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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Two Years in the French West Indies
+by Lafcadio Hearn
+(#4 in our series by Lafcadio Hearn)
+
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+Title: Two Years in the French West Indies
+
+Author: Lafcadio Hearn
+
+Release Date: August, 2004  [EBook #6381]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on December 3, 2002]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO Latin-1
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, TWO YEARS IN THE FRENCH WEST INDIES ***
+
+
+
+
+Transcribed by: Richard Farris [rf7211@hotmail.com]
+
+
+
+TWO YEARS
+
+IN THE 
+
+FRENCH WEST INDIES
+
+By LAFCADIO HEARN
+
+AUTHOR OF "CHITA" ETC.
+
+ILLUSTRATED
+
+
+
+
+
+"_La façon d'être du pays est si agréable, la température si
+bonne, et l'on y vit dans une liberté si honnête, que je n'aye
+pas vu un seul homme, ny une seule femme, qui en soient
+revenues, en qui je n'aye remarqué une grande passion d'y
+retourner._"-LE PÈRE DUTERTRE (1667)
+
+
+
+À MON CHER AMI
+LEOPOLD ARNOUX
+NOTAIRE À SAINT PIERRE, MARTINIQUE
+_Souvenir de nos 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 Pay des Revenants._
+
+
+
+
+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._
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+PART ONE--A MIDSUMMER TRIP TO THE TROPICS
+
+PART TWO--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 (not included in this 
+  transcription)
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS.
+
+A Martinique Métisse (Frontispiece)
+La Place Bertin, St. Pierre, Martinique
+Itinerant Pastry-seller
+In the Cimetière du Mouillage, St. Pierre
+In the Jardin des Plantes, St. Pierre
+Cascade in the Jardin des Plantes
+Departure of Steamer for Fort-de-France
+Statue of Josephine
+Inner Basin, Bridgetown, Barbadoes
+Trafalgar Square, Bridgetown, Barbadoes
+Street in Georgetown, Demerara
+Avenue in Georgetown, Demerara
+Victoria Regia in the Canal at Georgetown
+Demerara Coolie Girl
+St. James Avenue, Port-of-Spain, Trinidad
+Coolies of Trinidad
+Coolie Servant
+Coolie Merchant
+Church Street, St. George, Grenada
+Castries, St. Lucia
+'Ti Marie
+Fort-de-France, Martinique
+Capre in Working Garb
+A Confirmation Procession
+Manner of Playing the Ka
+A Wayside Shrine, or Chapelle
+Rue Victor Hugo, St. Pierre
+Quarter of the Fort, St. Pierre
+Rivière des Blanchisseuses
+Foot of La Pellé, behind the Quarter of the Fort
+Village of Morne Rouge
+Pellé as seen from Grande Anse
+Arborescent Ferns on a Mountain Road
+'Ti Canot
+The Martinique Turban
+The Guadeloupe Head-dress
+Young Mulattress
+Coolie Woman in Martinique Costume
+Country Girl-pure Negro Race
+Coolie Half-breed
+Capresse
+The Old Market-place of the Fort, St. Pierre
+Bread-fruit Tree
+Basse-terre, St. Kitt's
+
+
+
+
+
+A Trip to the Tropics.
+
+
+
+
+
+PART ONE--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 nearing 
+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 sunsetward.  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, 
+"_Oh_ 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 white-caps,--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.
+
+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 it 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 cloud. 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, sun lighted 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.
+
+But all the buildings look dilapidated; the stucco and paint is 
+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.  Peeling 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 naif 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 rises 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 only cast 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 
+light....  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 end 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,--"sap-saps," "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 yellow men 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 visitor is the pretty Botanical Garden, with its banyans and 
+its palms, its monstrous lilies and extraordinary fruit-trees, 
+and its beautiful little mountains.  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.
+
+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 today 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 ing 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 black; 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 spurs 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 Pelee (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 slided 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-clapping of mountain echo.
+
+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 
+head-foremost 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.
+
+[Illustration: LA PLACE BERTIN (THE SUGAR LANDING), ST. PIERRE, 
+MARTINIQUE.]
+
+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 
+swans.  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.
+
+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 were 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 jewellery: immense earrings, 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 ally graven)--the wonderful 
+_collier-choux_.  Now, this glowing jewellery 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 close 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 most 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.
