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+Project Gutenberg's Two Years in the French West Indies, by Lafcadio Hearn
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Two Years in the French West Indies
+
+Author: Lafcadio Hearn
+
+Release Date: August, 2004  [EBook #6381]
+Last Updated: August 23, 2012
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FRENCH WEST INDIES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Richard Farris
+
+
+
+
+
+
+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._
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF 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
+
+
+
+
+
+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 all this colonial
+life, this strong, bearded English visage takes something of heroic
+relief;--one feels, in a totally novel way, the dignity of a white skin.
+
+[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: "_Ou 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 belongs rather
+to the valleys and the heights surrounding the _chef-lieu_. Most of the
+porteuses are country girls, and I found that even those living in the
+village are seldom visible on the streets except when departing upon a
+trip or returning from one. An artist wishing to study the type might,
+however, pass a day at the bridge of the Rivière Falaise to advantage,
+as all the carrier-girls pass it at certain hours of the morning and
+evening.
+
+But the best possible occasion on which to observe what my friend the
+baker called _la belle jeunesse_, is a confirmation day,--when the
+bishop drives to Grande Anse over the mountains, and all the population
+turns out in holiday garb, and the bells are tapped like tam-tams, and
+triumphal arches--most awry to behold!--span the road-way, bearing in
+clumsiest lettering the welcome, _Vive Monseigneur_. On that event,
+the long procession of young girls to be confirmed--all in white robes,
+white veils, and white satin slippers--is a numerical surprise. It is
+a moral surprise also,--to the stranger at least; for it reveals the
+struggle of a poverty extraordinary with the self-imposed obligations of
+a costly ceremonialism.
+
+No white children ever appear in these processions: there are not half
+a dozen white families in the whole urban population of about seven
+thousand souls; and those send their sons and daughters to St. Pierre or
+Morne Rouge for their religious training and education. But many of
+the colored children look very charming in their costume of
+confirmation;--you could not easily recognize one of them as the same
+little _bonne_ who brings your morning cup of coffee, or another as the
+daughter of a plantation _commandeur_ (overseer's assistant),--a brown
+slip of a girl who will probably never wear shoes again. And many of
+those white shoes and white veils have been obtained only by the hardest
+physical labor and self-denial of poor parents and relatives: fathers,
+brothers, and mothers working with cutlass and hoe in the snake-swarming
+cane-fields;--sisters walking bare-footed every day to St. Pierre and
+back to earn a few francs a month.
+
+[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
+harbor and Pelée, which I believe even those who have seen Naples would
+confess to be one of the fairest sights in the world.... Towards evening
+I obtained a chance to ask my kind host some questions about the legend
+of his neighborhood.
+
+... "Ever since I was a child," observed Monsieur M--, "I heard it said
+that Père Labat haunted this mountain, and I often saw what was alleged
+to be his light. It looked very much like a lantern swinging in the hand
+of some one climbing the hill. A queer fact was that it used to come
+from the direction of Carbet, skirt the Morne d'Orange a few hundred
+feet above the road, and then move up the face of what seemed a sheer
+precipice. Of course somebody carried that light,--probably a negro; and
+perhaps the cliff is not so inaccessible as it looks: still, we could
+never discover who the individual was, nor could we imagine what his
+purpose might have been.... But the light has not been seen here now for
+years."
+
+
+
+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 10th._
+
+
+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 filling 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.
+
+--"O 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 safely be said refers rather
+to the fille-de-couleur of the past than of the present half-century.
+The race is now in a period of transition: public education and
+political changes are modifying the type, and it is impossible to guess
+the ultimate consequence, because it is impossible to safely predict
+what new influences may yet be brought to affect its social development.
+Befare the present era of colonial decadence, the character of the
+fille-de-couleur was not what it is now. Even when totally uneducated,
+she had a peculiar charm,--that charm of childishness which has power to
+win sympathy from the rudest natures. One could not but feel attracted
+towards this naïf being, docile as an infant, and as easily pleased or
+as easily pained,--artless in her goodnesses as in her faults, to all
+outward appearance;--willing to give her youth, her beauty, her caresses
+to some one in exchange for the promise to love her,--perhaps also to
+care for a mother, or a younger brother. Her astonishing capacity for
+being delighted with trifles, her pretty vanities and pretty follies,
+her sudden veerings of mood from laughter to tears,--like the sudden
+rainbursts and sunbursts of her own passionate climate: these touched,
+drew, won, and tyrannized. Yet such easily created joys and pains did
+not really indicate any deep reserve of feeling: rather a superficial
+sensitiveness only,--like the _zhèbe-m'amisé_, or _zhèbe-manmzelle_,
+whose leaves close at the touch of a hair. Such human manifestations,
+nevertheless, are apt to attract more in proportion as they are more
+visible,--in proportion as the soul-current, being less profound, flows
+more audibly. But no hasty observation could have revealed the whole
+character of the fille-de-couleur to the stranger, equally charmed and
+surprised: the creole comprehended her better, and probably treated
+her with even more real kindness. The truth was that centuries of
+deprivation of natural rights and hopes had given to her race--itself
+fathered by passion unrestrained and mothered by subjection
+unlimited--an inherent scepticism in the duration of love, and a
+marvellous capacity for accepting the destiny of abandonment as one
+accepts the natural and the inevitable. And that desire to please--which
+in the fille-de-couleur seemed to prevail above all other motives of
+action (maternal affection excepted)--could have appeared absolutely
+natural only to those who never reflected that even sentiment had been
+artificially cultivated by slavery.
+
+She asked for so little,--accepted a gift with such childish
+pleasure,--submitted so unresistingly to the will of the man
+who promised to love her. She bore him children--such beautiful
+children!--whom he rarely acknowledged, and was never asked
+to legitimatize;--and she did not ask perpetual affection
+notwithstanding,--regarded the relation as a necessarily temporary
+one, to be sooner or later dissolved by the marriage of her children's
+father. If deceived in all things,--if absolutely ill-treated and left
+destitute, she did not lose faith in human nature: she seemed a born
+optimist, believing most men good;--she would make a home for another
+and serve him better than any slave.... "_Née de l'amour_," says
+a creole writer, "_la fille-de-couleur vit d'amour, de rires, et
+d'oublis_."... [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
+
+
+[Footnote 1: Since this was written the market has been removed to the
+Savane,--to allow of the erection of a large new market-building on the
+old site; and the beautiful trees have been cut down.]
+
+[Footnote 2: I subsequently learned the mystery of this very strange and
+beautiful mixed race,--many fine specimens of which may also be seen
+in Trinidad. Three widely diverse elements have combined to form it:
+European, negro, and Indian,--but, strange to say, it is the most savage
+of these three bloods which creates the peculiar charm.... I cannot
+speak of this comely and extraordinary type without translating a
+passage from Dr. J. J. J. Cornilliac, an eminent Martinique physician,
+who recently published a most valuable series of studies upon the
+ethnology, climatology, and history of the Antilles. In these he
+writes:...]
+
+"When, among the populations of the Antilles, we first notice those
+remarkable _métis_ whose olive skins, elegant and slender figures, fine
+straight profiles, and regular features remind us of the inhabitants
+of Madras or Pondicherry,--we ask ourselves in wonder, while looking
+at their long eyes, full of a strange and gentle melancholy (especially
+among the women), and at the black, rich, silky-gleaming hair curling in
+abundance over the temples and falling in profusion over the neck,--to
+what human race can belong this singular variety,--in which there is a
+dominant characteristic that seems indelible, and always shows more
+and more strongly in proportion as the type is further removed from the
+African element. It is the Carib blood--blended with blood of Europeans
+and of blacks,--which in spite of all subsequent crossings, and in
+spite of the fact that it has not been renewed for more than two
+hundred years, still conserves as markedly as at the time of the first
+interblending, the race-characteristic that invariably reveals
+its presence in the blood of every being through whose veins it
+flows."--"Recherches chronologiques et historiques sur l'Origine et la
+Propagation de la Fièvre Jaune aux Antilles." Par J. J. J. Cornilliac.
+Fort-de-France: Imprimerie du Gouvernement. 1886.
+
+But I do not think the term "olive" always indicates the color of these
+skins, which seemed to me exactly the tint of gold; and the hair flashes
+with bluish lights, Like the plumage of certain black birds.]
+
+[Footnote 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."]
+
+[Footnote 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.]
+
+[Footnote 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.]
+
+[Footnote 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.]
+
+[Footnote 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.]
+
+[Footnote 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.]
+
+[Footnote 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"]
+
+[Footnote 10: Vol. iii., p. 382-3. Edition of 1722.]
+
+[Footnote 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.]
+
+[Footnote 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.]
+
+[Footnote 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.]
+
+[Footnote 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.]
