those peaks had been venerated from immemorial time by the ancient
-peoples of the archipelago as the birthplace of the human race; and that
-the first brown habitants of Madiana, having been driven from their
-natural heritage by the man-eating pirates of the south&mdash;the cannibal
-Caribs,&mdash;remembered and mourned for their sacred mountains, and
-gave the names of them, for a memory, to the loftiest summits of their
-new home,&mdash;Hayti.... Surely never was fairer spot hallowed by the
-legend of man's nursing-place than the valley blue-shadowed by those
-peaks,&mdash;worthy, for their gracious femininity of shape, to seem the
-visible breasts of the All-nourishing Mother,&mdash;dreaming under this
-tropic sun.</p>
-
-<p>Touching the zone of pale light north-east, appears a beautiful
-peaked silhouette,&mdash;Dominica. We had hoped to perceive Saint Lucia;
-but the atmosphere is too heavily charged with vapor to-day. How
-magnificent must be the view on certain extraordinary days, when it
-reaches from Antigua to the Grenadines&mdash;over a range of three
-hundred miles! But the atmospheric conditions which allow of such a
-spectacle are rare indeed. As a general rule, even in the most unclouded
-West Indian weather, the loftiest peaks fade into the light at a
-distance of one hundred miles.</p>
-
-<p>A sharp ridge covered with fern cuts off the view of the northern
-slopes: one must climb it to look down upon Macouba. Macouba occupies
-the steepest slope of Pelée, and the grimmest part of the coast: its
-little <i>chef-lieu</i> is industrially famous for the manufacture of
-native tobacco, and historically for the ministrations of Père Labat,
-who rebuilt its church. Little change has taken place in the parish
-since his time. "Do you know Macouba?" asks a native writer;&mdash;"it
-is not Pelion upon Ossa, but ten or twelve Pelions side by side with ten
-or twelve Ossæ, interseparated by prodigious ravines. Men can speak to
-each other from places whence, by rapid walking, it would require hours
-to meet;&mdash;to travel there is to experience on dry land the
-sensation of the sea."</p>
-
-<p>With the diminution of the warmth provoked by the exertion of climbing,
-you begin to notice how cool it feels;&mdash;you could almost doubt the
-testimony of your latitude. Directly east is Senegambia: we are well
-south of Timbuctoo and the Sahara,&mdash;on a line with southern India. The
-ocean has cooled the winds; at this altitude the rarity of the air is
-northern; but in the valleys below the vegetation is African. The best
-alimentary plants, the best forage, the flowers of the gardens, are of
-Guinea;&mdash;the graceful date-palms are from the Atlas region: those
-tamarinds, whose thick shade stifles all other vegetal life beneath it,
-are from Senegal. Only, in the touch of the air, the vapory colors of
-distance, the shapes of the hills, there is a something not of Africa:
-that strange fascination which has given to the island its poetic creole
-name,&mdash;<i>le Pays des Revenants.</i> And the charm is as puissant in
-our own day as it was more than two hundred years ago, when Père Du Tertre
-wrote:&mdash;"I have never met one single man, nor one single woman, of all
-those who came back therefrom, in whom I have not remarked a most
-passionate desire to return thereunto."</p>
-
-<p>Time and familiarity do not weaken the charm, either for those born
-among these scenes who never voyaged beyond their native island, or for
-those to whom the streets of Paris and the streets of St. Pierre are
-equally well known. Even at a time when Martinique had been forsaken by
-hundreds of her ruined planters, and the paradise-life of the old days
-had become only a memory to embitter exile,&mdash;a Creole
-writes:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Let there suddenly open before you one of those vistas, or
-anses, with colonnades of cocoa-palm&mdash;at the end of which you see
-smoking the chimney of a sugar-mill, and catch a glimpse of the hamlet of negro
-cabins (<i>cases</i>);&mdash;or merely picture to yourself one of the most
-ordinary, most trivial scenes: nets being hauled by two ranks of
-fishermen; a canot waiting for the embellie to make a dash for the
-beach; even a negro bending under the weight of a basket of fruits, and
-running along the shore to get to market;&mdash;and illuminate that with
-the light of our sun! What landscapes!&mdash;O Salvator Rosa! O Claude
-Lorrain,&mdash;if I had your pencil!... Well do I remember the day on
-which, after twenty years of absence, I found myself again in presence of
-these wonders;&mdash;I feel once more the thrill of delight that made all
-my body tremble, the tears that came to my eyes. It was my land, my own
-land, that appeared so beautiful."...<a name="FNanchor_36_1" id="FNanchor_36_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_36_1" class="fnanchor">[36]</a></p>
-
-<p><br /></p>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_36_1" id="Footnote_36_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_36_1"><span class="label">[36]</span></a>Dr. E. Rufz: "Études historiques," vol. I, p. 180.</p></div>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>X</h4>
-
-
-<p>At the beginning, while gazing south, east, west, to the rim of the
-world, all laughed, shouted, interchanged the quick delight of new
-impressions: every face was radiant.... Now all look serious;&mdash;none
-speak. The first physical joy of finding oneself on this point in violet
-air, exalted above the hills, soon yields to other emotions inspired by
-the mighty vision and the colossal peace of the heights. Dominating all,
-I think, is the consciousness of the awful antiquity of what one is
-looking upon,&mdash;such a sensation, perhaps, as of old found utterance in
-that tremendous question of the Book of Job:&mdash;"<i>Wast thou brought
-forth before the hills?</i>"</p>
-
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
-<a id="figure48"></a>
-<img src="images/figure48.jpg" width="400" alt="" />
-<p class="center">RUINS, ST. PIERRE<br />
-<i>Decked out with flowers grayed by the passing years,
-these crumbling walls look immeasurably old.</i></p>
-</div>
-
-
-<p>... And the blue multitude of the peaks, the perpetual congregation of
-the mornes, seem to chorus in the vast resplendence,&mdash;telling of
-Nature's eternal youth, and the passionless permanence of that about us
-and beyond us and beneath,&mdash;until something like the fulness of a
-great grief begins to weigh at the heart.... For all this astonishment of
-beauty, all this majesty of light and form and color, will surely
-endure,&mdash;marvellous as now,&mdash;after we shall have lain down to
-sleep where no dreams come, and may never arise from the dust of our rest
-to look upon it.</p>
-
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 300px;">
-<img src="images/figure49.jpg" width="400" alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4><a id="TI_CANOTIE">'TI CANOTIÉ</a></h4>
-
-
-<h4>I</h4>
-
-
-<div class="figleft" style="width: 60px;">
-<img src="images/figure50.jpg" width="60" height="80" alt="" />
-</div>
-
-
-
-<p>One might almost say that commercial time in St. Pierre is measured by
-cannon-shots,&mdash;by the signal-guns of steamers. Every such report
-announces an event of extreme importance to the whole population. To the
-merchant it is a notification that mails, money, and goods have
-arrived;&mdash;to consuls and Government officials it gives notice of fees
-and dues to be collected;&mdash;for the host of lightermen, longshoremen,
-port laborers of all classes, it promises work and pay;&mdash;for all it
-signifies the arrival of food. The island does not feed itself: cattle,
-salt meats, hams, lard, flour, cheese, dried fish, all come from
-abroad,&mdash;particularly from America. And in the minds of the colored
-population the American steamer is so intimately associated with the
-idea of those great tin cans in which food-stuffs are brought from the
-United States, that the onomatope applied to the can, because of the
-sound outgiven by it when tapped,&mdash;<i>bom!</i>&mdash;is also applied
-to the ship itself. The English or French or Belgian steamer, however
-large, is only known as <i>packett-à, batiment-là</i>; but the American
-steamer is always the "bom-ship"&mdash;<i>batiment-bom-à</i>; or, the
-"food-ship"&mdash;<i>batiment-mangé-à.</i> ... You hear women and men
-asking each other, as the shock of the gun flaps through all the town,
-"<i>Mil godé ça qui là, chè?</i>" And if the answer be, "<i>Mais c'est
-bom-là, chè,&mdash;bom-mangé-à ka rivé</i>" (Why, it is the bom,
-dear,&mdash;the food-bom that has come), great is the exultation.</p>
-
-<p>Again, because of the sound of her whistle, we find a steamer called in
-this same picturesque idiom, <i>batiment-cône</i>,&mdash;"the horn-ship."
-There is even a song, of which the refrain is:&mdash;</p>
-
-
-<p><span style="margin-left: 5em;">"Bom-là rivé, chè,&mdash;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Batiment-cône-là rivé."</span></p>
-
-
-<p>... But of all the various classes of citizens, those most joyously
-excited by the coming of a great steamer, whether she be a "bom" or
-not,&mdash;are the '<i>ti canotié</i>, who swarm out immediately in little
-canoes of their own manufacture to dive for coins which passengers gladly
-throw into the water for the pleasure of witnessing the graceful spectacle.
-No sooner does a steamer drop anchor&mdash;unless the water be very rough
-indeed&mdash;than she is surrounded by a fleet of the funniest little boats
-imaginable, full of naked urchins screaming creole.</p>
-
-<p><br /></p>
-
-<p>These <i>'ti canotié</i>&mdash;these little canoe-boys and
-professional divers&mdash;are, for the most part, sons of boatmen of
-color, the real canotiers. I cannot find who first invented the '<i>ti
-canot</i>: the shape and dimensions of the little canoe are fixed
-according to a tradition several generations old; and no improvements
-upon the original model seem to have ever been attempted, with the sole
-exception of a tiny water-tight box contrived sometimes at one end, in
-which the <i>palettes</i>, or miniature paddles, and various other
-trifles may be stowed away. The actual cost of material for a canoe of
-this kind seldom exceeds twenty-five or thirty cents; and, nevertheless,
-the number of canoes is not very large&mdash;I doubt if there be more
-than fifteen in the harbor;&mdash;as the families of Martinique boatmen
-are all so poor that twenty-five sous are difficult to spare, in spite
-of the certainty that the little son can earn fifty times the amount
-within a month after owning a canoe.</p>
-
-<p>For the manufacture of a canoe an American lard-box or kerosene-oil box
-is preferred by reason of its shape; but any well-constructed
-shipping-case of small size would serve the purpose. The top is removed;
-the sides and the corners of the bottom are sawn out at certain angles;
-and the pieces removed are utilized for the sides of the bow and
-stern,&mdash;sometimes also in making the little box for the paddles, or
-palettes, which are simply thin pieces of tough wood about the form and
-size of a cigar-box lid. Then the little boat is tarred and varnished:
-it cannot sink,&mdash;though it is quite easily upset. There are no seats.
-The boys (there are usually two to each canot) simply squat down in the
-bottom,&mdash;facing each other. They can paddle with surprising swiftness
-over a smooth sea; and it is a very pretty sight to witness one of their
-prize contests in racing,&mdash;which take place every 14th of July....</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>II</h4>
-
-
-<p>... It was five o'clock in the afternoon: the horizon beyond the harbor
-was turning lemon-color;&mdash;and a thin warm wind began to come in weak
-puffs from the south-west,&mdash;the first breaths to break the immobility
-of the tropical air. Sails of vessels becalmed at the entrance of the bay
-commenced to flap lazily: they might belly after sundown.</p>
-
-<p>The <i>La Guayra</i> was in port, lying well out: her mountainous iron
-mass rising high above the modest sailing craft moored in her
-vicinity,&mdash;barks and brigantines and brigs and schooners and
-barkentines. She had lain before the town the whole afternoon,
-surrounded by the entire squadron of canots; and the boys were still
-circling about her flanks, although she had got up steam and was lifting
-her anchor. They had been very lucky, indeed, that afternoon,&mdash;all the
-little canotiers;&mdash;and even many yellow lads, not fortunate enough to
-own canoes, had swum out to her in hope of sharing the silver shower
-falling from her saloon-deck. Some of these, tired out, were resting
-themselves by sitting on the slanting cables of neighboring ships.
-Perched naked thus,&mdash;balancing in the sun, against the blue of sky or
-water, their slender bodies took such orange from the mellowing light as
-to seem made of some self-luminous substance,&mdash;flesh of
-sea-fairies....</p>
-
-<p>Suddenly the <i>La Guayra</i> opened her steam-throat and uttered
-such a moo that all the mornes cried out for at least a minute
-after;&mdash;and the little fellows perched on the cables of the sailing
-craft tumbled into the sea at the sound and struck out for shore. Then
-the water all at once burst backward in immense frothing swirls from
-beneath the stem of the steamer; and there arose such a heaving as made
-all the little canoes dance. The <i>La Guayra</i> was moving. She moved
-slowly at first, making a great fuss as she turned round: then she began
-to settle down to her journey very majestically,&mdash;just making the
-water pitch a little behind her, as the hem of a woman's robe tosses
-lightly at her heels while she walks.</p>
-
-<p>And, contrary to custom, some of the canoes followed after her. A dark
-handsome man, wearing an immense Panama hat, and jewelled rings upon his
-hands, was still throwing money; and still the boys dived for it. But
-only one of each crew now plunged; for, though the <i>La Guayra</i> was yet
-moving slowly, it was a severe strain to follow her, and there was no
-time to be lost.</p>
-
-<p>The captain of the little band&mdash;black Maximilien, ten years old,
-and his comrade Stéphane&mdash;nicknamed <i>Ti Chabin</i>, because of
-his bright hair,&mdash;a slim little yellow boy of eleven&mdash;led the
-pursuit, crying always, "<i>Encò, Missié,&mdash;encò!</i>"...</p>
-
-<p>The <i>La Guayra</i> had gained fully two hundred yards when the
-handsome passenger made his final largess,&mdash;proving himself quite an
-expert in flinging coin. The piece fell far short of the boys, but near
-enough to distinctly betray a yellow shimmer as it twirled to the water.
-That was gold!</p>
-
-<p>In another minute the leading canoe had reached the spot, the other
-canotiers voluntarily abandoning the quest,&mdash;for it was little use to
-contend against Maximilien and Stéphane, who had won all the canoe
-contests last 14th of July. Stéphane, who was the better diver,
-plunged.</p>
-
-<p>He was much longer below than usual, came up at quite a distance, panted
-as he regained the canoe, and rested his arms upon it. The water was so
-deep there, he could not reach the coin the first time, though he could
-see it: he was going to try again,&mdash;it was gold, sure enough.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"<i>Fouinq! ça fond içitt!</i>" he gasped.</p>
-
-<p>Maximilien felt all at once uneasy. Very deep water, and perhaps sharks.
-And sunset not far off! The <i>La Guayra</i> was diminishing in the
-offing.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"<i>Boug-là 'lé fai nou néyé!&mdash;laissé y, Stéphane!</i>" he
-cried. (The fellow wants to drown us. <i>Laissé</i>&mdash;leave it
-alone.)</p>
-
-<p>But Stéphane had recovered breath, and was evidently resolved to try
-again. It was gold!</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"<i>Mais ça c'est lò!</i>"</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"<i>Assez, non!</i>" screamed Maximilien. "<i>Pa plongé ncò, moin
-ka di ou! Ah! foute!</i>"...</p>
-
-<p>Stéphane had dived again!</p>
-
-<p>... And where were the others? "<i>Bon-Dié, gadé oti yo yé!</i>" They
-were almost out of sight,&mdash;tiny specks moving shoreward.... The <i>La
-Guayra</i> now seemed no bigger than the little packet running between St.
-Pierre and Fort-de-France.</p>
-
-<p>Up came Stéphane again, at a still greater distance than
-before,&mdash;holding high the yellow coin in one hand. He made for the
-canoe, and Maximilien paddled towards him and helped him in. Blood was
-streaming from the little diver's nostrils, and blood colored the water
-he spat from his mouth.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"<i>Ah! moin té ka di ou laissé y!</i>" cried Maximilien, in
-anger and alarm.... "<i>Gàdé, godé sang-à ka coulé nans nez ou,&mdash;nans
-bouche ou!... Mi oti lézautt!</i>"</p>
-
-<p><i>Lézautt</i>, the rest, were no longer visible.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"<i>Et mi oti nou yé!</i>" cried Maximilien again. They had never
-ventured so far from shore.</p>
-
-<p>But Stéphane answered only, "<i>C'est lò!</i>" For the first time in his
-life he held a piece of gold in his fingers. He tied it up in a little
-rag attached to the string fastened about his waist,&mdash;a purse of his
-own invention,&mdash;and took up his paddles, coughing the while and
-spitting crimson.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"<i>Mi! mi!&mdash;mi oti nou yé!</i>" reiterated Maximilien.
-"<i>Bon-Dié!</i> look where we are!"</p>
-
-<p>The Place had become indistinct;&mdash;the light-house, directly behind
-half an hour earlier, now lay well south: the red light had just been
-kindled. Seaward, in advance of the sinking orange disk of the sun, was
-the <i>La Guayra</i>, passing to the horizon. There was no sound from the
-shore: about them a great silence had gathered,&mdash;the Silence of seas,
-which is a fear. Panic seized them: they began to paddle furiously.</p>
-
-<p>But St. Pierre did not appear to draw any nearer. Was it only an effect
-of the dying light, or were they actually moving towards the
-semicircular cliffs of Fond-Corré?... Maximilien began to cry. The
-little chabin paddled on,&mdash;though the blood was still trickling over
-his breast.</p>
-
-<p>Maximilien screamed out to him:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"<i>Ou pa ka pagayé,&mdash;anh?&mdash;ou ni bousoin demi?</i>?"
-(Thou dost not paddle, eh?&mdash;thou wouldst go to sleep?)</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"<i>Si! moin ka pagayé,&mdash;epi fò!</i>" (I am paddling, and
-hard, too!) responded Stéphane....</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"<i>Ou ka pagayé!&mdash;ou ka menti!</i>" (Thou art
-paddling!&mdash;thou liest!) vociferated Maximilien.... "And the fault is
-all thine. I cannot, all by myself, make the canoe to go in water like
-this! The fault is all thine: I told thee not to dive, thou stupid!"</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"<i>Ou fou!</i>" cried Stéphane, becoming angry. "<i>Moin ka
-pagayé!</i>" (I am paddling.)</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Beast! never may we get home so! Paddle, thou
-lazy;&mdash;paddle, thou nasty!"</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"<i>Macaque</i> thou!&mdash;monkey!"</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"<i>Chabin!</i>&mdash;must be chabin, for to be stupid so!"</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Thou black monkey!&mdash;thou species of <i>ouistiti!</i>"</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Thou tortoise-of-the-land!&mdash;thou slothful more than
-<i>molocoye!</i>"</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Why, thou cursed monkey, if thou sayest I do not paddle, thou
-dost not know how to paddle!"...</p>
-
-<p>... But Maximilien's whole expression changed: he suddenly stopped
-paddling, and stared before him and behind him at a great violet band
-broadening across the sea northward out of sight; and his eyes were big
-with terror as he cried out:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"<i>Mais ni qui chose qui douôle içitt!</i>... There is something
-queer, Stéphane; there is something queer."...</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Ah! you begin to see now, Maximilien!&mdash;it is the current!"</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"A devil-current, Stéphane.... We are drifting: we will go to the
-horizon!"...</p>
-
-<p>To the horizon&mdash;"<i>nou kallé Ihorizon!</i>"&mdash;a phrase of
-terrible picturesqueness.... In the creole tongue, "to the horizon"
-signifies to the Great Open&mdash;into the measureless sea.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"<i>C'est pa lapeine pagayé atouèlement!</i>" (It is no use to
-paddle now), sobbed Maximilien, laying down his palettes.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"<i>Si! si!</i>" said Stéphane, reversing the motion: "paddle
-with the current."</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"With the current! It runs to La Dominique!"</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"<i>Pouloss</i>," phlegmatically returned
-Stéphane,&mdash;"<i>ennou!</i>&mdash;let us make for La Dominique!"</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Thou fool!&mdash;it is more than past forty kilometres....
-<i>Stéphane, mi! gadé!&mdash;mi qui gouôs requ'em!</i>"</p>
-
-<p>A long black fin cut the water almost beside them, passed, and
-vanished,&mdash;a requin indeed! But, in his patois, the boy almost
-re-echoed the name as uttered by quaint Père Du Tertre, who, writing of
-strange fishes more than two hundred years ago, says it is called
-REQUIEM, because for the man who findeth himself alone with it in the
-midst of the sea, surely a requiem must be sung.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Do not paddle, Stéphane!&mdash;do not put thy hand in the
-water again!"</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>III</h4>
-
-
-<p>... The <i>La Guayra</i> was a point on the sky-verge;&mdash;the sun's
-face had vanished. The silence and the darkness were deepening together.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"<i>Si lanmè ka vini plis fò, ça nou ké fai?</i>" (If the sea
-roughens, what are we to do?) asked Maximilien.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Maybe we will meet a steamer," answered Stéphane: "the
-<i>Orinoco</i> was due to-day."</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"And if she pass in the night?"</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"They can see us."...</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"No, they will not be able to see us at all. There is no
-moon."</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"They have lights ahead."</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"I tell thee, they will not see us at all,&mdash;<i>pièss!
-pièss!</i>"</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Then they will hear us cry out."</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"No,&mdash;we cannot cry so loud. One can hear nothing but a
-steam-whistle or a cannon, with the noise of the wind and the water and the
-machine.... Even on the Fort-de-France packet one cannot hear for the
-machine. And the machine of the <i>Orinoco</i> is more big than the church
-of the 'Centre.'"</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Then we must try to get to La Dominique."</p>
-
-<p>... They could now feel the sweep of the mighty current;&mdash;it even
-seemed to them that they could hear it,&mdash;a deep low whispering. At
-long intervals they saw lights,&mdash;the lights of houses in
-Pointe-Prince, in Fond-Canonville,&mdash;in Au Prêcheur. Under them the
-depth was unfathomed:&mdash;hydrographic charts mark it <i>sans-fond.</i>
-And they passed the great cliffs of Aux Abymes, under which lies the
-Village of the Abysms.</p>
-
-<p>The red glare in the west disappeared suddenly as if blown
-out;&mdash;the rim of the sea vanished into the void of the
-gloom;&mdash;the night narrowed about them, thickening like a black fog.
-And the invisible, irresistible power of the sea was now bearing them
-away from the tall coast,&mdash;over profundities unknown,&mdash;over
-the <i>sans-fond</i>,&mdash;out "to the horizon."</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>IV</h4>
-
-
-<p>... Behind the canoe a long thread of pale light quivered and twisted:
-bright points from time to time mounted up, glowered like eyes, and
-vanished again;&mdash;glimmerings of faint flame wormed away on either
-side as they floated on. And the little craft no longer rocked as
-before;&mdash;they felt another and a larger motion,&mdash;long slow
-ascents and descents enduring for minutes at a time;&mdash;they were
-riding the great swells,&mdash;<i>riding the horizon!</i></p>
-
-<p>Twice they were capsized. But happily the heaving was a smooth one, and
-their little canoe could not sink: they groped for it, found it, righted
-it, and climbed in, and baled out the water with their hands.</p>
-
-<p>From time to time they both cried out together, as loud as they
-could,&mdash;"<i>Sucou!&mdash;sucou!&mdash;sucou!</i>"&mdash;hoping that
-some one might be looking for them.... The alarm had indeed been given; and
-one of the little steam-packets had been sent out to look for
-them,&mdash;with torch-fires blazing at her bows; but she had taken the
-wrong direction.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Maximilien," said Stéphane, while the great heaving seemed to
-grow vaster,&mdash;"<i>fau nou ka prié Bon-Dié.</i>"...</p>
-
-<p>Maximilien answered nothing.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"<i>Fau prié Bon-Dié</i>" (We must pray to the Bon-Dié), repeated
-Stéphane.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"<i>Pa lapeine, li pas pè ouè nou atò!</i>" (It is not worth
-while: He cannot see us now) answered the little black.</p>
-
-<p>... In the immense darkness even the loom of the island was no longer
-visible.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"O Maximilien!&mdash;<i>Bon-Dié ka ouè toutt, ha connaitt
-toutt</i>" (He sees all; He knows all), cried Stéphane.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"<i>Y pa pè ouè non pièss atouèlement, moin ben sur!</i>" (He
-cannot see us at all now,&mdash;I am quite sure) irreverently responded
-Maximilien....</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Thou thinkest the Bon-Dié like thyself!&mdash;He has not
-eyes like thou," protested Stéphane. "<i>Li pas ka tiny coulé; li pas
-ka tini zié</i>" (He has not color; He has not eyes), continued the
-boy, repeating the text of his catechism,&mdash;the curious creole
-catechism of old Perè Goux, of Carbet. [Quaint priest and quaint
-catechism have both passed away.]</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"<i>Moin pa save si li pa ka tini coulè</i>" (I know not if
-He has not color), answered Maximilien. "But what I well know is that if
-He has not eyes. He cannot see.... <i>Fouinq!</i>&mdash;how idiot!"</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Why, it is in the Catechism," cried Stéphane....
-"'<i>Bon-Dié, li conm vent: vent tout-patout, et nou pa save ouè
-li;&mdash;li ka touché nou,&mdash;li ka boulvésé lamnè.</i>" (The
-Good-God is like the Wind: the Wind is everywhere, and we cannot see
-It;&mdash;It touches us,&mdash;It tosses the sea.)</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"If the Bon-Dié is the Wind," responded Maximilien, "then
-pray thou the Wind to stay quiet."</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"The Bon-Dié is not the Wind," cried Stéphane: "He is like
-the Wind, but He is not the Wind."...</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"<i>Ah! soc-soc!&mdash;fouinq!</i>... More better past praying to
-care we be not upset again and eaten by sharks."</p>
-
-
-<p class="center">* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *</p>
-
-
-<p>... Whether the little chabin prayed either to the Wind or to the
-Bon-Dié, I do not know. But the Wind remained very quiet all that
-night,&mdash;seemed to hold its breath for fear of ruffling the sea. And in
-the Mouillage of St. Pierre furious American captains swore at the Wind
-because it would not fill their sails.</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>V</h4>
-
-
-<p>Perhaps, if there had been a breeze, neither Stéphane nor Maximilien
-would have seen the sun again. But they saw him rise.</p>
-
-<p>Light pearled in the east, over the edge of the ocean, ran around the
-rim of the sky and yellowed: then the sun's brow appeared;&mdash;a
-current of gold gushed rippling across the sea before him;&mdash;and all
-the heaven at once caught blue fire from horizon to zenith. Violet from
-flood to cloud the vast recumbent form of Pelée loomed far
-behind,&mdash;with long reaches of mountaining: pale grays o'ertopping
-misty blues. And in the north another lofty shape was
-towering,&mdash;strangely jagged and peaked and beautiful,&mdash;the
-silhouette of Dominica: a sapphire saw!... No wandering
-clouds:&mdash;over far Pelée only a shadowy piling of nimbi.... Under
-them the sea swayed dark as purple ink&mdash;a token of tremendous
-depth.... Still a dead calm, and no sail in sight.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"<i>Ça c'est la Dominique</i>," said
-Maximilien,&mdash;"<i>Ennou pou ouivage-à!</i>"</p>
-
-<p>They had lost their little palettes during the night;&mdash;they used
-their naked hands, and moved swiftly. But Dominica was many and many a
-mile away. Which was the nearer island, it was yet difficult to
-say;&mdash;in the morning sea-haze, both were vapory,&mdash;difference
-of color was largely due to position....</p>
-
-<p><i>Sough!&mdash;sough!&mdash;sough!</i>&mdash;A bird with a white
-breast passed overhead; and they stopped paddling to look at it,&mdash;a
-gull. Sign of fair weather!&mdash;it was making for Dominica.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"<i>Moin ni ben faim</i>," murmured Maximilien. Neither had
-eaten since the morning of the previous day,&mdash;most of which they
-had passed sitting in their canoe.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"<i>Moin ni anni soif</i>," said Stéphane. And besides his
-thirst he complained of a burning pain in his head, always growing
-worse. He still coughed, and spat out pink threads after each burst of
-coughing.</p>
-
-<p>The heightening sun flamed whiter and whiter: the flashing of waters
-before his face began to dazzle like a play of lightning.... Now the
-islands began to show sharper lines, stronger colors; and Dominica was
-evidently the nearer;&mdash;for bright streaks of green were breaking at
-various angles through its vapor-colored silhouette, and Martinique
-still remained all blue.</p>
-
-<p>... Hotter and hotter the sun burned; more and more blinding became his
-reverberation. Maximilien's black skin suffered least; but both lads,
-accustomed as they were to remaining naked in the sun, found the heat
-difficult to bear. They would gladly have plunged into the deep water to
-cool themselves, but for fear of sharks;&mdash;all they could do was to
-moisten their heads, and rinse their mouths with sea-water.</p>
-
-<p>Each from his end of the canoe continually watched the horizon. Neither
-hoped for a sail, there was no wind; but they looked for the coining of
-steamers,&mdash;the <i>Orinoco</i> might pass, or the English packet, or
-some one of the small Martinique steamboats might be sent out to find
-them.</p>
-
-<p>Yet hours went by; and there still appeared no smoke in the ring of the
-sky,&mdash;never a sign in all the round of the sea, broken only by the two
-huge silhouettes.... But Dominica was certainly nearing;&mdash;the green
-lights were spreading through the luminous blue of her hills.</p>
-
-<p>... Their long immobility in the squatting posture began to tell upon
-the endurance of both boys,&mdash;producing dull throbbing aches in thighs,
-hips, and loins.... Then, about mid-day, Stéphane declared he could
-not paddle any more;&mdash;it seemed to him as if his head must soon burst
-open with the pain which filled it: even the sound of his own voice hurt
-him,&mdash;he did not want to talk.</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>VI</h4>
-
-
-<p>... And another oppression came upon them,&mdash;in spite of all the
-pains, and the blinding dazzle of waters, and the biting of the sun: the
-oppression of drowsiness. They began to doze at intervals,&mdash;keeping
-their canoe balanced in some automatic way,&mdash;as cavalry soldiers,
-overweary, ride asleep in the saddle.</p>
-
-<p>But at last, Stéphane, awaking suddenly with a paroxysm of coughing, so
-swayed himself to one side as to overturn the canoe; and both found
-themselves in the sea.</p>
-
-<p>Maximilien righted the craft, and got in again; but the little chabin
-twice fell back in trying to raise himself upon his arms. He had become
-almost helplessly feeble. Maximilien, attempting to aid him, again
-overturned the unsteady little boat; and this time it required all his
-skill and his utmost strength to get Stéphane out of the water.
-Evidently Stéphane could be of no more assistance;&mdash;the boy was so
-weak he could not even sit up straight.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"<i>Aïe! ou kê jété nou encò</i>," panted Maximilien,&mdash;"<i>metté
-ou toutt longue.</i>"</p>
-
-<p>Stéphane slowly let himself down, so as to lie nearly all his length in
-the canoe,&mdash;one foot on either side of Maximilien's hips. Then he lay
-very still for a long time,&mdash;so still that Maximilien became
-uneasy.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"<i>Ou ben malade?</i>" he asked.... Stéphane did not seem to
-hear: his eyes remained closed.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Stéphane!" cried Maximilien, in alarm,&mdash;"Stéphane!"</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"<i>C'est lò, papoute</i>," murmured Stéphane, without
-lifting his eyelids,&mdash;"<i>ça c'est lò!&mdash;ou pa janmain cuè
-yon bel pièce conm ça?</i>" (It is gold, little father.... Didst thou
-ever see a pretty piece like that?... No, thou wilt not beat me, little
-father?&mdash;no, <i>papoute!</i>)</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"<i>Ou ka dòmi, Stéphane?</i>"&mdash;queried Maximilien,
-wondering,&mdash;"art asleep?"</p>
-
-<p>But Stéphane opened his eyes and looked at him so strangely! Never had
-he seen Stéphane look that way before.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"<i>Ça ou ni, Stéphane?</i>&mdash;what ails thee?&mdash;<i>aïe!