+
+..._"Çe 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.... _"Ca qui lè 
+titiri?"_  Minuscule fish, of which a thousand would scarcely 
+fill a tea-cup;--one of the most delicate of Martinique 
+dishes.... _"Ça qui lè canna?--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, bois d'lhomme, zhèbe-gras, bonnet-
+carré, zhèbe-codeinne, zhèbe-à-femme, zhèbe-à-châtte, canne-
+dleau, poque, fleu-papillon, lateigne,_ 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 moin, 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-la!--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 a 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 jewellery 
+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-négresse_ 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.
+
+[Illustration: ITINERANT PASTRY-SELLER. "Tourjours content, 
+Toujours joyeux."]
+
+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 marketplace. [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 pendent 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, couliou, macriau, lazard, 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.
+
+... Then you begin to look about you at the faces of
+the black, brown, and yellow people who are watching at 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 be 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 gulf orange babies, There is one rare 
+race-type, totally unseen like 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 the 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, no 
+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 
+never 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 high parts of 
+Montaigne 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....
+
+
+
+XIV.
+
+
+... Everywhere crosses, little shrines, way-side 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 in cantatory 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 on 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 
+unconciously 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.
+
+[Illustration: IN THE CIMETÈRE DU MOUILLAGE, ST. PIERRE.]
+
+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 stone-work, patiently, imperceptibly, yet 
+almost irresistibly.
+
+... 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 corne 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 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 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, one of whose works I 
+venture to translate the following remarkable pages:
+
+... "The sea, the sea alone, because it is the most colossal of 
+earthly spectacles,--only the sea can afford us any terms of 
+comparison for the attempt to describe a _grand-bois_;--but even 
+then one must imagine the sea on a day of a 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 _tedre-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 debris,--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.'" *
+
+* "Enquête sur le Serpent de la Martinique (Vipère Fer-de-Lance, 
+Bothrops Lancéolé, etc.)"  Par le Docteur E. Rufz. 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 in conceived 
+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 solitudes by day, and 
+by night he extends his dominion over the public roads, the 
+familiar paths, the parks, 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 It, 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 or, 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 simuulate 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 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 overpours 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 mongoos, 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.
+
+[Illustration: IN THE JARDIN DES PLANTES, ST. PIERRE.]
+
+... 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
+the 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 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 trionocephalus 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 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 visits of 
+the serpent; for the trigonocephalus goes everywhere,--mounting 
+to the very summits of the cocoa-palms, swimming rivers, 
+ascending walls, hiding in 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. Arbores. 
+cent ferps of unfammiliar elegance curve up from path-verge 
+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.
+
+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 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 clear 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.
+
+[Illustration: CASCADE IN THE JARDIN DES PLANTES.]
+
+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 
+plants,--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 clearedd 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 lovliness of the place;--
+barbarism was necessary!  Under the present negro-radical regime 
+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 is 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, defying all 
+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 son 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.
+
+... 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....
+
+[Illustration: DEPARTURE OF STEAMER FOR FORT-DE-FRANCE.]
+
+... Tropical nights have a splendor that seems strange to 
+northern eyes.  The sky does not look so high--so far way 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, steamer 
+from St. Pierre, in about an hour and a ... There is an overland 
+route--_La Trace_, but it 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 allover 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.
+
+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....
+
+[Illustration: STATUE OF JOSEPHINE.]
+
+
+
+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 viole 
+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 visable 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 begun; 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....  Mean while 
+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.
+
+... 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 
+really 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.
+
+[Illustration: INNER BASIN, BRIDGETOWN, BARBADOES.]
+
+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 3000 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.
+
+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.
+
+[Illustration: TRAFALGAR SQUARE, BRIDGETOWN, BARBADOES.]
+
+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 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 up 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, I 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.
+
+[Illustration: STREET IN GEORGETOWN, DEMERARA.]
+
+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 up-reaching 
+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 super-natural....  And I wonder 
+if some kindred fancy might not have inspired the name given by 
+the French colonists to the male palmiste,--_angelin_....
+
+[Illustration: AVENUE IN GEORGETOWN, DEMERARA.]
+
+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 up-turned 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, stern 
+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 eye glitters like a serpent's.
+
+[Illustration: VICTORIA REGIA IN THE CANAL AT GEORGETOWN]
+
+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 heavy black 
+beards are probably Mussulmans: I am told they have their mosques 
+here, and that the muezzein'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 jewellery 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.
+
+[Illustration: DEMERARA COOLIE GIRL.]
+
+... 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 sun 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.