+
+[Footnote 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?"]
+
+[Footnote 16: "Kiss me now!"]
+
+[Footnote 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!]
+
+[Footnote 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."]
+
+[Footnote 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.]
+
+[Footnote 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.]
+
+[Footnote 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.]
+
+[Footnote 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."...]
+
+[Footnote 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.]
+
+[Footnote 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.]
+
+[Footnote 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!"]
+
+[Footnote 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.]
+
+[Footnote 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.]
+
+[Footnote 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.]
+
+[Footnote 29: Humboldt believed the height to be not less than 800 _toises_ (1
+toise=6 ft. 4.73 inches), or about 5115 feet.]
+
+[Footnote 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.]
+
+[Footnote 31: "De la piqure du serpent de la Martinique," par Auguste Charriez,
+Medecin de la Marine. Paris: Moquet, 1875]
+
+[Footnote 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.]
+
+[Footnote 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).]
+
+[Footnote 34: Dr. E. Rufz: "Études historiques," vol. i., p. 189.]
+
+[Footnote 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.]
+
+[Footnote 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).]
+
+[Footnote 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.]
+
+[Footnote 38: "Leur sueur n'est pas fétide comme celle des nègres de la Guinée,"
+writes the traveller Dauxion-Lavaysse, in 1813.]
+
+[Footnote 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.)]
+
+[Footnote 40: Rufz: "Études," vol. i., p. 236.]
+
+[Footnote 41: I am assured it has now fallen to a figure not exceeding 5000.]
+
+[Footnote 42: Rufz: "Études," vol. ii., pp. 311, 312.]
+
+[Footnote 43: Rufz: "Études," vol. i., p. 237.]
+
+[Footnote 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.]
+
+[Footnote 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.]
+
+[Footnote 46: A sort of land-crab;--the female is selected for food, and,
+properly cooked, makes a delicious dish;--the male is almost worthless.]
+
+[Footnote 47: "Voyage à la Martinique," Par J. R., Général de Brigade. Paris: An,
+XII., 1804. Page 106.]
+
+[Footnote 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.]
+
+[Footnote 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.]
+
+[Footnote 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_.]
+
+[Footnote 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_.]
+
+[Footnote 52: In the patois, "_yon rafale yche_,"--a "whirlwind of children."]
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Two Years in the French West Indies, by
+Lafcadio Hearn
+
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+<?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1"?>
+
+<!DOCTYPE html
+   PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
+   "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd" >
+
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en">
+  <head>
+    <title>
+      Two Years in the French West Indies, by Lafcadio Hearn
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve">
+    
+    body { margin:5%; text-align:justify}
+    P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .25em; margin-bottom: .25em; }
+    H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; }
+    hr  { width: 50%; text-align: center;}
+    .foot { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; text-indent: -3em; font-size: 90%; }
+    blockquote {font-size: 97%; font-style: italic; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;}
+    .mynote    {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;}
+    .toc       { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;}
+    .toc2      { margin-left: 20%;}
+    div.fig { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; }
+    .figleft   {float: left; margin-left: 0%; margin-right: 1%;}
+    .figright  {float: right; margin-right: 0%; margin-left: 1%;}
+    .pagenum   {display:inline; font-size: 70%; font-style:normal;
+               margin: 0; padding: 0; position: absolute; right: 1%;
+               text-align: right;}
+    pre     { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;}
+    
+</style>
+  </head>
+  <body>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+Project Gutenberg's Two Years in the French West Indies, by Lafcadio Hearn
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Two Years in the French West Indies
+
+Author: Lafcadio Hearn
+
+Release Date: August, 2004  [EBook #6381]
+Last Updated: November 17, 2012
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FRENCH WEST INDIES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Richard Farris and David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+    <div style="height: 8em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h1>
+      TWO YEARS IN THE FRENCH WEST INDIES
+    </h1>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      By Lafcadio Hearn
+    </h2>
+    <h4>
+      Author Of "Chita" Etc.
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      Illustrated
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%">
+      <img alt="frontispiece (128K)" src="images/frontispiece.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%">
+      <img alt="titlepage (35K)" src="images/titlepage.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        "<i>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.</i>"-LE PÈRE DUTERTRE (1667)
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        À MON CHER AMI LEOPOLD ARNOUX
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <big><b>CONTENTS</b></big>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_PREF"> PREFACE </a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0003"> <big><b>A TRIP TO THE TROPICS.</b></big> </a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_PART"> <big><b>PART ONE&mdash;A MIDSUMMER TRIP TO THE
+      TROPICS.</b></big> </a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_PART2"> <big><b>PART TWO&mdash;MARTINIQUE SKETCHES.</b></big>
+      </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0001"> CHAPTER I. &mdash; LES PORTEUSES. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0002"> CHAPTER II. &mdash; LA GRANDE ANSE. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0003"> CHAPTER III. &mdash; UN REVENANT </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0004"> CHAPTER IV. &mdash; LA GUIABLESSE. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0005"> CHAPTER V. &mdash; LA VÉRETTE. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0006"> CHAPTER VI. &mdash; LES BLANCHISSEUSES. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0007"> CHAPTER VII. &mdash; LA PELÉE. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0008"> CHAPTER VIII. &mdash; 'TI CANOTIÉ </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0009"> CHAPTER IX. &mdash; LA FILLE DE COULEUR. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0010"> CHAPTER X. &mdash; BÊTE-NI-PIÉ. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0011"> CHAPTER XI. &mdash; MA BONNE. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0012"> CHAPTER XII. &mdash; "PA COMBINÉ, CHÈ!" </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0013"> CHAPTER XIII. &mdash; YÉ. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0014"> CHAPTER XIV &mdash; LYS </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0020"> ENDNOTES </a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <big><b>List of Illustrations</b></big>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#linkimage-0001"> La Place Bertin (the Sugar Landing), St.
+      Pierre, Martinique. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#linkimage-0002"> Itinerant Pastry-seller. "tourjours Content,
+      Toujours Joyeux." </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#linkimage-0003"> In the Cimetère Du Mouillage, St. Pierre. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#linkimage-0004"> In the Jardin Des Plantes, St. Pierre. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#linkimage-0005"> Cascade in the Jardin Des Plantes. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#linkimage-0006"> Departure of Steamer for Fort-de-france. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#linkimage-0007"> Statue of Josephine. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#linkimage-0008"> Inner Basin, Bridgetown, Barbadoes. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#linkimage-0009"> Trafalgar Square, Bridgetown, Barbadoes. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#linkimage-0010"> Street in Georgetown, Demerara. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#linkimage-0011"> Avenue in Georgetown, Demerara. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#linkimage-0012"> Victoria Regia in the Canal at Georgetown </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#linkimage-0013"> Demerara Coolie Girl. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#linkimage-0014"> St. James Avenue, Port-of-spain, Trinidad. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#linkimage-0015"> Coolies of Trinidad. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#linkimage-0016"> Coolie Servant. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#linkimage-0017"> Coolie Merchant. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#linkimage-0018"> Church Street, St. George, Grenada. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#linkimage-0019"> Castries, St. Lucia. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#linkimage-0020"> 'ti Marie (on the Route from St. Pierre To
+      Basse-pointe.) </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#linkimage-0021"> Fort-de-france, Martinique&mdash;(formerly Fort
+      Royal.) </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#linkimage-0022"> A Creole Capre in Working Garb. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#linkimage-0023"> A Confirmation Procession. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#linkimage-0024"> Manner of Playing the Ka </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#linkimage-0025"> A Wayside Shrine, Or Chapelle. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#linkimage-0026"> Rue Victor Hugo (formerly Grande Rue), St.
+      Pierre </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#linkimage-0027"> Quarter of the Fort, St. Pierre (overlooking
+      The Rivière Roxelane). </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#linkimage-0028"> Rivière Des Blanchisseuses. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#linkimage-0029"> Foot of PelÉe, Behind the Quarter Of The Fort.
+      </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#linkimage-0030"> Village of Morne Rouge, Martinique </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#linkimage-0031"> La Montagne PelÉe, As Seen from Grande Anse.
+      </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#linkimage-0032"> Arborescent Ferns on a Mountain Road. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#linkimage-0033"> 'ti Canot. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#linkimage-0034"> The Martinique Turban, Or Madras Calende. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#linkimage-0035"> The Guadeloupe Head-dress. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#linkimage-0036"> Young Mulattress. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#linkimage-0037"> Plantation Coolie Woman in Martinique Costume.