-Bon-Dié, Bon-Dié?</i>"</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"<i>Bon-Dié!</i>"&mdash;muttered Stéphane, closing his eyes again
-at the sound of the great Name,&mdash;"He has no color;&mdash;He is like
-the Wind."...</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Stéphane!"...</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"He feels in the dark;&mdash;He has not eyes."...</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"<i>Stéphane, pa pàlé ça!</i>"</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"He tosses the sea.... He has no face;&mdash;He lifts up the
-dead... and the leaves."...</p>
-
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
-<a id="figure51"></a>
-<img src="images/figure51.jpg" width="400" alt="" />
-<p class="center">ARMISTICE DAY, FORT-DE-FRANCE<br />
-<i>A review at 7 A. M. by the governor anti his staff, all
-in evening dress, with cannons booming as noisily as
-in the north&mdash;followed by a day busily devoted to
-doing nothing.</i></p>
-</div>
-
-
-<p>&mdash;"<i>Ou fou!</i>" cried Maximilien, bursting into a wild fit of
-sobbing,&mdash;"Stéphane, thou art mad!"</p>
-
-<p>And all at once he became afraid of Stéphane,&mdash;afraid of all he
-said,&mdash;afraid of his touch,&mdash;afraid of his eyes... he was growing
-like a <i>zombi!</i></p>
-
-<p>But Stéphane's eyes remained closed;&mdash;he ceased to speak.</p>
-
-<p>... About them deepened the enormous silence of the sea;&mdash;low swung
-the sun again. The horizon was yellowing: day had begun to fade. Tall
-Dominica was now half green; but there yet appeared no smoke, no sail,
-no sign of life.</p>
-
-<p>And the tints of the two vast Shapes that shattered the rim of the
-light shifted as if evanescing,&mdash;shifted like tones of West Indian
-fishes,&mdash;of <i>pisquette</i> and <i>congre</i>,&mdash;of
-<i>caringue</i> and <i>gouôs-zié</i> and <i>balaou.</i> Lower sank the
-sun;&mdash;cloud-fleeces of orange pushed up over the edge of the
-west;&mdash;a thin warm breath caressed the sea,&mdash;sent long lilac
-shudderings over the flanks of the swells. Then colors changed again:
-violet richened to purple;&mdash;greens blackened softly;&mdash;grays
-smouldered into smoky gold.</p>
-
-<p>And the sun went down.</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>VII</h4>
-
-
-<p>And they floated into the fear of the night together. Again the ghostly
-fires began to wimple about them: naught else was visible but the high
-stars.</p>
-
-<p>Black hours passed. From minute to minute Maximilien cried
-out:&mdash;"<i>Sucou! sucou!</i>" Stéphane lay motionless and dumb: his
-feet, touching Maximilien's naked hips, felt singularly cold.</p>
-
-<p>... Something knocked suddenly against the bottom of the
-canoe,&mdash;knocked heavily&mdash;making a hollow loud sound. It was
-not Stéphane;&mdash;Stéphane lay still as a stone: it was from the
-depth below. Perhaps a great fish passing.</p>
-
-<p>It came again,&mdash;twice,&mdash;shaking the canoe like a great
-blow. Then Stéphane suddenly moved,&mdash;drew up his feet a
-little,&mdash;made as if to speak:&mdash;"<i>Ou</i>..."; but the speech
-failed at his lips,&mdash;ending in a sound like the moan of one trying
-to call out in sleep;&mdash;and Maximilien's heart almost stopped
-beating.... Then Stéphane's limbs straightened again; he made no more
-movement;&mdash;Maximilien could not even hear him breathe.... All the
-sea had begun to whisper.</p>
-
-<p>A breeze was rising;&mdash;Maximilien felt it blowing upon him. All
-at once it seemed to him that he had ceased to be afraid,&mdash;that he
-did not care what might happen. He thought about a cricket he had one
-day watched in the harbor,&mdash;drifting out with the tide, on an atom
-of dead bark,&mdash;and he wondered what had become of it. Then he
-understood that he himself was the cricket,&mdash;still alive. But some
-boy had found him and pulled off his legs. There they were,&mdash;his
-own legs, pressing against him: he could still feel the aching where
-they had been pulled off; and they had been dead so long they were now
-quite cold.... It was certainly Stéphane who had pulled them
-off....</p>
-
-<p>The water was talking to him. It was saying the same thing over and
-over again,&mdash;louder each time, as if it thought he could not hear.
-But he heard it very well:&mdash;"<i>Bon-Dié, li conm vent... li ka
-touché nou... nou pa save ouè li.</i>" (But why had the Bon-Dié
-shaken the wind?) "<i>Li pa ka tint zié</i>," answered the water....
-<i>Ouille!</i>&mdash;He might all the same care not to upset folks in
-the sea!... <i>Mi!</i>...</p>
-
-<p>But even as he thought these things, Maximilien became aware that a
-white, strange, bearded face was looking at him: the Bon-Dié was
-there,&mdash;bending over him with a lantern,&mdash;talking to him in a
-language he did not understand. And the Bon-Dié certainly had
-eyes,&mdash;great gray eyes that did not look wicked at all. He tried to
-tell the Bon-Dié how sorry he was for what he had been saying about
-him;&mdash;but found he could not utter a word. He felt great hands lift
-him up to the stars, and lay him down very near them,&mdash;just under
-them. They burned blue-white, and hurt his eyes like lightning:&mdash;he
-felt afraid of them.... About him he heard voices,&mdash;always speaking
-the same language, which he could not understand.... "<i>Poor little
-devils!&mdash;poor little devils!</i>" Then he heard a bell ring; and
-the Bon-Dié made him swallow something nice and warm;&mdash;and
-everything became black again. The stars went out!...</p>
-
-<p>... Maximilien was lying under an electric-light on board the great
-steamer <i>Rio de Janeiro</i>, and dead Stéphane beside him.... It was four
-o'clock in the morning.</p>
-
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 300px;">
-<img src="images/figure52.jpg" width="400" alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4><a id="LA_FILLE_DE_COULEUR">LA FILLE DE COULEUR</a></h4>
-
-
-
-
-<h4>I</h4>
-
-
-<div class="figleft" style="width: 60px;">
-<img src="images/figure53.jpg" width="60" height="80" alt="" />
-</div>
-
-
-<p>Nothing else in the picturesque life of the French colonies of the
-Occident impresses the traveller on his first arrival more than the
-costumes of the women of color. They surprise the aesthetic sense
-agreeably;&mdash;they are local and special: you will see nothing
-resembling them among the populations of the British West Indies; they
-belong to Martinique, Guadeloupe, Désirade, Marie-Galante, and
-Cayenne,&mdash;in each place differing sufficiently to make the difference
-interesting, especially in regard to the head-dress. That of Martinique is
-quite Oriental;&mdash;more attractive, although less fantastic than the
-Cayenne coiffure, or the pretty drooping mouchoir of Guadeloupe.</p>
-
-<p>These costumes are gradually disappearing, for various reasons,&mdash;the
-chief reason being of course the changes in the social condition of the
-colonies during the last forty years. Probably the question of health
-had also something to do with the almost universal abandonment in
-Martinique of the primitive slave dress,&mdash;<i>chemise</i> and <i>jupe</i>,&mdash;which
-exposed its wearer to serious risks of pneumonia; for as far as
-economical reasons are concerned, there was no fault to find with it:
-six francs could purchase it when money was worth more than it is now.
-The douillette, a long trailing dress, one piece from neck to feet, has
-taken its place.<a name="FNanchor_37_1" id="FNanchor_37_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_37_1" class="fnanchor">[37]</a> But there was a luxurious variety of the jupe
-costume which is disappearing because of its cost; there is no money in
-the colonies now for such display:&mdash;I refer to the celebrated attire
-of the pet slaves and <i>belles affranchies</i> of the old colonial days. A
-full costume,&mdash;including violet or crimson "petticoat" of silk or
-satin; chemise with half-sleeves, and much embroidery and lace;
-"trembling-pins" of gold (<i>zépingue tremblant</i>) to attach the folds of
-the brilliant Madras turban; the great necklace of three or four strings
-of gold beads bigger than peas (<i>collier-choux</i>); the ear-rings,
-immense but light as egg-shells (<i>zanneaux-à-clous</i> or
-<i>zanneaux-chenilles</i>); the bracelets <i>portes-bonheur</i>); the studs
-(<i>boutons-à-clous</i>); the brooches, not only for the turban, but for
-the chemise, below the folds of the showy silken foulard or
-shoulder-scarf,&mdash;would sometimes represent over five thousand francs
-expenditure. This gorgeous attire is becoming less visible every year: it
-is now rarely worn except on very solemn occasions,&mdash;weddings,
-baptisms, first communions, confirmations. The <i>da</i> (nurse) or
-"porteuse-de-baptême" who bears the baby to church holds it at the
-baptismal font, and afterwards carries it from house to house in order that
-all the friends of the family may kiss it, is thus attired; but nowadays,
-unless she be a professional (for there are professional <i>das</i>, hired
-only for such occasions), she usually borrows the jewellry. If tall,
-young, graceful, with a rich gold tone of skin, the effect of her costume
-is dazzling as that of a Byzantine Virgin. I saw one young da who, thus
-garbed, scarcely seemed of the earth and earthly;&mdash;there was an
-Oriental something in her appearance difficult to describe,&mdash;something
-that made you think of the Queen of Sheba going to visit Solomon. She had
-brought a merchant's baby, just christened, to receive the caresses of the
-family at whose house I was visiting; and when it came to my turn to kiss
-it, I confess I could not notice the child: I saw only the beautiful dark
-face, coiffed with orange and purple, bending over it, in an illumination
-of antique gold.... What a da!... She represented really the type of that
-<i>belle affranchie</i> of other days, against whose fascination special
-sumptuary laws were made; romantically she imaged for me the supernatural
-god-mothers and Cinderellas of the creole fairy-tales. For these become
-transformed in the West Indian folklore,&mdash;adapted to the environment,
-and to local idealism:&mdash;Cinderella, for example, is changed to a
-beautiful metisse, wearing a quadruple <i>collier-choux</i>, <i>zépingues
-tremblants</i>, and all the ornaments of a da.<a name="FNanchor_38_1" id="FNanchor_38_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_38_1" class="fnanchor">[38]</a> Recalling
-the impression of that dazzling <i>da</i>, I can even now feel the
-picturesque justice of the fabulist's description of Cinderella's creole
-costume: <i>Ça té ka baille ou mal zie!</i>&mdash;(it would have given you
-a pain in your eyes to look at her!)</p>
-
-<p><br /></p>
-
-<p>... Even the every-day Martinique costume is slowly changing. Year by
-year the "calendeuses"&mdash;the women who paint and fold the
-turbans&mdash;have less work to do;&mdash;the colors of the <i>douiellette</i>
-are becoming less vivid;&mdash;while more and more young colored girls are
-being <i>élevées en chapeau</i> ("brought up in a hat")&mdash;i.e., dressed
-and educated like the daughters of the whites. These, it must be confessed,
-look far less attractive in the latest Paris fashion, unless white as the
-whites themselves: on the other hand, few white girls could look well in
-<i>douillette</i> and <i>mouchoir</i>,&mdash;not merely because of color
-contrast, but because they have not that amplitude of limb and particular
-cambering of the torso peculiar to the half-breed race, with its large
-bulk and stature. Attractive as certain coolie women are, I observed that
-all who have adopted the Martinique costume look badly in it: they are too
-slender of body to wear it to advantage.</p>
-
-<p>Slavery introduced these costumes, even though it probably did not
-invent them; and they were necessarily doomed to pass away with the
-peculiar social conditions to which they belonged. If the population
-clings still to its <i>douillettes</i>, <i>mouchoirs</i>, and
-<i>foulards</i>, the fact is largely due to the cheapness of such
-attire. A girl can dress very showily indeed for about twenty
-francs&mdash;shoes excepted;&mdash;and thousands never wear shoes. But
-the fashion will no doubt have become cheaper and uglier within another
-decade.</p>
-
-<p>At the present time, however, the stranger might be sufficiently
-impressed by the oddity and brilliancy of these dresses to ask about
-their origin,&mdash;in which case it is not likely that he will obtain
-any satisfactory answer. After long research I found myself obliged to
-give up all hope of being able to outline the history of Martinique
-costume,&mdash;partly because books and histories are scanty or
-defective, and partly because such an undertaking would require a
-knowledge possible only to a specialist. I found good reason,
-nevertheless, to suppose that these costumes were in the beginning
-adopted from certain fashions of provincial France,&mdash;that the
-respective fashions of Guadeloupe, Martinique, and Cayenne were
-patterned after modes still worn in parts of the mother-country. The
-old-time garb of the <i>affranchie</i>&mdash;that still worn by the
-<i>da</i>&mdash;somewhat recalls dresses worn by the women of Southern
-France, more particularly about Montpellier. Perhaps a specialist might
-also trace back the evolution of the various creole coiffures to old
-forms of head-dresses which still survive among the French
-country-fashions of the south and south-west provinces;&mdash;but local
-taste has so much modified the original style as to leave it
-unrecognizable to those who have never studied the subject. The
-Martinique fashion of folding and tying the Madras, and of calendering
-it, are probably local; and I am assured that the designs of the curious
-semi-barbaric jewellry were all invented in the colony, where the
-<i>collier-choux</i> is still manufactured by local goldsmiths.
-Purchasers buy one, two, or three <i>grains</i>, or beads, at a time,
-and string them only on obtaining the requisite number.... This is the
-sum of all that I was able to learn on the matter; but in the course of
-searching various West Indian authors and historians for information, I
-found something far more important than the origin of the
-<i>douillette</i> or the <i>collier-choux</i>: the facts of that strange
-struggle between nature and interest, between love and law, between
-prejudice and passion, which forms the evolutional history of the mixed
-race.</p>
-
-<p><br /></p>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_37_1" id="Footnote_37_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_37_1"><span class="label">[37]</span></a> The brightly colored douillettes are classified by the people
-according to the designs of the printed
-calico:&mdash;<i>robe-à-bambou,&mdash;robe-à-bouquet,&mdash;robe-arc-en-ciel&mdash;robe-à-carreau</i>,&mdash;etc.,
-according as the pattern is in stripes, flower-designs, "rainbow" bands
-of different tints, or plaidings. <i>Ronde-en-ronde</i> means a stuff
-printed with disk-patterns, or link-patterns of different
-colors,&mdash;each joined with the other. A robe of one color only is
-called a <i>robe-uni.</i></p>
-
-<p>The general laws of contrasts observed in the costume require the silk
-foulard, or shoulder-kerchief, to make a sharp relief with the color of
-the robe, thus:&mdash;</p>
-
-<div>
-<table border="0" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="10" summary="">
-<tr>
-<th><i>Robe.</i></th>
-<th><i>Foulard.</i></th>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-<td align="left">Yellow </td>
-<td align="left">Blue.</td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-<td align="left">Dark Blue</td>
-<td align="left">Yellow.</td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-<td align="left">Pink</td>
-<td align="left">Green.</td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-<td align="left">Violet</td>
-<td align="left">Bright red.</td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-<td align="left">Red</td>
-<td align="left">Violet.</td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-<td align="left">Chocolate (cacao)</td>
-<td align="left">Pale blue.</td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-<td align="left">Sky blue</td>
-<td align="left">Pale rose.</td>
-</tr>
-</table></div>
-
-<p>These refer, of course, to dominant or ground colors, as there are
-usually several tints in the foulard as well as the robe. The painted
-Madras should always be bright yellow. According to popular ideas of
-good dressing, the different tints of skin should be relieved by special
-choice of color in the robe, as follows:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p><span style="margin-left: 1em;"><i>Capresse</i> (a clear red skin) should wear</span><span style="margin-left: 5.2em;">Pale yellow.</span></p>
-
-<p><span style="margin-left: 1em;"><i>Mulatresse</i> (according to shade)</span><span style="margin-left: 8.2em;">{Rose.</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 22em;">{Blue.</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 22em;">{Green.</span></p>
-
-<p><span style="margin-left: 1em;"><i>Négresse</i></span><span style="margin-left: 17.2em;"> {White.</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 22em;">{Scarlet, or any violent color.</span></p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_38_1" id="Footnote_38_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_38_1"><span class="label">[38]</span></a>"<i>Vouèla Cendrillon evec yon bel ròbe velou grande
-lakhè.... Ça té ka bail ou mal ziè. Li té tini bel zanneau dans
-zòreill li, quate-tou-chou, bouoche, bracelet, tremblant,&mdash;toutt sòte
-bel baggaïe conm ça.</i>"...&mdash;(<i>Conte Cendrillon</i>,&mdash;d'après
-Turiault.)</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"There was Cendrillon with a beautiful long trailing robe of
-velvet on her!... It was enough to hurt one's eyes to look at her! She had
-beautiful rings in her ears, and a collier-choux of four rows, brooches,
-<i>tremblants</i>, bracelets,&mdash;everything fine of that
-sort."&mdash;(Story of Cinderella in Turinault's Creole Grammar).</p></div>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>II</h4>
-
-
-<p>Considering only the French peasant colonist and the West African slave
-as the original factors of that physical evolution visible in the modern
-<i>fille-de-couleur</i>, it would seem incredible;&mdash;for the
-intercrossing alone could not adequately explain all the physical results.
-To understand them fully, it will be necessary to bear in mind that both of
-the original races became modified in their lineage to a surprising
-degree by conditions of climate and environment.</p>
-
-<p>The precise time of the first introduction of slaves into Martinique is
-not now possible to ascertain,&mdash;no record exists on the subject; but
-it is probable that the establishment of slavery was coincident with the
-settlement of the island. Most likely the first hundred colonists from
-St. Christophe, who landed, in 1635, near the bay whereon the city of
-St. Pierre is now situated, either brought slaves with them, or else
-were furnished with negroes very soon after their arrival. In the time
-of Père Dutertre (who visited the colonies in 1640, and printed his
-history of the French Antilles at Paris in 1667) slavery was already a
-flourishing institution,&mdash;the foundation of the whole social
-structure. According to the Dominican missionary, the Africans then in the
-colony were decidedly repulsive; he describes the women as "hideous"
-(<i>hideuses</i>). There is no good reason to charge Dutertre with
-prejudice in his pictures of them. No writer of the century was more keenly
-sensitive to natural beauty than the author of that "Voyage aux
-Antilles" which inspired Chateaubriand, and which still, after two
-hundred and fifty years, delights even those perfectly familiar with the
-nature of the places and things spoken of. No other writer and traveller
-of the period possessed to a more marked degree that sense of generous
-pity which makes the unfortunate appear to us in an illusive, almost
-ideal aspect. Nevertheless, he asserts that the negresses were, as a
-general rule, revoltingly ugly,&mdash;and, although he had seen many
-strange sides of human nature (having been a soldier before becoming a
-monk), was astonished to find that miscegenation had already begun.
-Doubtless the first black women thus favored, or afflicted, as the case
-might be, were of the finer types of negresses; for he notes remarkable
-differences among the slaves procured from different coasts and various
-tribes. Still, these were rather differences of ugliness than aught
-else: they were all repulsive;&mdash;only some were more repulsive than
-others.<a name="FNanchor_39_1" id="FNanchor_39_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_39_1" class="fnanchor">[39]</a> Granting that the first mothers of mulattoes in the colony
-were the superior rather than the inferior physical types,&mdash;which
-would be a perfectly natural supposition,&mdash;still we find their
-offspring worthy in his eyes of no higher sentiment than pity. He writes in
-his chapter entitled "<i>De la naissance honteuse des mulastres</i>":</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"They have something of their Father and something of their
-Mother,&mdash;in the same wise that Mules partake of the qualities of the
-creatures that engendered them: for they are neither all white, like the
-French; nor all black, like the Negroes, but have a livid tint, which
-comes of both."...</p>
-
-<p>To-day, however, the traveller would look in vain for a <i>livid</i>
-tint among the descendants of those thus described: in less than two
-centuries and a half the physical characteristics of the race have been
-totally changed. What most surprises is the rapidity of the
-transformation. After the time of Père Labat, Europeans never could
-"have mistaken little negro children for monkeys." Nature had begun to
-remodel the white, the black, and half-breed according to environment
-and climate: the descendant of the early colonists ceased to resemble
-his fathers; the creole negro improved upon his progenitors;<a name="FNanchor_40_1" id="FNanchor_40_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_40_1" class="fnanchor">[40]</a> the
-mulatto began to give evidence of those qualities of physical and mental
-power which were afterwards to render him dangerous to the integrity of
-the colony itself. In a temperate climate such a change would have been
-so gradual as to escape observation for a long period;&mdash;in the tropics
-it was effected with a quickness that astounds by its revelation of the
-natural forces at work.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Under the sun of the tropics," writes Dr. Rufz, of Martinique,
-"the African race, as well as the European, becomes greatly modified in its
-reproduction. Either race gives birth to a totally new being. The Creole
-African came into existence as did the Creole white." And just as the
-offspring of Europeans who emigrated to the tropics from different parts
-of France displayed characteristics so identical that it was impossible
-to divine the original race-source,&mdash;so likewise the Creole
-negro&mdash;whether brought into being by the heavy thick-set Congo, or the
-long slender black of Senegambia, or the suppler and more active
-Mandingo,&mdash;appeared so remodelled, homogeneous, and adapted in such
-wise to his environment that it was utterly impossible to discern in his
-features anything of his parentage, his original kindred, his original
-source.... The transformation is absolute. All that In be asserted is:
-"This is a white Creole; this is a black Creole";&mdash;or, "This is a
-European white; this is an African black";&mdash;and furthermore, after a
-certain number of years passed in the tropics, the enervated and
-discolored aspect of the European may create uncertainty, as to his
-origin. But with very few exceptions the primitive African, or, as he is
-termed here, the "Coast Black" (<i>le noir de la Côte</i>), can be
-recognized at once....</p>
-
-<p>... "The Creole negro is gracefully shaped, finely proportioned: his
-limbs are lithe, his neck long;&mdash;his features are more delicate, his
-lips less thick, his nose less flattened, than those of the African;&mdash;he
-has the Carib's large and melancholy eye, better adapted to express the
-emotions.... Rarely can you discover in him the sombre fury of the
-African, rarely a surly and savage mien: he is brave, chatty, boastful.
-His skin has not the same tint as his father's,&mdash;it has become more
-satiny; his hair remains woolly, but it is a finer wool... all his
-outlines are more rounded;&mdash;one may perceive that the cellular tissue
-predominates, as in cultivated plants, of which the ligneous and savage
-fibre has become transformed."...<a name="FNanchor_41_1" id="FNanchor_41_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_41_1" class="fnanchor">[41]</a></p>
-
-<p>This new and comelier black race naturally won from its masters a
-more sympathetic attention than could have been vouchsafed to its
-progenitors; and the consequences in Martinique and elsewhere seemed to
-have evoked the curious Article 9 of the <i>Code Noir</i> of
-1665,&mdash;enacting, first, that free men who should have one or two
-children by slave women, as well as the slave-owners permitting the
-same, should be each condemned to pay two thousand pounds of sugar;
-secondly, that if the violator of the ordinance should be himself the
-owner of the mother and father of her children, the mother and the
-children should be confiscated for the profit of the Hospital, and
-deprived for their lives of the right to enfranchisement. An exception,
-however, was made to the effect that if the father were unmarried at the
-period of his concubinage, he could escape the provisions of the penalty
-by marrying, "according to the rites of the Church," the female slave,
-who would thereby be enfranchised, and her children "rendered free and
-legitimate." Probably the legislators did not imagine that the first
-portion of the article could prove inefficacious, or that any violator
-of the ordinance would seek to escape the penalty by those means offered
-in the provision. The facts, however, proved the reverse. Miscegenation
-continued; and Labat notices two cases of marriage between whites and
-blacks,&mdash;describing the offspring of one union as "very handsome
-little mulattoes." These legitimate unions were certainly
-exceptional,&mdash;one of them was dissolved by the ridicule cast upon
-the father;&mdash;but illegitimate unions would seem to have become
-common within a very brief time after the passage of the law. At a later
-day they were to become customary. The Article 9 was evidently at fault;
-and in March, 1724, the Black Code was reinforced by a new ordinance, of
-which the sixth provision prohibited marriage as well as concubinage
-between the races.</p>
-
-<p>It appears to have had no more effect than the previous law, even in
-Martinique, where the state of public morals was better than in Santo
-Domingo. The slave race had begun to exercise an influence never
-anticipated by legislators. Scarcely a century had elapsed since the
-colonization of the island; but in that time climate and civilization
-had transfigured the black woman. "After one or two generations," writes
-the historian Rufz, "the <i>Africaine</i>, reformed, refined, beautified in
-her descendants, transformed into the creole negress, commenced to exert
-a fascination irresistible, capable of winning anything (<i>capable de
-tout obtenir</i>)."<a name="FNanchor_42_1" id="FNanchor_42_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_42_1" class="fnanchor">[42]</a> Travellers of the eighteenth century were
-confounded by the luxury of dress and of jewellry displayed by swarthy
-beauties in St. Pierre. It was a public scandal to European eyes. But
-the creole negress or mulattress, beginning to understand her power,
-sought for higher favors and privileges than silken robes and necklaces
-of gold beads: she sought to obtain, not merely liberty for herself, but
-for her parents, brothers, sisters,&mdash;even friends. What successes she
-achieved in this regard may be imagined from the serious statement of
-creole historians that if human nature had been left untrammelled to
-follow its better impulses, slavery would have ceased to exist a century
-before the actual period of emancipation! By 1738, when the white
-population had reached its maximum (15,000),<a name="FNanchor_43_1" id="FNanchor_43_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_43_1" class="fnanchor">[43]</a> and colonial luxury had
-arrived at its greatest height, the question of voluntary
-enfranchisement was becoming very grave. So omnipotent the charm of
-half-breed beauty that masters were becoming the slaves of their slaves.
-It was not only the creole <i>negress</i> who had appeared to play a part
-in this strange drama which was the triumph of nature over interest and
-judgment: her daughters, far more beautiful, had grown up to aid her,
-and to form a special class. These women, whose tints of skin rivalled
-the colors of ripe fruit, and whose gracefulness&mdash;peculiar, exotic,
-and irresistible&mdash;made them formidable rivals to the daughters of the
-dominant race, were no doubt physically superior to the modern
-<i>filles-de-couleur</i>. They were results of a natural selection which
-could have taken place in no community otherwise constituted;&mdash;the
-offspring of the union between the finer types of both races. But that
-which only slavery could have rendered possible began to endanger the
-integrity of slavery itself: the institutions upon which the whole
-social structure rested were being steadily sapped by the influence of
-half-breed girls. Some new, severe, extreme policy was evidently
-necessary to avert the already visible peril. Special laws were passed
-by the Home-Government to check enfranchisement, to limit its reasons or
-motives; and the power of the slave woman was so well comprehended by
-the Métropole that an extraordinary enactment was made against it. It
-was decreed that whosoever should free a woman of color would have to
-pay to the Government <i>three times her value as a slave!</i></p>
-
-<p>Thus heavily weighted, emancipation advanced much more slowly than
-before, but it still continued to a considerable extent. The poorer
-creole planter or merchant might find it impossible to obey the impulse
-of his conscience or of his affection, but among the richer classes
-pecuniary considerations could scarcely affect enfranchisement. The
-country had grown wealthy; and although the acquisition of wealth may
-not evoke generosity in particular natures, the enrichment of a whole
-class develops pre-existing tendencies to kindness, and opens new ways
-for its exercise. Later in the eighteenth century, when hospitality had
-been cultivated as a gentleman's duty to fantastical extremes,&mdash;when
-liberality was the rule throughout society,&mdash;when a notary summoned to
-draw up a deed, or a priest invited to celebrate a marriage, might receive
-for fee five thousand francs in gold,&mdash;there were certainly many
-emancipations.... "Even though interest and public opinion in the
-colonies," says a historian,<a name="FNanchor_44_1" id="FNanchor_44_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_44_1" class="fnanchor">[44]</a> "were
-adverse to enfranchisement, the private feeling of each man combated that
-opinion;&mdash;Nature resumed her sway in the secret places of
-hearts;&mdash;and as local custom permitted a sort of polygamy, the rich
-man naturally felt himself bound in honor to secure the freedom of his own
-blood.... It was not a rare thing to see legitimate wives taking care of
-the natural children of their husbands,&mdash;becoming their godmothers
-(<i>s'en faire les marraines</i>)."... Nature seemed to laugh all these
-laws to scorn, and the prejudices of race! In vain did the wisdom of
-legislators attempt to render the condition of the enfranchised more
-humble,&mdash;enacting extravagant penalties for the blow by which a
-mulatto might avenge the insult of a white,&mdash;prohibiting the freed
-from wearing the same dress as their former masters or mistresses
-wore;&mdash;"the <i>belles affranchies</i> found, in a costume whereof
-the negligence seemed a very inspiration of voluptuousness, means of
-evading that social inferiority which the law sought to impose upon
-them:&mdash;they began to inspire the most violent jealousies."<a name="FNanchor_45_1" id="FNanchor_45_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_45_1" class="fnanchor">[45]</a></p>
-
-<p><br /></p>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_39_1" id="Footnote_39_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_39_1"><span class="label">[39]</span></a>It is quite possible, however, that the slaves of
-Dutertre's time belonged for the most part to the uglier African tribes;
-and that later supplies may have been procured from other parts of the
-slave coast. Writing half a century later, Père Labat declares having
-seen freshly disembarked blacks handsome enough to inspire an
-artist:&mdash;"<i>J'en ai vu des deux sexes faits à peindre, et beaux par
-merveille</i>" (vol. iv. chap, vii,). He adds that their skin was extremely
-fine, and of velvety softness;&mdash;"<i>le velours n'est pas plus
-doux</i>."... Among the 30,000 blacks yearly shipped to the French
-colonies, there were doubtless many representatives of the finer African
-races.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_40_1" id="Footnote_40_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_40_1"><span class="label">[40]</span></a>"Leur sueur n'est pas fétide comme celle des nègres de
-la Guinée," writes the traveller Dauxion-Lavaysse, in 1813.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_41_1" id="Footnote_41_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_41_1"><span class="label">[41]</span></a>Dr. E. Rufz: "Études historiques et statistiques sur la
-population de la Martinique." St. Pierre: 1850. Vol. I, pp. 148-50.</p>
-
-<p>It has been generally imagined that the physical constitution of the
-black race was proof against the deadly climate of the West Indies. The
-truth is that the freshly imported Africans died of fever by thousands
-and tens-of-thousands;&mdash;the creole-negro race, now so prolific,
-represents only the fittest survivors in the long and terrible struggle
-of the slave element to adapt itself to the new environment. Thirty
-thousand negroes a year were long needed to supply the French colonies.