+
+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 denser 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 anyone 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 impossiblity. As yet the hills are nearly all 
+gray, the forests also inwrapping them are gray and ghostly, for 
+the sun has but just risen above them, and vapors hang like a 
+veil between.  Then, over the glassy level of the flood, winds 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 a 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 impressions, 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 a11 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.
+
+[Illustration: ST. JAMES AVENUE, PORT-OF-SPAIN, TRINIDAD.]
+
+... 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 sheafwise 
+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 naïf;--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 known 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.
+
+[Illustration: COOLIES OF TRINIDAD.]
+
+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.
+
+[Illustration: COOLIE SERVANT.]
+
+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.
+
+[Illustration: COOLIE MERCHANT.]
+
+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 beveling 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 anyone 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. 
+
+[Illustration: CHURCH STREET, ST. GEORGE, GRENADA.]
+
+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 lights; and as we draw yet nearer they 
+prove dissimilar both in 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 pylones.  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 Choi-seul. 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 ows.  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 is 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 hills 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: CASTRIES, ST. LUCIA.]
+
+... 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 fruit, 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?
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Part Two - Martinique Sketches.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+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 inter-blending 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 of 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 Atalanta;--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 those 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. [3]
+
+
+
+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.
+
+[Illustration: 'TI MARIE (On the Route from St. Pierre
+to Basse-Pointe.)]
+
+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!-
+dé!--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 mid-
+day,--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_.
+
+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 303 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 mile-
+stones, 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 
+exqisiteness 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 un-acclimated 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.
+
+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 during 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.
+
+[Illustration: FORT-DE-FRANCE, MARTINIQUE--(FORMERLY FORT
+ROYAL.)]
+
+
+
+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 ain 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 
+deason 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?
+
+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 màchanne!_" 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 come 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! coument 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 un-corded, 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....  
+_Fesis-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 horned 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 the 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: "_0u jojoll, oui!--moin ni envie monté assou ou, pou 
+moin 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 gaudé moin!_"
+(There is the great sea looking at me!) "_Màché toujou deïé moin,
+lanmè!_" (Walk after me, 0 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, 0 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, 0 Dog!  Never did I anything 
+to thee that thou shouldst bite me, 0 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 from 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,--stricken 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-
+Clê trotting behind, very tired....  Never mind, Ti-Clê!--you 
+will outwalk your cousins when you are a few years older,--pretty 
+Ti-Clê.... Here come Cyrillia and Zabette, and Fêfê 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, _"Toutt douce, chè,--et ou?_" (All 
+sweetly, dear,--and thou?) But some, over-weary, cry to him, 
+"_Ah! déchâgé 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! déchâgé moin vite, chè! moin lasse!_"
+--and see the mighty arms outreach to take the burdens away. 
+... Only, there is a change',--I know not what!...  All vapory 
+the road is, and the fronds, and the comely coming 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. I who cry to Thee, thou dear black Giver of the perpetual 
+rest, "_Ah! déchâgé moin vite, chè! moin lasse!_"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+LA GRANDE ANSE.
+
+
+
+I.
+
+
+In 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 "Grand 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 Grand Anse.  The Grande Anse 
+girls were distinguished 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, perectly 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 Grand 
+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 bare-footed 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 island 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 
+mornes 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 likely 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 is 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.
+
+[Illustration: A CREOLE CAPRE IN WORKING GARB.]
+
+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 mornes 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 verqant, 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 
+corner 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 Riviere 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 horned, 
+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,--
+to 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 _bouton 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 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 risk 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 mantle-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 yes, 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. [4]
+
+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.
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+
+One whose ideas of the people of Grande Anse had I 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 be1ongs 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 ceremonia1ism.
+
+No white children ever appear in these processions: there are 
+not half a dozen white families in the who1e 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.
+
+[Illustration: A CONFIRMATION PROCESSION.]
+
+... 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 hills 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, Pelee, 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 feel 
+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 moin?_" (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,--
+_Tambou!_ 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_, [5] 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 or 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 finger-tips 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....  "_Aïe, 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, aïe, yaïe!_  Then he got off that ka. 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 eight seconds, which 
+perfectly times a particular measure in the drum roll.  It may be 
+the burden of a song: 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 oyerheated 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, "Secou! les voisinages!" 
+Moin ka crié, "Secou! la gàde royale!" 
+Moin ka crié, "Secou! 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.
+
+[Illustration: MANNER OF PLAYING THE KA]
+
+The stars were all out when I bid my host good-bye;--he sent his 
+lack servant along with me to carry a lantern and keep a sharp 
+watch for snakes along the mountain road.