+      </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#linkimage-0038"> Coolie Half-breed </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#linkimage-0039"> Country-girl&mdash;pure Negro Race. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#linkimage-0040"> Capresse. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#linkimage-0041"> Old Market-place of the Fort, St. Pierre.&mdash;(removed
+      In 1888). </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#linkimage-0042"> Bread-fruit Tree. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#linkimage-0043"> Basse-terre St. Kitts. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br /> <a name="link2H_NOTA" id="link2H_NOTA">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h3>
+      NOTAIRE À SAINT PIERRE, MARTINIQUE
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <i>Souvenir de nos promenades,&mdash;de nos voyages,&mdash;de nos
+      causeries,&mdash;des sympathies échangées,&mdash;de tout le charme d'une
+      amitié inaltérable et inoubliable,&mdash;de tout ce qui parle à l'âme au
+      doux Pay des Revenants.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br /> <a name="link2H_PREF" id="link2H_PREF">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      PREFACE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      During a trip to the Lesser Antilles in the summer of 1887, the writer of
+      the following pages, landing at Martinique, fell under the influence of
+      that singular spell which the island has always exercised upon strangers,
+      and by which it has earned its poetic name,&mdash;<i>Le Pays des Revenants</i>.
+      Even as many another before him, he left its charmed shores only to know
+      himself haunted by that irresistible regret,&mdash;unlike any other,&mdash;which
+      is the enchantment of the land upon all who wander away from it. So he
+      returned, intending to remain some months; but the bewitchment prevailed,
+      and he remained two years.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some of the literary results of that sojourn form the bulk of the present
+      volume. Several, or portions of several, papers have been published in
+      HARPER'S MAGAZINE; but the majority of the sketches now appear in print
+      for the first time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The introductory paper, entitled "A Midsummer Trip to the Tropics,"
+      consists for the most part of notes taken upon a voyage of nearly three
+      thousand miles, accomplished in less than two months. During such hasty
+      journeying it is scarcely possible for a writer to attempt anything more
+      serious than a mere reflection of the personal experiences undergone; and,
+      in spite of sundry justifiable departures from simple note-making, this
+      paper is offered only as an effort to record the visual and emotional
+      impressions of the moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My thanks are due to Mr. William Lawless, British Consul at St. Pierre,
+      for several beautiful photographs, taken by himself, which have been used
+      in the preparation of the illustrations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      L. H.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Philadelphia, 1889.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br /> <a name="link2H_4_0003" id="link2H_4_0003">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h1>
+      A TRIP TO THE TROPICS.
+    </h1>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_PART" id="link2H_PART">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      PART ONE&mdash;A MIDSUMMER TRIP TO THE TROPICS.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... A long, narrow, graceful steel steamer, with two masts and an
+      orange-yellow chimney,&mdash;taking on cargo at Pier 49 East River.
+      Through her yawning hatchways a mountainous piling up of barrels is
+      visible below;&mdash;there is much rumbling and rattling of steam-winches,
+      creaking of derrick-booms, groaning of pulleys as the freight is being
+      lowered in. A breezeless July morning, and a dead heat,&mdash;87° already.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The saloon-deck gives one suggestion of past and of coming voyages. Under
+      the white awnings long lounge-chairs sprawl here and there,&mdash;each
+      with an occupant, smoking in silence, or dozing with head drooping to one
+      side. A young man, awaking as I pass to my cabin, turns upon me a pair of
+      peculiarly luminous black eyes,&mdash;creole eyes. Evidently a West
+      Indian....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The morning is still gray, but the sun is dissolving the haze. Gradually
+      the gray vanishes, and a beautiful, pale, vapory blue&mdash;a
+      spiritualized Northern blue&mdash;colors water and sky. A cannon-shot
+      suddenly shakes the heavy air: it is our farewell to the American shore;&mdash;we
+      move. Back floats the wharf, and becomes vapory with a bluish tinge.
+      Diaphanous mists seem to have caught the sky color; and even the great red
+      storehouses take a faint blue tint as they recede. The horizon now has a
+      greenish glow, Everywhere else the effect is that of looking through very
+      light-blue glasses....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We steam under the colossal span of the mighty bridge; then for a little
+      while Liberty towers above our passing,&mdash;seeming first to turn
+      towards us, then to turn away from us, the solemn beauty of her
+      passionless face of bronze. Tints brighten;&mdash;the heaven is growing a
+      little bluer, A breeze springs up....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the water takes on another hue: pale-green lights play through it, It
+      has begun to sound, Little waves lift up their heads as though to look at
+      us,&mdash;patting the flanks of the vessel, and whispering to one another.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Far off the surface begins to show quick white flashes here and there, and
+      the steamer begins to swing.... We are nearing Atlantic waters, The sun is
+      high up now, almost overhead: there are a few thin clouds in the
+      tender-colored sky,&mdash;flossy, long-drawn-out, white things. The
+      horizon has lost its greenish glow: it is a spectral blue. Masts, spars,
+      rigging,&mdash;the white boats and the orange chimney,&mdash;the bright
+      deck-lines, and the snowy rail,&mdash;cut against the colored light in
+      almost dazzling relief. Though the sun shines hot the wind is cold: its
+      strong irregular blowing fans one into drowsiness. Also the somnolent
+      chant of the engines&mdash;<i>do-do, hey! do-do, hey!</i>&mdash;lulls to
+      sleep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ..Towards evening the glaucous sea-tint vanishes,&mdash;the water becomes
+      blue. It is full of great flashes, as of seams opening and reclosing over
+      a white surface. It spits spray in a ceaseless drizzle. Sometimes it
+      reaches up and slaps the side of the steamer with a sound as of a great
+      naked hand, The wind waxes boisterous. Swinging ends of cordage crack like
+      whips. There is an immense humming that drowns speech,&mdash;a humming
+      made up of many sounds: whining of pulleys, whistling of riggings,
+      flapping and fluttering of canvas, roar of nettings in the wind. And this
+      sonorous medley, ever growing louder, has rhythm,&mdash;a <i>crescendo</i>
+      and <i>diminuendo</i> timed by the steamer's regular swinging: like a
+      great Voice crying out, "Whoh-oh-oh! whoh-oh-oh!" We are nearing the
+      life-centres of winds and currents. One can hardly walk on deck against
+      the ever-increasing breath;&mdash;yet now the whole world is blue,&mdash;not
+      the least cloud is visible; and the perfect transparency and voidness
+      about us make the immense power of this invisible medium seem something
+      ghostly and awful.... The log, at every revolution, whines exactly like a
+      little puppy;&mdash;one can hear it through all the roar fully forty feet
+      away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ...It is nearly sunset. Across the whole circle of the Day we have been
+      steaming south. Now the horizon is gold green. All about the falling sun,
+      this gold-green light takes vast expansion.... Right on the edge of the
+      sea is a tall, gracious ship, sailing sunsetward. Catching the vapory
+      fire, she seems to become a phantom,&mdash;a ship of gold mist: all her
+      spars and sails are luminous, and look like things seen in dreams.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Crimsoning more and more, the sun drops to the sea. The phantom ship
+      approaches him,&mdash;touches the curve of his glowing face, sails right
+      athwart it! Oh, the spectral splendor of that vision! The whole great ship
+      in full sail instantly makes an acute silhouette against the monstrous
+      disk,&mdash;rests there in the very middle of the vermilion sun. His face
+      crimsons high above her top-masts,&mdash;broadens far beyond helm and
+      bowsprit. Against this weird magnificence, her whole shape changes color:
+      hull, masts, and sails turn black&mdash;a greenish black.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sun and ship vanish together in another minute. Violet the night comes;
+      and the rigging of the foremast cuts a cross upon the face of the moon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      II.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Morning: the second day. The sea is an extraordinary blue,&mdash;looks to
+      me something like violet ink. Close by the ship, where the foam-clouds
+      are, it is beautifully mottled,&mdash;looks like blue marble with
+      exquisite veinings and nebulosities.... Tepid wind, and cottony white
+      clouds,&mdash;cirri climbing up over the edge of the sea all around. The
+      sky is still pale blue, and the horizon is full of a whitish haze.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... A nice old French gentleman from Guadeloupe presumes to say this is
+      not blue water&mdash;he declares it greenish (<i>verdâtre</i>). Because I
+      cannot discern the green, he tells me I do not yet know what blue water
+      is. <i>Attendez un peu!</i>...
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... The sky-tone deepens as the sun ascends,&mdash;deepens deliciously.