-Between 1700 and 1789 no less than 900,000 slaves were imported by San
-Domingo alone;&mdash;yet there were less than half that number left in
-1789. (See Placide Justin's history of Santo Domingo, p. 147.) The entire
-slave population of Barbadoes had to be renewed every sixteen years,
-according to estimates: the loss to planters by deaths of slaves
-(reckoning the value of a slave at only £20 sterling) during the same
-period was £1,600,000 ($8,000,000). (Burck's "History of European
-Colonies," vol. II., p. 141; French edition of 1767.)</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_42_1" id="Footnote_42_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_42_1"><span class="label">[42]</span></a>Rufz: "Études," vol. I., p. 236.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_43_1" id="Footnote_43_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_43_1"><span class="label">[43]</span></a>I am assured it has now fallen to a figure not exceeding
-5000.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_44_1" id="Footnote_44_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_44_1"><span class="label">[44]</span></a>Rufz: "Études," vol. II., pp. 311, 312.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_45_1" id="Footnote_45_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_45_1"><span class="label">[45]</span></a>Rufz: "Études," vol. I., p. 237.</p></div>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>III</h4>
-
-
-<p>What the legislators of 1685 and 1724 endeavored to correct did not
-greatly improve with the abolition of slavery, nor yet with those
-political troubles which socially deranged colonial life. The
-<i>fille-de-couleur</i>, inheriting the charm of the belle
-<i>affranchie</i>, continued to exert a similar influence, and to fulfil
-an almost similar destiny. The latitude of morals
-persisted,&mdash;though with less ostentation: it has latterly
-contracted under the pressure of necessity rather than through any other
-influences. Certain ethical principles thought essential to social
-integrity elsewhere have always been largely relaxed in the tropics;
-and&mdash;excepting, perhaps, Santo Domingo&mdash;the moral standard in
-Martinique was not higher than in the other French colonies. Outward
-decorum might be to some degree maintained; but there was no great
-restraint of any sort upon private lives: it was not uncommon for a rich
-man to have many "natural" families; and almost every individual of
-means had children of color. The superficial character of race
-prejudices was everywhere manifested by unions, which although never
-mentioned in polite converse, were none the less universally known; and
-the "irresistible fascination" of the half-breed gave the open lie to
-pretended hate. Nature, in the guise of the <i>belle affranchie</i>, had
-mocked at slave codes;&mdash;in the <i>fille-de-couleur</i> she still
-laughed at race pretensions, and ridiculed the fable of physical
-degradation. To-day, the situation has not greatly changed; and with
-such examples on the part of the cultivated race, what could be expected
-from the other? Marriages are rare;&mdash;it has been officially stated
-that the illegitimate births are sixty per cent; but seventy-five to
-eighty per cent would probably be nearer the truth. It is very common to
-see in the local papers such announcements as: <i>Enfants
-légitimes</i>, 1 (one birth announced); <i>enfants naturels</i>,
-25.</p>
-
-<p>In speaking of the <i>fille-de-couleur</i> it is necessary also to
-speak of the extraordinary social stratification of the community to
-which she belongs. The official statement of 20,000 "colored" to the
-total population of between 173,000 and 174,000 (in which the number of
-pure whites is said to have fallen as low as 5,000) does not at all
-indicate the real proportion of mixed blood. Only a small element of
-unmixed African descent really exists; yet when a white creole speaks of
-the <i>gens-de-couleur</i> he certainly means nothing darker than a
-mulatto skin. Race classifications have been locally made by sentiments
-of political origin: at least four or five shades of visible color are
-classed as negro. There is, however, some natural truth at the bottom of
-this classification: where African blood predominates, the sympathies
-are likely to be African; and the turning-point is reached only in the
-true mulatto, where, allowing the proportions of mixed blood to be
-nearly equal, the white would have the dominant influence in situations
-more natural than existing politics. And in speaking of the
-<i>filles-de-couleur</i>, the local reference is always to women in whom
-the predominant element is white: a white creole, as a general rule,
-deigns only thus to distinguish those who are nearly white,&mdash;more
-usually he refers to the whole class as mulattresses. Those women whom
-wealth and education have placed in a social position parallel with that
-of the daughters of creole whites are in some cases allowed to pass for
-white,&mdash;or at the very worst, are only referred to in a whisper as
-being <i>de couleur</i>. (Needless to say, these are totally beyond the
-range of the present considerations: there is nothing to be further said
-of them except that they can be classed with the most attractive and
-refined women of the entire tropical world.) As there is an almost
-infinite gradation from the true black up to the brightest
-<i>sang-mêlé</i>, it is impossible to establish any
-color-classification recognizable by the eye alone; and whatever lines
-of demarcation can be drawn between castes must be social rather than
-ethnical. In this sense we may accept the local Creole definition of
-<i>fille-de-couleur</i> as signifying, not so much a daughter of the
-race of visible color, as the half-breed girl destined from her birth to
-a career like that of the <i>belle affranchie</i> of the old
-regime;&mdash;for the moral cruelties of slavery have survived
-emancipation.</p>
-
-<p>Physically, the typical <i>fille-de-couleur</i> may certainly be
-classed, as white creole writers have not hesitated to class her, with the
-"most beautiful women of the human race."<a name="FNanchor_46_1" id="FNanchor_46_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_46_1" class="fnanchor">[46]</a> She
-has inherited not only the finer bodily characteristics of either parent
-race, but a something else belonging originally to neither, and created by
-special climatic and physical conditions,&mdash;a grace, a suppleness of
-form, a delicacy of extremities (so that all the lines described by the
-bending of limbs or fingers are parts of clean curves), a satiny smoothness
-and fruit-tint of skin,&mdash;solely West Indian.... Morally, of course, it
-is much more difficult to describe her; and whatever may safely be said
-refers rather to the fille-de-couleur of the past than of the present
-half-century. The race is now in a period of transition: public education
-and political changes are modifying the type, and it is impossible to guess
-the ultimate consequence, because it is impossible to safely predict
-what new influences may yet be brought to affect its social development.
-Befare the present era of colonial decadence, the character of the
-fille-de-couleur was not what it is now. Even when totally uneducated,
-she had a peculiar charm,&mdash;that charm of childishness which has power
-to win sympathy from the rudest natures. One could not but feel attracted
-towards this naïf being, docile as an infant, and as easily pleased or
-as easily pained,&mdash;artless in her goodnesses as in her faults, to all
-outward appearance;&mdash;willing to give her youth, her beauty, her
-caresses to some one in exchange for the promise to love her,&mdash;perhaps
-also to care for a mother, or a younger brother. Her astonishing capacity
-for being delighted with trifles, her pretty vanities and pretty follies,
-her sudden veerings of mood from laughter to tears,&mdash;like the sudden
-rainbursts and sunbursts of her own passionate climate: these touched,
-drew, won, and tyrannized. Yet such easily created joys and pains did not
-really indicate any deep reserve of feeling: rather a superficial
-sensitiveness only,&mdash;like the <i>zhèbe-m'amisé</i>, or
-<i>zhèbe-manmzelle</i>, whose leaves close at the touch of a hair. Such
-human manifestations, nevertheless, are apt to attract more in proportion
-as they are more visible,&mdash;in proportion as the soul-current, being
-less profound, flows more audibly. But no hasty observation could have
-revealed the whole character of the fille-de-couleur to the stranger,
-equally charmed and surprised: the creole comprehended her better, and
-probably treated her with even more real kindness. The truth was that
-centuries of deprivation of natural rights and hopes had given to her
-race&mdash;itself fathered by passion unrestrained and mothered by
-subjection unlimited&mdash;an inherent scepticism in the duration of love,
-and a marvellous capacity for accepting the destiny of abandonment as one
-accepts the natural and the inevitable. And that desire to
-please&mdash;which in the fille-de-couleur seemed to prevail above all
-other motives of action (maternal affection excepted)&mdash;could have
-appeared absolutely natural only to those who never reflected that even
-sentiment had been artificially cultivated by slavery.</p>
-
-<p>She asked for so little,&mdash;accepted a gift with such childish
-pleasure,&mdash;submitted so unresistingly to the will of the man
-who promised to love her. She bore him children&mdash;such beautiful
-children!&mdash;whom he rarely acknowledged, and was never asked
-to legitimatize;&mdash;and she did not ask perpetual affection
-notwithstanding,&mdash;regarded the relation as a necessarily temporary
-one, to be sooner or later dissolved by the marriage of her children's
-father. If deceived in all things,&mdash;if absolutely ill-treated and left
-destitute, she did not lose faith in human nature: she seemed a born
-optimist, believing most men good;&mdash;she would make a home for another
-and serve him better than any slave.... "<i>Née de l'amour</i>," says a
-creole writer, "<i>la fille-de-couleur vit d'amour, de rires, et
-d'oublis</i>."...<a name="FNanchor_47_1" id="FNanchor_47_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_47_1" class="fnanchor">[47]</a></p>
-
-<p>Then came the general colonial crash!... You cannot see its results
-without feeling touched by them. Everywhere the weird beauty, the
-immense melancholy of tropic ruin. Magnificent terraces, once golden
-with cane, now abandoned to weeds and serpents;&mdash;deserted
-plantation-homes, with trees rooted in the apartments and pushing up
-through the place of the roofs;&mdash;grass-grown alleys ravined by
-rains;&mdash;fruit-trees strangled by lianas;&mdash;here and there the stem
-of some splendid palmiste, brutally decapitated, naked as a
-mast;&mdash;petty frail growths of banana-trees or of bamboo slowly taking
-the place of century-old forest giants destroyed to make charcoal. But
-beauty enough remains to tell what the sensual paradise of the old days
-must have been, when sugar was selling at 52.</p>
-
-<p>And the fille-de-couleur has also changed. She is much less humble and
-submissive,&mdash;somewhat more exacting: she comprehends better the moral
-injustice of her position. The almost extreme physical refinement and
-delicacy, bequeathed to her by the freedwomen of the old regime, are
-passing away: like a conservatory plant deprived of its shelter, she is
-returning to a more primitive condition,&mdash;hardening and growing perhaps
-less comely as well as less helpless. She perceives also in a vague way
-the peril of her race: the creole white, her lover and protector, is
-emigrating;&mdash;the domination of the black becomes more and more
-probable. Furthermore, with the continual increase of the difficulty of
-living, and the growing pressure of population, social cruelties and
-hatreds have been developed such as her ancestors never knew. She is still
-loved; but it is alleged that she rarely loves the white, no matter how
-large the sacrifices made for her sake, and she no longer enjoys that
-reputation of fidelity accorded to her class in other years. Probably
-the truth is that the fille-de-couleur never had at any time capacity to
-bestow that quality of affection imagined or exacted as a right. Her
-moral side is still half savage: her feelings are still those of a
-child. If she does not love the white man according to his unreasonable
-desire, it is certain at least that she loves him as well as he
-deserves. Her alleged demoralization is more apparent than real;&mdash;she
-is changing from an artificial to a very natural being, and revealing more
-and more in her sufferings the true character of the luxurious social
-condition that brought her into existence. As a general rule, even while
-questioning her fidelity, the creole freely confesses her kindness of
-heart, and grants her capable of extreme generosity and devotedness to
-strangers or to children whom she has an opportunity to care for.
-Indeed, her natural kindness is so strikingly in contrast with the
-harder and subtler character of the men of color that one might almost
-feel tempted to doubt if she belong to the same race. Said a creole
-once, in my hearing:&mdash;"The gens-de-couleur are just like the
-<i>tourtouroux</i>:<a name="FNanchor_48_1" id="FNanchor_48_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_48_1" class="fnanchor">[48]</a> one must pick out the females and leave the males
-alone." Although perhaps capable of a double meaning, his words were not
-lightly uttered;&mdash;he referred to the curious but indubitable fact that
-the character of the colored woman appears in many respects far superior
-to that of the colored man. In order to understand this, one must bear
-in mind the difference in the colonial history of both sexes; and a
-citation from General Romanet,<a name="FNanchor_49_1" id="FNanchor_49_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_49_1" class="fnanchor">[49]</a> who visited Martinique at the end of
-the last century, offers a clue to the mystery. Speaking of the tax upon
-enfranchisement, he writes:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"The governor appointed by the sovereign delivers the
-certificates of liberty,&mdash;on payment by the master of a sum usually
-equivalent to the value of the subject. Public interest frequently
-justifies him in making the price of the slave proportionate to the desire
-or the interest manifested by the master. It can be readily understood that
-the tax upon the liberty of the women ought to be higher than that of the
-men: the latter unfortunates having no greater advantage than that of being
-useful;&mdash;the former know how to please: they have those rights and
-privileges which the whole world allows to their sex; they know how to
-make even the fetters of slavery serve them for adornments. They may be
-seen placing upon their proud tyrants the same chains worn by
-themselves, and making them kiss the marks left thereby: the master
-becomes the slave, and purchases another's liberty only to lose his
-own."</p>
-
-<p>Long before the time of General Romanet, the colored male slave might
-win liberty as the guerdon of bravery in fighting against foreign
-invasion, or might purchase it by extraordinary economy, while working
-as a mechanic on extra time for his own account (he always refused to
-labor with negroes); but in either case his success depended upon the
-possession and exercise of qualities the reverse of amiable. On the
-other hand, the bondwoman won manumission chiefly through her power to
-excite affection. In the survival and perpetuation of the fittest of
-both sexes these widely different characteristics would obtain more and
-more definition with successive generations.</p>
-
-<p>I find in the "Bulletin des Actes Administratifs de la Martinique" for
-1831 (No. 41) a list of slaves to whom liberty was accorded <i>pour
-services rendus à leurs maîtres</i>. Out of the sixty-nine
-enfranchisements recorded under this head, there are only two names of
-male adults to be found,&mdash;one an old man of sixty;&mdash;the other,
-called Laurencin, the betrayer of a conspiracy. The rest are young girls,
-or young mothers and children;&mdash;plenty of those singular and pretty
-names in vogue among the creole population,&mdash;Acélie, Avrillette,
-Mélie, Robertine, Célianne, Francillette, Adée, Catharinette, Sidollie,
-Céline, Coraline;&mdash;and the ages given are from sixteen to twenty-one,
-with few exceptions. Yet these liberties were asked for and granted at a
-time when Louis Philippe had abolished the tax on manumissions.... The
-same "Bulletin" contains a list of liberties granted to colored men,
-<i>pour service accompli dans la milice</i>, only!</p>
-
-<p>Most of the French West Indian writers whose works I was able to
-obtain and examine speak severely of the <i>hommes-de-couleur</i> as a
-class,&mdash;in some instances the historian writes with a very violence
-of hatred. As far back as the commencement of the eighteenth century,
-Labat, who, with all his personal oddities, was undoubtedly a fine judge
-of men, declared:&mdash;"The mulattoes are as a general rule well made,
-of good stature, vigorous, strong, adroit, industrious, and daring
-(<i>hardis</i>) beyond all conception. They have much vivacity, but are
-given to their pleasures, fickle, proud, deceitful (<i>cachés</i>),
-wicked, and capable of the greatest crimes." A San Domingo historian,
-far more prejudiced than Père Labat, speaks of them "as physically
-superior, though morally inferior to the whites": he wrote at a time
-when the race had given to the world the two best swordsmen it has yet
-perhaps seen,&mdash;Saint-Georges and Jean-Louis.</p>
-
-<p>Commenting on the judgment of Père Labat, the historian Borde
-observes:&mdash;"The wickedness spoken of by Père Labat doubtless relates
-to their political passions only; for the women of color are, beyond any
-question, the best and sweetest persons in the world&mdash;<i>à coup
-sûr, les meilleures et les plus douces personnes qu'il y ait au
-monde</i>."&mdash;("Histoire de l'Ile de la Trinidad," par M. Pierre
-Gustave Louis Borde, vol. I., p. 222.) The same author, speaking of their
-goodness of heart, generosity to strangers and the sick says "they are
-born Sisters of Charity";&mdash;and he is not the only historian who has
-expressed such admiration of their moral qualities. What I myself saw
-during the epidemic of 1887-88 at Martinique convinced me that these
-eulogies of the women of color are not extravagant. On the other hand,
-the existing creole opinion of the men of color is much less favorable
-than even that expressed by Père Labat. Political events and passions
-have, perhaps, rendered a just estimate of their qualities difficult.
-The history of the <i>hommes-de-couleur</i> in all the French colonies has
-been the same;&mdash;distrusted by the whites, who feared their aspirations
-to social equality, distrusted even more by the blacks (who still hate
-them secretly, although ruled by them), the mulattoes became an
-Ishmaelitish clan, inimical to both races, and dreaded of both. In
-Martinique it was attempted, with some success, to manage them by
-according freedom to all who would serve in the militia for a certain
-period with credit. At no time was it found possible to compel them to
-work with blacks; and they formed the whole class of skilled city
-workmen and mechanics for a century prior to emancipation.</p>
-
-<p>... To-day it cannot be truly said of the <i>fille-de-couleur</i> that
-her existence is made up of "love, laughter, and forgettings." She has aims
-in life,&mdash;the bettering of her condition, the higher education of her
-children, whom she hopes to free from the curse of prejudice. She still
-clings to the white, because through him she may hope to improve her
-position. Under other conditions she might even hope to effect some sort
-of reconciliation between the races. But the gulf has become so much
-widened within the last forty years, that no rapprochement now appears
-possible; and it is perhaps too late even to restore the lost prosperity
-of the colony by any legislative or commercial reforms. The universal
-creole belief is summed up in the daily-repeated cry: "<i>C'est un pays
-perdu!</i>" Yearly the number of failures increase; and more whites
-emigrate;&mdash;and with every bankruptcy or departure some
-fille-de-couleur is left almost destitute, to begin life over again. Many a
-one has been rich and poor several times in succession;&mdash;one day her
-property is seized for debt;&mdash;perhaps on the morrow she finds some one
-able and willing to give her a home again... Whatever comes, she does not
-die for grief, this daughter of the sun: she pours out her pain in song,
-like a bird, Here is one of her little improvisations,&mdash;a song very
-popular in both Martinique and Guadeloupe, though originally composed in
-the latter colony:&mdash;</p>
-
-
-<p><span style="margin-left: 5em;">&mdash;"Good-bye Madras!</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Good-bye foulard!</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Good-bye pretty calicoes!</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Good-bye collier-choux!</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">That ship</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Which is there on the buoy,</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">It is taking</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">My doudoux away."</span></p>
-
-<p><span style="margin-left: 5em;">&mdash;"Adiéu Madras!</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Adiéu foulard!</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Adiéu dézinde!</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Adiéu collier-choux!</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Batiment-là</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Qui sou labouè-là,</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Li ka mennein</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Doudoux-à-moin allé."</span></p>
-
-<p><span style="margin-left: 5em;">&mdash;"Very good-day,&mdash;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Monsieur the Consignee.</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">I come</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">To make one little petition.</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">My doudoux</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Is going away.</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Alas! I pray you</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Delay his going."</span></p>
-
-<p><span style="margin-left: 5em;">&mdash;"Bien le-bonjou',</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Missié le Consignataire.</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Moin ka vini</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Fai yon ti pétition;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Doudoux-à-moin</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Y ka pati,&mdash;T'enprie, hélas!</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Rétàdé li."</span></p>
-
-<p>[He answers kindly in French: the <i>békés</i> are always kind to these
-gentle children.]</p>
-
-<p><span style="margin-left: 5em;">&mdash;"My dear child,</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">It is too late.</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">The bills of lading</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Are already signed;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">The ship</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Is already on the buoy.</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">In an hour from now</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">They will be getting her under way."</span></p>
-
-<p><span style="margin-left: 5em;">&mdash;"Ma chère enfant</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Il est trop tard,</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Les connaissements</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Sont déjà signés,</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Est déjà sur la bouée;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Dans une heure d'ici,</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Ils vont appareiller."</span></p>
-
-<p><span style="margin-left: 5em;">&mdash;"When the foulards came....</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">I always had some;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">When the Madras-kerchiefs came,</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">I always had some;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">When the printed calicoes came,</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">I always had some.</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">... That second officer&mdash;Is such a kind man!"</span></p>
-
-<p><span style="margin-left: 5em;">&mdash;"Foulard rivé,</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Moin té toujou tini;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Madras rivé,</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Moin té toujou tini;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Dézindes rivé,</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Moin té toujou tini.&mdash;Capitaine sougonde</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">C'est yon bon gàçon!"</span></p>
-
-<p><span style="margin-left: 5em;">"Everybody has</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Somebody to love;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Everybody has</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Somebody to pet;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Every body has</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">A sweetheart of her own.</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">I am the only one</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Who cannot have that,&mdash;I!"</span></p>
-
-<p><span style="margin-left: 5em;">"Toutt moune tini</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Yon moune yo aimé;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Toutt moune tini</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Yon moune yo chéri;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Toutt moune tini</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Yon doudoux à yo.</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Jusse moin tou sèle</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Pa tini ça&mdash;moin!"</span></p>
-
-
-<p>... On the eve of the <i>Fête Dieu</i>, or Corpus Christi festival, in
-all these Catholic countries, the city streets are hung with banners and
-decorated with festoons and with palm branches; and great altars are
-erected at various points along the route of the procession, to serve as
-resting-places for the Host. These are called <i>reposoirs</i>; in creole
-patois, "<i>reposouè Bon-Dié</i>." Each wealthy man lends something to help
-to make them attractive,&mdash;rich plate, dainty crystal, bronzes,
-paintings, beautiful models of ships or steamers, curiosities from
-remote parts of the world.... The procession over, the altar is
-stripped, the valuables are returned to their owners: all the splendor
-disappears.... And the spectacle of that evanescent magnificence,
-repeated year by year, suggested to this proverb-loving people a similitude
-for the unstable fortune of the fille-de-couleur:&mdash;<i>Fortune
-milatresse c'est reposouè Bon-Dié</i>. (The luck of the mulattress is the
-resting-place of the Good-God).</p>
-
-<p><br /></p>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_46_1" id="Footnote_46_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_46_1"><span class="label">[46]</span></a><i>La race de sang-mêlé, issue des blancs et des noirs,
-est éminement civilizable. Comme types physiques, elle fournit dans
-beaucoup d'individus, dans ses femmes en général, les plus beaux
-specimens de la race humaine</i>.&mdash;"Le Préjugé de Race aux Antilles
-Françaises." Par G. Souquet-Basiège. St. Pierre, Martinique: 1883. pp.
-661-62.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_47_1" id="Footnote_47_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_47_1"><span class="label">[47]</span></a>Turiault: "Étude sur le langage Créole de la
-Martinique." Brest: 1874.... On page 136 he cites the following pretty
-verses in speaking of the <i>fille-de-couleur</i>:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p><span style="margin-left: 5em;">L'Amour prit soin de la former</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Tendre, naïve, et caressante.</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Faite pour plaire, encore plus pour aimer.</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Portant tous les traits précieux</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Du caractère d'une amante.</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Le plaisir sur sa bouche et l'amour dans set yeux.</span></p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_48_1" id="Footnote_48_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_48_1"><span class="label">[48]</span></a>A sort of land-crab;&mdash;the female is selected for food,
-and, properly cooked, makes a delicious dish;&mdash;the male is almost
-worthless.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_49_1" id="Footnote_49_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_49_1"><span class="label">[49]</span></a>"Voyage à la Martinique," Par J. R., Général de
-Brigade. Paris: An. XII., 1804. Page 106.</p></div>
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 300px;">
-<img src="images/figure54.jpg" width="400" alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4><a id="BETE-NI-PIE">BÊTE-NI-PIÉ</a></h4>
-
-
-
-
-<h4>I</h4>
-
-
-<div class="figleft" style="width: 60px;">
-<img src="images/figure55.jpg" width="60" height="80" alt="" />
-</div>
-
-
-<p>St. Pierre is in one respect fortunate beyond many tropical
-cities;&mdash;she has scarcely any mosquitoes, although there are plenty
-of mosquitoes in other parts of Martinique, even in the higher mountain
-villages. The flood of bright water that pours perpetually through all
-her streets, renders her comparatively free from the pest;&mdash;nobody
-sleeps under a mosquito bar.</p>
-
-<p>Nevertheless, St. Pierre is not exempt from other peculiar plagues of
-tropical life; and you cannot be too careful about examining your bed
-before venturing to lie down, and your clothing before you
-dress;&mdash;for various disagreeable things might be hiding in them: a
-spider large as a big crab, or a scorpion or a <i>mabouya</i> or a
-centipede,&mdash;or certain large ants whose bite burns like the
-pricking of a red-hot needle. No one who has lived in St. Pierre is
-likely to forget the ants.... There are three or four kinds in every
-house;&mdash;the <i>fourmi fou</i> (mad ant), a little speckled
-yellowish creature whose movements are so rapid as to delude the vision;
-the great black ant which allows itself to be killed before it lets go
-what it has bitten; the venomous little red ant, which is almost too
-small to see; and the small black ant which does not bite at
-all,&mdash;are usually omnipresent, and appear to dwell together in
-harmony. They are pests in kitchens, cupboards, and safes; but they are
-scavengers. It is marvellous to see them carrying away the body of a
-great dead roach or centipede,&mdash;pulling and pushing together like
-trained laborers, and guiding the corpse over obstacles or around them
-with extraordinary skill.... There was a time when ants almost destroyed
-the colony,&mdash;in 1751. The plantations, devastated by them are
-described by historians as having looked as if desolated by fire.
-Underneath the ground in certain places, layers of their eggs two inches
-deep were found extending over acres. Infants left unwatched in the
-cradle for a few hours were devoured alive by them. Immense balls of
-living ants were washed ashore at the same time on various parts of the
-coast (a phenomenon repeated within the memory of creoles now living in
-the north-east parishes). The Government vainly offered rewards for the
-best means of destroying the insects; but the plague gradually
-disappeared as it came.</p>
-
-<p>None of these creatures can be prevented from entering a
-dwelling;&mdash;you may as well resign yourself to the certainty of
-meeting with them from time to time. The great spiders (with the
-exception of those which are hairy) need excite no alarm or
-disgust;&mdash;indeed they are suffered to live unmolested in many
-houses, partly owing to a belief that they bring good-luck, and partly
-because they destroy multitudes of those enormous and noisome roaches
-which spoil whatever they cannot eat. The scorpion is less common; but
-it has a detestable habit of lurking under beds; and its bite
-communicates a burning fever. With far less reason, the mabouya is
-almost equally feared. It is a little lizard about six inches long, and
-ashen-colored;&mdash;it haunts only the interior of houses, while the
-bright-green lizards dwell only upon the roofs. Like other reptiles of
-the same order, the mabouya can run over or cling to polished surfaces;
-and there is a popular belief that if frightened, it will leap at one's
-face or hands and there fasten itself so tightly that it cannot be
-dislodged except by cutting it to pieces. Moreover, it's feet are
-supposed to have the power of leaving certain livid and ineffaceable
-marks upon the skin of the person to whom it attaches
-itself:&mdash;<i>ça ka ba ou lota</i>, say the colored people.
-Nevertheless, there is no creature more timid and harmless than the
-mabouya.</p>
-
-<p>But the most dreaded and the most insolent invader of domestic peace
-is the centipede. The water system of the city banished the mosquito;
-but it introduced the centipede into almost every dwelling. St. Pierre
-has a plague of centipedes. All the covered drains, the gutters, the
-crevices of fountain-basins and bathing-basins, the spaces between floor
-and ground, shelter centipedes. And the <i>bête à-mille-pattes</i> is
-the terror of the barefooted population:&mdash;scarcely a day passes
-that some child or bonne or workman is not bitten by the creature.</p>
-
-<p>The sight of a full-grown centipede is enough to affect a strong set
-of nerves. Ten to eleven inches is the average length of adults; but
-extraordinary individuals much exceeding this dimension may be sometimes
-observed in the neighborhood of distilleries (<i>rhommeries</i>) and
-sugar-refineries. According to age, the color of the creature varies
-from yellowish to black;&mdash;the younger ones often have several
-different tints; the old ones are uniformly jet-black, and have a
-carapace of surprising toughness,&mdash;difficult to break. If you
-tread, by accident or design, upon the tail, the poisonous head will
-instantly curl back and bite the foot through any ordinary thickness of
-upper-leather.</p>
-
-<p>As a general rule the centipede lurks about the court-yards,
-foundations, and drains by preference; but in the season of heavy rains
-he does not hesitate to move upstairs, and make himself at home in
-parlors and bed-rooms. He has a provoking habit of nestling in your
-<i>moresques</i> or your <i>chinoises</i>,&mdash;those wide light
-garments you put on before taking your siesta or retiring for the night.
-He also likes to get into your umbrella,&mdash;an article indispensable
-in the tropics; and you had better never open it carelessly. He may even
-take a notion to curl himself up in your hat, suspended on the wall. (I
-have known a trigonocephalus to do the same thing in a country-house).
-He has also a singular custom of mounting upon the long trailing dresses
-(douillettes) worn by Martinique women,&mdash;and climbing up very
-swiftly and lightly to the wearer's neck, where the prickling of his
-feet first betrays his presence. Sometimes he will get into bed with you
-and bite you, because you have not resolution enough to lie perfectly
-still while he is tickling you.... It is well to remember before
-dressing that merely shaking a garment may not dislodge him;&mdash;you
-must examine every part very patiently,&mdash;particularly the sleeves
-of a coat and the legs of pantaloons.</p>
-
-<p>The vitality of the creature is amazing. I kept one in a bottle without
-food or water for thirteen weeks, at the end of which time it remained
-active and dangerous as ever. Then I fed it with living insects,
-which it devoured ravenously;&mdash;beetles, roaches, earthworms, several
-<i>lepismaoe</i>, even one of the dangerous-looking millepedes, which have
-a great resemblance in outward structure to the centipede, but a thinner
-body, and more numerous limbs,&mdash;all seemed equally palatable to the
-prisoner.... I knew an instance of one, nearly a foot long, remaining in
-a silk parasol for more than four months, and emerging unexpectedly
-one day, with aggressiveness undiminished, to bite the hand that had
-involuntarily given it deliverance.</p>
-
-<p>In the city the centipede has but one natural enemy able to cope with
-him,&mdash;the hen! The hen attacks him with delight, and often swallows
-him, head first, without taking the trouble to kill him. The cat hunts
-him, but she is careful never to put her head near him;&mdash;she has a
-trick of whirling him round and round upon the floor so quickly as to
-stupefy him: then, when she sees a good chance, she strikes him dead
-with her claws. But if you are fond of your cat you will let her run no
-risks, as the bite of a large centipede might have very bad results for
-your pet. Its quickness of movement demands all the quickness of even
-the cat for self-defence.... I know of men who have proved themselves
-able to seize a fer-de-lance by the tail, whirl it round and round, and
-then flip it as you would crack a whip,&mdash;whereupon the terrible
-head flies off; but I never heard of anyone in Martinique daring to
-handle a living centipede.</p>
-
-<p>There are superstitions concerning the creature which have a good effect
-in diminishing his tribe. If you kill a centipede, you are sure
-to receive money soon; and even if you dream of killing one it
-is good-luck. Consequently, people are glad of any chance to kill
-centipedes,&mdash;usually taking a heavy stone or some iron utensil for the
-work;&mdash;a wooden stick is not a good weapon. There is always a little
-excitement when a <i>bête-ni-pié</i> (as the centipede is termed in the
-patois) exposes itself to death; and you may often hear those who kill
-it uttering a sort of litany of abuse with every blow, as if addressing
-a human enemy:&mdash;"<i>Quitté moin tchoué ou, maudi!&mdash;quitté moin
-tchoué ou, scelerat!&mdash;quitté moin tchoué ou, Satan!&mdash;quitté moin
-tchoué ou, abonocio!</i>" etc. (Let me kill you, accursed! scoundrel!