+
+
+
+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 leafy 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 sunsets,...only the ocean 
+roaring forever over its beach of black sand.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+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 Nature'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 Aimeé 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 Daney'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 _anse_ 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 naive 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 manmaill,--
+moin ka souvini y pouend caiie 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 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 suceeded 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." [6]
+
+"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!"
+
+
+
+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; the 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:
+
+"_Moin ka couè c'est fanal Pè Labatt!_" (I believe it is the 
+lantern of Perè 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 Thereza, 
+"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 clear 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: '_Mi! moin ké fai Pè 
+Labatt 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 Dutertre, another Dominican missionary and historian, who 
+wrote his book,--a queer book in old French, [7] --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 found a 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.  Perè 
+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 piess!_" 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. [8] 
+
+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 shoe and he shook the dust of his shoe upon 
+that quay, and he said: 'I curse you, 0 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.'" [9]
+
+"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 batt manman!_ 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 harbor1 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."
+
+
+
+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 encyclopedias answer the question, 
+but far less fully and less interestingly than Dr. Rufz, the 
+Martinique historian, whose article upon him in the _Etudes 
+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 judgement 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 role-building bastions, scarps, 
+counterterscarps, 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 
+medieval 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 
+churches, 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, yet must have 
+created secret hate and jealousy even when open malevolence might 
+not dare to show itself.  And to the 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, but where any public mention of 
+a family scandal is never just 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 Intendant 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'Amêrique" 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 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." [10] 
+
+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 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 [11]
+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 fat 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 false-hoods, 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 stories 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 Rain-maker, 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 on 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 Fraise, Père Rosié", Père Temple, and Père 
+Bournot,--all members of his own order,--as trust-worthy 
+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 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 capttain 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 all 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 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, were 
+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_, [12] almost 
+as tough, 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.
+
+Believing in these things, and withal unable to decide whether 
+the sun revolved about the earth, or the earth about the sun, [13] 
+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 goblins.... "_Mi! ti manmaille-là, moin ké fai Pè 
+Labatt vini pouend ou!_"...
+
+
+
+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 somethmg 
+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.
+
+[Illustration: A WAYSIDE SHRINE, OR CHAPELLE.]
+
+... 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 mediaevalism 
+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 aesthetic 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.)
+
+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, flung 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 _békés_.
+
+"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 only of 
+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 wittness 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 tam tam 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 and 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 ou!_"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+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 _malefice_ 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_, [14] 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 anyone 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.
+
+
+
+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, Missié,--non; çé pa ca._"
+
+--"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;--moun-mò ké barré moin: moin pa sé pè vini enco.'" (_I 
+said, "I do not want to go by 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 Manman!_"
+
+--"_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 Thereza'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 
+embeté 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! Vini 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: 
+on 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 wa 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.
+
+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 "bon-jou'" 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 her coming.He looks a 
+moment,turns to the hut and calls:--
+
+--"Ou-ou! Fafa!"
+
+--"Étí! Gabou!"
+
+--"Vini ti bouin!--mi bel negresse!"
+
+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 conm couresse 
+qui ka passélariviè" (_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 fai 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 rêté, che?" 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 au rhabillé toutt nouè conm ça."
+
+--"Moin pòté deil pou name main mò."
+
+--"Aïe ya yaïe!... Non, vouè!--ça ou kallé atouèlement?"
+
+--"Lanmou pàti: moin pàti deïé lanmou."
+
+--"Ho!--on 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?" [15]
+
+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, çe pa ça."
+
+--"Ess Vitaline?"
+
+--"Non çé pa ça."
+
+--"Ess Aza?"
+
+--"Non, çé pa ça."
+
+--"Ess Nini?"
+
+--"Châché encò."
+
+--"Ess Tité"
+
+--"Ou pa save,--tant pis pou ou!"
+
+--"Ess Youma?"
+
+--"Pouki ou 'lè save nom moin?--ça ou ké 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 te-- 
+moin ka dòmi toute longue; 
+Yon paillasse sé fai main bien, 
+Doudoux!
+
+À te-- 
+moin ka dòmi toute longue; 
+Yon robe biésé sé fai moin bien, 
+Doudoux!
+
+À te-- 
+moin ka dòmi toute longue; 
+Dè jolis foulà sé fai moin bien, 
+Doudoux!
+
+À te-- 
+moin ka dòmi toute longue; 
+Yon joli madras sé fai moin bien, 
+Doudoux!