+      The warm wind proves soporific. I drop asleep with the blue light in my
+      face,&mdash;the strong bright blue of the noonday sky. As I doze it seems
+      to burn like a cold fire right through my eyelids. Waking up with a start,
+      I fancy that everything is turning blue,&mdash;myself included. "Do you
+      not call this the real tropical blue?" I cry to my French
+      fellow-traveller. <i>"Mon Dieu! non</i>," he exclaims, as in astonishment
+      at the question;&mdash;"this is not blue!"...What can be <i>his</i> idea
+      of blue, I wonder!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Clots of sargasso float by,&mdash;light-yellow sea-weed. We are nearing
+      the Sargasso-sea,&mdash;entering the path of the trade-winds. There is a
+      long ground-swell, the steamer rocks and rolls, and the tumbling water
+      always seems to me growing bluer; but my friend from Guadeloupe says that
+      this color "which I call blue" is only darkness&mdash;only the shadow of
+      prodigious depth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nothing now but blue sky and what I persist in calling blue sea. The
+      clouds have melted away in the bright glow. There is no sign of life in
+      the azure gulf above, nor in the abyss beneath&mdash;there are no wings or
+      fins to be seen. Towards evening, under the slanting gold light, the color
+      of the sea deepens into ultramarine; then the sun sinks down behind a bank
+      of copper-colored cloud.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      III.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Morning of the third day. Same mild, warm wind. Bright blue sky, with some
+      very thin clouds in the horizon,&mdash;like puffs of steam. The glow of
+      the sea-light through the open ports of my cabin makes them seem filled
+      with thick blue glass.... It is becoming too warm for New York
+      clothing....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Certainly the sea has become much bluer. It gives one the idea of
+      liquefied sky: the foam might be formed of cirrus clouds compressed,&mdash;so
+      extravagantly white it looks to-day, like snow in the sun. Nevertheless,
+      the old gentleman from Guadeloupe still maintains this is not the true
+      blue of the tropics
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... The sky does not deepen its hue to-day: it brightens it&mdash;the blue
+      glows as if it were taking fire throughout. Perhaps the sea may deepen its
+      hue;&mdash;I do not believe it can take more luminous color without being
+      set aflame.... I ask the ship's doctor whether it is really true that the
+      West Indian waters are any bluer than these. He looks a moment at the sea,
+      and replies, "<i>Oh</i> yes!" There is such a tone of surprise in his "oh"
+      as might indicate that I had asked a very foolish question; and his look
+      seems to express doubt whether I am quite in earnest.... I think,
+      nevertheless, that this water is extravagantly, nonsensically blue!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... I read for an hour or two; fall asleep in the chair; wake up suddenly;
+      look at the sea,&mdash;and cry out! This sea is impossibly blue! The
+      painter who should try to paint it would be denounced as a lunatic.... Yet
+      it is transparent; the foam-clouds, as they sink down, turn sky-blue,&mdash;a
+      sky-blue which now looks white by contrast with the strange and violent
+      splendor of the sea color. It seems as if one were looking into an
+      immeasurable dyeing vat, or as though the whole ocean had been thickened
+      with indigo. To say this is a mere reflection of the sky is nonsense!&mdash;the
+      sky is too pale by a hundred shades for that! This must be the natural
+      color of the water,&mdash;a blazing azure,&mdash;magnificent, impossible
+      to describe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The French passenger from Guadeloupe observes that the sea is "beginning
+      to become blue."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      IV.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the fourth day. One awakens unspeakably lazy;&mdash;this must be the
+      West Indian languor. Same sky, with a few more bright clouds than
+      yesterday;&mdash;always the warm wind blowing. There is a long swell.
+      Under this trade-breeze, warm like a human breath, the ocean seems to
+      pulse,&mdash;to rise and fall as with a vast inspiration and expiration.
+      Alternately its blue circle lifts and falls before us and behind us&mdash;we
+      rise very high; we sink very low,&mdash;but always with a slow long
+      motion. Nevertheless, the water looks smooth, perfectly smooth; the
+      billowings which lift us cannot be seen;&mdash;it is because the summits
+      of these swells are mile-broad,&mdash;too broad to be discerned from the
+      level of our deck.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... Ten A.M.&mdash;Under the sun the sea is a flaming, dazzling lazulite.
+      My French friend from Guadeloupe kindly confesses this is <i>almost</i>
+      the color of tropical water.... Weeds floating by, a little below the
+      surface, are azured. But the Guadeloupe gentleman says he has seen water
+      still more blue. I am sorry,&mdash;I cannot believe him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mid-day.&mdash;The splendor of the sky is weird! No clouds above&mdash;only
+      blue fire! Up from the warm deep color of the sea-circle the edge of the
+      heaven glows as if bathed in greenish flame. The swaying circle of the
+      resplendent sea seems to flash its jewel-color to the zenith. Clothing
+      feels now almost too heavy to endure; and the warm wind brings a languor
+      with it as of temptation.... One feels an irresistible desire to drowse on
+      deck&mdash;the rushing speech of waves, the long rocking of the ship, the
+      lukewarm caress of the wind, urge to slumber&mdash;but the light is too
+      vast to permit of sleep. Its blue power compels wakefulness. And the brain
+      is wearied at last by this duplicated azure splendor of sky and sea. How
+      gratefully comes the evening to us,&mdash;with its violet glooms and
+      promises of coolness!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All this sensuous blending of warmth and force in winds and waters more
+      and more suggests an idea of the spiritualism of elements,&mdash;a sense
+      of world-life. In all these soft sleepy swayings, these caresses of wind
+      and sobbing of waters, Nature seems to confess some passional mood.
+      Passengers converse of pleasant tempting things,&mdash;tropical fruits,
+      tropical beverages, tropical mountain-breezes, tropical women It is a time
+      for dreams&mdash;those day-dreams that come gently as a mist, with ghostly
+      realization of hopes, desires, ambitions.... Men sailing to the mines of
+      Guiana dream of gold.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The wind seems to grow continually warmer; the spray feels warm like
+      blood. Awnings have to be clewed up, and wind-sails taken in;&mdash;still,
+      there are no white-caps,&mdash;only the enormous swells, too broad to see,
+      as the ocean falls and rises like a dreamer's breast....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sunset comes with a great burning yellow glow, fading up through faint
+      greens to lose itself in violet light;&mdash;there is no gloaming. The
+      days have already become shorter.... Through the open ports, as we lie
+      down to sleep, comes a great whispering,&mdash;the whispering of the seas:
+      sounds as of articulate speech under the breath,&mdash;as, of women
+      telling secrets....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      V.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fifth day out. Trade-winds from the south-east; a huge tumbling of
+      mountain-purple waves;&mdash;the steamer careens under a full spread of
+      canvas. There is a sense of spring in the wind to-day,&mdash;something
+      that makes one think of the bourgeoning of Northern woods, when naked
+      trees first cover themselves with a mist of tender green,&mdash;something
+      that recalls the first bird-songs, the first climbings of sap to sun, and
+      gives a sense of vital plenitude.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... Evening fills the west with aureate woolly clouds,&mdash;the wool of
+      the Fleece of Gold. Then Hesperus beams like another moon, and the stars
+      burn very brightly. Still the ship bends under the even pressure of the
+      warm wind in her sails; and her wake becomes a trail of fire. Large sparks
+      dash up through it continuously, like an effervescence of flame;&mdash;and
+      queer broad clouds of pale fire swirl by. Far out, where the water is
+      black as pitch, there are no lights: it seems as if the steamer were only
+      grinding out sparks with her keel, striking fire with her propeller.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      VI.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sixth day out. Wind tepid and still stronger, but sky very clear. An
+      indigo sea, with beautiful white-caps. The ocean color is deepening: it is
+      very rich now, but I think less wonderful than before;&mdash;it is an
+      opulent pansy hue. Close by the ship it looks black-blue,&mdash;the color
+      that bewitches in certain Celtic eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is a feverishness in the air;&mdash;the heat is growing heavy; the
+      least exertion provokes perspiration; below-decks the air is like the air
+      of an oven. Above-deck, however, the effect of all this light and heat is
+      not altogether disagreeable;-one feels that vast elemental powers are near
+      at hand, and that the blood is already aware of their approach.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All day the pure sky, the deepening of sea-color, the lukewarm wind. Then
+      comes a superb sunset! There is a painting in the west wrought of
+      cloud-colors,&mdash;a dream of high carmine cliffs and rocks outlying in a
+      green sea, which lashes their bases with a foam of gold....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Even after dark the touch of the wind has the warmth of flesh. There is no
+      moon; the sea-circle is black as Acheron; and our phosphor wake reappears
+      quivering across it,&mdash;seeming to reach back to the very horizon. It
+      is brighter to-night,&mdash;looks like another <i>Via Lactea</i>,&mdash;with
+      points breaking through it like stars in a nebula. From our prow ripples
+      rimmed with fire keep fleeing away to right and left into the night,&mdash;brightening
+      as they run, then vanishing suddenly as if they had passed over a
+      precipice. Crests of swells seem to burst into showers of sparks, and
+      great patches of spume catch flame, smoulder through, and disappear....