-Satan! abomination!)</p>
-
-<p>The patois term for the centipede is not a mere corruption of the French
-<i>bête-à-mille-pattes</i>. Among a population of slaves, unable to read or
-write,<a name="FNanchor_50_1" id="FNanchor_50_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_50_1" class="fnanchor">[50]</a> there were only the vaguest conceptions of numerical values;
-and the French term bête-à-mille-pattes was not one which could appeal
-to negro imagination. The slaves themselves invented an equally vivid
-name, <i>bête-anni-pié</i> (the Beast-which-is-all-feet); <i>anni</i> in
-creole signifying "only," and in such a sense "all." Abbreviated by
-subsequent usage to <i>bête-'ni-pié</i>, the appellation has
-amphibology;&mdash;for there are two words <i>ni</i> in the patois, one
-signifying "to have," and the other "naked." So that the creole for a
-centipede might be translated in three ways,&mdash;"the
-Beast-which-is-all-feet"; or, "the Naked-footed Beast"; or, with fine
-irony of affirmation, "the Beast-which-has-feet."</p>
-
-<p><br /></p>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_50_1" id="Footnote_50_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_50_1"><span class="label">[50]</span></a>According to the Martinique "Annuaire" for 1887, there
-were even then, out of a total population of 173,182, no less than
-125,366 unable to read and write.</p></div>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>II</h4>
-
-
-<p>What is the secret of that horror inspired by the centipede?... It is
-but very faintly related to our knowledge that the creature is
-venomous;&mdash;the results of the bite are only temporary swelling and
-a brief fever;&mdash;it is less to be feared than the bite of other
-tropical insects and reptiles which never inspire the same loathing by
-their aspect. And the shapes of venomous creatures are not always shapes
-of ugliness. The serpent has elegance of form as well as attractions of
-metallic tinting;&mdash;the tarantula, or the <i>matoutou-falaise</i>,
-have geometrical beauty. Lapidaries have in all ages expended rare skill
-upon imitations of serpent grace in gold and gems;&mdash;a princess
-would not scorn to wear a diamond spider. But what art could utilize
-successfully the form of the centipede? It is a form of absolute
-repulsiveness,&mdash;a skeleton-shape half defined:&mdash;the suggestion
-of some old reptile-spine astir, crawling with its fragments of
-ribs.</p>
-
-<p>No other living thing excites exactly the same feeling produced by the
-sight of the centipede,&mdash;the intense loathing and peculiar fear. The
-instant you see a centipede you feel it is absolutely necessary to kill
-it; you cannot find peace in your house while you know that such a life
-exists in it: perhaps the intrusion of a serpent would annoy and
-disgust you less. And it is not easy to explain the whole reason of this
-loathing. The form alone has, of course, something to do with it,&mdash;a
-form that seems almost a departure from natural laws. But the form alone
-does not produce the full effect, which is only experienced when you see
-the creature in motion. The true horror of the centipede, perhaps, must
-be due to the monstrosity of its movement,&mdash;multiple and complex, as
-of a chain of pursuing and inter-devouring lives: there is something about
-it that makes you recoil, as from a sudden corrupt swarming-out. It is
-confusing,&mdash;a series of contractings and lengthenings and, undulations
-so rapid as to allow of being only half seen: it alarms also, because
-the thing seems perpetually about to disappear, and because you know
-that to lose sight of it for one moment involves the very unpleasant
-chance of finding it upon you the next,&mdash;perhaps between skin and
-clothing.</p>
-
-<p>But this is not all:&mdash;the sensation produced by the centipede is
-still more complex&mdash;complex, in fact, as the visible organization of
-the creature. For, during pursuit,&mdash;whether retreating or attacking,
-in hiding or fleeing,&mdash;it displays a something which seems more than
-instinct: calculation and cunning,&mdash;a sort of malevolent intelligence.
-It knows how to delude, how to terrify;&mdash;it has marvellous skill in
-feinting;&mdash;it is an abominable juggler....</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>III</h4>
-
-
-<p>I am about to leave my room after breakfast, when little Victoire who
-carries the meals up-stairs in a wooden tray, screams out:&mdash;"<i>Gadé,
-Missié! ni bête-ni-pié assous dos ou!</i>" There is a thousand-footed beast
-upon my back!</p>
-
-<p>Off goes my coat, which I throw upon the floor;&mdash;the little
-servant, who has a nervous horror of centipedes, climbs upon a chair. I
-cannot see anything under the coat, nevertheless;&mdash;I lift it by the
-collar, turn it about very cautiously&mdash;nothing! Suddenly the child
-screams again; and I perceive the head close to my hand;&mdash;the
-execrable thing had been hiding in a perpendicular fold of the coat,
-which I drop only just in time to escape getting bitten. Immediately the
-centipede becomes invisible. Then I take the coat by one flap, and turn
-it over very quickly: just as quickly does the centipede pass over it in
-the inverse direction, and disappear under it again. I have had my first
-good look at him: he seems nearly a foot long,&mdash;has a
-greenish-yellow hue against the black cloth,&mdash;and pink legs, and a
-violet head;&mdash;he is evidently young.... I turn the coat a second
-time: same disgusting manreuvre. Undulations of livid color flow over
-him as he lengthens and shortens;&mdash;while running his shape is but
-half apparent; it is only as he makes a half pause in doubling round and
-under the coat that the panic of his legs becomes discernible. When he
-is fully exposed they move with invisible rapidity,&mdash;like a
-vibration;&mdash;you can see only a sort of pink haze extending about
-him,&mdash;something to which you would no more dare advance your finger
-than to the vapory halo edging a circular saw in motion. Twice more I
-turn and re-turn the coat with the same result;&mdash;I observe that the
-centipede always runs towards my hand, until I withdraw it: he
-feints!</p>
-
-<p>With a stick I uplift one portion of the coat after another; and
-suddenly perceive him curved under a sleeve,&mdash;looking quite
-small!&mdash;how could he have seemed so large a moment ago?... But
-before I can strike him he has flickered over the cloth again, and
-vanished; and I discover that he has the power of <i>magnifying
-himself</i>,&mdash;dilating the disgust of his shape at will: he
-invariably amplifies himself to face attack....</p>
-
-<p>It seems very difficult to dislodge him; he displays astonishing
-activity and cunning at finding wrinkles and folds to hide in. Even at
-the risk of damaging various things in the pockets, I stamp upon the
-coat;&mdash;then lift it up with the expectation of finding the creature
-dead. But it suddenly rushes out from some part or other, looking larger
-and more wicked than ever,&mdash;drops to the floor, and charges at my
-feet: a sortie! I strike at him unsuccessfully with the stick: he
-retreats to the angle between wainscoting and floor, and runs along it
-fast as a railroad train,&mdash;dodges two or three pokes,&mdash;gains
-the door-frame,&mdash;glides behind a hinge, and commences to run over
-the wall of the stair-way. There the hand of a black servant slaps him
-dead.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Always strike at the head," the servant tells me; "never
-tread on the tail.... This is a small one: the big fellows can make you
-afraid if you do not know how to kill them."</p>
-
-<p>... I pick up the carcass with a pair of scissors. It does not look
-formidable now that it is all contracted;&mdash;it is scarcely eight
-inches long,&mdash;thin as card-board, and even less heavy. It has no
-substantiality, no weight;&mdash;it is a mere appearance, a mask, a
-delusion.... But remembering the spectral, cunning, juggling something
-which magnified and moved it but a moment ago,&mdash;I feel almost
-tempted to believe, with certain savages, that there are animal shapes
-inhabited by goblins....</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>IV</h4>
-
-
-<p>&mdash;"Is there anything still living and lurking in old black drains
-of Thought,&mdash;any bigotry, any prejudice, anything in the moral world
-whereunto the centipede may be likened?"</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Really, I do not know," replied the friend to whom I had put the
-question; "but you need only go as far as the vegetable world for a
-likeness. Did you ever see anything like this?" he added, opening a
-drawer and taking therefrom something revolting, which, as he pressed it
-in his hand, looked like a long thick bundle of dried centipedes.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Touch them," he said, holding out to me the mass of articulated
-flat bodies and bristling legs.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Not for anything!" I replied, in astonished disgust. He laughed,
-and opened his hand. As he did so, the mass expanded.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Now look," he exclaimed!</p>
-
-<p>Then I saw that all the bodies were united at the tails&mdash;grew
-together upon one thick flat annulated stalk... a plant!&mdash;"But here is
-the fruit," he continued, taking from the same drawer a beautifully
-embossed ovoid nut, large as a duck's egg, ruddy-colored, and so
-exquisitely varnished by nature as to resemble a rosewood carving fresh
-from the hands of the cabinet-maker. In its proper place among the leaves
-and branches, it had the appearance of something delicious being devoured
-by a multitude of centipedes. Inside was a kernel, hard and heavy as
-iron-wood; but this in time, I was told, falls into dust: though the
-beautiful shell remains always perfect.</p>
-
-<p>Negroes call it the <i>coco-macaque.</i></p>
-
-
-
-
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 300px;">
-<img src="images/figure56.jpg" width="300" alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4><a id="MA_BONNE">MA BONNE</a></h4>
-
-
-
-
-<h4>I</h4>
-
-<div class="figleft" style="width: 60px;">
-<img src="images/figure57.jpg" width="60" height="80" alt="" />
-</div>
-
-
-<p>I cannot teach Cyrillia the clock;&mdash;I have tried until both of us
-had our patience strained to the breaking-point. Cyrillia still believes
-she will learn how to tell the time some day or other;&mdash;I am certain
-that she never will. "<i>Missié</i>," she says, "<i>lézhè pa aïen pou moin:
-c'est minitt ka fouté moin yon travail!</i>"&mdash;the hours do not give
-her any trouble; but the minutes are a frightful bore! And nevertheless,
-Cyrillia is punctual as the sun;&mdash;she always brings my coffee and a
-slice of corossol at five in the morning precisely. Her clock is the
-<i>cabritt-bois</i>. The great cricket stops singing, she says, at
-half-past four: the cessation of its chant awakens her.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"<i>Bonjou', Missié. Coument ou passé lanuitt?</i>"&mdash;"Thanks,
-my daughter, I slept well."&mdash;"The weather is beautiful: if Missié
-would like to go to the beach, his bathing-towels are ready."&mdash;"Good!
-Cyrillia; I will go."... Such is our regular morning conversation.</p>
-
-<p>Nobody breakfasts before eleven o'clock or thereabout; but after an
-early sea-bath, one is apt to feel a little hollow during the morning,
-unless one take some sort of refreshment. Cyrillia always prepares
-something for me on my return from the beach,&mdash;either a little pot of
-fresh cocoa-water, or a <i>cocoyage</i>, or a <i>mabiyage</i>, or a
-<i>bavaroise</i>.</p>
-
-<p>The <i>cocoyage</i> I like the best of all. Cyrillia takes a green
-cocoa-nut, slices off one side of it so as to open a hole, then pours the
-opalescent water into a bowl, adds to it a fresh egg, a little Holland
-gin, and some grated nutmeg and plenty of sugar. Then she whips up the
-mixture into effervescence with her <i>baton-lélé</i>. The <i>baton-lélé</i>
-is an indispensaple article in every creole home: it is a thin stick which
-is cut from a young tree so as to leave at one end a whorl of branch-stumps
-sticking out at right angles like spokes;&mdash;by twirling the stem
-between the hands, the stumps whip up the drink in a moment.</p>
-
-<p>The <i>mabiyage</i> is less agreeable, but is a popular morning drink
-among the poorer classes. It is made with a little white rum and a bottle
-of the bitter native root-beer called <i>mabi</i>. The taste of <i>mabi</i>
-I can only describe as that of molasses and water flavored with a little
-cinchona bark.</p>
-
-<p>The <i>bavaroise</i> is fresh milk, sugar, and a little Holland gin or
-rum,&mdash;mixed with the baton-lélé until a fine thick foam is formed.
-After the <i>cocoyage</i>, I think it is the best drink one can take in the
-morning; but very little spirit must be used for any of these mixtures.
-It is not until just before the mid-day meal that one can venture to
-take a serious stimulant,&mdash;<i>yon ti ponch</i>,&mdash;rum and water,
-sweetened with plenty of sugar or sugar syrup.</p>
-
-<p>The word <i>sucre</i> is rarely used in Martinique,&mdash;considering
-that sugar is still the chief product;&mdash;the word <i>doux</i>,
-"sweet," is commonly substituted for it. <i>Doux</i> has, however, a
-larger range of meaning: it may signify syrup, or any sort of
-sweets,&mdash;duplicated into <i>doudoux</i>, it means the corossole
-fruit as well as a sweetheart. <i>Ça qui lè doudoux?</i> is the cry of
-the corossole-seller. If a negro asks at a grocery store
-(<i>graisserie</i>) for <i>sique</i> instead of for <i>doux</i>, it is
-only because he does not want it to be supposed that he means
-syrup;&mdash;as a general rule, he will only use the word <i>sique</i>
-when referring to quality of sugar wanted, or to sugar in hogsheads.
-<i>Doux</i> enters into domestic consumption in quite remarkable ways.
-People put sugar into fresh milk, English porter, beer, and cheap
-wine;&mdash;they cook various vegetables with sugar, such as peas; they
-seem to be particularly fond of sugar-and-water and of
-<i>d'leau-pain</i>,&mdash;bread-and-water boiled, strained, mixed with
-sugar, and flavored with cinnamon. The stranger gets accustomed to all
-this sweetness without evil results. In a northern climate the
-consequence would probably be at least a bilious attack; but in the
-tropics, where salt fish and fruits are popularly preferred to meat, the
-prodigal use of sugar or sugar-syrups appears to be decidedly
-beneficial.</p>
-
-<p>... After Cyrillia has prepared my <i>cocoyage</i>, and rinsed the
-bathing-towels in fresh-water, she is ready to go to market, and wants
-to know what I would like to eat for breakfast. "Anything creole,
-Cyrillia;&mdash;I want to know what people eat in this country." She
-always does her best to please me in this respect,&mdash;almost daily
-introduces me to some unfamiliar dishes, something odd in the way of
-fruit or fish.</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>II</h4>
-
-
-<p>Cyrillia has given me a good idea of the range and character of
-<i>mangé-Créole</i>, and I can venture to write something about it after a
-year's observation. By <i>mangé-Créole</i> I refer only to the food of the
-people proper, the colored population; for the <i>cuisine</i> of the small
-class of wealthy whites is chiefly European, and devoid of local
-interest:&mdash;I might observe, however, that the fashion of cooking is
-rather Provençal than Parisian;&mdash;rather of southern than of northern
-France.</p>
-
-<p>Meat, whether fresh or salt, enters little into the nourishment of
-the poorer classes. This is partly, no doubt, because of the cost of all
-meats; but it is also due to natural preference for fruits and fish.
-When fresh meat is purchased, it is usually to make a stew or
-<i>daube</i>;&mdash;probably salt meats are more popular; and native
-vegetables and manioc flour are preferred to bread. There are only two
-popular soups which are peculiar to the creole
-cuisine,&mdash;<i>calalou</i>, a gombo soup, almost precisely similar to
-that of Louisiana; and the <i>soupe-d'habitant</i>, or "country soup."
-It is made of yams, carrots, bananas, turnips, <i>choux-caraïbes</i>,
-pumpkins, salt pork, and pimento, all boiled together;&mdash;the salt
-meat being left out of the composition on Fridays.</p>
-
-<p>The great staple, the true meat of the population, is salt codfish,
-which is prepared in a great number of ways. The most popular and the
-rudest preparation of it is called "Ferocious" (<i>férocé</i>); and it
-is not at all unpalatable. The codfish is simply fried, and served with
-vinegar, oil, pimento;&mdash;manioc flour and avocados being considered
-indispensable adjuncts. As manioc flour forms a part of almost every
-creole meal, a word of information regarding it will not be out of place
-here. Everybody who has heard the name probably knows that the manioc
-root is naturally poisonous, and that the toxic elements must be removed
-by pressure and desiccation before the flour can be made. Good manioc
-flour has an appearance like very coarse oatmeal; and is probably quite
-as nourishing. Even when dear as bread, it is preferred, and forms the
-flour of the population, by whom the word <i>farine</i> is only used to
-signify manioc flour: if wheat-flour be referred to it is always
-qualified as "French flour" (<i>farine-Fouance</i>). Although certain
-flours are regularly advertised as American in the local papers, they
-are still <i>farine-Fouance</i> for the population, who call everything
-foreign French. American beer is <i>biè-Fouance</i>; American canned
-peas, <i>ti-pois-Fouance</i>; any white foreigner who can talk French is
-<i>yon béké-Fouance</i>.</p>
-
-<p>Usually the manioc flour is eaten uncooked:<a name="FNanchor_51_1" id="FNanchor_51_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_51_1" class="fnanchor">[51]</a> merely
-poured into a plate, with a little water and stirred with a spoon into a
-thick paste or mush,&mdash;the thicker the better;&mdash;<i>dleau passé
-farine</i> (more water than manioc flour) is a saying which describes
-the condition of a very destitute person. When not served with fish, the
-flour is occasionally mixed with water and refined molasses
-(<i>sirop-battrie</i>): this preparation, which is very nice, is called
-<i>cousscaye</i>. There is also a way of boiling it with molasses and
-milk into a kind of pudding. This is called <i>matêté</i>; children
-are very fond of it. Both of these names, <i>cousscaye</i> and
-<i>matêté</i>, are alleged to be of Carib origin: the art of preparing
-the flour itself from manioc root is certainly an inheritance from the
-Caribs, who bequeathed many singular words to the creole patois of the
-French West Indies.</p>
-
-<p>Of all the preparations of codfish with which manioc flour is eaten,
-I preferred the <i>lamori-bouilli</i>,&mdash;the fish boiled plain,
-after having been steeped long enough to remove the excess of salt; and
-then served with plenty of olive-oil and pimento. The people who have no
-home of their own, or at least no place to cook, can buy their food
-already prepared from the <i>màchannes lapacotte</i>, who seem to make
-a specialty of <i>macadam</i> (codfish stewed with rice) and the other
-two dishes already referred to. But in every colored family there are
-occasional feasts of <i>lamori-au-laitt</i>, codfish stewed with milk
-and potatoes; <i>lamori-au-grattin</i>, codfish boned, pounded with
-toast crumbs, and boiled with butter, onions, and pepper into a
-mush;&mdash;<i>coubouyon-lamori</i>, codfish stewed with butter and
-oil;&mdash;<i>bachamelle</i>, codfish boned and stewed with potatoes,
-pimentos, oil, garlic, and butter.</p>
-
-<p><i>Pimento</i> is an essential accompaniment to all these dishes,
-whether it be cooked or raw: everything is served with plenty of
-pimento,-<i>en pile</i>, <i>en pile piment.</i> Among the various kinds
-I can mention only the <i>piment-café</i>, or "coffee-pepper," larger
-but about the same shape as a grain of Liberian coffee, violet-red at
-one end; the <i>piment-zouèseau</i>, or bird-pepper, small and long and
-scarlet;&mdash;and the <i>piment-capresse</i>, very large, pointed at
-one end, and bag-shaped at the other. It takes a very deep red color
-when ripe, and is so strong that if you only break the pod in a room,
-the sharp perfume instantly fills the apartment. Unless you are as
-well-trained as any Mexican to eat pimento, you will probably regret
-your first encounter with the <i>capresse</i>.</p>
-
-<p>Cyrillia told me a story about this infernal vegetable.</p>
-
-<p><br /></p>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_51_1" id="Footnote_51_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_51_1"><span class="label">[51]</span></a>There is record of an attempt to manufacture bread with
-one part manioc flour to three of wheat flour. The result was excellent;
-but no serious effort was ever made to put the manioc bread on the
-market.</p></div>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>III</h4>
-
-
-<p>ZHISTOUÈ PIMENT.</p>
-
-<p>Té ni yon manman qui té ni en pile, en pile yche; et yon jou y pa té ni
-aïen pou y té baill yche-là mangé. Y té ka lévé bon matin-là sans yon
-sou: y pa sa ça y té douè fai,&mdash;là y té ké baill latête. Y allé
-lacaïe macoumè-y, raconté lapeine-y. Macoumè baill y toua chopine
-farine-manioc. Y allé lacaill liautt macoumè, qui baill y yon grand
-trai piment. Macoumè-là di y venne trai-piment-à, épi y té pè acheté
-lamori,&mdash;pisse y ja té ni farine. Madame-là di: "Mèçi,
-macoumè;"&mdash;y di y bonjou'; épi y allé lacaïe-y.</p>
-
-<p>Lhè y rivé àcaïe y limé difè: y metté canari épi dleau assous difé-a;
-épi y cassé toutt piment-là et metté yo adans canari-à assous diré.</p>
-
-<p>Lhè y oue canari-à ka bouï, y pouend <i>baton-lélé</i>, epi y lélé
-piment-à: aloss y ka fai yonne calalou-piment. Lhè calalou-piment-là té
-tchouitt, y pouend chaque zassiett yche-li; y metté calalou yo fouète dans
-zassiett-là; y metté ta-mari fouète, assou, épi ta-y. Épi lhè calalou-là
-té bien fouète, y metté farine nans chaque zassiett-là. Épi y crié toutt
-moune vini mangé. Toutt moune vini metté yo à-tabe.</p>
-
-<p>Pouèmiè bouchée mari-à pouend, y rété,&mdash;y crié: "Aïe!
-ouaill! mafenm!" Fenm-là réponne mari y: "Ouaill! monmari!" Cés ti
-manmaille-la crie: "Ouaill! manman!" Manman-à. réponne:&mdash;"Ouaill!
-yches-moin!"... Yo toutt pouend couri, quitté caïe-là
-sèle,&mdash;épi yo toutt tombé larviè à touempé bouche yo. Cés ti
-manmaille-là bouè dleau sitellement jusse temps yo toutt néyé: té
-ka rété anni manman-là épi papa-là. Yo té là bò lariviè, qui
-té ka pleiré. Moin té ka passé à lhè-à;&mdash;moin ka mandé yo:
-"Ça zautt ni?"</p>
-
-<p>Nhomme-là lévé: y baill moin yon sèle coup d'piè, y voyé moin lautt bo
-lariviè-ou ouè moin vini pou conté ça ba ou.</p>
-
-<p>There was once a mamma who had ever so many children; and one day she
-had nothing to give those children to eat. She had got up very early
-that morning, without a sou in the world: she did not know what to do:
-she was so worried that her head was upset. She went to the house of a
-woman-friend, and told her about her trouble. The friend gave her three
-<i>chopines</i> [three pints] of manioc flour. Then she went to the house
-of another female friend, who gave her a big trayful of pimentos. The
-friend told her to sell that tray of pimentos: then she could buy some
-codfish,&mdash;since she already had some manioc flour. The good-wife said:
-"Thank you, <i>macoumè</i>,"&mdash;she bid her good-day, and then went to
-her own house.</p>
-
-<p>The moment she got home, she made a fire, and put her <i>canari</i>
-[earthen pot] full of water on the fire to boil: then she broke up all the
-pimentos and put them into the canari on the fire.</p>
-
-<p>As soon as she saw the canari boiling, she took her <i>baton-lélé</i>,
-and beat up all those pimentos: then she made a <i>pimento-calalou</i>.
-When the pimento-calalou was well cooked, she took each one of the
-children's plates, and poured their calalou into the plates to cool it; she
-also put her husband's out to cool, and her own. And when the calalou was
-quite cool, she put some manioc flour into each of the plates. Then
-she called to everybody to come and eat. They all came, and sat down to
-table.</p>
-
-<p>The first mouthful that husband took he stopped and
-screamed:&mdash;"<i>Aïe! ouaill!</i> my wife!" The woman answered her
-husband: <i>Ouaill</i>! my husband!" The little children all screamed:
-"<i>Ouaill!</i> mamma!" Their mamma answered: "<i>Ouaill!</i> my
-children!"... They all ran out, left the house empty; and they tumbled
-into the river to steep their mouths. Those little children just drank
-water and drank water till they were all drowned: there was nobody left
-except the mamma and the papa, They stayed there on the river-bank, and
-cried. I was passing that way just at that time;&mdash;I asked them:
-"What ails you people?" That man got up and gave me just one kick that
-sent me right across the river; I came here at once, as you see, to tell
-you all about it....</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>IV</h4>
-
-
-<p>... It is no use for me to attempt anything like a detailed
-description of the fish Cyrillia brings me day after day from the Place
-du Fort: the variety seems to be infinite. I have learned, however, one
-curious fact which is worth noting: that, as a general rule, the more
-beautifully colored fish are the least palatable, and are sought after
-only by the poor. The <i>perroquet</i>, black, with bright bands of red
-and yellow; the <i>cirurgien</i>, blue and black; the <i>patate</i>,
-yellow and black; the <i>moringue</i>, which looks like polished
-granite; the <i>souri</i>, pink and yellow; the vermilion
-<i>Gouôs-zie</i>; the rosy <i>sade</i>; the red
-<i>Bon-Dié-manié-moin</i> ("the-Good-God-handled-me")&mdash;it has two
-queer marks as of great fingers; and the various kinds of all-blue fish,
-<i>balaou</i>, <i>conliou</i>, etc. varying from steel-color to
-violet,&mdash;these are seldom seen at the tables of the rich. There are
-exceptions, of course, to this and all general rules: notably the
-<i>couronné</i>, pink spotted beautifully with black,&mdash;a sort of
-Redfish, which never sells less than fourteen cents a pound; and the
-<i>zorphie</i>, which has exquisite changing lights of nacreous green
-and purple. It is said, however, that the zorphi is sometimes poisonous,
-like the <i>bécunne</i>; and there are many fish which, although not
-venomous by nature, have always been considered dangerous. In the time
-of Père Dutertre it was believed these fish ate the apples of the
-manchineel-tree, washed into the sea by rains;&mdash;to-day it is
-popularly supposed that they are rendered occasionally poisonous by
-eating the barnacles attached to copper-plating of ships. The
-<i>tazard</i>, the <i>lune</i>, the <i>capitaine</i>, the <i>dorade</i>,
-the <i>perroquet</i>, the <i>couliou</i>, the <i>congre</i>, various
-crabs, and even the <i>tonne</i>,&mdash;all are dangerous unless
-perfectly fresh: the least decomposition seems to develop a mysterious
-poison. A singular phenomenon regarding the poisoning occasionally
-produced by the bécunne and dorade is that the skin peels from the
-hands and feet of those lucky enough to survive the terrible colics,
-burnings, itchings, and delirium, which are early symptoms, Happily
-these accidents are very rare, since the markets have been properly
-inspected: in the time of Dr. Rufz, they would seem to have been very
-common,&mdash;so common that he tells us he would not eat fresh fish
-without being perfectly certain where it was caught and how long it had
-been out of the water.</p>
-
-<p>The poor buy the brightly colored fish only when the finer qualities
-are not obtainable at low rates; but often and often the catch is so
-enormous that half of it has to be thrown back into the sea. In the hot
-moist air, fish decomposes very rapidly; it is impossible to transport
-it to any distance into the interior; and only the inhabitants of the
-coast can indulge in fresh fish,&mdash;at least sea-fish.</p>
-
-<p>Naturally, among the laboring class the question of quality is less
-important than that of quantity and substance, unless the fish-market be
-extraordinarily well stocked. Of all fresh fish, the most popular is the
-<i>tonne</i>, a great blue-gray creature whose flesh is solid as beef;
-next come in order of preferment the flying-fish (<i>volants</i>), which
-often sell as low as four for a cent;&mdash;then the <i>lambi</i>, or
-sea-snail, which has a very dense and nutritious flesh;&mdash;then the
-small whitish fish classed as <i>sàdines</i>;&mdash;then the
-blue-colored fishes according to price, <i>couliou</i>, <i>balaou</i>,
-etc.;&mdash;lastly, the shark, which sells commonly at two cents a
-pound. Large sharks are not edible; the flesh is too hard; but a young
-shark is very good eating indeed. Cyrillia cooked me a slice one
-morning: it was quite delicate, tasted almost like veal.</p>
-
-<p>The quantity of very small fish sold is surprising. With ten sous the
-family of a laborer can have a good fish-dinner: a pound of
-<i>sàdines</i> is never dearer than two sous;&mdash;a pint of manioc
-flour can be had for the same price; and a big avocado sells for a sou.
-This is more than enough food for any one person; and by doubling the
-expense one obtains a proportionately greater quantity&mdash;enough for
-four or five individuals. The <i>sàdines</i> are roasted over a
-charcoal fire, and flavored with a sauce of lemon, pimento, and garlic.
-When there are no <i>sàdines</i>, there are sure to be <i>coulious</i>
-in plenty,&mdash;small <i>coulious</i> about as long as your little
-finger: these are more delicate, and fetch double the price. With four
-sous' worth of <i>coulious</i> a family can have a superb <i>blaffe</i>.
-To make a <i>blaffe</i> the fish are cooked in water, and served with
-pimento, lemon, spices, onions, and garlic; but without oil or butter.