+
+À te-- 
+moin ka dòmi toute longue: 
+Çe 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 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 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...
+
+
+
+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 scoriae,--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 la?" 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 thinkling, 
+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 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 questionn 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 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!_"  [16]
+
+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. 
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+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 Mirail; 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 màchanne 
+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 anyone 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 
+medicinal herbs, which she gathers herself upon the mornes.  But 
+for these services she never accepts any reuneration: she is a 
+sort of Mother of the poor in 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 anyybody is afraid of being 
+bewitched (_quimboisé_) 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 is 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 
+everyone 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 douillette 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.
+
+[Illustration: RUE VICTOR HUGO (FORMERLY GRANDE RUE), ST. PIERRE]
+
+... 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....  "_Moin 
+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.  From 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"). [17]
+
+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.
+
+
+
+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 bien 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 unpicturesquel--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, 
+Dominican, 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 Iuugh 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, lace-edged pantalettes, and a child's cap; 
+the whole being decorated with bright ribbbons 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 and 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, "_Fou 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 disguise the wearer absolutely, although 
+they can be through perfectly well from within.  It struck me 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,--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, 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, 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 manifested by these good souls 
+for the birth of the Saviour."... [18]
+
+
+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 
+Verette_ 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, comes 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-Die. 
+
+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 manmaille-là, 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 manmaille-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-à derhò!_"
+
+D.--"_Eh! Marie-sans-dent!_"... etc.
+
+[Illustration: QUARTER OF THE FORT, ST. PIERRE (OVERLOOKING
+THE RIVIÈRE ROXELANE).]
+
+The Devil at last descends to the main street, always singing the 
+same song;--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-làp 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 hanwith 
+a precision of rhythm that is simply wonderful,--making each 
+time a sound almost exactly like the bursting of a heavy wave:--
+
+DEVIL.--"_Diable épi zombi_."...
+
+CHORUS.--"_Diable épi zombi ka d'omi tout-pàtout!_" 
+
+D.--"_Diable épi zombi_."
+ 
+C.--"_Diable épi zombi ka dòmi tout-pàtout!_"
+
+D.--_Diable 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 _raifales_ 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 calender 
+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. [19]
+
+
+
+XIII.  _February 23d._
+
+
+A Coffin passes, balanced on the heads of black men.  It holds the 
+body of Pascaline Z-, covered with quick-lime. 
+
+She was the prettiest, assuredly, among the pretty shopgirls 
+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....  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 of 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 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:--
+
+"_Pauv' ti Lélé,
+Pauv' 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 childlren 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 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 peide!_--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 shine!" [20]
+
+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."... [21]
+
+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, toutt 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....
+
+
+
+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 ye, Manm-Robert?_"
+
+--"_Pou empêché ou pouend laverette_," she answers.  It 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 en 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" (_lèfan_)--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 house-hold, 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 
+_familia_, 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 hair;--she is
+always pleased to see me, pleased to chat lith me about creole 
+folk-lore.  Then observing, a smile exchanged between myself and 
+Mimi, she tells the children to bid me good-day:--"_Alle di bonjou' 
+Missié-a!_"
+ 
+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 lanuite 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:-- [22]
+
+--"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_!)
+
+
+
+XX.  _March 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 pest-house 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 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,--forget everything but 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_ [23]
+(that is 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 same thing," or ought to 
+be so considered,--you can readily imagine how soon the city must 
+become one vast hospital.
+
+
+
+XXII.
+
+
+... By nine o'clock, as a general rule, St. Pierre becomes silent: 
+everyone 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 bare-footed 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, 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 visible through all 
+the ways of St. Pierre.  The costumes donned are all similar to 
+those worn for the death 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 winndow 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 hill: 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 grow 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.  _March 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 ring the dead 
+two together: the cemeteries are over-burdened....
+
+
+
+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 out-stretched leg to the tip of 
+its opposite fellow, as they cling to the wall.  I never heard of 
+anyone 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 door-way quite a 
+host of these monster insects. Manm-Robert is quite dismayed:--
+
+--"_Fesis-Maïa!_--ou 'lè malhè encò pou 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 sou!--gouôs conm ça fil zagrignin, 
+et moin pa menm mangé!  Epi laverette encò.... Moin 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 alle_," 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 Nausicaa, though more naively 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, [24] who, falling in love with 
+a handsome colored girl, spent all his father's money 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 verette.  
+She is gone to the lazaretto."