+      The Southern Cross is visible,&mdash;sloping backward and sidewise, as if
+      propped against the vault of the sky: it is not readily discovered by the
+      unfamiliarized eye; it is only after it has been well pointed out to you
+      that you discern its position. Then you find it is only the <i>suggestion</i>
+      of a cross&mdash;four stars set almost quadrangularly, some brighter than
+      others.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For two days there has been little conversation on board. It may be due in
+      part to the somnolent influence of the warm wind,&mdash;in part to the
+      ceaseless booming of waters and roar of rigging, which drown men's voices;
+      but I fancy it is much more due to the impressions of space and depth and
+      vastness,&mdash;the impressions of sea and sky, which compel something
+      akin to awe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      VII.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Morning over the Caribbean Sea,&mdash;a calm, extremely dark-blue sea.
+      There are lands in sight,&mdash;high lands, with sharp, peaked, unfamiliar
+      outlines.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We passed other lands in the darkness: they no doubt resembled the shapes
+      towering up around us now; for these are evidently volcanic creations,&mdash;jagged,
+      coned, truncated, eccentric. Far off they first looked a very pale gray;
+      now, as the light increases, they change hue a little,&mdash;showing misty
+      greens and smoky blues. They rise very sharply from the sea to great
+      heights,&mdash;the highest point always with a cloud upon it;&mdash;they
+      thrust out singular long spurs, push up mountain shapes that have an odd
+      scooped-out look. Some, extremely far away, seem, as they catch the sun,
+      to be made of gold vapor; others have a madderish tone: these are colors
+      of 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... The first tropical visitor has just boarded our ship: a wonderful fly,
+      shaped like a common fly, but at least five times larger. His body is a
+      beautiful shining black; his wings seem ribbed and jointed with silver,
+      his head is jewel-green, with exquisitely cut emeralds for eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Islands pass and disappear behind us. The sun has now risen well; the sky
+      is a rich blue, and the tardy moon still hangs in it. Lilac tones show
+      through the water. In the south there are a few straggling small white
+      clouds,&mdash;like a long flight of birds. A great gray mountain shape
+      looms up before us. We are steaming on Santa Cruz.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The island has a true volcanic outline, sharp and high: the cliffs sheer
+      down almost perpendicularly. The shape is still vapory, varying in
+      coloring from purplish to bright gray; but wherever peaks and spurs fully
+      catch the sun they edge themselves with a beautiful green glow, while
+      interlying ravines seem filled with foggy blue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As we approach, 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,&mdash;from emerald to blue, and blue to gray.... But now
+      we are near: it shows us a lovely heaping of high bright hills in front,&mdash;with
+      a further coast-line very low and long and verdant, fringed with a white
+      beach, and tufted with spidery palm-crests. Immediately opposite, other
+      palms are poised; their trunks look like pillars of unpolished silver,
+      their leaves shimmer like bronze.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... The water of the harbor is transparent and pale green. One can see
+      many fish, and some small sharks. White butterflies are fluttering about
+      us in the blue air. Naked black boys are bathing on the beach;&mdash;they
+      swim well, but will not venture out far because of the sharks. A boat puts
+      off to bring colored girls on board. They are tall, and not uncomely,
+      although very dark;&mdash;they coax us, with all sorts of endearing words,
+      to purchase bay rum, fruits, Florida water.... We go ashore in boats. The
+      water of the harbor has a slightly fetid odor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      VIII.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Viewed from the bay, under the green shadow of the hills overlooking it,
+      Frederiksted has the appearance of a beautiful Spanish town, with its
+      Romanesque piazzas, churches, many arched buildings peeping through breaks
+      in a line of mahogany, bread-fruit, mango, tamarind, and palm trees,&mdash;an
+      irregular mass of at least fifty different tints, from a fiery emerald to
+      a sombre bluish-green. But on entering the streets the illusion of beauty
+      passes: you find yourself in a crumbling, decaying town, with buildings
+      only two stories high. The lower part, of arched Spanish design, is
+      usually of lava rock or of brick, painted a light, warm yellow; the upper
+      stories are most commonly left unpainted, and are rudely constructed of
+      light timber. There are many heavy arcades and courts opening on the
+      streets with large archways. Lava blocks have been used in paving as well
+      as in building; and more than one of the narrow streets, as it slopes up
+      the hill through the great light, is seen to cut its way through craggy
+      masses of volcanic stone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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;&mdash;the Spanish basements resisted
+      the fire well, and it was found necessary to rebuild only the second
+      stories of the buildings; but the work was done cheaply and flimsily, not
+      massively and enduringly, as by the first colonial builders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is great wealth of verdure. Cabbage and cocoa palms overlook all the
+      streets, bending above almost every structure, whether hut or public
+      building;&mdash;everywhere you see the splitted green of banana leaves. In
+      the court-yards you may occasionally catch sight of some splendid palm
+      with silver-gray stem so barred as to look jointed, like the body of an
+      annelid.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the market-place&mdash;a broad paved square, crossed by two rows of
+      tamarind-trees, and bounded on one side by a Spanish piazza&mdash;you can
+      study a spectacle of savage picturesqueness. There are no benches, no
+      stalls, no booths; the dealers stand, sit, or squat upon the ground under
+      the sun, or upon the steps of the neighboring arcade. Their wares are
+      piled up at their feet, for the most part. Some few have little tables,
+      but as a rule the eatables are simply laid on the dusty ground or heaped
+      upon the steps of the piazza&mdash;reddish-yellow mangoes, that look like
+      great apples squeezed out of shape, bunches of bananas, pyramids of
+      bright-green cocoanuts, immense golden-green oranges, and various other
+      fruits and vegetables totally unfamiliar to Northern eyes.... It is no use
+      to ask questions&mdash;the black dealers speak no dialect comprehensible
+      outside of the Antilles: it is a negro-English that sounds like some
+      African tongue,&mdash;a rolling current of vowels and consonants, pouring
+      so rapidly that the inexperienced ear cannot detach one intelligible word,
+      A friendly white coming up enabled me to learn one phrase: "Massa,
+      youwancocknerfoobuy?" (Master, do you want to buy a cocoanut?)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The market is quite crowded,&mdash;full of bright color under the
+      tremendous noon light. Buyers and dealers are generally black;&mdash;very
+      few yellow or brown people are visible in the gathering. The greater
+      number present are women; they are very simply, almost savagely, garbed&mdash;only
+      a skirt or petticoat, over which is worn a sort of calico short dress,
+      which scarcely descends two inches below the hips, and is confined about
+      the waist with a belt or a string. The skirt bells out like the skirt of a
+      dancer, leaving the feet and bare legs well exposed; and the head is
+      covered with a white handkerchief, twisted so as to look like a turban.
+      Multitudes of these barelegged black women are walking past us,&mdash;carrying
+      bundles or baskets upon their heads, and smoking very long cigars.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They are generally short and thick-set, and walk with surprising
+      erectness, and with long, firm steps, carrying the bosom well forward.