-Experience has demonstrated that <i>coulious</i> make the best
-<i>blaffe</i>; and a <i>blaffe</i> is seldom prepared with other
-fish.</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>V</h4>
-
-
-<p>There are four dishes which are the holiday luxuries of the
-poor:&mdash;<i>manicou</i>, <i>ver-palmiste</i>, <i>zandouille</i>, and
-<i>poule-épi-diri</i>.<a name="FNanchor_52_1" id="FNanchor_52_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_52_1" class="fnanchor">[52]</a></p>
-
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
-<a id="figure58"></a>
-<img src="images/figure58.jpg" width="400" alt="" />
-<p class="center">MARKET, FORT-DE FRANCE<br />
-<i>Daily, at dawn, these carriers stream in from the
-country with burdens of fruit upon their heads.</i></p>
-</div>
-
-
-<p>The <i>manitou</i> is a brave little marsupial, which might be called
-the opossum of Martinique: it fights, although overmatched, with the
-serpent, and is a great enemy to the field-rat. In the market a manicou
-sells for two francs and a half at cheapest: it is generally salted
-before being cooked.</p>
-
-<p>The great worm, or caterpillar, called <i>ver-palmiste</i> is found in
-the heads of cabbage-palms,&mdash;especially after the cabbage has been cut
-out, and the tree has begun to perish. It is the grub of a curious beetle,
-which has a proboscis of such form as suggested the creole appellation,
-<i>léfant</i>: the "elephant." These worms are sold in the Place du Fort at
-two sous each: they are spitted and roasted alive, and are said to taste
-like almonds. I have never tried to find out whether this be fact or
-fancy; and I am glad to say that few white creoles confess a liking for
-this barbarous food.</p>
-
-<p>The <i>zandouilles</i> are delicious sausages made with
-pig-buff,&mdash;and only seen in the market on Sundays. They cost a
-franc and a half each; and there are several women who have an
-established reputation throughout Martinique for their skill in making
-them. I have tasted some not less palatable than the famous London
-"pork-pies." Those of Lamentin are reputed the best in the island.</p>
-
-<p>But <i>poule-épi-diri</i> is certainly the most popular dish of all:
-it is the dearest, as well, and poor people can rarely afford it. In
-Louisiana an almost similar dish is called <i>jimbalaya</i>: chicken
-cooked with rice. The Martiniquais think it such a delicacy that an
-over-exacting person, or one difficult to satisfy, is reproved with the
-simple question:&mdash;"<i>Ça ou lè 'nco-poule, épi-diri?</i>" (What
-more do you want, great heavens!&mdash;chicken-and-rice?) Naughty
-children are bribed into absolute goodness by the promise of
-poule-épi-diri:&mdash;</p>
-
-
-<p><span style="margin-left: 5em;">&mdash;"<i>Aïe! chè, bò doudoux!</i></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;"><i>Doudoux ba ou poule-épi-diri</i>;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;"><i>Aïe! chè, bò doudoux!</i>"...</span></p>
-
-<p>(Aïe, dear! kiss <i>doudoux!&mdash;doudoux</i> has rice-and-chicken for
-you!&mdash;<i>aïe</i>, dear! kiss <i>doudoux!</i>)</p>
-
-<p><br /></p>
-
-<p>How far rice enters into the success of the dish above mentioned I
-cannot say; but rice ranks in favor generally above all cereals; it is
-at least six times more in demand than maize. <i>Diri-doux</i>, rice
-boiled with sugar, is sold in prodigious quantities
-daily,&mdash;especially at the markets, where little heaps of it, rolled
-in pieces of banana or <i>cachibou</i> leaves, are retailed at a cent
-each. <i>Diri-aulaitt</i>, a veritable rice-pudding, is also very
-popular; but it would weary the reader to mention one-tenth of the
-creole preparations into which rice enters.</p>
-
-<p><br /></p>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_52_1" id="Footnote_52_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_52_1"><span class="label">[52]</span></a>I must mention a surreptitious dish, <i>chatt</i>;&mdash;needless to
-say the cats are not sold, but stolen. It is true that only a small
-class of poor people eat cats; but they eat so many cats that cats have
-become quite rare in St Pierre. The custom is purely superstitious: it
-is alleged that if you eat cat seven times, or if you eat seven cats, no
-witch, wizard, or <i>quimboiseur</i> can ever do you any harm; and the cat
-ought to be eaten on Christmas Eve in order that the meal be perfectly
-efficacious. . . . The mystic number "seven" enters into another and a
-better creole superstition;&mdash;if you kill a serpent, seven great sins
-are forgiven to you: <i>ou ké ni sept grands péchés effacé.</i></p></div>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>VI</h4>
-
-
-<p>Everybody eats <i>akras</i>;&mdash;they sell at a cent apiece. The
-akra is a small fritter or pancake, which may be made of fifty different
-things,&mdash;among others codfish, titiri, beans, brains,
-<i>choux-caraïbes</i>, little black peas (<i>poix-zié-nouè</i>,
-"black-eyed peas"), or of crawfish (<i>akra-cribîche</i>). When made of
-carrots, bananas, chicken, palm-cabbage, etc. and sweetened, they are
-called <i>marinades</i>. On first acquaintance they seem rather greasy
-for so hot a climate; but one learns, on becoming accustomed to tropical
-conditions, that a certain amount of oily or greasy food is both healthy
-and needful.</p>
-
-<p>First among popular vegetables are beans. Red beans are preferred;
-but boiled white beans, served cold with vinegar and plenty of oil, form
-a favorite salad. Next in order of preferment come the
-<i>choux-caraïbes</i>, <i>patates</i>, <i>zignames</i>,
-<i>camanioc</i>, and <i>cousscouche</i>: all immense roots,&mdash;the
-true potatoes of the tropics. The camanioc is finer than the
-choux-caraïbe, boils whiter and softer: in appearance it resembles the
-manioc root very closely, but has no toxic element. The cousscouche is
-the best of all: the finest Irish potato boiled into sparkling flour is
-not so good. Most of these roots can be cooked into a sort of mush,
-called <i>migan</i>: such as <i>migan-choux</i>, made with the
-choux-caraïbe; <i>migan-zignames</i>, made with yams;
-<i>migan-cousscouche</i>, etc.,&mdash;in which case crabs or shrimps are
-usually served with the <i>migan</i>. There is a particular fondness for
-the little rosy crab called <i>tourlouroux</i>, in patois
-<i>touloulou</i>. <i>Migan</i> is also made with bread-fruit. Very large
-bananas or plantains are boiled with codfish, with <i>daubes</i>, or
-meat stews, and with eggs. The bread-fruit is a fair substitute for
-vegetables. It must be cooked very thoroughly, and has a dry potato
-taste. What is called the <i>fleu-fouitt-à-pain</i>, or "bread-fruit
-flower"&mdash;a long pod-shaped solid growth, covered exteriorly with
-tiny seeds closely set as pin-heads could be, and having an interior
-pith very elastic and resistant,&mdash;is candied into a delicious
-sweetmeat.</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>VII</h4>
-
-
-<p>The consumption of bananas is enormous: more bananas are eaten than
-vegetables; and more banana-trees are yearly being cultivated. The negro
-seems to recognize instinctively that economical value of the banana to
-which attention was long since called by Humboldt, who estimated that
-while an acre planted in wheat would barely support three persons, an
-acre planted in banana-trees would nourish fifty.</p>
-
-<p>Bananas and plantains hold the first place among fruits in popular
-esteem;&mdash;they are cooked in every way, and served with almost every
-sort of meat or fish. What we call bananas in the United States,
-however, are not called bananas in Martinique, but figs (<i>figues</i>).
-Plantains seem to be called <i>bananes</i>. One is often surprised at
-popular nomenclature: <i>choux</i> may mean either a sort of root
-(<i>choux-caraïbe</i>), or the top of the cabbage-palm; <i>Jacquot</i>
-may mean a fish; <i>cabane</i> never means a cabin, but a bed;
-<i>crickett</i> means not a cricket, but a frog; and at least fifty
-other words have equally deceptive uses. If one desires to speak of real
-figs&mdash;dried figs&mdash;he must say <i>figues-Fouanc</i> (French
-figs); otherwise nobody will understand him. There are many kinds of
-bananas here called <i>figues</i>,&mdash;the four most popular are the
-<i>figues-bananes</i>, which are plantains, I think; the
-<i>figues-makouenga</i>, which grow wild, and have a red skin; the
-<i>figues-pommes</i> (apple-bananas), which are large and yellow; and
-the <i>ti-figues-desse</i> (little-dessert-bananas), which are to be
-seen on all tables in St. Pierre. They are small, sweet, and always
-agreeable, even when one has no appetite for other fruits.</p>
-
-<p>It requires some little time to become accustomed to many tropical
-fruits, or at least to find patience as well as inclination to eat them.
-A large number, in spite of delicious flavor, are provokingly stony:
-such as the ripe guavas, the cherries, the barbadines; even the
-corrossole and <i>pomme-cannelle</i> are little more than huge masses of
-very hard seeds buried in pulp of exquisite taste. The <i>sapota</i>, or
-<i>sapodtilla</i>, is less characterized by stoniness, and one soon
-learns to like it. It has large flat seeds, which can be split into two
-with the finger-nail; and a fine white skin lies between these two
-halves. It requires some skill to remove entire this little skin, or
-pellicle, without breaking it: to do so is said to be a test of
-affection. Perhaps this bit of folk-lore was suggested by the shape of
-the pellicle, which is that of a heart. The pretty fille-de-couleur asks
-her doudoux:&mdash;"<i>Ess ou ainmein moin?&mdash;pouloss tiré ti
-lapeau-là sans cassé-y</i>." Woe to him if he breaks it!... The most
-disagreeable fruit is, I think, the <i>pomme-d'Haiti</i>, or Haytian
-apple: it is very attractive exteriorly; but has a strong musky odor and
-taste which nauseates. Few white creoles ever eat it.</p>
-
-<p>Of the oranges, nothing except praise can be said; but there are
-fruits that look like oranges, and are not oranges, that are far more
-noteworthy. There is the <i>chadèque</i>, which grows here to fully
-three feet in circumference, and has a sweet pink pulp; and there is the
-"forbidden-fruit" (<i>fouitt-défendu</i>), a sort of cross between the
-orange and the chadèque, and superior to both. The colored people
-declare that this monster fruit is the same which grew in Eden upon the
-fatal tree: <i>c'est ça mênm qui fai moune ka fai yche conm ça
-atouelement!</i> The fouitt-défendu is wonderful, indeed, in its way;
-but the fruit which most surprised me on my first acquaintance with it
-was the <i>zabricôt</i>.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"<i>Ou lè yon zabricôt?</i>" (Would you like an apricot?)
-Cyrillia asked me one day. I replied that I liked apricots very
-much,&mdash;wanted more than one. Cyrillia looked astonished, but said
-nothing until she returned from market, and put on the table <i>two</i>
-apricots, with the observation:&mdash;"<i>Ça ke fai ou malade mangé
-toutt ça!</i>" (You will get sick if you eat all that.) I could not eat
-even half of one of them. Imagine a plum larger than the largest turnip,
-with a skin like a russet apple, solid sweet flesh of a carrot-red
-color, and a nut in the middle bigger than a duck's egg and hard as a
-rock. These fruits are aromatic as well as sweet to the taste: the price
-varies from one to four cents each, according to size. The tree is
-indigenous to the West Indies; the aborigines of Hayti had a strange
-belief regarding it. They alleged that its fruits formed the nourishment
-of the dead; and however pressed by hunger, an Indian in the woods would
-rather remain without food than strip one of these trees, lest he should
-deprive the ghosts of their sustenance.... No trace of this belief seems
-to exist among the colored people of Martinique.</p>
-
-<p>Among the poor such fruits are luxuries: they eat more mangoes than
-any other fruits excepting bananas. It is rather slobbery work eating a
-common mango, in which every particle of pulp is threaded fast to the
-kernel: one prefers to gnaw it when alone. But there are cultivated
-mangoes with finer and thicker flesh which can be sliced off, so that
-the greater part of the fruit may be eaten without smearing and sucking.
-Among grafted varieties the <i>mangue</i> is quite as delicious as the
-orange. Perhaps there are nearly as many varieties of mangoes in
-Martinique as there are varieties of peaches with us: I am acquainted,
-however, with only a few,&mdash;such as the
-<i>mango-Bassignac</i>;&mdash;<i>mango-pêche</i> (or
-peach-mango);&mdash;<i>mango-vert</i> (green mango), very large and
-oblong;&mdash;<i>mango-grêffé</i>;&mdash;<i>mangotine</i>, quite round
-and small;&mdash;<i>mango-quinette</i>, very small also, almost
-egg-shaped;&mdash;<i>mango-Zézé</i>, very sweet, rather small, and of
-flattened form;&mdash;<i>mango-d'or</i> (golden mango), worth half a
-franc each;&mdash;<i>mango-Lamentin</i>, a highly cultivated
-variety&mdash;and the superb <i>Reine-Amélie</i> (or Queen Amelia), a
-great yellow fruit which retails even in Martinique at five cents
-apiece.</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>VIII</h4>
-
-
-<p>... "<i>Ou c'est bonhomme caton?-ou c'est zimage, non?</i>" (Am I a
-pasteboard man, or an image, that I do not eat?) Cyrillia wants to know.
-The fact is that I am a little overfed; but the stranger in the tropics
-cannot eat like a native, and my abstemiousness is a surprise. In the
-North we eat a good deal for the sake of caloric; in the tropics, unless
-one be in the habit of taking much physical exercise, which is a very
-difficult thing to do, a generous appetite is out of the question.
-Cyrillia will not suffer me to live upon <i>mangé-Creole</i>
-altogether; she insists upon occasional beefsteaks and roasts, and tries
-to tempt me with all kinds of queer delicious, desserts as
-well,&mdash;particularly those cakes made of grated cocoanut and
-sugar-syrup (<i>tablett-coco-rapé</i>) of which a stranger becomes very
-fond. But, nevertheless, I cannot eat enough to quiet Cyrillia's
-fears.</p>
-
-<p>Not eating enough is not her only complaint against me. I am
-perpetually doing something or other which shocks her. The Creoles are
-the most cautious livers in the world, perhaps;&mdash;the stranger who
-walks in the sun without an umbrella, or stands in currents of air, is
-for them an object of wonder and compassion. Cyrillia's complaints about
-my recklessness in the matter of hygiene always terminate with the
-refrain: "<i>Yo pa fai ça içi</i>"&mdash;(People never do such things
-in Martinique.) Among such rash acts are washing one's face or hands
-while perspiring, taking off one's hat on coming in from a walk, going
-out immediately after a bath, and washing my face with soap. "Oh,
-Cyrillia! what foolishness!&mdash;why should I not wash my face with
-soap? Because it will blind you," Cyrillia answers: "<i>ça ké tchoué
-limiè zié ou</i>" (it will kill the light in your eyes). There is no
-cleaner person than Cyrillia; and, indeed among the city people, the
-daily bath is the rule in all weathers; but soap is never used on the
-face by thousands, who, like Cyrillia, believe it will "kill the light
-of the eyes."</p>
-
-<p>One day I had been taking a long walk in the sun, and returned so
-thirsty that all the old stories about travellers suffering in waterless
-deserts returned to memory with new significance;&mdash;visions of
-simooms arose before me. What a delight to see and to grasp the heavy,
-red, thick-lipped <i>dobanne</i>, the water-jar, dewy and cool with the
-exudation of the <i>Eau-de-Gouyave</i> which filled it to the
-brim,&mdash;<i>toutt vivant</i>, as Cyrillia says, "all alive"! There
-was a sudden scream,&mdash;the water-pitcher was snatched from my hands
-by Cyrillia with the question: "<i>Ess ou lè tchoué
-cò-ou?&mdash;Saint Joseph!</i>" (Did I want to kill my body?)... The
-Creoles use the word "body" in speaking of anything that can happen to
-one,&mdash;"hurt one's body, tire one's body, marry one's body, bury
-one's body," etc.;&mdash;I wonder whether the expression originated in
-zealous desire to prove a profound faith in the soul.... Then Cyrillia
-made me a little punch with sugar and rum, and told me I must never
-drink fresh-water after a walk unless I wanted to kill my body. In this
-matter her advice was good. The immediate result of a cold drink while
-heated is a profuse and icy perspiration, during which currents of air
-are really dangerous. A cold is not dreaded here, and colds are rare;
-but pleurisy is common, and may be the consequence of any imprudent
-exposure.</p>
-
-<p>I do not often have the opportunity at home of committing even an
-unconscious imprudence; for Cyrillia is ubiquitous, and always on the
-watch lest something dreadful should happen to me. She is wonderful as
-a house-keeper as well as a cook: there is certainly much to do, and she
-has only a child to help her, but she always seems to have time. Her
-kitchen apparatus is of the simplest kind: a charcoal furnace
-constructed of bricks, a few earthenware pots (<i>canar</i>), and some
-grid-irons;&mdash;yet with these she can certainly prepare as many
-dishes as there are days in the year. I have never known her to be busy
-with her <i>canari</i> for more than an hour; yet everything is kept in
-perfect order. When she is not working, she is quite happy in sitting at
-a window, and amusing herself by watching the life of the
-street,&mdash;or playing with a kitten, which she has trained so well
-that it seems to understand everything she says.</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>IX</h4>
-
-
-<p>With darkness all the population of the island retire to their
-homes;&mdash;the streets become silent, and the life of the day is done.
-By eight o'clock nearly all the windows are closed, and the lights put
-out;&mdash;by nine the people are asleep. There are no evening parties, no
-night amusements, except during rare theatrical seasons and times of
-Carnival; there are no evening visits: active existence is almost timed
-by the rising and setting of the sun.... The only pleasure left for the
-stranger of evenings is a quiet smoke on his balcony or before his door:
-reading is out of the question, partly because books are rare, partly
-because lights are bad, partly because insects throng about every lamp
-or candle. I am lucky enough to have a balcony, broad enough for a
-rocking-chair; and sometimes Cyrillia and the kitten come to keep me
-company before bedtime. The kitten climbs on my knees; Cyrillia sits
-right down upon the balcony.</p>
-
-<p>One bright evening, Cyrillia was amusing herself very much by watching
-the clouds: they were floating high; the moonlight made them brilliant
-as frost. As they changed shape under the pressure of the trade-wind,
-Cyrillia seemed to discover wonderful things in them: sheep, ships with
-sails, cows, faces, perhaps even <i>zombis</i>.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"<i>Travaill Bon-Dié joli,&mdash;anh?</i>" (Is not the work
-of the Good-God pretty?) she said at last.... "There was Madame Remy,
-who used to sell the finest <i>foulards</i> and Madrases in St.
-Pierre;&mdash;she used to study the clouds. She drew the patterns of the
-clouds for her <i>foulards</i>: whenever she saw a beautiful cloud or a
-beautiful rainbow, she would make a drawing of it in color at once; and
-then she would send that to France to have <i>foulards</i> made just
-like it.... Since she is dead, you do not see any more pretty
-<i>foulards</i> such as there used to be."...</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Would you like to look at the moon with my telescope,
-Cyrillia?" I asked. "Let me get it for you."</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Oh no, no!" she answered, as if shocked.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Why?"</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"<i>Ah! faut pa gàdé baggaïe Bon-Dié conm ça!</i>" (It is not
-right to look at the things of the Good-God that way.)</p>
-
-<p>I did not insist. After a little silence, Cyrillia resumed:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"But I saw the Sun and the Moon once fighting together: that
-was what people call an <i>eclipse</i>,&mdash;is not that the word?...
-They fought together a long time: I was looking at them. We put a
-<i>terrine</i> full of water on the ground, and looked into the water to
-see them. And the Moon is stronger than the Sun!&mdash;yes, the Sun was
-obliged to give way to the Moon.... Why do they fight like that?"</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"They don't, Cyrillia."</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Oh yes, they do. I saw them!... And the Moon is much stronger
-than the Sun!"</p>
-
-<p>I did not attempt to contradict this testimony of the eyes. Cyrillia
-continued to watch the pretty clouds. Then she said:&mdash;"Would you not
-like to have a ladder long enough to let you climb up to those clouds,
-and see what they are made of?"</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Why, Cyrillia, they are only vapor,&mdash;brume: I have been in
-clouds."</p>
-
-<p>She looked at me in surprise, and, after a moment's silence, asked, with
-an irony of which I had not supposed her capable:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Then you are the Good-God?"</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Why, Cyrillia, it is not difficult to reach clouds. You see
-clouds always upon the top of the Montagne Pelée;&mdash;people go there. I
-have been there&mdash;in the clouds."</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Ah! those are not the same clouds: those are not the clouds of
-the Good-God. You cannot touch the sky when you are on the Morne de la
-Croix."</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"My dear Cyrillia, there is no sky to touch. The sky is only an
-appearance."</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"<i>Anh, anh, anh!</i> No sky!&mdash;you say there is no sky?...
-Then, what is that up there?"</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"That is air, Cyrillia, beautiful blue air."</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"And what are the stars fastened to?"</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"To nothing. They are suns, but so much further away than our sun
-that they look small."</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"No, they are not suns! They have not the same form as the sun...
-You must not say there is no sky: it is wicked! But you are not a
-Catholic!"</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"My dear Cyrillia, I don't see what that has to do with the
-sky."</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Where does the Good-God stay, if there be no sky? And where is
-heaven?&mdash;and where is hell?"</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Hell in the sky, Cyrillia?"</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"The Good-God made heaven in one part of the sky, and hell in
-another part, for bad people.... Ah! you are a Protestant;&mdash;you do not
-know the things of the Good-God! That is why you talk like that."</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"What is a Protestant, Cyrillia?"</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"You are one. The Protestants do not believe in religion,&mdash;do
-not love the Good-God."</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Well, I am neither a Protestant nor a Catholic, Cyrillia."</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Oh! you do not mean that; you cannot be a <i>maudi</i>, an
-accursed. There are only the Protestants, the Catholics, and the accursed.
-You are not a <i>maudi</i>, I am sure, But you must not say there is no
-sky"...</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"But, Cyrillia"&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"No: I will not listen to you:&mdash;you are a Protestant. Where
-does the rain come from, if there is no sky,"...</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Why, Cyrillia... the clouds"...</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"No, you are a Protestant.... How can you say such things? There
-are the Three Kings and the Three Valets,&mdash;the beautiful stars that
-come at Christmas-time,&mdash;there, over there&mdash;all beautiful, and
-big, big, big!... And you say there is no sky!"</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Cyrillia, perhaps I am a <i>maudi</i>."</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"No, no! You are only a Protestant. But do not tell me there is
-no sky: it is wicked to say that!"</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"I won't say it any more, Cyrillia&mdash;there! But I will say
-there are no <i>zombis</i>."</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"I know you are not a <i>maudi</i>;&mdash;you have been
-baptized."</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"How do you know I have been baptized?"</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Because, if you had not been baptized you would see <i>zombis</i>
-all the time, even in broad day. All children who are not baptized see
-<i>zombis</i>."...</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>X</h4>
-
-
-<p>Cyrilla's solicitude for me extends beyond the commonplaces of hygiene
-and diet into the uncertain domain of matters ghostly. She fears much
-that something might happen to me through the agency of wizards, witches
-(<i>sociès</i>), or <i>zombis</i>. Especially zombis. Cyrillia's belief in
-zombis has a solidity that renders argument out of the question. This
-belief is part of her inner nature,&mdash;something hereditary, racial,
-ancient as Africa, as characteristic of her people as the love of rhythms
-and melodies totally different from our own musical conceptions, but
-possessing, even for the civilized, an inexplicable emotional charm.</p>
-
-<p><i>Zombi!</i>&mdash;the word is perhaps full of mystery even for
-those who made it. The explanations of those who utter it most often are
-never quite lucid: it seems to convey ideas darkly impossible to
-define,&mdash;fancies belonging to the mind of another race and another
-era,&mdash;unspeakably old. Perhaps the word in our own language which
-offers the best analogy is "goblin": yet the one is not fully translated
-by the other. Both have, however, one common ground on which they become
-indistinguishable,&mdash;that region of the supernatural which is most
-primitive and most vague; and the closest relation between the savage
-and the civilized fancy may be found in the fears which we call
-childish,&mdash;of darkness, shadows, and things dreamed. One form of
-the <i>zombi</i>-belief&mdash;akin to certain ghostly superstitions held
-by various primitive races&mdash;would seem to have been suggested by
-nightmare,&mdash;that form of nightmare in which familiar persons become
-slowly and hideously transformed into malevolent beings. The
-<i>zombi</i> deludes under the appearance of a travelling companion, an
-old comrade&mdash;like the desert spirits of the Arabs&mdash;or even
-under the form of an animal. Consequently the creole negro fears
-everything living which he meets after dark upon a lonely road,&mdash;a
-stray horse, a cow, even a dog; and mothers quell the naughtiness of
-their children by the threat of summoning a zombi-cat or a
-zombi-creature of some kind. "<i>Zombi ké nana ou</i>" (the zombi will
-gobble thee up) is generally an effectual menace in the country parts,
-where it is believed zombis may be met with any time after sunset. In
-the city it is thought that their regular hours are between two and four
-o'clock in the morning. At least so Cyrillia says:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Dèezhè, toua-zhè-matin: c'est lhè zombi. Yo ka sòti
-dèzhè, toua zhè: c'est lhè yo. A quattrhè yo ka
-rentré;&mdash;angelus ka sonné." (At four o'clock they go back where
-they came from, before the <i>Angelus</i> rings.) Why?</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"<i>C'est pou moune pas joinne yo dans larue</i>." (So that
-people may not meet with them in the street), Cyrillia answers.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Are they afraid of the people, Cyrillia?" I asked.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"No, they are not afraid; but they do not want people to know
-their business" (<i>pa lè moune ouè zaffai yo</i>).</p>
-
-<p>Cyrillia also says one must not look out of the window when a dog
-howls at night. Such a dog may be a <i>mauvais vivant</i> (evil being):
-"If he sees me looking at him he will say, '<i>Ou tropp quirièse
-quittée cabane ou pou gàdé zaffai lezautt</i>.'" (You are too curious
-to leave your bed like that to look at other folks' business.)</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"And what then, Cyrillia?"</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Then he will put out your eyes,&mdash;<i>y ké coqui zié
-ou</i>,&mdash;make you blind."</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"But, Cyrillia," I asked one day, "did you ever see any
-zombis?"</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"How? I often see them!... They walk about the room at
-night;&mdash;they walk like people. They sit in the rocking-chairs and rock
-themselves very softly, and look at me. I say to them:&mdash;'What do you
-want here?&mdash;I never did any harm to anybody. Go away!' Then they go
-away."</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"What do they look like?"</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Like people,&mdash;sometimes like beautiful people (<i>bel
-moune</i>). I am afraid of them. I only see them when there is no light
-burning. While the lamp bums before the Virgin they do not come. But
-sometimes the oil fails, and the light dies."</p>
-
-<p>In my own room there are dried palm leaves and some withered flowers
-fastened to the wall. Cyrillia put them there. They were taken from
-the <i>reposoirs</i> (temporary altars) erected for the last Corpus Christi
-procession: consequently they are blessed, and ought to keep the zombis
-away. That is why they are fastened to the wall, over my bed.</p>
-
-<p>Nobody could be kinder to animals than Cyrillia usually shows herself
-to be: all the domestic animals in the neighborhood impose upon
-her;&mdash;various dogs and cats steal from her impudently, without the
-least fear of being beaten. I was therefore very much surprised to see her
-one evening catch a flying beetle that approached the light, and
-deliberately put its head in the candle-flame. When I asked her how she
-could be so cruel, she replied:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"<i>Ah ou pa connaitt choïe pays-ci</i>." (You do not know Things
-in this country.)</p>
-
-<p>The Things thus referred to I found to be supernatural Things. It is
-popularly believed that certain winged creatures which circle about
-candles at night may be <i>engagés</i> or <i>envoyés</i>&mdash;wicked
-people having the power of transformation, or even zombis "sent" by
-witches or wizards to do harm. "There was a woman at Tricolore,"
-Cyrillia says, "who used to sew a great deal at night; and a big beetle
-used to come into her room and fly about the candle, and and bother her
-very much. One night she managed to get hold of it, and she singed its
-head in the candle. Next day, a woman who was her neighbor came to the
-house with her head all tied up. '<i>Ah! macoumè</i>,' asked the
-sewing-woman, '<i>ça ou ni dans guiôle-ou?</i>' And the other
-answered, very angrily, '<i>Ou ni toupet mandé moin ça moin ni dans
-guiôle moin!&mdash;et cété ou qui té brilé guiôle moin nans
-chandelle-ou hiè-souè</i>.'" (You have the impudence to ask what is
-the matter with my mouth! and you yourself burned my mouth in your
-candle last night.)</p>
-
-<p>Early one morning, about five o'clock, Cyrillia, opening the front
-door, saw a huge crab walking down the street. Probably it had escaped
-from some barrel; for it is customary here to keep live crabs in barrels
-and fatten them,&mdash;feeding them with maize, mangoes, and, above all,
-green peppers: nobody likes to cook crabs as soon as caught; for they
-may have been eating manchineel apples at the river-mouths. Cyrillia
-uttered a cry of dismay on seeing that crab; then I heard her talking to
-herself:&mdash;"<i>I</i> touch it?&mdash;never! it can go about its
-business. How do I know it is not <i>an arranged crab</i> (<i>yon crabe
-rangé</i>), or an <i>envoyé</i>?&mdash;since everybody knows I like
-crabs. For two sous I can buy a fine crab and know where it comes from."
-The crab went on down the street: everywhere the sight of it created
-consternation; nobody dared to touch it; women cried out at it,
-"<i>Miserabe!&mdash;envoyé Satan!&mdash;allez, maudi!</i>"&mdash;some
-threw holy water on the crab. Doubtless it reached the sea in safety. In
-the evening Cyrillia said: "I think that crab was a little
-zombi;&mdash;I am going to burn a light all night to keep it from coming
-back."</p>
-
-<p>Another day, while I was out, a negro to whom I had lent two francs
-came to the house, and paid his debt Cyrillia told me when I came back,
-and showed me the money carefully enveloped in a piece of brown paper;
-but said I must not touch it,&mdash;she would get rid of it for me at
-the market. I laughed at her fears; and she observed: "You do not know
-negroes, Missié!&mdash;negroes are wicked, negroes are jealous! I do
-not want you to touch that money, because I have not a good opinion
-about this affair."</p>
-
-<p>After I began to learn more of the underside of Martinique life, I could
-understand the source and justification of many similar superstitions
-in simple and uneducated minds. The negro sorcerer is, at worst, only a
-poisoner; but he possesses a very curious art which long defied serious
-investigation, and in the beginning of the last century was attributed,
-even by whites, to diabolical influence. In 1721, 1723, and 1725,
-several negroes were burned alive at the stake as wizards in league with
-the devil. It was an era of comparative ignorance; but even now
-things are done which would astonish the most sceptical and practical
-physician. For example, a laborer discharged from a plantation vows
-vengeance; and the next morning the whole force of hands&mdash;the entire
-atelier&mdash;are totally disabled from work. Every man and woman on the
-place is unable to walk; everybody has one or both legs frightfully
-swollen. <i>Yo te ka pilé malifice</i>: they have trodden on a "malifice."
-What is the "malifice"? All that can be ascertained is that certain
-little prickly seeds have been scattered all over the ground, where the
-barefooted workers are in the habit of passing. Ordinarily, treading on
-these seeds is of no consequence; but it is evident in such a case that
-they must have been prepared in a special way,&mdash;soaked in some poison,
-perhaps snake-venom. At all events, the physician deems it safest to
-treat the inflammations after the manner of snake wounds; and after many
-days the hands are perhaps able to resume duty.</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>XI</h4>
-
-
-<p>While Cyrillia is busy with her <i>canari</i>, she talks to herself or
-sings. She has a low rich voice,&mdash;sings strange things, things that
-have been forgotten by this generation,&mdash;creole songs of the old days,
-having a weird rhythm and fractions of tones that are surely African. But
-more generally she talks to herself, as all the Martiniquaises do: it is
-a continual murmur as of a stream. At first I used to think she was
-talking to somebody else, and would call out:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"<i>Épi quiless moune ça ou ka pàlé-à?</i>"</p>
-
-<p>But she would always answer:&mdash;"<i>Moin ka pàlé anni cò moin</i>"
-(I am only talking to my own body), which is the creole expression for
-talking to oneself.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"And what are you talking so much to your own body about,
-Cyrillia?"</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"I am talking about my own little affairs" (<i>ti
-zaffai-moin</i>).... That is all that I could ever draw from her.</p>
-
-<p>But when not working, she will sit for hours looking out of the window.