+
+
+
+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 Manrn-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_, etc. [25]  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 nouè_," she says;
+--"_moin ouôuge: ou fai moin nouè nans pòtrait-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--_nouè conm poule-zo-nouè_ ("black as a black-
+boned hen!")
+
+ ... And this red race is disappearing from St. Pierre--doubtless 
+also from other plague-stricken centres.
+
+
+
+XXIX.  _April l0th._
+
+
+Manm-Robert is much annoyed and puzzled because the American 
+steamer--the _bom-mangé_, as she calls does not come.  It used to 
+bring regularly so many barrels of potatoes and beans, so much lard 
+and cheese 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 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 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 delared 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 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:--
+
+--"_Atò, mon chè, c'est Yzore qui ni laverette!_" 
+
+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 the 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....  
+All the furniture is to be sold at auction to 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 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!--qutitté moin châché papaou 
+qui adans cimétiè pou vini 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!)
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+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 still 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 wormen, 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!--Dede!-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.
+
+[Illustration: RIVIÈRE DES BLANCHISSEUSES.]
+
+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 mulatresses;--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:--
+
+--"_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 fesse 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" (_pouèmiè lablanie_). In the evening they are 
+gathered into large wooden trays or baskets, and carried to what is 
+called the "lye-house" (_lacaïe lessive_)--overlooking the river from a 
+point on the fort bank opposite to the higher end of the Savane.  There 
+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 
+mornes 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', che!_"  Idle men stare at some 
+pretty washer, till she points at them and cries:--"_Gadé Missie-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 main qui té ka lavé,
+Passé, raccommodé:
+Y té néf hè disouè
+Ou metté moin derhò,--
+Yche main assous bouas moin;--
+Laplie té ka tombé-- 
+Léfan moin assous tête moin!
+Doudoux, ou m'abandonne!
+Moin pa ni pèsonne pou soigné moin." [26]
+
+... 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. 
+
+"0 cursed eyes he praised that led me to him!  0 cursed lips of 
+mine which ever repeated his name!  0 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 lanmou,
+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."
+
+--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. 
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+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 Dutertre, 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 
+breadth--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 coast-lines 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 line 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; [27]  
+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 fiIling the 
+north, presents an aspect and occupies an area scarcely inferior 
+to those of AEtna. 
+
+--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. [28]
+
+[Illustration: FOOT OF PELÉE, BEHIND THE QUARTER OF THE FORT.]
+
+Huge as the mountain looks from St. Pierre, the eye under-
+estimates 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 precipitous pitch of its sides.  Pelée is not 
+very remarkable in point of altitude, however: its height was 
+estimated by Moreau de Jonnes at 1600 metres; and by others at 
+between 4400 and 4500 feet.  The sum of the various imperfect 
+estimates made justify the opinion of Dr. Cornilliac that the 
+extreme summit is over 5000 feet above the sea--perhaps 5200. [29]
+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 meteorologic 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. [30]
+
+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 configuraion 
+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 Souffrière_, 
+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 Souffrière 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 Morne 
+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.
+
+
+
+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 
+manreuvre to the _Iroquois;_ but she gained Aux Abymes, laid 
+herself close 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.
+
+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 route 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 broad-leaved 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 mornes.  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 while 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.
+
+[Illustration: VILLAGE OF MORNE ROUGE, MARTINIQUE]
+
+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.
+
+
+We 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 from 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 
+millimetres.
+2.  _Saison chaude et sèche_.  April to July.  Rainfall, about 140 
+millimetres.
+3.  _Saison chaude et pluvieuse_.  July to November. Rainfall 
+average, 121 millimetres.
+
+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 midday 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 silouette 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.
+
+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 with 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, [31]
+--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.
+
+
+
+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 
+amareuses, 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.... [32]
+
+
+
+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 interspaces 
+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 fromagers, 
+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 to-day 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.
+
+[Illustration: LA MONTAGNE PELÉE, AS SEEN FROM GRANDE ANSE.]
+
+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 nor more swift.
+
+... We climb.  There is a trace rather than a foot-path;--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 me 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 us 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 
+easily 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 to 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 everyone 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 mornes, 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 100 to 200 feet high. Their 
+waters are necessarily shallow in normal weather; but during 
+rain-storms 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_" [33] --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.
+
+[Illustration: ARBORESCENT FERNS ON A MOUNTAIN ROAD.]
+
+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 Dutertre 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."...