+      Their limbs are strong and finely rounded. Whether walking or standing,
+      their poise is admirable,&mdash;might be called graceful, were it not for
+      the absence of real grace of form in such compact, powerful little
+      figures. All wear brightly colored cottonade stuffs, and the general
+      effect of the costume in a large gathering is very agreeable, the dominant
+      hues being pink, white, and blue. Half the women are smoking. All chatter
+      loudly, speaking their English jargon with a pitch of voice totally unlike
+      the English timbre: it sometimes sounds as if they were trying to
+      pronounce English rapidly according to French pronunciation and pitch of
+      voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These green oranges have a delicious scent and amazing juiciness. 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The streets leading from the plaza glare violently in the strong sunlight;&mdash;the
+      ground, almost dead-white, dazzles the eyes.... There are few comely faces
+      visible,&mdash;in the streets all are black who pass. But through open
+      shop-doors one occasionally catches glimpses of a pretty quadroon face,&mdash;with
+      immense black eyes,&mdash;a face yellow like a ripe banana.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... It is now after mid-day. Looking up to the hills, or along sloping
+      streets towards the shore, wonderful variations of foliage-color meet the
+      eye: gold-greens, sap-greens, bluish and metallic greens of many tints,
+      reddish-greens, yellowish-greens. The cane-fields are broad sheets of
+      beautiful gold-green; and nearly as bright are the masses of <i>pomme-cannelle</i>
+      frondescence, the groves of lemon and orange; while tamarind and
+      mahoganies are heavily sombre. Everywhere palm-crests soar above the
+      wood-lines, and tremble with a metallic shimmering in the blue light. Up
+      through a ponderous thickness of tamarind 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&mdash;panting
+      in this azure heat. In the bay the water looks greener than ever: it is so
+      clear that the light passes under every boat and ship to the very bottom;
+      the vessels only cast very thin green shadows,&mdash;so transparent that
+      fish can be distinctly seen passing through from sunlight to sunlight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sunset offers a splendid spectacle of pure color; there is only an
+      immense yellow glow in the west,&mdash;a lemon-colored blaze; but when it
+      melts into the blue there is an exquisite green light.... We leave
+      to-morrow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... Morning: the green hills are looming in a bluish vapor: the long
+      faint-yellow slope of beach to the left of the town, under the mangoes and
+      tamarinds, is already thronged with bathers,&mdash;all men or boys, and
+      all naked: black, brown, yellow, and white. The white bathers are Danish
+      soldiers from the barracks; the Northern brightness of their skins forms
+      an almost startling contrast with the deep colors of the nature about
+      them, and with the dark complexions of the natives. Some very slender,
+      graceful brown lads are bathing with them,&mdash;lightly built as deer:
+      these are probably creoles. Some of the black bathers are clumsy-looking,
+      and have astonishingly long legs.... Then little boys come down, leading
+      horses;&mdash;they strip, leap naked on the animals' backs, and ride into
+      the sea,&mdash;yelling, screaming, splashing, in the morning light. Some
+      are a fine brown color, like old bronze. Nothing could-be more statuesque
+      than the unconscious attitudes of these bronze bodies in leaping,
+      wrestling, running, pitching shells. Their simple grace is in admirable
+      harmony with that of Nature's green creations about them,&mdash;rhymes
+      faultlessly with the perfect self-balance of the palms that poise along
+      the shore....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Boom! and a thunder-rolling of echoes. We move slowly out of the harbor,
+      then swiftly towards the southeast.... The island seems to turn slowly
+      half round; then to retreat from us. Across our way appears a long band of
+      green light, reaching over the sea like a thin protraction of color from
+      the extended spur of verdure in which the western 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,&mdash;the carcass of a brig. Her decks have been broken in;
+      the roofs of her cabins are gone; her masts are splintered off short; her
+      empty hold yawns naked to the sun; all her upper parts have taken a
+      yellowish-white color,&mdash;the color of sun-bleached bone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Behind us the mountains still float back. Their shining green has changed
+      to a less vivid hue; they are taking bluish tones here and there; but
+      their outlines are still sharp, and along their high soft slopes there are
+      white specklings, which are villages and towns. These white specks
+      diminish swiftly,&mdash;dwindle to the dimensions of salt-grains,&mdash;finally
+      vanish. Then the island grows uniformly bluish; it becomes cloudy, vague
+      as a dream of mountains;&mdash;it turns at last gray as smoke, and then
+      melts into the horizon-light like a mirage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Another yellow sunset, made weird by extraordinary black, dense, fantastic
+      shapes of cloud. Night darkens, and again the Southern Cross glimmers
+      before our prow, and the two Milky Ways reveal themselves,&mdash;that of
+      the Cosmos and that ghostlier one which stretches over the black deep
+      behind us. This alternately broadens and narrows at regular intervals,
+      concomitantly with the rhythmical swing of the steamer, Before us the bows
+      spout: fire; behind us there is a flaming and roaring as of Phlegethon;
+      and the voices of wind and sea become so loud that we cannot talk to one
+      another,&mdash;cannot make our words heard even by shouting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      IX.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Early morning: the eighth day. Moored in another blue harbor,&mdash;a
+      great semicircular basin, bounded by a high billowing of hills all green
+      from the fringe of yellow beach up to their loftiest clouded summit. The
+      land has that up-tossed look which tells a volcanic origin. There are
+      curiously scalloped heights, which, though emerald from base to crest,
+      still retain all the physiognomy of volcanoes: their ribbed sides must be
+      lava under that verdure. Out of sight westward&mdash;in successions of
+      bright green, pale green, bluish-green, and vapory gray-stretches a long
+      chain of crater shapes. Truncated, jagged, or rounded, all these
+      elevations are interunited by their curving hollows of land or by
+      filaments&mdash;very low valleys. And as they grade away in varying color
+      through distance, these hill-chains take a curious segmented, jointed
+      appearance, like insect forms, enormous ant-bodies.... This is St. Kitt's.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We row ashore over a tossing dark-blue water, and leaving the long wharf,
+      pass under a great arch and over a sort of bridge into the town of
+      Basse-Terre, through a concourse of brown and black people.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is very tropical-looking; but more sombre than Frederiksted. There are
+      palms everywhere,&mdash;cocoa, fan, and cabbage palms; many bread-fruit
+      trees, tamarinds, bananas, Indian fig-trees, mangoes, and unfamiliar
+      things the negroes call by incomprehensible names,&mdash;"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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The population is not picturesque. The costumes are commonplace; the tints
+      of the women's attire are dull. Browns and sombre blues and grays are
+      commoner than pinks, yellows, and violets. Occasionally you observe a fine
+      half-breed type&mdash;some tall brown girl walking by with a swaying grace
+      like that of a sloop at sea;&mdash;but such spectacles are not frequent.
+      Most of those you meet are black or a blackish brown. Many stores are kept
+      by yellow men with intensely black hair and eyes,&mdash;men who do not
+      smile. These are Portuguese. There are some few fine buildings; but the
+      most pleasing sight the little town can offer the 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,&mdash;but it is black!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... As we move away southwardly, the receding outlines of the island look
+      more and more volcanic. A chain of hills and cones, all very green, and
+      connected by strips of valley-land so low that the edge of the sea-circle
+      on the other side of the island can be seen through the gaps. We steam
+      past truncated hills, past heights that have the look of the stumps of
+      peaks cut half down,&mdash;ancient fire-mouths choked by tropical verdure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Southward, above and beyond the deep-green chain, tower other volcanic
+      forms,&mdash;very far away, and so pale-gray as to seem like clouds. Those
+      are the heights of Nevis,&mdash;another creation of the subterranean
+      fires.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It draws nearer, floats steadily into definition: a great mountain flanked
+      by two small ones; three summits; the loftiest, with clouds packed high
+      upon it, still seems to smoke;&mdash;the second highest displays the most
+      symmetrical crater-form I have yet seen. All are still grayish-blue or
+      gray. Gradually through the blues break long high gleams of green.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As we steam closer, the island becomes all verdant from flood to sky; the
+      great dead crater shows its immense wreath of perennial green. On the
+      lower slopes little settlements are sprinkled in white, red, and brown:
+      houses, windmills, sugar-factories, high chimneys are distinguishable;&mdash;cane-plantations
+      unfold gold-green surfaces.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We pass away. The island does not seem to sink behind us, but to become a
+      ghost. All its outlines grow shadowy. For a little while it continues
+      green;&mdash;but it is a hazy, spectral green, as of colored vapor. The
+      sea 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,&mdash;in the centre of
+      a blue-black circle of sea. The water-line cuts blackly against the
+      immense light of the horizon,&mdash;a huge white glory that flames up very
+      high before it fades and melts into the eternal blue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      X.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then a high white shape like a cloud appears before us,&mdash;on the
+      purplish-dark edge of the sea. The cloud-shape enlarges, heightens without
+      changing contour. It is not a cloud, but an island! Its outlines begin to
+      sharpen,&mdash;with faintest pencillings of color. Shadowy valleys appear,
+      spectral hollows, phantom slopes of pallid blue or green. The apparition
+      is so like a mirage that it is difficult to persuade oneself one is
+      looking at real land,&mdash;that it is not a dream. It seems to have
+      shaped itself all suddenly out of the glowing haze. We pass many miles
+      beyond it; and it vanishes into mist again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... Another and a larger ghost; but we steam straight upon it until it
+      materializes,&mdash;Montserrat. It bears a family likeness to the islands
+      we have already passed&mdash;one dominant height, with massing of bright
+      crater shapes about it, and ranges of green hills linked together by low
+      valleys. About its highest summit also hovers a flock of clouds. At the
+      foot of the vast hill nestles the little white and red town of Plymouth.
+      The single salute of our gun is answered by a stupendous broadside of
+      echoes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Plymouth is more than half hidden in the rich foliage that fringes the
+      wonderfully wrinkled green of the hills at their base;&mdash;it has a
+      curtain of palms before it. Approaching, you discern only one or two
+      façades above the sea-wall, and the long wharf projecting through an
+      opening 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,&mdash;a miniature tropical town,&mdash;with very narrow paved ways,&mdash;steep,
+      irregular, full of odd curves and angles,&mdash;and likewise of tiny
+      courts everywhere sending up jets of palm-plumes, or displaying above
+      their stone enclosures great candelabra-shapes of cacti. All is
+      old-fashioned and quiet and queer and small. Even the palms are
+      diminutive,&mdash;slim and delicate; there is a something in their poise
+      and slenderness like the charm of young girls who have not yet ceased to
+      be children, though soon to become women....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is a glorious sunset,&mdash;a fervid orange splendor, shading
+      starward into delicate roses and greens. Then black boatmen come astern
+      and quarrel furiously for the privilege of carrying one passenger ashore;
+      and as they scream and gesticulate, half naked, their silhouettes against
+      the sunset seem forms of great black apes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... Under steam and sail we are making south again, with a warm wind
+      blowing south-east,&mdash;a wind very moist, very powerful, and soporific.