-In this she resembles the kitten: both seem to find the same silent
-pleasure in watching the street, or the green heights that rise above
-its roofs,&mdash;the Morne d'Orange. Occasionally at such times she will
-break the silence in the strangest way, if she thinks I am not too busy
-with my papers to answer a question:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"<i>Missié?</i>"&mdash;timidly.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Eh?"</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"<i>Di moin, chè, ti manmaille dans pays ou, toutt piti,
-piti,&mdash;ess ça pàlé Anglais?</i>" (Do the little children in my
-country&mdash;the very, very little children&mdash;talk English?)</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Why, certainly, Cyrillia."</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"<i>Toutt piti, piti?</i>"&mdash;with growing surprise.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Why, of course!"</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"<i>C'est drôle, ça</i>" (It is queer, that!) She cannot
-understand it.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"And the little <i>manmaille</i> in Martinique,
-Cyrillia&mdash;<i>toutt piti, piti</i>,&mdash;don't they talk creole?"</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"'<i>Oui; mais toutt moune ka pâlé nègue: ça facile</i>." (Yes;
-but anybody can talk negro&mdash;that is easy to learn.)</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>XII</h4>
-
-
-<p>Cyrillia's room has no furniture in it: the Martinique bonne lives as
-simply and as rudely as a domestic animal. One thin mattress covered
-with a sheet, and elevated from the floor only by a léfant, forms her
-bed. The <i>léfant</i>, or "elephant," is composed of two thick square
-pieces of coarse hard mattress stuffed with shavings, and placed end to
-end. Cyrillia has a good pillow, however,&mdash;<i>bourré épi
-flêches-canne</i>,&mdash;filled with the plumes of the sugar-cane. A
-cheap trunk with broken hinges contains her modest little wardrobe: a
-few <i>mouchoirs</i>, or kerchiefs, used for head-dresses, a spare
-<i>douillette</i>, or long robe, and some tattered linen. Still she is
-always clean, neat, fresh-looking. I see a pair of sandals in the
-corner,&mdash;such as the women of the country sometimes
-wear&mdash;wooden soles with a leather band for the instep, and two
-little straps; but she never puts them on. Fastened to the wall are two
-French prints&mdash;lithographs: one representing Victor Hugo's
-<i>Esmeralda</i> in prison with her pet goat; the other, Lamartine's
-<i>Laurence</i> with her fawn. Both are very old and stained and bitten
-by the <i>bête-à-ciseau</i>, a species of <i>lepisma</i>, which
-destroys books and papers, and everything it can find exposed. On a
-shelf are two bottles,&mdash;one filled with holy water; another with
-<i>tafia camphrée</i> (camphor dissolved in tafia), which is Cyrillia's
-sole remedy for colds, fevers, headaches&mdash;all maladies not of a
-very fatal description. There are also a little woollen monkey, about
-three inches high&mdash;the dusty plaything of a long-dead
-child;&mdash;an image of the Virgin, even smaller;&mdash;and a broken
-cup with fresh bright blossoms in it, the Virgin's
-flower-offering;&mdash;and the Virgin's invariable lamp&mdash;a
-night-light, a little wick floating on olive-oil in a tiny glass.</p>
-
-<p>I know that Cyrillia must have bought these flowers&mdash;they are
-garden flowers&mdash;at the Marchè du Fort. There are always old women
-sitting there who sell nothing else but bouquets for the
-Virgin,&mdash;and who cry out to passers-by:&mdash;"<i>Gagné ti bouquet
-pou Viège-ou, chè!</i>... Buy a nosegay, dear, for your
-Virgin;&mdash;she is asking you for one;&mdash;give her a little one,
-<i>chè cocott</i>."... Cyrillia says you must not smell the flowers you
-give the Virgin: it would be stealing from her.... The little lamp is
-always lighted at six o'clock. At six o'clock the Virgin is supposed to
-pass through all the streets of St. Pierre, and wherever a lamp burns
-before her image, she enters there and blesses that house. "<i>Faut
-limé lampe ou pou fai la-Viège passé dans caïe-ou</i>," says
-Cyrillia. (You must light the lamp to make the Virgin come into your
-house.)... Cyrillia often talks to her little image, exactly as if it
-were a baby,&mdash;calls it pet names,&mdash;asks if it is content with
-the flowers.</p>
-
-<p>This image of the Virgin is broken: it is only half a
-Virgin,&mdash;the upper half. Cyrillia has arranged it so, nevertheless,
-that had I not been very inquisitive I should never have divined its
-mishap. She found a small broken powder-box without a
-lid,&mdash;probably thrown negligently out of a boudoir window by some
-wealthy beauty: she filled this little box with straw, and fixed the
-mutilated image upright within it, so that you could never suspect the
-loss of its feet. The Virgin looks very funny, thus peeping over the
-edge of her little box,&mdash;looks like a broken toy, which a child has
-been trying to mend. But this Virgin has offerings too: Cyrillia buys
-flowers for her, and sticks them all round her, between the edge of the
-powder-box and the straw. After all, Cyrillia's Virgin is quite as
-serious a fact as any image of silver or of ivory in the homes of the
-rich: probably the prayers said to her are more simply beautiful, and
-more direct from the heart, than many daily murmured before the
-<i>chapelles</i> of luxurious homes. And the more one looks at it, the
-more one feels that it were almost wicked to smile at this little broken
-toy of faith.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Cyrillia, <i>mafi</i>," I asked her one day, after my
-discovery of the little Virgin,&mdash;"would you not like me to buy a
-<i>chapelle</i> for you?" The <i>chapelle</i> is the little
-bracket-altar, together with images and ornaments, to be found in every
-creole bedroom.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"<i>Mais non, Missié</i>," she answered, smiling, "<i>moin
-aimein ti Viège moin, pa lè gagnin dautt</i>. I love my little Virgin:
-do not want any other. I have seen much trouble: she was with me in my
-trouble;&mdash;she heard my prayers. It would be wicked for me to throw
-her away. When I have a sou to spare, I buy flowers for her;&mdash;when
-I have no money, I climb the mornes, and pick pretty buds for her....
-But why should Missié want to buy me a <i>chapelle?</i>&mdash;Missié
-is a Protestant?"</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"I thought it might give you pleasure, Cyrillia."</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"No, Missié, I thank you; it would not give me pleasure. But
-Missié could give me something else which would make me very
-happy&mdash;I often thought of asking Missié...but&mdash;"</p>
-
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
-<a id="figure59"></a>
-<img src="images/figure59.jpg" width="400" alt="" />
-<p class="center">CREOLE WOMEN<br />
-<i>In their gay dresses with their brilliant "maárases"
-and "foulards they seem always in gala array.</i></p>
-</div>
-
-
-<p>&mdash;"Tell me what it is, Cyrillia."</p>
-
-<p>She remained silent a moment, then said:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Missié makes photographs...."</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"You want a photograph of yourself, Cyrillia?"</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Oh! no, Missié, I am too ugly and too old. But I have a
-daughter. She is beautiful&mdash;<i>yon bel bois</i>,&mdash;like a
-beautiful tree, as we say here. I would like so much to have her picture
-taken."</p>
-
-<p>A photographic instrument belonging to a clumsy amateur suggested this
-request to Cyrillia. I could not attempt such work successfully; but I
-gave her a note to a photographer of much skill; and a few days later
-the portrait was sent to the house. Cyrillia's daughter was certainly a
-comely girl,&mdash;tall and almost gold-colored, with pleasing features;
-and the photograph looked very nice, though less nice than the original.
-Half the beauty of these people is a beauty of tint,&mdash;a tint so
-exquisite sometimes that I have even heard white creoles declare
-no white complexion compares with it: the greater part of the charm
-remaining is grace,&mdash;the grace of movement; and neither of these can
-be rendered by photography. I had the portrait framed for Cyrillia, to hang
-up beside her little pictures.</p>
-
-<p>When it came, she was not in; I put it in her room, and waited to see
-the effect. On returning, she entered there; and I did not see her for
-so long a time that I stole to the door of the chamber to observe her.
-She was standing before the portrait,&mdash;looking at it, talking to it
-as if it were alive. "<i>Yche moin, yche moin!... Oui! ou toutt
-bel!&mdash;yche moin bel</i>." (My child, my child!... Yes, thou art all
-beautiful: my child is beautiful.) All at once she turned&mdash;perhaps she
-noticed my shadow, or felt my presence in some way: her eyes were
-wet;&mdash;she started, flushed, then laughed.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Ah! Missié, you watch me;&mdash;<i>ou guette moin</i>.... But
-she is my child. Why should I not love her?... She looks so beautiful
-there."</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"She is beautiful, Cyrillia;&mdash;I love to see you love
-her."</p>
-
-<p>She gazed at the picture a little longer in silence;&mdash;then turned
-to me again, and asked earnestly:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"<i>Pouki yo ja ka fai pòtrai palé&mdash;anh?... pisse yo ka tiré
-y toutt samm ou: c'est ou-menm!... Yo douè fai y palé 'tou</i>."</p>
-
-<p>(Why do they not make a portrait talk,&mdash;tell me? For they draw it
-just all like you!&mdash;it is yourself: they ought to make it talk.)</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Perhaps they will be able to do something like that one of these
-days, Cyrillia."</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Ah! that would be so nice. Then I could talk to her. <i>C'est
-yon bel moune moin fai&mdash;y bel, joli moune!... Moin sé causé épi
-y</i>."...</p>
-
-<p><br /></p>
-
-<p>... And I, watching her beautiful childish emotion,
-thought:&mdash;Cursed be the cruelty that would persuade itself that one
-soul may be like another,&mdash;that one affection may be replaced by
-another,&mdash;that individual goodness is not a thing apart, original,
-untwinned on earth, but only the general characteristic of a class or
-type, to be sought and found and utilized at will!... Self-curséd he
-who denies the divinity of love! Each heart, each brain in the billions
-of humanity,&mdash;even so surely as sorrow lives,&mdash;feels and
-thinks in some special way unlike any other; and goodness in each has
-its unlikeness to all other goodness,&mdash;and thus its own infinite
-preciousness; for however humble, however small, it is something all
-alone, and God never repeats his work. No heart-beat is cheap, no
-gentleness is despicable, no kindness is common; and Death, in removing
-a life&mdash;the simplest life ignored,&mdash;removes what never will
-reappear through the eternity of eternities,&mdash;since every being is
-the sum of a chain of experiences infinitely varied from all others....
-To some Cyrillia's happy tears might bring a smile: to me that smile
-would seem the unforgivable sin against the Giver of Life!...</p>
-
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 300px;">
-<img src="images/figure60.jpg" width="300" alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4><a id="PA_COMBINE_CHE">"PA COMBINÉ, CHÈ!"</a></h4>
-
-
-<h4>I</h4>
-
-
-<div class="figleft" style="width: 60px;">
-<img src="images/figure61.jpg" width="60" height="80" alt="" />
-</div>
-
-
-<p>More finely than any term in our tongue does the French word
-<i>frisson</i> express that faint shiver&mdash;as of a ghostly touch
-thrilling from hair to feet&mdash;which intense pleasure sometimes
-gives, and which is felt most often and most strongly in childhood, when
-the imagination is still so sensitive and so powerful that one's whole
-being trembles to the vibration of a fancy. And this electric word best
-expresses, I think, that long thrill of amazed delight inspired by the
-first knowledge of the tropic world,&mdash;a sensation of weirdness in
-beauty, like the effect, in child-days, of fairy tales and stories of
-phantom isles.</p>
-
-<p>For all unreal seems the vision of it. The transfiguration of all
-things by the stupendous light and the strange vapors of the West Indian
-sea,&mdash;the interorbing of flood and sky in blinding azure,&mdash;the
-sudden spirings of gem-tinted coast from the ocean,&mdash;the
-iris-colors and astounding shapes of the hills,&mdash;the unimaginable
-magnificence of palms,&mdash;the high woods veiled and swathed in vines
-that blaze like emerald: all remind you in some queer way of things half
-forgotten,&mdash;the fables of enchantment. Enchantment it is
-indeed&mdash;but only the enchantment of that Great Wizard, the Sun,
-whose power you are scarcely beginning to know.</p>
-
-<p>And into the life of the tropical city you enter as in dreams one enters
-into the life of a dead century. In all the quaint streets&mdash;over whose
-luminous yellow façades the beautiful burning violet of the sky appears
-as if but a few feet away&mdash;you see youth good to look upon as ripe
-fruit; and the speech of the people is soft as a coo; and eyes of brown
-girls caress you with a passing look.... Love's world, you may have
-heard, has few restraints here, where Nature ever seems to cry out, like
-the swart seller of corossoles:&mdash;"<i>ça qui le doudoux?</i>"...</p>
-
-<p>How often in some passing figure does one discern an ideal almost
-realized, and forbear to follow it with untired gaze only when another,
-another, and yet another, come to provoke the same aesthetic
-fancy,&mdash;to win the same unspoken praise! How often does one long
-for artist's power to fix the fleeting lines, to catch the color, to
-seize the whole exotic charm of some special type!... One finds a
-strange charm even in the timbre of these voices,&mdash;these half-breed
-voices, always with a tendency to contralto, and vibrant as ringing
-silver. What is that mysterious quality in a voice which has power to
-make the pulse beat faster, even when the singer is unseen?... do only
-the birds know?</p>
-
-<p>... It seems to you that you could never weary of watching this
-picturesque life,&mdash;of studying the costumes, brilliant with
-butterfly colors,&mdash;and the statuesque semi-nudity of laboring
-hundreds,&mdash;and the untaught grace of attitudes,&mdash;and the
-simplicity of manners. Each day brings some new pleasure of
-surprise;&mdash;even from the window of your lodging you are ever noting
-something novel, something to delight the sense of oddity or beauty....
-Even in your room everything interests you, because of its queerness or
-quaintness: you become fond of the objects about you,&mdash;the great
-noiseless rocking-chairs that lull to sleep;&mdash;the immense bed
-(<i>lit-à-bateau</i>) of heavy polished wood, with its richly carven
-sides reaching down to the very floor;&mdash;and its invariable
-companion, the little couch or <i>sopha</i>, similarly shaped but much
-narrower, used only for the siesta;&mdash;and the thick red earthen
-vessels (<i>dobannes</i>) which keep your drinking-water cool on the
-hottest days, but which are always filled thrice between sunrise and
-sunset with clear water from the mountain,&mdash;<i>dleau toutt
-vivant</i>, "all alive";&mdash;and the <i>verrines</i>, tall glass vases
-with stems of bronze in which your candle will burn steadily despite a
-draught;&mdash;and even those funny little angels and Virgins which look
-at you from their bracket in the corner, over the oil lamp you are
-presumed to kindle nightly in their honor, however great a heretic you
-may be.... You adopt at once, and without reservation, those creole home
-habits which are the result of centuries of experience with
-climate,&mdash;abstention from solid food before the middle of the day,
-repose after the noon meal;&mdash;and you find each repast an experience
-as curious as it is agreeable. It is not at all difficult to accustom
-oneself to green pease stewed with sugar, eggs mixed with tomatoes, salt
-fish stewed in milk, palmiste pith made into salad, grated cocoa formed
-into rich cakes, and dishes of titiri cooked in oil,&mdash;the minuscule
-fish, of which a thousand will scarcely fill a saucer. Above all, you
-are astonished by the endless variety of vegetables and fruits, of all
-conceivable shapes and inconceivable flavors.</p>
-
-<p>And it does not seem possible that even the simplest little
-recurrences of this antiquated, gentle home-life could ever prove
-wearisome by daily repetition through the months and years. The musical
-greeting of the colored child, tapping at your door before
-sunrise,&mdash;"<i>Bonjou', Missié</i>,"&mdash;as she brings your cup
-of black hot coffee and slice of corossole;&mdash;the smile of the
-silent brown girl who carries your meals up-stairs in a tray poised upon
-her brightly coiffed head, and who stands by while you dine, watching
-every chance to serve, treading quite silently with her pretty bare
-feet;&mdash;the pleasant manners of the <i>màchanne</i> who brings your
-fruit, the <i>porteuse</i> who delivers your bread, the
-<i>blanchisseuse</i> who washes your linen at the river,&mdash;and all
-the kindly folk who circle about your existence, with their trays and
-turbans, their <i>foulards</i> and <i>douillettes</i>, their primitive
-grace and creole chatter: these can never cease to have a charm for you.
-You cannot fail to be touched also by the amusing solicitude of these
-good people for your health, because you are a stranger: their advice
-about hours to go out and hours to stay at home,&mdash;about roads to
-follow and paths to avoid on account of snakes,&mdash;about removing
-your hat and coat, or drinking while warm.... Should you fall ill, this
-solicitude intensifies to devotion; you are tirelessly tended;&mdash;the
-good people will exhaust their wonderful knowledge of herbs to get you
-well,&mdash;will climb the mornes even at midnight, in spite of the risk
-of snakes and fear of zombis, to gather strange plants by the light of a
-lantern. Natural joyousness, natural kindliness, heart-felt desire to
-please, childish capacity of being delighted with trifles,&mdash;seem
-characteristic of all this colored population. It is turning its best
-side towards you, no doubt; but the side of the nature made visible
-appears none the less agreeable because you suspect there is another
-which you have not seen. What kindly inventiveness is displayed in
-contriving surprises for you, or in finding some queer thing to show
-you,&mdash;some fantastic plant, or grotesque fish, or singular bird!
-What apparent pleasure in taking trouble to gratify,&mdash;what innocent
-frankness of sympathy!... Childishly beautiful seems the readiness of
-this tinted race to compassionate: you do not reflect that it is also a
-savage trait, while the charm of its novelty is yet upon you. No one is
-ashamed to shed tears for the death of a pet animal; any mishap to a
-child creates excitement, and evokes an immediate volunteering of
-services. And this compassionate sentiment is often extended, in a
-semi-poetical way, even to inanimate objects. One June morning, I
-remember, a three-masted schooner lying in the bay took fire, and had to
-be set adrift. An immense crowd gathered on the wharves; and I saw many
-curious manifestations of grief,&mdash;such grief, perhaps, as an infant
-feels for the misfortune of a toy it imagines to possess feeling, but
-not the less sincere because unreasoning. As the flames climbed the
-rigging, and the masts fell, the crowd moaned as though looking upon
-some human tragedy; and everywhere one could hear such strange cries of
-pity as, "<i>Pauv' malhérè!</i>" (poor unfortunate), "<i>pauv'
-diabe!</i>"... "<i>Toutt baggaïe-y pou allé, casse!</i>" (All its
-things-to-go-with are broken!) sobbed a girl, with tears streaming down
-her cheeks.... She seemed to believe it was alive....</p>
-
-<p>... And day by day the artlessness of this exotic humanity touches
-you more;&mdash;day by day this savage, somnolent, splendid
-Nature&mdash;delighting in furious color&mdash;bewitches you more.
-Already the anticipated necessity of having to leave it all some
-day&mdash;the far-seen pain of bidding it farewell&mdash;weighs upon
-you, even in dreams.</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>II</h4>
-
-
-<p>Reader, if you be of those who have longed in vain for a glimpse of that
-tropic world,&mdash;tales of whose beauty charmed your childhood, and made
-stronger upon you that weird mesmerism of the sea which pulls at the
-heart of a boy,&mdash;one who had longed like you, and who, chance-led,
-beheld at last the fulfilment of the wish, can swear to you that the
-magnificence of the reality far excels the imagining. Those who know
-only the lands in which all processes for the satisfaction of human
-wants have been perfected under the terrible stimulus of necessity, can
-little guess the witchery of that Nature ruling the zones of color and
-of light. Within their primeval circles, the earth remains radiant and
-young as in that preglacial time whereof some transmitted memory
-may have created the hundred traditions of an Age of Gold. And the
-prediction of a paradise to come,&mdash;a phantom realm of rest and
-perpetual light: may this not have been but a sum of the remembrances and
-the yearnings of man first exiled from his heritage,&mdash;a dream born of
-the great nostalgia of races migrating to people the pallid North?...</p>
-
-<p><br /></p>
-
-<p>... But with the realization of the hope to know this magical Nature
-you learn that the actuality varies from the preconceived ideal
-otherwise than in surpassing it. Unless you enter the torrid world
-equipped with scientific knowledge extraordinary, your anticipations are
-likely to be at fault. Perhaps you had pictured to yourself the effect
-of perpetual summer as a physical delight,&mdash;something like an
-indefinite prolongation of the fairest summer weather ever enjoyed at
-home. Probably you had heard of fevers, risks of acclimatization,
-intense heat, and a swarming of venomous creatures; but you may
-nevertheless believe you know what precautions to take; and published
-statistics of climatic temperature may have persuaded you that the heat
-is not difficult to bear. By that enervation to which all white dwellers
-in the tropics are subject you may have understood a pleasant
-languor,&mdash;a painless disinclination to effort in a country where
-physical effort is less needed than elsewhere,&mdash;a soft temptation
-to idle away the hours in a hammock, under the shade of giant trees.
-Perhaps you have read, with eyes of faith, that torpor of the body is
-favorable to activity of the mind, and therefore believe that the
-intellectual powers can be stimulated and strengthened by tropical
-influences:&mdash;you suppose that enervation will reveal itself only as
-a beatific indolence which will leave the brain free to think with
-lucidity, or to revel in romantic dreams.</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>III</h4>
-
-
-<p>You are not at first undeceived;&mdash;the disillusion is long delayed.
-Doubtless you have read the delicious idyl of Bernardin de Saint-Pierre
-(this is not Mauritius, but the old life of Mauritius was wellnigh the
-same); and you look for idyllic personages among the beautiful humanity
-about you,&mdash;for idyllic scenes among the mornes shadowed by primeval
-forest, and the valleys threaded by a hundred brooks. I know not whether
-the faces and forms that you seek will be revealed to you;&mdash;but you
-will not be able to complain for the lack of idyllic loveliness in the
-commonest landscape. Whatever artistic knowledge you possess will merely
-teach you the more to wonder at the luxuriant purple of the sea, the
-violet opulence of the sky, the violent beauty of foliage greens, the
-lilac tints of evening, and the color-enchantments distance gives in
-an atmosphere full of iridescent power,&mdash;the amethysts and agates, the
-pearls and ghostly golds, of far mountainings. Never, you imagine, never
-could one tire of wandering through those marvellous valleys,&mdash;of
-climbing the silent roads under emeraldine shadow to heights from which
-the city seems but a few inches long, and the moored ships tinier than
-gnats that cling to a mirror,&mdash;or of swimming in that blue bay whose
-clear flood stays warm through all the year.<a name="FNanchor_53_1" id="FNanchor_53_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_53_1" class="fnanchor">[53]</a> Or,
-standing alone, in some aisle of colossal palms, where humming-birds are
-flashing and shooting like a showering of jewel-fires, you feel how weak
-the skill of poet or painter to fix the sensation of that white-pillared
-imperial splendor;&mdash;and you think you know why creoles exiled by
-necessity to colder lands may sicken for love of their own,&mdash;die of
-home-yearning, as did many a one in far Louisiana, after the political
-tragedies of 1848....</p>
-
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
-<a id="figure62"></a>
-<img src="images/figure62.jpg" width="400" alt="" />
-<p class="center">DIDIER SPRINGS<br />
-<i>At the end of a gorgeous ride, in a deep ravine we
-found the spring--warm, effervescent water gushing
-from the depths of the earth.</i></p>
-</div>
-
-
-<p>... But you are not a creole, and must pay tribute of suffering to the
-climate of the tropics. You will have to learn that a temperature of
-90° Fahr. in the tropics is by no means the same thing as 90° Fahr. in
-Europe or the United States;&mdash;that the mornes cannot be climbed with
-safety during the hotter hours of the afternoon;&mdash;that by taking a
-long walk you incur serious danger of catching a fever;&mdash;that to enter
-the high woods, a path must be hewn with the cutlass through the creepers
-and vines and undergrowth,&mdash;among snakes, venomous insects, venomous
-plants, and malarial exhalations;&mdash;that the finest blown dust is full
-of irritant and invisible enemies;&mdash;that it is folly to seek repose on
-a sward, or in the shade of trees,&mdash;particularly under tamarinds. Only
-after you have by experience become well convinced of these facts can
-you begin to comprehend something general in regard to West Indian
-conditions of life.</p>
-
-<p><br /></p>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_53_1" id="Footnote_53_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_53_1"><span class="label">[53]</span></a>Rufz remarks that the first effect of this climate of the
-Antilles is a sort of general physical excitement, an exaltation, a
-sense of unaccustomed strength,&mdash;which begets the desire of immediate
-action to discharge the surplus of nervous force. "Then all
-distances seem brief;&mdash;the greatest fatigues are braved without
-hesitation."&mdash;<i>Études.</i></p></div>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>IV</h4>
-
-
-<p>... Slowly the knowledge comes.... For months the vitality of a
-strong European (the American constitution bears the test even better)
-may resist the debilitating climate: perhaps the stranger will flatter
-himself that, like men habituated to heavy labor in stifling
-warmth,&mdash;those toiling in mines, in founderies in engine-rooms of
-ships, at iron-furnaces,&mdash;so he too may become accustomed, without
-losing his strength to the continuous draining of the pores, to the
-exhausting force of this strange motionless heat which compels change of
-clothing many times a day. But gradually he finds that it is not heat
-alone which is debilitating him, but the weight and septic nature of an
-atmosphere charged with vapor, with electricity, with unknown agents not
-less inimical to human existence than propitious to vegetal luxuriance.
-If he has learned those rules of careful living which served him well in
-a temperate climate, he will not be likely to abandon them among his new
-surroundings; and they will help him; no doubt,&mdash;particularly if he
-be prudent enough to avoid the sea-coast at night, and all exposure to
-dews or early morning mists, and all severe physical strain.
-Nevertheless, he becomes slowly conscious of changes extraordinary going
-on within him,&mdash;in especial, a continual sensation of weight in the
-brain, daily growing, and compelling frequent repose;&mdash;also a
-curious heightening of nervous sensibility to atmospheric changes, to
-tastes and odors, to pleasure and pain. Total loss of appetite soon
-teaches him to follow the local custom of eating nothing solid before
-mid-day, and enables him to divine how largely the necessity for caloric
-enters into the food-consumption of northern races. He becomes
-abstemious, eats sparingly, and discovers his palate to have become
-oddly exacting&mdash;finds that certain fruits and drinks are indeed, as
-the creoles assert, appropriate only to particular physical conditions
-corresponding with particular hours of the day. Corossole is only to be
-eaten in the morning, after black coffee;&mdash;vermouth is good to
-drink only between the hours of nine and half-past ten;&mdash;rum or
-other strong liquor only before meals or after fatigue;&mdash;claret or
-wine only during a repast, and then very sparingly,&mdash;for, strangely
-enough, wine is found to be injurious in a country where stronger
-liquors are considered among the prime necessaries of existence.</p>
-
-<p>And he expected, at the worst, to feel lazy, to lose some physical
-energy! But this is no mere languor which now begins to oppress
-him;&mdash;it is a sense of vital exhaustion painful as the misery of
-convalescence: the least effort provokes a perspiration profuse enough
-to saturate clothing, and the limbs ache as from muscular
-overstrain;&mdash;the lightest attire feels almost
-insupportable;&mdash;the idea of sleeping even under a sheet is torture,
-for the weight of a silken handkerchief is discomfort. One wishes one
-could live as a savage,&mdash;naked in the heat. One burns with a thirst
-impossible to assuage&mdash;feels a desire for stimulants, a sense of
-difficulty in breathing, occasional quickenings of the heart's action so
-violent as to alarm. Then comes at last the absolute dread of physical
-exertion. Some slight relief might be obtained, no doubt, by resigning
-oneself forthwith to adopt the gentle indolent manners of the white
-creoles, who do not walk when it is possible to ride, and never ride if
-it is equally convenient to drive;&mdash;but the northern nature
-generally refuses to accept this ultimate necessity without a protracted
-and painful struggle.</p>
-
-<p>... Not even then has the stranger fully divined the evil power of
-this tropical climate, which remodels the characters of races within a
-couple of generations,&mdash;changing the shape of the
-skeleton,&mdash;deepening the cavities of the orbits to protect the eye
-from the flood of light,&mdash;transforming the blood,&mdash;darkening
-the skin. Following upon the nervous modifications of the first few
-months come modifications and changes of a yet graver kind;&mdash;with
-the loss of bodily energy ensues a more than corresponding loss of
-mental activity and strength. The whole range of thought diminishes,
-contracts,&mdash;shrinks to that narrowest of circles which surrounds
-the physical sell, the inner ring of merely material sensation: the
-memory weakens appallingly;&mdash;the mind operates faintly, slowly,
-incoherently,&mdash;almost as in dreams. Serious reading, vigorous
-thinking, become impossible. You doze over the most important
-project;&mdash;you fall fast asleep over the most fascinating of
-books.</p>
-
-<p>Then comes the vain revolt, the fruitless desperate striving with this
-occult power which numbs the memory and enchants the will. Against
-the set resolve to think, to act, to study, there is a hostile rush of
-unfamiliar pain to the temples, to the eyes, to the nerve centres of
-the brain; and a great weight is somewhere in the head, always growing
-heavier: then comes a drowsiness that overpowers and stupefies, like the
-effect of a narcotic. And this obligation to sleep, to sink into coma,
-will impose itself just so surely as you venture to attempt any mental
-work in leisure hours, after the noon repast, or during the heat of the
-afternoon. Yet at night you can scarcely sleep. Repose is made feverish
-by a still heat that keeps the skin drenched with thick sweat, or by
-a perpetual, unaccountable, tingling and prickling of the whole
-body-surface. With the approach of morning the air grows cooler, and
-slumber comes,&mdash;a slumber of exhaustion, dreamless and sickly; and
-perhaps when you would rise with the sun you feel such a dizziness, such
-a numbness, such a torpor, that only by the most intense effort can you
-keep your feet for the first five minutes. You experience a sensation
-that recalls the poet's fancy of death-in-life, or old stories of sudden
-rising from the grave: it is as though all the electricity of will
-had ebbed away,&mdash;all the vital force evaporated, in the heat of the
-night....</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>V</h4>
-
-
-<p>It might be stated, I think, with safety, that for a certain class of
-invalids the effect of the climate is like a powerful stimulant,&mdash;a
-tonic medicine which may produce astonishing results within a fixed
-time,&mdash;but which if taken beyond that time will prove dangerous. After
-a certain number of months, your first enthusiasm with your new
-surroundings dies out;&mdash;even Nature ceases to affect the senses in the
-same way: the <i>frisson</i> ceases to come to you. Meanwhile you may have
-striven to become as much as possible a part of the exotic life into
-which you have entered,&mdash;may have adopted its customs, learned its
-language. But you cannot mix with it mentally;&mdash;You circulate only as
-an oil-drop in its current. You still feel yourself alone.</p>
-
-<p>The very longest West Indian day is but twelve hours fifty-six
-minutes;&mdash;perhaps your first dissatisfaction was evoked by the brevity
-of the days. There is no twilight whatever; and all activity ceases with
-sundown: there is no going outside of the city after dark, because of
-snakes;&mdash;club life here ends at the hour it only begins
-abroad;&mdash;there is no visiting of evenings; after the seven o'clock
-dinner, everyone prepares to retire. And the foreigner, accustomed to make
-evening a time for social intercourse, finds no small difficulty in
-resigning himself to this habit of early retiring. The natural activity of
-a European or American mind requires some intellectual exercise,&mdash;at
-least some interchange of ideas with sympathetic natures; the hours during
-the suspension of business after noon, or those following the closing of
-offices at sunset, are the only ones in which busy men may find time
-for such relaxation; and these very hours have been always devoted to
-restorative sleep by the native population ever since the colony began.