+
+
+
+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 too low.  There are beautiful flowers here,--various 
+unfamiliar species of lobelia;--pretty red and yellow blossoms belonging 
+to plants which the creole physician calls _Bromeliacoe_; 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 
+_bourbiers_, 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 larvae 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 comes, 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 up-
+heaved 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 today 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 
+Ossae, 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 de Revenants_.  And the charm is as puissant 
+in our own day as it was more than two hundred years ago, when 
+Père Dutertre 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!  0 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."... [34]
+
+
+
+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?_"...  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. [34]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+'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, "_Mi! gadé 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....
+
+[Illustration: 'TI CANOT.]
+
+... 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 _'ti 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 stern 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, gàdé sang-à ka coulé nans
+nez ou,-nans bouche ou!...Mi oti Iézautt!_" 
+
+_Lèzautt_, 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 dòmi?_" (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 lhorizon!_"--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 quz" 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 Dutertre, 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! 
+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.
+
+--"0 Maximilien!--_Bon-Dié ka ouè toutt, ka connaitt toutt_" (He 
+sees all; He knows all), cried Stéphane.
+
+--"_Y pa pè ouè non pièss atouèelement, 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 tini coulè; 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 lanmè.'_" (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 
+Sea! ... 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 coming 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 ké 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 ouè 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.
+
+--"_C'a 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."...
+
+--"_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 tini 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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+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. [35]
+
+[Illustration: THE MARTINIQUE TURBAN, OR MADRAS CALENDE.]
+
+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 jewellery.  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. [36] 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!)
+
+[Illustration: THE GUADELOUPE HEAD-DRESS.]
+
+... 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 jewellery 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.
+
+
+
+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.
+
+[Illustration: YOUNG MULATTRESS.]
+
+[Illustration: PLANTATION COOLIE WOMAN IN MARTINIQUE COSTUME.]
+
+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. [37] 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; [38] 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.
+
+[Illustration: COOLIE HALF-BREED]
+
+--"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 Cote_), can be recognized at 
+once....
+
+[Illustration: COUNTRY-GIRL--PURE NEGRO RACE.]
+
+... "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."... [39]
+
+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 curinus 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_)." [40]  Travellers of the eighteenth century were 
+confounded by the luxury of dress and of jewellery 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), [41]
+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, [42]
+"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." [43]
+
+
+
+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 
+coloniei.  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." [44]  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 safe1y 
+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 
+fil1e-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_."... [45]
+
+[Illustration: CAPRESSE.]
+
+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_:  
+[46] 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, [47] 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).
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+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."
+
+
+
+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_.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+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: [49]
+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.
+
+
+II
+
+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.
+
+
+II.
+
+PIMENTO STORY.
+
+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.
+
+[Illustration: OLD MARKET-PLACE OF THE FORT, ST. PIERRE.
+--(REMOVED IN 1888.]
+
+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_. [50]
+
+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.
+
+
+
+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.
+
+[Illustration: BREAD-FRUIT TREE.]
+
+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--"
+
+--"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!... 
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+"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. [51]
+
+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....
+
+... 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.
+
+
+
+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_"... 
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+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 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 [52] 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:--*
+
+[* In the original:--"Y té ka monté assous tabe-là, épi y té ka fai 
+caca adans toutt plats-à, adans toutt zassiett-là."]
+
+--"_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.*
+
+[*A peaklet rising above the verge of the ancient crater now filled 
+with water.]
+
+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,--*
+
+[* The great field-rat of Martinique is, in Martinique folk-lore, 
+the symbol of all cunning, and probably merits its reputation.]
+
+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_.* And that is 
+why the _coulivicou_ always looks so much ashamed of himself even 
+to this day.
+
+[* 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!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+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 eyening;--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."...
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+
+... 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 wamrth, 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.
+
+[Illustration: BASSE-TERRE ST. KITTS.]
+
+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!_... 
+
+
+
+
+
+ENDNOTES
+
+
+
+[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 site; and the beautiful trees have been cut down.
+
+[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.
+
+[3] _Extract from the "Story of Marie," as written from 
+dictation:_
+
+... Manman-à té ni yon gouôs 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 bò la fontaine, y pa trouvé 
+pésonne pou châgé y.  Y rété; y ka crié, "Toutt bon Chritien, 
+vini châgé moin!"
+
+... Lhè manman rété y ouè pa té ni piess bon Chritien pou chage
+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 
+çaa, "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." 
+
+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 anyone to load her.  She 
+stood there, crying out, "Any good Christian, come load me!"
+
+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."
+
+[4] _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 phase.