+      Facing it, one feels almost cool; but the moment one is sheltered from it
+      profuse perspiration bursts out. The ship rocks over immense swells; night
+      falls very black; and there are surprising displays of phosphorescence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      XI.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... Morning. A gold sunrise over an indigo sea. The wind is a great warm
+      caress; the sky a spotless blue. We are steaming on Dominica,&mdash;the
+      loftiest of the lesser Antilles. While the silhouette is yet all violet in
+      distance nothing more solemnly beautiful can well be imagined: a vast
+      cathedral shape, whose spires are mountain peaks, towering in the horizon,
+      sheer up from the sea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We stay at Roseau only long enough to land the mails, and wonder at the
+      loveliness of the island. A beautifully wrinkled mass of green and blue
+      and gray;&mdash;a strangely abrupt peaking and heaping of the land. Behind
+      the green heights loom the blues; behind these the grays&mdash;all
+      pinnacled against the sky-glow-thrusting up through gaps or behind
+      promontories. Indescribably exquisite the foldings and hollowings of the
+      emerald coast. In glen and vale the color of cane-fields shines like a
+      pooling of fluid bronze, as if the luminous essence of the hill tints had
+      been dripping down and clarifying there. Far to our left, a bright green
+      spur pierces into the now turquoise sea; and beyond it, a beautiful
+      mountain form, blue and curved like a hip, slopes seaward, showing lighted
+      wrinkles here and there, of green. And from the foreground, against the
+      blue of the softly outlined shape, cocoa-palms are curving,&mdash;all
+      sharp and shining in the sun.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... Another hour; and Martinique looms before us. At first it appears all
+      gray, a vapory gray; then it becomes bluish-gray; then all green.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is another of the beautiful volcanic family: it owns the same hill
+      shapes with which we have already become acquainted; its uppermost height
+      is hooded with the familiar cloud; we see the same gold-yellow plains, the
+      same wonderful varieties of verdancy, the same long green spurs reaching
+      out into the sea,&mdash;doubtless formed by old lava torrents. But all
+      this is now repeated for us more imposingly, more grandiosely;&mdash;it is
+      wrought upon a larger scale than anything we have yet seen. The
+      semicircular sweep of the harbor, dominated by the eternally veiled summit
+      of the Montagne 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,&mdash;with a red
+      billowing of tiled roofs over all, and enormous palms poking up through
+      it,&mdash;higher even than the creamy white twin towers of its cathedral.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We anchor in limpid blue water; the cannon-shot is answered by a prolonged
+      thunder-clapping of mountain echo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then from the shore a curious flotilla bears down upon us. There is one
+      boat, two or three canoes; but the bulk of the craft are simply wooden
+      frames,&mdash;flat-bottomed structures, made from shipping-cases or
+      lard-boxes, with triangular ends. In these sit naked boys,&mdash;boys
+      between ten and fourteen years of age,&mdash;varying in color from a fine
+      clear yellow to a deep reddish-brown or chocolate tint. They row with two
+      little square, flat pieces of wood for paddles, clutched in each hand; and
+      these lid-shaped things are dipped into the water on either side with
+      absolute precision, in perfect time,&mdash;all the pairs of little naked
+      arms seeming moved by a single impulse. There is much unconscious grace in
+      this paddling, as well as skill. Then all about the ship these ridiculous
+      little boats begin to describe circles,&mdash;crossing and intercrossing
+      so closely as almost to bring them into collision, yet never touching. The
+      boys have simply come out to dive for coins they expect passengers to
+      fling to them. All are chattering creole, laughing and screaming shrilly;
+      every eye, quick and bright as a bird's, watches the faces of the
+      passengers on deck. "'Tention-là!" shriek a dozen soprani. Some
+      passenger's fingers have entered his vest-pocket, and the boys are on the
+      alert. Through the air, twirling and glittering, tumbles an English
+      shilling, and drops into the deep water beyond the little fleet. Instantly
+      all the lads leap, scramble, topple head-foremost out of their little
+      tubs, and dive in pursuit. In the blue water their lithe figures look
+      perfectly red,&mdash;all but the soles of their upturned feet, which show
+      nearly white. Almost immediately they all rise again: one holds up at
+      arm's-length above the water the recovered coin, and then puts it into his
+      mouth for safe-keeping; Coin after coin is thrown in, and as speedily
+      brought up; a shower of small silver follows, and not a piece is lost.
+      These lads move through the water without apparent effort, with the
+      suppleness of fishes. Most are decidedly fine-looking boys, with admirably
+      rounded limbs, delicately formed extremities. The best diver and swiftest
+      swimmer, however, is a red lad;&mdash;his face is rather commonplace, but
+      his slim body has the grace of an antique bronze.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... We are ashore in St. Pierre, the quaintest, queerest, and the
+      prettiest withal, among West Indian cities: all stone-built and
+      stone-flagged, with very narrow streets, wooden or zinc awnings, and
+      peaked roofs of red tile, pierced by gabled dormers. Most of the buildings
+      are painted in a clear yellow tone, which contrasts delightfully with the
+      burning blue ribbon of tropical sky above; and no street is absolutely
+      level; nearly all of them climb hills, descend into hollows, curve, twist,
+      describe sudden angles. There is everywhere a loud murmur of running
+      water,&mdash;pouring through the deep gutters contrived between the paved
+      thoroughfare and the absurd little sidewalks, varying in width from one to
+      three feet. The architecture is quite old: it is seventeenth century,
+      probably; and it reminds one a great deal of that characterizing the
+      antiquated French quarter of New Orleans. All the tints, the forms, the
+      vistas, would seem to have been especially selected or designed for
+      aquarelle studies,&mdash;just to please the whim of some extravagant
+      artist. The windows are frameless openings without glass; some have iron
+      bars; all have heavy wooden shutters with movable slats, through which
+      light and air can enter as through Venetian blinds. These are usually
+      painted green or bright bluish-gray.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So steep are the streets descending to the harbor,&mdash;by flights of old
+      mossy stone steps,&mdash;that looking down them to the azure water you
+      have the sensation of gazing from a cliff. From certain openings in the
+      main street&mdash;the Rue Victor Hugo&mdash;you can get something like a
+      bird's-eye view of the harbor with its shipping. The roofs of the street
+      below are under your feet, and other streets are rising behind you to meet
+      the mountain roads. They climb at a very steep angle, occasionally
+      breaking into stairs of lava rock, all grass-tufted and moss-lined.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0001" id="linkimage-0001">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%">
+      <img src="images/01-La_Place_Bertin.jpg"
+      alt="La Place Bertin (the Sugar Landing), St. Pierre, Martinique. "
+      width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      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;&mdash;on one street, facing the sea, they are even heavier, and
+      slope outward like ramparts, so that the perpendicular recesses of windows
+      and doors have the appearance of being opened between buttresses. It may
+      have been partly as a precaution against earthquakes, and partly for the
+      sake of coolness, that the early colonial architects built thus;&mdash;giving
+      the city a physiognomy so well worthy of its name,&mdash;the name of the
+      Saint of the Rock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And everywhere rushes mountain water,&mdash;cool and crystal clear,
+      washing the streets;&mdash;from time to time you come to some public
+      fountain flinging a silvery column to the sun, or showering bright spray
+      over a group of black bronze tritons or bronze swans. The Tritons on the
+      Place Bertin you will not readily forget;&mdash;their curving torsos might
+      have been modelled from the forms of those ebon men who toil there
+      tirelessly all day in the great heat, rolling hogsheads of sugar or casks
+      of rum. And often you will note, in the course of a walk, little
+      drinking-fountains contrived at the angle of a building, or in the thick
+      walls bordering the bulwarks or enclosing public squares: glittering
+      threads of water spurting through lion-lips of stone. Some mountain
+      torrent, skilfully directed and divided, is thus perpetually refreshing
+      the city,&mdash;supplying its fountains and cooling its courts.... This is
+      called the Gouyave water: it is not the same stream which sweeps and
+      purifies the streets.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Picturesqueness and color: these are the particular and the unrivalled
+      charms of St. Pierre. As you pursue the Grande Rue, or Rue Victor Hugo,&mdash;which
+      traverses the town through all its length, undulating over hill-slopes and
+      into hollows and over a bridge,&mdash;you become more and more enchanted
+      by the contrast of the yellow-glowing walls to right and left with the
+      jagged strip of gentian-blue sky overhead. Charming also it is to watch
+      the cross-streets climbing up to the fiery green of the mountains behind
+      the town. On the lower side of the main thoroughfare other streets open in
+      wonderful bursts of blue-warm blue of horizon and sea. The steps by which
+      these ways descend towards the bay are black with age, and slightly mossed
+      close to the wall on either side: they have an alarming steepness,&mdash;one
+      might easily stumble from the upper into the lower street. Looking towards
+      the water through these openings from the Grande Rue, you will notice that
+      the sea-line cuts across the blue space just at the level of the upper
+      story of the house on the lower street-corner. Sometimes, a hundred feet
+      below, you see a ship resting in the azure aperture,&mdash;seemingly
+      suspended there in sky-color, floating in blue light. And everywhere and
+      always, through sunshine or shadow, comes to you the scent of the city,&mdash;the
+      characteristic odor of St. Pierre;&mdash;a compound odor suggesting the
+      intermingling of sugar and garlic in those strange tropical dishes which
+      creoles love....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      XII.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... A population fantastic, astonishing,&mdash;a population of the Arabian
+      Nights. It is many-colored; but the general dominant tint is yellow, like
+      that of the town itself&mdash;yellow in the interblending of all the hues
+      characterizing <i>mulâtresse, capresse, griffe, quarteronne, métisse,
+      chabine,</i>&mdash;a general effect of rich brownish yellow. You are among
+      a people of half-breeds,&mdash;the finest mixed race of the West Indies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Straight as palms, and supple and tall, these colored women and men
+      impress one powerfully by their dignified carriage and easy elegance of
+      movement. They walk without swinging of the shoulders;&mdash;the perfectly
+      set torso seems to remain rigid; yet the step is a long full stride, and
+      the whole weight is springily poised on the very tip of the bare foot.