-Naturally, therefore, the stranger dreads the coming of the darkness,
-the inevitable isolation of long sleepless hours. And if he seek those
-solaces for loneliness which he was wont to seek at home,&mdash;reading,
-study,&mdash;he is made to comprehend, as never before, what the absence of
-all libraries, lack of books, inaccessibility of all reading-matter,
-means for the man of the nineteenth century. One must send abroad to
-obtain even a review, and wait months for its coming. And this
-mental starvation gnaws at the brain more and more as one feels less
-inclination and less capacity for effort, and as that single enjoyment,
-which at first rendered a man indifferent to other pleasures,&mdash;the
-delight of being alone with tropical Nature,&mdash;becomes more difficult
-to indulge. When lethargy has totally mastered habit and purpose, and you
-must at last confess yourself resigned to view Nature from your chamber,
-or at best from a carriage window,&mdash;then, indeed, the want of all
-literature proves a positive torture. It is not a consolation to
-discover that you are an almost solitary sufferer,&mdash;from climate as
-well as from mental hunger. With amazement and envy you see young girls
-passing to walk right across the island and back before sunset, under
-burdens difficult for a strong man to lift to his shoulder;&mdash;the same
-journey on horseback would now weary you for days. You wonder of what
-flesh and blood can these people be made,&mdash;what wonderful vitality
-lies in those slender woman-bodies, which, under the terrible sun, and
-despite their astounding expenditure of force, remain cool to the sight
-and touch as bodies of lizards and serpents! And contrasting this savage
-strength with your own weakness, you begin to understand better how
-mighty the working of those powers which temper races and shape race
-habits in accordance with environment.</p>
-
-<p>... Ultimately, if destined for acclimatation, you will cease to suffer
-from these special conditions; but ere this can be, a long period of
-nervous irritability must be endured; and fevers must thin the blood,
-soften the muscles, transform the Northern tint of health to a dead
-brown. You will have to learn that intellectual pursuits can be
-persisted in only at risk of life;&mdash;that in this part of the world
-there is nothing to do but to plant cane and cocoa, and make rum,
-and cultivate tobacco,&mdash;or open a magazine for the sale of Madras
-handkerchiefs and <i>foulards</i>,&mdash;and eat, drink, sleep, perspire.
-You will understand why the tropics settled by European races produce no
-sciences, arts, or literature,&mdash;why the habits and the thoughts of
-other centuries still prevail where Time itself moves slowly as though
-enfeebled by the heat.</p>
-
-<p>And with the compulsory indolence of your life, the long exacerbation
-of the nervous system, will come the first pain of nostalgia,&mdash;the
-first weariness of the tropics. It is not that Nature can become ever less
-lovely to your sight; but that the tantalization of her dangerous
-beauty, which you may enjoy only at a safe distance, exasperates at
-last. The colors that at first bewitched will vex your eyes by their
-violence;&mdash;the creole life that appeared so simple, so gentle, will
-reveal dulnesses and discomforts undreamed of. You will ask yourself how
-much longer can you endure the prodigious light, and the furnace heat
-of blinding blue days, and the void misery of sleepless nights, and the
-curse of insects, and the sound of the mandibles of enormous roaches
-devouring the few books in your possession. You will grow weary of the
-grace of the palms, of the gemmy colors of the ever-clouded peaks, of
-the sight of the high woods made impenetrable by lianas and vines and
-serpents. You will weary even of the tepid sea, because to enjoy it as a
-swimmer you must rise and go out at hours while the morning air is still
-chill and heavy with miasma;&mdash;you will weary, above all, of tropic
-fruits, and feel that you would gladly pay a hundred francs for the
-momentary pleasure of biting into one rosy juicy Northern apple.</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>VI</h4>
-
-
-<p>&mdash;But if you believe this disillusion perpetual,&mdash;if you fancy
-the old bewitchment has spent all its force upon you,&mdash;you do not know
-this Nature. She is not done with you yet: she has only torpefied your
-energies a little. Of your willingness to obey her, she takes no
-cognizance;&mdash;she ignores human purposes, knows only molecules and
-their combinations; and the blind blood in your veins,&mdash;thick with
-Northern heat and habit,&mdash;is still in dumb desperate rebellion against
-her.</p>
-
-<p>Perhaps she will quell this revolt forever,&mdash;thus:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>One day, in the second hour of the afternoon, a few moments after
-leaving home, there will come to you a sensation such as you have never
-known before: a sudden weird fear of the light.</p>
-
-<p>It seems to you that the blue sky-fire is burning down into your
-brain,&mdash;that the flare of the white pavements and yellow walls is
-piercing somehow into your life,&mdash;creating an unfamiliar mental
-confusion,&mdash;blurring out thought.... Is the whole world taking
-fire?... The flaming azure of the sea dazzles and pains like a
-crucible-glow;&mdash;the green of the mornes flickers and blazes in some
-amazing way.... Then dizziness inexpressible: you grope with
-eyes shut fast&mdash;afraid to open them again in that stupefying
-torrefaction,&mdash;moving automatically,&mdash;vaguely knowing you must
-get out of the flaring and flashing,&mdash;somewhere, anywhere away from
-the white wrath of the sun, and the green fire of the hills, and the
-monstrous color of the sea.... Then, remembering nothing, you find
-yourself in bed,&mdash;with an insupportable sense of weight at the back
-of the head,&mdash;a pulse beating furiously,&mdash;and a strange sharp
-pain at intervals stinging through your eyes.... And the pain grows,
-expands,&mdash;fills all the skull,&mdash;forces you to cry out,
-replaces all other sensations except a weak consciousness, vanishing and
-recurring, that you are very sick, more sick than ever before in all
-your life.</p>
-
-<p><br /></p>
-
-<p>... And with the tedious ebbing of the long fierce fever, all the
-heat seems to pass from your veins. You can no longer imagine, as
-before, that it would be delicious to die of cold;&mdash;you shiver even
-with all the windows closed;&mdash;you feel currents of
-air,&mdash;imperceptible to nerves in a natural condition,&mdash;which
-shock like a dash of cold water, whenever doors are opened and closed;
-the very moisture upon your forehead is icy. What you now wish for are
-stimulants and warmth. Your blood has been changed;&mdash;tropic Nature
-has been good to you: she is preparing you to dwell with her.</p>
-
-<p>... Gradually, under the kind nursing of those colored
-people,&mdash;among whom, as a stranger, your lot will probably be
-cast,&mdash;you recover strength; and perhaps it will seem to you that
-the pain of lying a while in the Shadow of Death is more than
-compensated by this rare and touching experience of human goodness. How
-tirelessly watchful,&mdash;how naïvely sympathetic,&mdash;how utterly
-self-sacrificing these women-natures are! Patiently, through weeks of
-stifling days and sleepless nights,&mdash;cruelly unnatural to them, for
-their life is in the open air,&mdash;they struggle to save without one
-murmur of fatigue, without heed of their most ordinary physical wants,
-without a thought of recompense;&mdash;trusting to their own skill when
-the physician abandons hope,&mdash;climbing to the woods for herbs when
-medicines prove, without avail. The dream of angels holds nothing
-sweeter than this reality of woman's tenderness.</p>
-
-<p>And simultaneously with the return of force, you may wonder whether
-this sickness has not sharpened your senses in some extraordinary
-way,&mdash;especially hearing, sight, and smell. Once well enough to be
-removed without danger, you will be taken up into the mountains
-somewhere,&mdash;for change of air; and there it will seem to you,
-perhaps, that never before did you feel so acutely the pleasure of
-perfumes,&mdash;of color-tones,&mdash;of the timbre of voices. You have
-simply been acclimated.... And suddenly the old fascination of tropic
-Nature seizes you again,&mdash;more strongly than in the first
-days;&mdash;the <i>frisson</i> of delight returns; the joy of it thrills
-through all your blood,&mdash;making a great fulness at your heart as of
-unutterable desire to give thanks....</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>VII</h4>
-
-
-<p>... My friend Felicien had come to the colony fresh from the region of
-the Vosges, with the muscles and energies of a mountaineer, and cheeks
-pink as a French country-girl's;&mdash;he had never seemed to me physically
-adapted for acclimation; and I feared much for him on hearing of his
-first serious illness. Then the news of his convalescence came to me as
-a grateful surprise. But I did not feel reassured by his appearance the
-first evening I called at the little house to which he had been removed,
-on the brow of a green height overlooking the town. I found him seated
-in a <i>berceuse</i> on the veranda. How wan he was, and how spectral his
-smile of welcome,&mdash;as he held out to me a hand that seemed all of
-bone!</p>
-
-<p>... We chatted there a while. It had been one of those tropic days whose
-charm interpenetrates and blends with all the subtler life of sensation,
-and becomes a luminous part of it forever,&mdash;steeping all after-dreams
-of ideal peace in supernal glory of color,&mdash;transfiguring all fancies
-of the pure joy of being. Azure to the sea-line the sky had remained since
-morning; and the trade-wind, warm as a caress, never brought even one
-gauzy cloud to veil the naked beauty of the peaks.</p>
-
-<p>And the sun was yellowing,&mdash;as only over the tropics he yellows to
-his death. Lilac tones slowly spread through sea and heaven from the
-west;&mdash;mornes facing the light began to take wondrous glowing
-color,&mdash;a tone of green so fiery that it looked as though all the rich
-sap of their woods were phosphorescing. Shadows blued;&mdash;far peaks took
-tinting that scarcely seemed of earth,&mdash;iridescent violets and
-purples interchanging through vapor of gold.... Such the colors of the
-<i>carangue</i>, when the beautiful tropic fish is turned in the light, and
-its gem-greens shift to rich azure and prism-purple.</p>
-
-<p>Reclining in our chairs, we watched the strange splendor from the
-veranda of the little cottage,&mdash;saw the peaked land slowly steep
-itself in the aureate glow,&mdash;the changing color of the verdured
-mornes, and of the sweep of circling sea. Tiny birds, bosomed with fire,
-were shooting by in long curves, like embers flung by invisible hands.
-From far below, the murmur of the city rose to us,&mdash;a stormy hum.
-So motionless we remained that the green and gray lizards were putting
-out their heads from behind the columns of the veranda to stare at
-us,&mdash;as if wondering whether we were really alive. I turned my head
-suddenly to look at two queer butterflies; and all the lizards hid
-themselves again. <i>Papillon-lanmò</i>,&mdash;Death's
-butterflies,&mdash;these were called in the speech of the people: their
-broad wings were black like blackest velvet;&mdash;as they fluttered
-against the yellow light, they looked like silhouettes of butterflies.
-Always through my memory of that wondrous evening,&mdash;when I little
-thought I was seeing my friend's face for the last time,&mdash;there
-slowly passes the black palpitation of those wings....</p>
-
-<p>... I had been chatting with Felicien about various things which I
-thought might have a cheerful interest for him; and more than once I had
-been happy to see him smile.... But our converse waned. The
-ever-magnifying splendor before us had been mesmerizing our
-senses,&mdash;slowly overpowering our wills with the amazement of its
-beauty. Then, as the sun's disk&mdash;enormous,&mdash;blinding
-gold&mdash;touched the lilac flood, and the stupendous orange glow
-flamed up to the very zenith, we found ourselyes awed at last into
-silence.</p>
-
-<p>The orange in the west deepened into vermilion. Softly and very
-swiftly night rose like an indigo exhalation from the
-land,&mdash;filling the valleys, flooding the gorges, blackening the
-woods, leaving only the points of the peaks a while to catch the crimson
-glow. Forests and fields began to utter a rushing sound as of torrents,
-always deepening,&mdash;made up of the instrumentation and the voices of
-numberless little beings: clangings as of hammered iron, ringings as of
-dropping silver upon a stone, the dry bleatings of the
-<i>cabritt-bois</i>, and the chirruping of tree-frogs, and the
-<i>k-i-i-i-i-i-i</i> of crickets. Immense trembling sparks began to rise
-and fall among the shadows,&mdash;twinkling out and disappearing all
-mysteriously: these were the fire-flies awakening. Then about the
-branches of the <i>bois-canon</i> black shapes began to hover, which
-were not birds&mdash;shapes flitting processionally without any noise;
-each one in turn resting a moment as to nibble something at the end of a
-bough;&mdash;then yielding place to another, and circling away, to
-return again from the other side...the <i>guimbos</i>, the great
-bats.</p>
-
-<p>But we were silent, with the emotion of sunset still upon us: that
-ghostly emotion which is the transmitted experience of a race,&mdash;the
-sum of ancestral experiences innumerable,&mdash;the mingled joy and pain
-of a million years.... Suddenly a sweet voice pierced the
-stillness,&mdash;pleading:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"<i>Pa combiné, chè!&mdash;pa combiné conm ça!</i>" (Do
-not think, dear!&mdash;do not think like that!)</p>
-
-<p>... Only less beautiful than the sunset she seemed, this slender
-half-breed, who had come all unperceived behind us, treading soundlessly
-with her slim bare feet.... "And you, Missié", she said to me, in a tone
-of gentle reproach;&mdash;"you are his friend! why do you let him think? It
-is thinking that will prevent him getting well."</p>
-
-<p><i>Combiné</i> in creole signifies to think intently, and therefore to
-be unhappy,&mdash;because, with this artless race, as with children, to
-think intensely about anything is possible only under great stress of
-suffering.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"<i>Pa combiné,&mdash;non, chè</i>," she repeated, plaintively,
-stroking Felicien's hair. "It is thinking that makes us old.... And it is
-time to bid your friend good-night."...</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"She is so good," said Felicien, smiling to make her
-pleased;&mdash;"I could never tell you how good. But she does not
-understand. She believes I suffer if I am silent. She is contented only
-when she sees me laugh; and so she will tell me creole stories by the
-hour to keep me amused, as if I were a child."...</p>
-
-<p>As he spoke she slipped an arm about his neck.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"<i>Doudoux</i>," she persisted;&mdash;and her voice was a dove's
-coo,&mdash;"<i>Si ou ainmein moin, pa combiné-non!</i>"</p>
-
-<p><br /></p>
-
-<p>And in her strange exotic beauty, her savage grace, her supple caress,
-the velvet witchery of her eyes,&mdash;it seemed to me that I beheld a
-something imaged, not of herself, nor of the moment only,&mdash;a something
-weirdly sensuous: the Spirit of tropic Nature made golden flesh, and
-murmuring to each lured wanderer:&mdash;"<i>If thou wouldst love me, do not
-think</i>"...</p>
-
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 300px;">
-<img src="images/figure63.jpg" width="400" alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4><a id="YE">YÉ</a></h4>
-
-
-<h4>I</h4>
-
-<div class="figleft" style="width: 60px;">
-<img src="images/figure64.jpg" width="60" height="80" alt="" />
-</div>
-
-
-<p>Almost every night, just before bedtime, I hear some group of children
-in the street telling stories to each other. Stories, enigmas or
-<i>tim-tim</i>, and songs, and round games, are the joy of child-life
-here,&mdash;whether rich or poor. I am particularly fond of listening to
-the stories,&mdash;which seem to me the oddest stories I ever heard.</p>
-
-<p>I succeeded in getting several dictated to me, so that I could write
-them;&mdash;others were written for me by creole friends, with better
-success. To obtain them in all their original simplicity and naive humor
-of detail, one should be able to write them down in short-hand as fast
-as they are related: they lose greatly in the slow process of dictation.
-The simple mind of the native story-teller, child or adult, is seriously
-tried by the inevitable interruptions and restraints of the dictation
-method;&mdash;the reciter loses spirit, becomes soon weary, and purposely
-shortens the narrative to finish the task as soon as possible. It seems
-painful to such a one to repeat a phrase more than once,&mdash;at least
-in the same way; while frequent questioning may irritate the most
-good-natured in a degree that shows how painful to the untrained brain
-may be the exercise of memory and steady control of imagination required
-for continuous dictation. By patience, however, I succeeded in obtaining
-many curiosities of oral literature,&mdash;representing a group of stories
-which, whatever their primal origin, have been so changed by local
-thought and coloring as to form a distinctively Martinique folk-tale
-circle. Among them are several especially popular with the children of
-my neighborhood; and I notice that almost every narrator embellishes the
-original plot with details of his own, which he varies at pleasure.</p>
-
-<p>I submit a free rendering of one of these tales,&mdash;the history of Yé
-and the Devil. The whole story of Yé would form a large book,&mdash;so
-numerous the list of his adventures; and this adventure seems to me the
-most characteristic of all. Yé is the most curious figure in Martinique
-folk-lore. Yé is the typical Bitaco,&mdash;or mountain negro of the lazy
-kind,&mdash;the country black whom city blacks love to poke fun at. As for
-the Devil of Martinique folk-lore, he resembles the <i>travailleur</i> at a
-distance; but when you get dangerously near him, you find that he has
-red eyes and red hair, and two little horns under his <i>chapeau-Bacouè</i>,
-and feet like an ape, and fire in his throat. <i>Y ka sam yon gouôs, gouôs
-macaque</i>....</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>II</h4>
-
-
-<p>Ça qui pa té eonnaitt Yé?... Who is there in all Martinique who never
-heard of Yé? Everybody used to know the old rascal. He had every fault
-under the sun;&mdash;he was the laziest negro in the whole island; he was
-the biggest glutton in the whole world. He had an amazing number of
-children; and they were most of the time all half dead for hunger.</p>
-
-<p><i>Ça qui pa té connaitt Yé?</i>... Who is there in all Martinique who
-never heard of Yé? Everybody used to know the old rascal. He had every
-fault under the sun;&mdash;he was the laziest negro in the whole island; he
-was the biggest glutton in the whole world. He had an amazing number<a name="FNanchor_54_1" id="FNanchor_54_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_54_1" class="fnanchor">[54]</a> of
-children; and they were most of the time all half dead for hunger.</p>
-
-<p>Well, one day Yé went out to the woods to look for something to eat.
-And he walked through the woods nearly all day, till he became ever so
-tired; but he could not find anything to eat. He was just going to give
-up the search, when he heard a queer crackling noise,&mdash;at no great
-distance. He went to see what it was,&mdash;hiding himself behind the big
-trees as he got nearer to it.</p>
-
-<p>All at once he came to a little hollow in the woods, and saw a great
-fire burning there,&mdash;and he saw a Devil sitting beside the fire. The
-Devil was roasting a great heap of snails; and the sound Yé had heard
-was the crackling of the snail-shells. The Devil seemed to be very
-old;&mdash;he was sitting on the trunk of a bread-fruit tree; and Yé took a
-good long look at him. After Yé had watched him for a while, Yé found
-out that the old Devil was quite blind.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;The Devil had a big calabash in his hand full of
-<i>feroce</i>,&mdash;that is to say, boiled salt codfish and manioc
-flour, with ever so many pimentos (<i>épi en pile
-piment</i>),&mdash;just what negroes like Yé are most fond of. And the
-Devil seemed to be very hungry; and the food was going so fast down his
-throat that it made Yé unhappy to see it disappearing. It made him so
-unhappy that he felt at last he could not resist the temptation to steal
-from the old blind Devil. He crept quite close up to the Devil without
-making any noise, and began to rob him. Every time the Devil would lift
-his hand to his mouth, Yé would slip his own fingers into the calabash,
-and snatch a piece. The old Devil did not even look puzzled;&mdash;he
-did not seem to know anything; and Yé thought to himself that the old
-Devil was a great fool. He began to get more and more courage;&mdash;he
-took bigger and bigger handfuls out of the calabash;&mdash;he ate even
-faster than the Devil could eat. At last there was only one little bit
-left in the calabash. Yé put out his hand to take it,&mdash;and all of
-a sudden the Devil made a grab at Yé's hand and caught it! Yé was so
-frightened he could not even cry out, <i>Aïe-yaïe</i>. The Devil
-finished the last morsel, threw down the calabash, and said to Yé in a
-terrible voice:&mdash;"<i>Atò, saff!&mdash;ou c'est ta moin!</i>" (I've
-got you now, you glutton;&mdash;you belong to me!) Then he jumped on
-Yé's back, like a great ape, and twisted his legs round Yé's neck, and
-cried out:&mdash;-"Carry me to your cabin,&mdash;and walk fast!"</p>
-
-<p><br /></p>
-
-<p>... When Yé's poor children saw him coming, they wondered what their
-papa was carrying on his back. They thought it might be a sack of bread
-or vegetables or perhaps a <i>régime</i> of bananas,&mdash;for it was
-getting dark, and they could not see well. They laughed and showed their
-teeth and danced and screamed: "Here's papa coming with something to
-eat!&mdash;papa's coming with something to eat!" But when Yé had got near
-enough for them to see what he was carrying, they yelled and ran away to
-hide themselves. As for the poor mother, she could only hold up her two
-hands for horror.</p>
-
-<p>When they got into the cabin the Devil pointed to a corner, and said to
-Yé:&mdash;"Put me down there!" Yé put him down. The Devil sat there in the
-corner and never moved or spoke all that evening and all that night. He
-seemed to be a very quiet Devil indeed. The children began to look at
-him.</p>
-
-<p>But at breakfast-time, when the poor mother had managed to procure
-something for the children to eat,&mdash;just some bread-fruit and
-yams,&mdash;the old Devil suddenly rose up from his corner and
-muttered:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"<i>Manman mò!&mdash;papa mò!&mdash;touttt yche mò!</i>" (Mamma
-dead!&mdash;papa dead!&mdash;all the children dead!)</p>
-
-<p>And he blew his breath on them, and they all fell down stiff as if they
-were dead&mdash;<i>raidi-cadave!</i>. Then the Devil ate up everything
-there was on the table. When he was done, he filled the pots and dishes
-with dirt, and blew his breath again on Yé and all the family, and
-muttered:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"<i>Toutt moune lévé!</i>" (Everybody get up!)</p>
-
-<p>Then they all got up. Then he pointed to all the plates and dishes full
-of dirt, and said to them:&mdash;<a name="FNanchor_55_1" id="FNanchor_55_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_55_1" class="fnanchor">[55]</a></p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"<i>Gobe-moin ça!</i>"</p>
-
-<p>And they had to gobble it all up, as he told them.</p>
-
-<p>After that it was no use trying to eat anything. Every time anything was
-cooked, the Devil would do the same thing. It was thus the next day, and
-the next, and the day after, and so every day for a long, long time.</p>
-
-<p><br /></p>
-
-<p>Yé did not know what to do; but his wife said she did. If she was only
-a man, she would soon get rid of that Devil. "Yé," she insisted, "go
-and see the Bon-Dié [the Good-God], and ask him what to do. I would go
-myself if I could; but women are not strong enough to climb the great
-morne."</p>
-
-<p>So Yé started off very, very early one morning, before the peep of day,
-and began to climb the Montagne Pelée. He climbed and walked, and walked
-and climbed, until he got at last to the top of the Morne de la Croix.<a name="FNanchor_56_1" id="FNanchor_56_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_56_1" class="fnanchor">[56]</a></p>
-
-<p>Then he knocked at the sky as loud as he could till the Good-God put his
-head out of a cloud and asked him what he wanted:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"<i>Eh bien!&mdash;ça ou ni, Yé fa ou lè?</i>"</p>
-
-<p>When Yé had recounted his troubles, the Good-God said:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"<i>Pauv ma pauv!</i> I knew it all before you came, Yé. I
-can tell you what to do; but I am afraid it will be no use&mdash;you
-will never be able to do it! Your gluttony is going to be the ruin of
-you, poor Yé! Still, you can try. Now listen well to what I am going to
-tell you. First of all, you must not eat anything before you get home.
-Then when your wife has the children's dinner ready, and you see the
-Devil getting up, you must cry out:&mdash;'<i>Tam ni pou tam ni
-bé!</i>' Then the Devil will drop down dead. Don't forget not to eat
-anything&mdash;<i>ou tanne?</i>"...</p>
-
-<p>Yé promised to remember all he was told, and not to eat anything on
-his way down;&mdash;then he said good-bye to the Bon-Dié (<i>bien conm
-y faut</i>), and started. All the way he kept repeating the words the
-Good-God had told him: "<i>Tam ni pou tam ni bé!"&mdash;"tam ni pou tam
-ni bé!</i>"&mdash;over and over again.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;But before reaching home he had to cross a little stream; and
-on both banks he saw wild guava-bushes growing, with plenty of sour
-guavas upon them;&mdash;for it was not yet time for guavas to be ripe.
-Poor Yé was hungry! He did all he could to resist the temptation, but
-it proved too much for him. He broke all his promises to the Bon-Dié:
-he ate and ate and ate till there were no more guavas left,&mdash;and
-then he began to eat <i>zicaques</i> and green plums, and all sorts of
-nasty sour things, till he could not eat any more.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;By the time he got to the cabin his teeth were so on edge that he
-could scarcely speak distinctly enough to tell his wife to get the
-supper ready.</p>
-
-<p>And so while everybody was happy, thinking that they were going to be
-freed from their trouble, Yé was really in no condition to do anything.
-The moment the supper was ready, the Devil got up from his corner as
-usual, and approached the table. Then Yé tried to speak; but his teeth
-were so on edge that instead of saying,&mdash;"<i>Tam ni pou tam ni
-bé</i>," he could only stammer out:&mdash;-"<i>Anni toqué Diabe-là
-cagnan</i>."</p>
-
-<p>This had no effect on the Devil at all: he seemed to be used to it! He
-blew his breath on them all, sent them to sleep, ate up all the supper,
-filled the empty dishes with filth, awoke Yé and his family, and ordered
-them as usual;&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"<i>Gobe-moin ça!</i>" And they had to gobble it up,&mdash;every
-bit of it.</p>
-
-<p><br /></p>
-
-<p>The family nearly died of hunger and disgust. Twice more Yé climbed the
-Montagne Pelée; twice more he climbed the Morne de la Croix; twice more
-he disturbed the poor Bon-Dié, all for nothing!&mdash;since each time on
-his way down he would fill his paunch with all sorts of nasty sour things,
-so that he could not speak right. The Devil remained in the house night
-and day;&mdash;the poor mother threw herself down on the ground, and pulled
-out her hair,&mdash;so unhappy she was!</p>
-
-<p>But luckily for the poor woman, she had one child as cunning as a
-rat,<a name="FNanchor_57_1" id="FNanchor_57_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_57_1" class="fnanchor">[57]</a>&mdash;a boy called Ti Fonté (little Impudent), who bore his name well.
-When he saw his mother crying so much, he said to her:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Mamma, send papa just once more to see the Good-God: I know
-something to do!"</p>
-
-<p>The mother knew how cunning her boy was: she felt sure he meant
-something by his words;&mdash;she sent old Yé for the last time to see the
-Bon-Dié.</p>
-
-<p>Yé used always to wear one of those big long coats they call
-<i>lavalasses</i>;&mdash;whether it was hot or cool, wet or dry, he
-never went out without it. There were two very big pockets in
-it&mdash;one on each side. When Ti Fonté saw his father getting ready
-to go, he jumped <i>floup!</i> into one of the pockets and hid himself
-there. Yé climbed all the way to the top of the Morne de la Croix
-without suspecting anything. When he got there the little boy put one of
-his ears out of Yé's pocket,&mdash;so as to hear everything the
-Good-God would say.</p>
-
-<p>This time he was very angry,&mdash;the Bon-Dié: he spoke very
-crossly; he scolded Yé a great deal. But he was so kind for all
-that,&mdash;he was so generous to good-for-nothing Yé, that he took the
-pains to repeat the words over and over again for him:&mdash;"<i>Tam ni
-pou tam ni bé</i>."... And this time the Bon-Dié was not talking to no
-purpose: there was somebody there well able to remember what he said. Ti
-Fonté made the most of his chance;&mdash;he sharpened that little
-tongue of his; he thought of his mamma and all his little brothers and
-sisters dying of hunger down below. As for his father, Yé did as he had
-done before&mdash;stuffed himself with all the green fruit he could
-find.</p>
-
-<p>The moment Yé got home and took off his coat, Ti Fonté jumped out,
-<i>plapp!</i>&mdash;and ran to his mamma, and whispered:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Mamma, get ready a nice, big dinner!&mdash;we are going to have
-it all to ourselves to-day: the Good-God didn't talk for nothing,&mdash;I
-heard every word he said!"</p>
-
-<p>Then the mother got ready a nice <i>calalou-crabe</i>, a
-<i>tonton-banane</i>, a <i>matété-cirique</i>,&mdash;several
-calabashes of <i>couss-caye</i>, two <i>régimes-figues</i> (bunches of
-small bananas),&mdash;in short, a very fine dinner indeed, with a
-<i>chopine</i> of tafia to wash it all well down.</p>
-
-<p>The Devil felt as sure of himself that day as he had always felt, and
-got up the moment everything was ready. But Ti Fonté got up too, and
-yelled out just as loud as he could:&mdash;-"<i>Tam ni pou tam ni
-bé!</i>"</p>
-
-<p>At once the Devil gave a scream so loud that it could be heard right
-down to the bottom of hell,&mdash;and he fell dead.</p>
-
-<p>Meanwhile, Yé, like the old fool he was, kept trying to say what the
-Bon-Dié had told him, and could only mumble:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"<i>Anni toqué Diabe-là cagnan!</i>"</p>
-
-<p>He would never have been able to do anything;&mdash;and his wife had a
-great mind just to send him to bed at once, instead of letting him sit down
-to eat all those nice things. But she was a kind-hearted soul; and so she
-let Yé stay and eat with the children, though he did not deserve it. And
-they all ate and ate, and kept on eating and filling themselves until
-daybreak&mdash;<i>pauv piti!</i></p>
-
-<p>But during this time the Devil had begun to smell badly and he had
-become swollen so big that Yé found he could not move him. Still, they
-knew they must get him out of the way somehow. The children had eaten so
-much that they were all full of strength&mdash;<i>yo tè plein lafòce</i>;
-and Yé got a rope and tied one end round the Devil's foot; and then he and
-the children&mdash;all pulling together&mdash;managed to drag the Devil out
-of the cabin and into the bushes, where they left him just like a dead dog.
-They all felt themselves very happy to be rid of that old Devil.</p>
-
-<p><br /></p>
-
-<p>But some days after old good-for-nothing Yé went off to hunt for birds.
-He had a whole lot of arrows with him. He suddenly remembered the Devil,
-and thought he would like to take one more look at him. And he did.</p>
-
-<p><i>Fouinq!</i> what a sight! The Devil's belly had swelled up like a
-morne: it was yellow and blue and green,&mdash;looked as if it was going to
-burst. And Yé, like the old fool he always was, shot an arrow up in the
-air, so that it fell down and stuck into the Devil's belly. Then he wanted
-to get the arrow, and he climbed up on the Devil, and pulled and pulled
-till he got the arrow out. Then he put the point of the arrow to his
-nose,&mdash;just to see what sort of a smell dead Devils had.</p>
-
-<p>The moment he did that, his nose swelled up as big as the refinery-pot
-of a sugar-plantation.</p>
-
-<p><br /></p>
-
-<p>Yé could scarcely walk for the weight of his nose; but he had to go and
-see the Bon-Dié again. The Bon-Dié said to him:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Ah! Yé, my poor Yé, you will live and die a fool!&mdash;you are
-certainly the biggest fool in the whole world!... Still, I must try to do
-something for you;&mdash;I'll help you anyhow to get rid of that nose!...