+
+[5] 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.]
+
+[6] 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 clear, begins the breaking of the sea; then 
+darkness comes, and after it the wind.
+
+[7] "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 4to.
+
+[8] 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, man chè!_ "How many cows did you steal from 
+him?" asked the magistrate.  "_Ess moin 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 geole_," 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.
+
+[9] 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"
+
+[10] Vol.  iii., p. 382-3.  Edition of 1722.]
+
+[11] 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.
+
+[12] 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.
+
+[13] 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 be the one 
+or the other, of these two great bodies which moves..._" etc.
+
+[14] 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 
+clock, the cessation of its song is the signal to get up.
+
+[15] --"Where dost stay, dear?"--"Affairs of the goat are not 
+affairs 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?--dost thou want to come with me?"
+
+[16] "Kiss me now!"
+
+[17] 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 làbas, 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!
+
+[18] ..."Cette danse est opposée à la pudeur.  Avec tout cela, 
+elle ne lesse 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 théatre élévé dans leur Choeur, vis-à-vis de 
+leur grille, qui est ouverte, afin que le Peuple aît sa part dans la 
+joye que ces bonnes âmes témoignent pour la naissance du Sauveur."
+
+[19] 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.  Sorely 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.
+
+[20] "_Bel laline, moin ka montré ti pièce moin!--ba moin làgent 
+toutt temps ou ka clairé!_"...  This little invocation is 
+supposed to have most power when uttered on the first appearance 
+of the new moon.
+
+[21] ... 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.
+
+[22] --"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 danse.  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! main 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."...]
+
+[23] 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 indicates a desire to
+affiliate with the white class.
+
+[24] 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.
+
+[25] 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,
+Gouôs, gouâs, vaillant,
+Peau,di chapoti 
+Ka fai plaisi;--
+Lapeau moin 
+Li bien poli; 
+Et moin ka plai 
+Mênm 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 at me!"
+
+[26] 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.
+
+[27] Also called _La Barre de '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.
+
+[28] Thibault de Chanvallon, writing of Martinique in 1751,  
+declared:--"All possible hinderances to study are encountered  
+here (_tout s'oppose à l'etude_): 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 othelr 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.
+
+[29] Humboldt believed the height to be not less than 800 _toises_ 
+(1  toise=6 ft. 4.73 inches), or about 5115 feet.
+
+[30] 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 time, might be regarded as an omen of  
+hurricane.
+
+[31] "De la piqure du serpent de la Martinique," par Auguste  
+Charriez, Medecin de la Marine.  Paris: Moquet, 1875]
+
+[32] M. Francard Bayardelle, overseer of the Prèsbourg plantation 
+at  Grande Anse, tells me that the most successful treatment of 
+snake bite 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 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 grass; 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 over-seer.
+
+[33] The sheet-lightnings which play during the nights of July and  
+August are termed in creole _Zéclai-titiri_, or "titiri- 
+lightnings";--it is believed these give notice that the titiri  
+have begun to swarn 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- 
+a ka fai yo écloré_" (the lightning hatches them).
+
+[34] Dr. E. Rufz: "Études historiques," vol. i., p. 189.
+
+[35] 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 (cacoa)       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.
+_Negresse_.... White. Scarlet, or any violet color.
+
+[36] ... "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.
+
+[37]  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.
+
+[38] "Leur sueur n'est pas fétide comme celle des nègres de la 
+Guinée," writes the traveller Dauxion-Lavaysse, in 1813.
+
+[39] 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.)
+
+[40] Rufz: "Études," vol. i., p. 236.
+
+[41] I am assured it has now fallen to a figure not exceeding 
+5000.
+
+[42] Rufz: "Études," vol. ii., pp. 311, 312.
+
+[43] Rufz: "Études," vol. i., p.  237.
+
+[44] _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.
+
+[45] 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 ses yeux.
+
+[46] A sort of land-crab;--the female is selected for food, and, 
+properly cooked, makes a delicious dish;--the male is almost 
+worthless.
+
+[47] "Voyage à la Martinique," Par J.  R., Général de Brigade. 
+Paris: An, XII., 1804.  Page 106.
+
+[48] According to the Martinique "Annuaire" for 1887, there were 
+even then, out of a total population of 173,182, no less than 
+12,366 able to read and write.
+
+[49] 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.
+
+[50] 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_.
+
+[51]  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_.
+
+[52] In the patois, "_yon rafale yche_,"--a "whirlwind of 
+children."
+
+
+
+
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