-I'll tell you how to do it. To-morrow morning, very early, get up and
-take a big <i>taya</i> [whip], and beat all the bushes well, and drive all
-the birds to the Roche de la Caravelle. Then you must tell them that I,
-the Bon-Dié, want them to take off their bills and feathers, and take a
-good bath in the sea. While they are bathing, you can choose a nose for
-yourself out of the heap of bills there."</p>
-
-<p>Poor Yé did just as the Good-God told him; and while the birds were
-bathing, he picked out a nose for himself from the heap of beaks,&mdash;and
-left his own refinery-pot in its place.</p>
-
-<p>The nose he took was the nose of the <i>coulivicou</i>.<a name="FNanchor_58_1" id="FNanchor_58_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_58_1" class="fnanchor">[58]</a> And that is why the
-<i>coulivicou</i> always looks so much ashamed of himself even to this day.</p>
-
-<p><br /></p>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_54_1" id="Footnote_54_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_54_1"><span class="label">[54]</span></a>In the patois, "<i>yon rafale yche</i>"&mdash;"a whirlwind of
-children."</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_55_1" id="Footnote_55_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_55_1"><span class="label">[55]</span></a>In the original:&mdash;"Y té ka monté assous tabe-là, épi y
-té ka fai caca adans toutt plats-à, adans toutt zassiett-là."</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_56_1" id="Footnote_56_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_56_1"><span class="label">[56]</span></a>A peaklet rising above the verge of the ancient crater now
-filled with water.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_57_1" id="Footnote_57_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_57_1"><span class="label">[57]</span></a>The great field-rat of Martinique is, in Martinique
-folklore, the symbol of all cunning, and probably merits its
-reputation.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_58_1" id="Footnote_58_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_58_1"><span class="label">[58]</span></a>The <i>coulivicou</i>, or "Colin Vicou," is a Martinique bird
-with a long meagre body, and an enormous bill. It has a very tristful
-and taciturn expression.... <i>Maig conm yon coulivicou</i>, "thin as a
-coulivicou," is a popular comparison for the appearance of anybody much
-reduced by sickness.</p></div>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>III</h4>
-
-
-<p>... Poor Yé!&mdash;you still live for me only too vividly outside of
-those strange folk-tales of eating and of drinking which so cruelly
-reveal the long slave-hunger of your race. For I have seen you cutting
-cane on peak slopes above the clouds;&mdash;I have seen you climbing
-from plantation to plantation with your cutlass in your hand, watching
-for snakes as you wander to look for work, when starvation forces you to
-obey a master, though born with the resentment of centuries against all
-masters;&mdash;I have seen you prefer to carry two hundred-weight of
-bananas twenty miles to market, rather than labor in the fields;&mdash;I
-have seen you ascending through serpent-swarming woods to some dead
-crater to find a cabbage-palm,&mdash;and always hungry,&mdash;and always
-shiftless! And you are still a great fool, poor Yé!&mdash;and you have
-still your swarm of children,&mdash;your <i>rafale yche</i>,&mdash;and
-they are famished; for you have taken into your <i>ajoupa</i> a Devil
-who devours even more than you can earn,&mdash;even your heart, and your
-splendid muscles, and your poor artless brain,&mdash;the Devil Tafia!...
-And there is no Bon-Dié to help you rid yourself of him now: for the
-only Bon-Dié you ever really had, your old creole master, cannot care
-for you any more, and you cannot care for yourself. Mercilessly moral,
-the will of this enlightened century has abolished forever that
-patriarchal power which brought you up strong and healthy on scanty
-fare, and scourged you into its own idea of righteousness, yet kept you
-innocent as a child of the law of the struggle for life. But you feel
-that law now;&mdash;you are a citizen of the Republic! you are free to
-vote, and free to work, and free to starve if you prefer it, and free to
-do evil and suffer for it;&mdash;and this new knowledge stupefies you so
-that you have almost forgotten how to laugh!</p>
-
-
-
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 300px;">
-<img src="images/figure65.jpg" width="300" alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4><a id="LYS">LYS</a></h4>
-
-
-<h4>I</h4>
-
-<div class="figleft" style="width: 60px;">
-<img src="images/figure66.jpg" width="60" height="80" alt="" />
-</div>
-
-
-<p>It is only half-past four o'clock: there is the faintest blue light of
-beginning day,&mdash;and little Victoire already stands at the bedside with
-my wakening cup of hot black fragrant coffee. What! so early?...
-Then with a sudden heart-start I remember this is my last West Indian
-morning. And the child&mdash;her large timid eyes all gently
-luminous&mdash;is pressing something into my hand.</p>
-
-<p>Two vanilla beans wrapped in a morsel of banana-leaf,&mdash;her poor
-little farewell gift!...</p>
-
-<p>Other trifling souvenirs are already packed away. Almost everybody that
-knows me has given me something. Manm-Robert brought me a tiny packet of
-orange-seeds,&mdash;seeds of a "gift-orange": so long as I can keep these
-in my vest-pocket I will never be without money. Cyrillia brought me
-a package of <i>bouts</i>, and a pretty box of French matches, warranted
-inextinguishable by wind. Azaline, the blanchisseuse, sent me a little
-pocket looking-glass. Cerbonnie, the <i>màchanne</i>, left a little cup of
-guava jelly for me last night. Mimi&mdash;dear child!&mdash;brought me a
-little paper dog! It is her best toy; but those gentle black eyes would
-stream with tears if I dared to refuse it.... Oh, Mimi! what am I to do
-with a little paper dog? And what am I to do with the chocolate-sticks and
-the cocoanuts and all the sugar-cane and all the cinnamon-apples?...</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>II</h4>
-
-
-<p>... Twenty minutes past five by the clock of the Bourse. The hill
-shadows are shrinking back from the shore;&mdash;the long wharves reach
-out yellow into the sun;&mdash;the tamarinds of the Place Bertin, and
-the pharos for half its height, and the red-tiled roofs along the bay
-are catching the glow. Then, over the light-house&mdash;on the outermost
-line depending from the southern yard-arm of the semaphore&mdash;a big
-black ball suddenly runs up like a spider climbing its own thread....
-<i>Steamer from the South!</i> The packet has been sighted. And I have
-not yet been able to pack away into a specially purchased wooden box all
-the fruits and vegetable curiosities and odd little presents sent to me.
-If Radice the boatman had not come to help me, I should never be able to
-get ready; for the work of packing is being continually interrupted by
-friends and acquaintances coming to say good-bye. Manm-Robert brings to
-see me a pretty young girl&mdash;very fair, with a violet foulard
-twisted about her blonde head. It is little Basilique, who is going to
-make her <i>pouémiè communion</i>. So I kiss her, according to the old
-colonial custom, once on each downy cheek;&mdash;and she is to pray to
-<i>Notre Dame du Bon Port</i> that the ship shall bear me safely to
-far-away New York.</p>
-
-<p>And even then the steamer's cannon-call shakes over the town and into
-the hills behind us, which answer with all the thunder of their phantom
-artillery.</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>III</h4>
-
-
-<p>... There is a young white lady, accompanied by an aged negress, already
-waiting on the south wharf for the boat;&mdash;evidently she is to be one
-of my fellow-passengers. Quite a pleasing presence: slight graceful
-figure,&mdash;a face not precisely pretty, but delicate and sensitive, with
-the odd charm of violet eyes under black eye-brows....</p>
-
-<p>A friend who comes to see me off tells me all about her. Mademoiselle
-Lys is going to New York to be a governess,&mdash;to leave her native
-island forever. A story sad enough, though not more so than that of many a
-gentle creole girl. And she is going all alone, for I see her
-bidding good-bye to old Titine,&mdash;kissing her. "<i>Adié encò,
-chè;&mdash;Bon-Dié ké béni ou!</i>" sobs the poor servant, with tears
-streaming down her kind black face. She takes off her blue
-shoulder-kerchief, and waves it as the boat recedes from the wooden
-steps.</p>
-
-<p><br /></p>
-
-<p>... Fifteen minutes later, Mademoiselle and I find ourselves under
-the awnings shading the saloon-deck of the <i>Guadeloupe</i>. There are
-at least fifty passengers,&mdash;many resting in chairs, lazy-looking
-Demerara chairs with arm-supports immensely lengthened so as to form
-rests for the lower limbs. Overhead, suspended from the awning-frames,
-are two tin cages containing parrots;&mdash;and I see two little
-greenish monkeys, no bigger than squirrels, tied to the
-wheel-hatch,&mdash;two <i>sakiwinkis</i>. These are from the forests of
-British Guiana. They keep up a continual thin sharp twittering, like
-birds,&mdash;all the while circling, ascending, descending, retreating
-or advancing to the limit of the little ropes attaching them to the
-hatch.</p>
-
-<p>The <i>Guadeloupe</i> has seven hundred packages to deliver at St.
-Pierre: we have ample time,&mdash;Mademoiselle Violet-Eyes and
-I,&mdash;to take one last look at the "Pays des Revenants."</p>
-
-<p>I wonder what her thoughts are, feeling a singular sympathy for
-her,&mdash;for I am in that sympathetic mood which the natural emotion of
-leaving places and persons one has become fond of, is apt to inspire.
-And now at the moment of my going,&mdash;when I seem to understand as never
-before the beauty of that tropic Nature, and the simple charm of the
-life to which I am bidding farewell,&mdash;the question comes to me: "Does
-she not love it all as I do,&mdash;nay, even much more, because of that in
-her own existence which belongs to it?" But as a child of the land,
-she has seen no other skies,&mdash;fancies, perhaps, there may be brighter
-ones....</p>
-
-<p>... Nowhere on this earth, Violet-Eyes!&mdash;nowhere beneath this
-sun!... Oh! the dawnless glory of tropic morning!&mdash;the single
-sudden leap of the giant light over the purpling of a hundred
-peaks,&mdash;over the surging of the mornes! And the early breezes from
-the hills,&mdash;all cool out of the sleep of the forests, and heavy
-with vegetal odors thick, sappy, savage-sweet!&mdash;and the wild high
-winds that run ruffling and crumpling through the cane of the mountain
-slopes in storms of papery sound!&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>And the mighty dreaming of the woods,&mdash;green-drenched with
-silent pouring of creepers,&mdash;dashed with the lilac and yellow and
-rosy foam of liana flowers!&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>And the eternal azure apparition of the all-circling sea,&mdash;that
-as you mount the heights ever appears to rise perpendicularly behind
-you,&mdash;that seems, as you descend, to sink and flatten before
-you!&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>And the violet velvet distances of evening;&mdash;and the swaying of
-palms against the orange-burning,&mdash;when all the heaven seems filled
-with vapors of a molten sun!...</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>IV</h4>
-
-
-<p>How beautiful the mornes and azure-shadowed hollows in the jewel
-clearness of this perfect morning! Even Pelée wears only her very
-lightest head-dress of gauze; and all the wrinklings of her green robe
-take unfamiliar tenderness of tint from the early sun. All the quaint
-peaking of the colored town&mdash;sprinkling the sweep of blue bay with
-red and yellow and white-of-cream&mdash;takes a sharpness in this limpid
-light as if seen through a diamond lens; and there above the living
-green of the familiar hills I can see even the faces of the
-statues&mdash;the black Christ on his white cross, and the White Lady of
-the Morne d'Orange&mdash;among curving palms.... It is all as though the
-island were donning its utmost possible loveliness, exerting all its
-witchery,&mdash;seeking by supremest charm to win back and hold its
-wandering child,&mdash;Violet-Eyes over there!... She is looking
-too.</p>
-
-<p>I wonder if she sees the great palms of the Voie du
-Parnasse,&mdash;curving far away as to bid us adieu, like beautiful
-bending women. I wonder if they are not trying to say something to her;
-and I try myself to fancy what that something is:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;"Child, wilt thou indeed abandon all who love thee!...
-Listen!&mdash;'tis a dim grey land thou goest unto,&mdash;a land of
-bitter winds,&mdash;a land of strange gods,&mdash;a land of hardness and
-barrenness, where even Nature may not live through half the cycling of
-the year! Thou wilt never see us there.... And there, when thou shalt
-sleep thy long sleep, child&mdash;that land will have no power to lift
-thee up;&mdash;vast weight of stone will press thee down
-forever;&mdash;until the heavens be no more thou shalt not awake!... But
-here, darling, our loving roots would seek for thee, would find thee:
-thou shouldst live again!&mdash;we lift, like Aztec priests, the blood
-of hearts to the Sun."...</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>V</h4>
-
-
-<p>... It is very hot.... I hold in my hand a Japanese paper-fan with a
-design upon it of the simplest sort: one jointed green bamboo, with a
-single spurt of sharp leaves, cutting across a pale blue murky double
-streak that means the horizon above a sea. That is all. Trivial to my
-Northern friends this design might seem; but to me it causes a pleasure
-bordering on pain.... I know so well what the artist means; and they
-could not know, unless they had seen bamboos,&mdash;and bamboos peculiarly
-situated. As I look at this fan I know myself descending the Morne
-Parnasse by the steep winding road; I have the sense of windy heights
-behind me, and forest on either hand, and before me the blended azure of
-sky and sea with one bamboo-spray swaying across it at the level of
-my eyes. Nor is this all;&mdash;I have the every sensation of the very
-moment,&mdash;the vegetal odors, the mighty tropic light, the warmth, the
-intensity of irreproducible color.... Beyond a doubt, the artist who
-dashed the design on this fan with his miraculous brush must have had a
-nearly similar experience to that of which the memory is thus aroused in
-me, but which I cannot communicate to others.</p>
-
-<p>... And it seems to me now that all which I have tried to write about
-the <i>Pays des Revenants</i> can only be for others, who have never beheld
-it,&mdash;vague like the design upon this fan.</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>VI</h4>
-
-
-<p><i>Brrrrrrrrrrr!</i>... The steam-winch is lifting the anchor; and the
-<i>Guadeloupe</i> trembles through every plank as the iron torrent of her
-chain-cable rumbles through the hawse-holes.... At last the quivering
-ceases;&mdash;there is a moment's silence; and Violet-Eyes seems trying to
-catch a last glimpse of her faithful <i>bonne</i> among the ever-thickening
-crowd upon the quay.... Ah! there she is&mdash;waving her foulard.
-Mademoiselle Lys is waving a handkerchief in reply....</p>
-
-<p>Suddenly the shock of the farewell gun shakes heavily through our
-hearts, and over the bay,&mdash;where the tall mornes catch the flapping
-thunder, and buffet it through all their circle in tremendous mockery.
-Then there is a great whirling and whispering of whitened water behind
-the steamer&mdash;another,&mdash;another; and the whirl becomes a
-foaming stream: the mighty propeller is playing!.... All the blue harbor
-swings slowly round;&mdash;and the green limbs of the land are pushed
-out further on the left, shrink back upon the right;&mdash;and the
-mountains are moving their shoulders. And then the many-tinted
-façades,&mdash;and the tamarinds of the Place Bertin,&mdash;and the
-light-house,&mdash;and the long wharves with their throng of turbaned
-women,&mdash;and the cathedral towers,&mdash;and the fair
-palms,&mdash;and the statues of the hills,&mdash;all veer, change place,
-and begin to float away... steadily, very swiftly.</p>
-
-<p><br /></p>
-
-<p>Farewell, fair city,&mdash;sun-kissed city,&mdash;many-fountained
-city!&mdash;dear yellow-glimmering streets,&mdash;white pavements
-learned by heart,&mdash;and faces ever looked for,&mdash;and voices ever
-loved! Farewell, white towers with your golden-throated
-bells!&mdash;farewell, green steeps, bathed in the light of summer
-everlasting!&mdash;craters with your coronets of forest!&mdash;bright
-mountain paths upwinding 'neath pomp of fern and angelin and feathery
-bamboo!&mdash;and gracious palms that drowse above the dead! Farewell,
-soft-shadowing majesty of valleys unfolding to the sun,&mdash;green
-golden cane-fields ripening to the sea!...</p>
-
-<p><br /></p>
-
-<p>... The town vanishes. The island slowly becomes a green silhouette.
-So might Columbus first have seen it from the deck of his
-caravel,&mdash;nearly four hundred years ago. At this distance there are
-no more signs of life upon it than when it first became visible to his
-eyes: yet there are cities there,&mdash;and toiling,&mdash;and
-suffering,&mdash;and gentle hearts that knew me.... Now it is turning
-blue,&mdash;the beautiful shape!&mdash;becoming a dream....</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>VII</h4>
-
-
-<p>And Dominica draws nearer,&mdash;sharply massing her hills against the
-vast light in purple nodes and gibbosities and denticulations. Closer and
-closer it comes, until the green of its heights breaks through the
-purple here and there,&mdash;in flashings and ribbings of color. Then
-it remains as if motionless a while;&mdash;then the green lights go out
-again,&mdash;and all the shape begins to recede sideward towards the
-south.</p>
-
-<p>... And what had appeared a pearl-grey cloud in the north slowly
-reveals itself as another island of mountains,&mdash;hunched and horned and
-mammiform: Guadeloupe begins to show her double profile. But Martinique
-is still visible;&mdash;Pelée still peers high over the rim of the
-south.... Day wanes;&mdash;the shadow of the ship lengthens over the
-flower-blue water. Pelée changes aspect at last,&mdash;turns pale as a
-ghost,&mdash;but will not fade away....</p>
-
-<p>... The sun begins to sink as he always sinks to his death in the
-tropics,&mdash;swiftly,&mdash;too swiftly!&mdash;and the glory of him
-makes golden all the hollow west,&mdash;and bronzes all the flickering
-wave-backs. But still the gracious phantom of the island will not
-go,&mdash;softly haunting us through the splendid haze. And always the
-tropic wind blows soft and warm;&mdash;there is an indescribable caress
-in it! Perhaps some such breeze, blowing from Indian waters, might have
-inspired that prophecy of Islam concerning the Wind of the Last
-Day,&mdash;that "Yellow Wind, softer than silk, balmier than
-musk,"&mdash;which is to sweep the spirits of the just to God in the
-great Winnowing of Souls....</p>
-
-<p>Then into the indigo night vanishes forever from my eyes the ghost of
-Pelée; and the moon swings up,&mdash;a young and lazy moon, drowsing
-upon her back, as in a hammock.... Yet a few nights more, and we shall
-see this slim young moon erect,&mdash;gliding upright on her
-way,&mdash;coldly beautiful like a fair Northern girl.</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>VIII</h4>
-
-
-<p>And ever through tepid nights and azure days the <i>Guadeloupe</i>
-rushes on,&mdash;her wake a river of snow beneath the sun, a torrent of
-fire beneath the stars,&mdash;steaming straight for the North.</p>
-
-<p>Under the peaking of Montserrat we steam,&mdash;beautiful Montserrat,
-all softly wrinkled like a robe of greenest velvet fallen from the
-waist!&mdash;breaking the pretty sleep of Plymouth town behind its screen
-of palms... young palms, slender and full of grace as creole children
-are;&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>And by tall Nevis, with her trinity of dead craters purpling through
-ocean-haze;&mdash;by clouded St. Christopher's mountain-giant;&mdash;past
-ghostly St. Martin's, far-floating in fog of gold, like some dream of the
-Saint's own Second Summer;&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>Past low Antigua's vast blue harbor,&mdash;shark-haunted, bounded about
-by huddling of little hills, blue and green.</p>
-
-<p>Past Santa Cruz, the "Island of the Holy Cross,"&mdash;all radiant with
-verdure though well nigh woodless,&mdash;nakedly beautiful in the tropic
-light as a perfect statue;&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>Past the long cerulean reaching and heaping of Porto Rico on the left,
-and past hopeless St. Thomas on the right,&mdash;old St. Thomas, watching
-the going and the coming of the commerce that long since abandoned
-her port,&mdash;watching the ships once humbly solicitous for patronage now
-turning away to the Spanish rival, like ingrates forsaking a ruined
-patrician;&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>And the vapory Vision of, St. John;&mdash;and the grey ghost of
-Tortola,&mdash;and further, fainter, still more weirdly dim, the aureate
-phantom of Virgin Gorda.</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>IX</h4>
-
-
-<p>Then only the enormous double-vision of sky and sea.</p>
-
-<p>The sky: a cupola of blinding blue, shading down and paling into
-spectral green at the rim of the world,&mdash;and all fleckless, save at
-evening. Then, with sunset, comes a light gold-drift of little feathery
-cloudlets into the West,&mdash;stippling it as with a snow of fire.</p>
-
-<p>The sea: no flower-tint may now make my comparison for the splendor of
-its lucent color. It has shifted its hue;&mdash;for we have entered into
-the Azure Stream: it has more than the magnificence of burning
-cyanogen....</p>
-
-<p>But, at night, the Cross of the South appears no more. And other changes
-come, as day succeeds to day,&mdash;a lengthening of the hours of light, a
-longer lingering of the after-glow,&mdash;a cooling of the wind. Each
-morning the air seems a little cooler, a little rarer;&mdash;each noon the
-sky looks a little paler, a little further away&mdash;always heightening,
-yet also more shadowy, as if its color, receding, were dimmed by
-distance,&mdash;were coming more faintly down from vaster altitudes.</p>
-
-<p><br /></p>
-
-<p>... Mademoiselle is petted like a child by the lady passengers. And
-every man seems anxious to aid in making her voyage a pleasant one. For
-much of which, I think, she may thank her eyes!</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>X</h4>
-
-
-<p>A dim morning and chill;&mdash;blank sky and sunless waters: the sombre
-heaven of the North with colorless horizon rounding in a blind grey
-sea.... What a sudden weight comes to the heart with the touch of the
-cold mist, with the spectral melancholy of the dawn;&mdash;and then what
-foolish though irrepressible yearning for the vanished azure left
-behind!</p>
-
-<p>... The little monkeys twitter plaintively, trembling in the chilly air.
-The parrots have nothing to say: they look benumbed, and sit on their
-perches with eyes closed.</p>
-
-<p>... A vagueness begins to shape itself along the verge of the sea, far
-to port: that long heavy clouding which indicates the approach of land.
-And from it now floats to us something ghostly and frigid which makes
-the light filmy and the sea shadowy as a flood of dreams,&mdash;the fog of
-the Jersey coast.</p>
-
-<p>At once the engines slacken their respiration. The <i>Guadeloupe</i>
-begins to utter her steam-cry of warning,&mdash;regularly at intervals
-of two minutes,&mdash;for she is now in the track of all the ocean
-vessels. And from far away we can hear a heavy knelling,&mdash;the
-booming of some great fog-bell.</p>
-
-<p>... All in a white twilight. The place of the horizon has
-vanished;&mdash;we seem ringed in by a wall of smoke.... Out of this
-vapory emptiness&mdash;very suddenly&mdash;an enormous steamer rushes,
-towering like a hill&mdash;passes so close that we can see faces, and
-disappears again, leaving the sea heaving and frothing behind her.</p>
-
-<p><br /></p>
-
-<p>... As I lean over the rail to watch the swirling of the wake, I feel
-something pulling at my sleeve: a hand,&mdash;a tiny black
-hand,&mdash;the hand of a <i>sakiwinki</i>. One of the little monkeys,
-straining to the full length of his string, is making this dumb appeal
-for human sympathy;&mdash;the bird-black eyes of both are fixed upon me
-with the oddest look of pleading. Poor little tropical exiles! I stoop
-to caress them; but regret the impulse a moment later: they utter such
-beseeching cries when I find myself obliged to leave them again
-alone!...</p>
-
-<p>... Hour after hour the <i>Guadeloupe</i> glides on through the white
-gloom,&mdash;cautiously, as if feeling her way; always sounding her
-whistle, ringing her bells, until at last some brown-winged bark comes
-flitting to us out of the mist, bearing a pilot.... How strange it must
-all seem to Mademoiselle who stands so silent there at the
-rail!&mdash;how weird this veiled world must appear to her, after the
-sapphire light of her own West Indian sky, and the great lazulite
-splendor of her own tropic sea!</p>
-
-<p>But a wind comes;&mdash;it strengthens,&mdash;begins to blow very
-cold. The mists thin before its blowing; and the wan blank sky is all
-revealed again with livid horizon around the heaving of the iron-grey
-sea.</p>
-
-<p><br /></p>
-
-<p>... Thou dim and lofty heaven of the North,&mdash;grey sky of
-Odin,&mdash;bitter thy winds and spectral all thy colors!&mdash;they
-that dwell beneath thee know not the glory of Eternal Summer's
-green,&mdash;the azure splendor of southern day!&mdash;but thine are the
-lightnings of Thought illuminating for human eyes the interspaces
-between sun and sun. Thine the generations of might,&mdash;the strivers,
-the battlers,&mdash;the men who make Nature tame!&mdash;thine the domain
-of inspiration and achievement,&mdash;the larger heroisms, the vaster
-labors that endure, the higher knowledge, and all the witchcrafts of
-science!...</p>
-
-<p><br /></p>
-
-<p>But in each one of us there lives a mysterious Something which is
-Self, yet also infinitely more than Self,&mdash;incomprehensibly
-multiple,&mdash;the complex total of sensations, impulses, timidities
-belonging to the unknown past. And the lips of the little stranger from
-the tropics have become all white, because that Something within
-her,&mdash;ghostly bequest from generations who loved the light and rest
-and wondrous color of a more radiant world,&mdash;now shrinks all back
-about her girl's heart with fear of this pale grim North.... And
-lo!&mdash;opening mile-wide in dream-grey majesty before
-us,&mdash;reaching away, through measureless mazes of masting, into
-remotenesses all vapor-veiled,&mdash;the mighty perspective of New York
-harbor!...</p>
-
-<p><br /></p>
-
-<p>Thou knowest it not, this gloom about us, little maiden;&mdash;'tis
-only a magical dusk we are entering,&mdash;only that mystic dimness in
-which miracles must be wrought!... See the marvellous shapes
-uprising,&mdash;the immensities, the astonishments! And other greater
-wonders thou wilt behold in a little while, when we shall have become
-lost to each other forever in the surging of the City's million-hearted
-life!... 'Tis all shadow here, thou sayest?&mdash;Ay, 'tis twilight,
-verily, by contrast with that glory out of which thou camest,
-Lys&mdash;twilight only,&mdash;but the Twilight of the Gods!...
-<i>Adié, chè!&mdash;Bon-Dié ké bént ou!</i>...</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4><a id="APPENDIX_SOME_CREOLE_MELODIES">APPENDIX&mdash;SOME CREOLE MELODIES</a></h4>
-
-
-<p>More than a hundred years ago Thibault de Chanvallon expressed his
-astonishment at the charm and wonderful sense of musical rhythm
-characterizing the slave-songs and slave-dances of Martinique. The
-rhythmical sense of the negroes especially impressed him. "I have seen,"
-he writes, "seven or eight hundred negroes accompanying a wedding-party
-to the sound of song. They would all leap up in the air and come down
-together;&mdash;the movement was so exact and general that the noise of
-their fall made but a single sound."</p>
-
-<p>An almost similar phenomenon may be witnessed any Carnival season in St.
-Pierre,&mdash;while the Devil makes his nightly round, followed by many
-hundred boys clapping hands and leaping in chorus. It may also be
-observed in the popular malicious custom of the pillard, or, in creole,
-<i>piyà.</i> Some person whom it is deemed justifiable and safe to annoy,
-may suddenly find himself followed in the street by a singing chorus of
-several hundred, all clapping hands and dancing or running in perfect
-time, so that all the bare feet strike the ground together. Or the
-<i>pillard-chorus</i> may even take up its position before the residence of
-the party disliked, and then proceed with its performance. An example of
-such a <i>pillard</i> is given further on, in the song entitled <i>Loéma
-tombé.</i> The improvisation by a single voice begins the
-pillard,&mdash;which in English might be rendered as follows:&mdash;</p>
-
-
-<p><span style="margin-left: 1em;">(<i>Single voice</i>) You little children there!&mdash;you who were by the</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 7.5em;">river-side!</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 7em;">Tell me truly this:&mdash;Did you see Loéma fall?</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 7em;">Tell me truly this&mdash;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">(<i>Chorus, opening</i>)</span><span style="margin-left: 4.8em;">Did you see Loéma fall?</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">(<i>Single voice</i>)</span><span style="margin-left: 6.5em;">Tell me truly this&mdash;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">(<i>Chorus</i>)</span><span style="margin-left: 8.5em;">Did you see Loéma fall?</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">(<i>Single voice, more rapidly</i>)</span><span style="margin-left: 1em;">Tell me truly this&mdash;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">(<i>Chorus, more quickly</i>)</span><span style="margin-left: 4.5em;">Loéma fall!</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">(<i>Single voice</i>)</span><span style="margin-left: 7em;">Tell me truly this&mdash;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">(<i>Chorus</i>)</span><span style="margin-left: 10.5em;">Loéma fall!</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">(<i>Single voice</i>)</span><span style="margin-left: 7em;">Tell me truly this&mdash;</span></p>
-<p>(<i>Chorus, always more quickly, and more loudly, all the hands
-clapping together like a fire of musketry</i>) Loéma fall! etc.</p>
-
-
-<p>The same rhythmic element characterizes many of the games and round
-dances of Martinique children;&mdash;but, as a rule, I think it is
-perceptible that the sense of time is less developed in the colored
-children than in the black.</p>
-
-<p>The other melodies which are given as specimens of Martinique music
-show less of the African element,&mdash;the nearest approach to it being
-in <i>Tant sirop</i>; but all are probably creations of the mixed race.
-<i>Marie-Clémence</i> is a Carnival satire composed not more than four
-years ago. <i>To-to-to</i> is very old&mdash;dates back, perhaps, to the
-time of the <i>belles-affranchies.</i> It is seldom sung now except by
-survivors of the old régime: the sincerity and tenderness of the
-emotion that inspired it&mdash;the old sweetness of heart and simplicity
-of thought,&mdash;are passing forever away.</p>
-
-<p>To my friend, Henry Edward Krehbiel, the musical lecturer and
-critic,&mdash;at once historian and folklorist in the study of
-race-music,&mdash;and to Mr. Frank van der Stucken, the New York musical
-composer, I owe the preparation of these four melodies for voice and
-piano-forte. The arrangements of <i>To-to-to</i> and <i>Loéma
-tombé</i> are Mr. Van der Stucken's.</p>
-
-<h4>"TO-TO-TO"</h4>
-
-<p class="center">(<i>Creole werds</i>)</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
-<img src="images/figure67.jpg" width="500" alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>MARIE-CLÉMENCE</h4>
-
-<p class="center">(<i>Creole words</i>)</p>
-
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
-<img src="images/figure68.jpg" width="500" alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
-<img src="images/figure69.jpg" width="500" alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>TANT SIROP EST DOUX</h4>
-
-<p class="center">(<i>Negro-French</i>)</p>
-
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
-<img src="images/figure70.jpg" width="500" alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
-<img src="images/figure71.jpg" width="500" alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<h4>LOÉMA TOMBÉ</h4>
-
-<p class="center">(<i>Creole words</i>)</p>
-
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
-<img src="images/figure72.jpg" width="500" alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
-<img src="images/figure73.jpg" width="500" alt="" />
-</div>
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-<pre>
-
-
-
-
-
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-Lafcadio Hearn
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