+      All, or nearly all, are without shoes: the treading of many naked feet
+      over the heated pavement makes a continuous whispering sound.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... Perhaps the most novel impression of all is that produced by the
+      singularity and brilliancy of certain of the women's costumes. These were
+      developed, at least a hundred years ago, by some curious sumptuary law
+      regulating the dress of slaves and colored people of free condition,&mdash;a
+      law which allowed considerable liberty as to material and tint,
+      prescribing chiefly form. But some of these fashions suggest the Orient:
+      they offer beautiful audacities of color contrast; and the full-dress
+      coiffure, above all, is so strikingly Eastern that one might be tempted to
+      believe it was first introduced into the colony by some Mohammedan slave.
+      It is merely an immense Madras handkerchief, which is folded about the
+      head with admirable art, like a turban;&mdash;one bright end pushed
+      through at the top in front, being left sticking up like a plume. Then
+      this turban, always full of bright canary-color, is fastened with golden
+      brooches,&mdash;one in front and one at either side. As for the remainder
+      of the dress, it is simple enough: an embroidered, low-cut chemise with
+      sleeves; a skirt or <i>jupe</i>, very long behind, but caught up and
+      fastened in front below the breasts so as to bring the hem everywhere to a
+      level with the end of the long chemise; and finally a <i>foulard</i>, or
+      silken kerchief, thrown over the shoulders. These <i>jupes</i> and <i>foulards</i>,
+      however, are exquisite in pattern and color: bright crimson, bright
+      yellow, bright blue, bright green,&mdash;lilac, violet, rose,&mdash;sometimes
+      mingled in plaidings or checkerings or stripings: black with orange,
+      sky-blue with purple. And whatever be the colors of the costume, which
+      vary astonishingly, the coiffure must be yellow-brilliant, flashing yellow&mdash;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);&mdash;a necklace of double, triple, quadruple, or
+      quintuple rows of large hollow gold beads (sometimes smooth, but generally
+      ally graven)&mdash;the wonderful <i>collier-choux</i>. 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 <i>doudoux</i>, but such articles are usually
+      purchased either on time by small payments, or bead by bead singly until
+      the requisite number is made up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But few are thus richly attired: the greater number of the women carrying
+      burdens on their heads,&mdash;peddling vegetables, cakes, fruit,
+      ready-cooked food, from door to door,&mdash;are very simply dressed in a
+      single plain robe of vivid colors (<i>douillette</i>) 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ...<i>"Çe moune-là, ça qui lè bel mango?"</i> Her basket of mangoes
+      certainly weighs as much as herself.... <i>"Ça qui lè bel avocat?,"</i>
+      The alligator-pear&mdash;cuts and tastes like beautiful green cheese... <i>"Ça
+      qui lè escargot?"</i> Call her, if you like snails.... <i>"Ca qui lè
+      titiri?"</i> Minuscule fish, of which a thousand would scarcely fill a
+      tea-cup;&mdash;one of the most delicate of Martinique dishes.... <i>"Ça
+      qui lè canna?&mdash;Ça qui lè charbon?&mdash;Ça qui lè di pain aubè?</i>"
+      (Who wants ducks, charcoal, or pretty little loaves shaped like
+      cucumbers.)... <i>"Ça qui lè pain-mi?"</i> A sweet maize cake in the form
+      of a tiny sugar-loaf, wrapped in a piece of banana leaf.... <i>"Ça qui lè
+      fromassé" (pharmacie) "lapotécai créole?"</i> She deals in creole roots
+      and herbs, and all the leaves that make <i>tisanes</i> or poultices or
+      medicines: <i>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,</i> and a score of others you never saw or
+      heard of before.... <i>"Ça qui lè dicaments?"</i> (overalls for
+      laboring-men).... <i>"Çé moune-là, si ou pa lè acheté canari-à dans
+      lanmain moin, moin ké crazé y."</i> The vender of red clay cooking-pots;&mdash;she
+      has only one left, if you do not buy it she will break it!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>"Hé! zenfants-la!&mdash;en deho'!"</i> Run out to meet her, little
+      children, if you like the sweet rice-cakes.... <i>"Hé! gens pa' enho',
+      gens pa' enbas, gens di galtas, moin ni bel gououôs poisson!"</i> Ho!
+      people up-stairs, people down-stairs, and all ye good folks who dwell in
+      the attics,&mdash;know that she has very big and very beautiful fish to
+      sell!... <i>"Hé! ça qui lé mangé yonne?"</i>&mdash;those are "akras,"&mdash;flat
+      yellow-brown cakes, made of pounded codfish, or beans, or both, seasoned
+      with pepper and fried in butter.... And then comes the pastry-seller,
+      black as ebony, but dressed all in white, and white-aproned and
+      white-capped like a French cook, and chanting half in French, half in
+      creole, with a voice like a clarinet:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     <i>"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!&mdash;Oh, qu'ils sont doux!"</i>
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      It is the pastryman passing by, who has been up all night to gain his
+      livelihood,&mdash;always content,&mdash;always happy.... Oh, how good they
+      are (the pies)!&mdash;Oh, how sweet they are!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... The quaint stores bordering both sides of the street bear no names and
+      no signs over their huge arched doors;&mdash;you must look well inside to
+      know what business is being done. Even then you will scarcely be able to
+      satisfy yourself as to the nature of the commerce;&mdash;for they are
+      selling gridirons and frying-pans in the dry goods stores, holy images and
+      rosaries in the notion stores, sweet-cakes and confectionery in the
+      crockery stores, coffee and stationery in the millinery stores, cigars and
+      tobacco in the china stores, cravats and laces and ribbons in the
+      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,&mdash;the Martinique <i>poupée</i>. There are two kinds,&mdash;the
+      <i>poupée-capresse</i>, of which the body is covered with smooth
+      reddish-brown leather, to imitate the tint of the capresse race; and the
+      <i>poupée-négresse</i>, covered with black leather. When dressed, these
+      dolls range in price from eleven to thirty-five francs,&mdash;some,
+      dressed to order, may cost even more; and a good <i>poupée-négresse</i> is
+      a delightful curiosity. Both varieties of dolls are attired in the costume
+      of the people; but the <i>négresse</i> is usually dressed the more simply.
+      Each doll has a broidered chemise, a tastefully arranged <i>jupe</i> of
+      bright hues; a silk <i>foulard</i>, a <i>collier-choux</i>, ear-rings of
+      five cylinders (<i>zanneaux-à-clous</i>), and a charming little
+      yellow-banded Madras turban. Such a doll is a perfect costume-model,&mdash;a
+      perfect miniature of Martinique fashions, to the smallest details of
+      material and color: it is almost too artistic for a toy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0002" id="linkimage-0002">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%">
+      <img src="images/02-Pastry_Seller.jpg"
+      alt="Itinerant Pastry-seller. 'tourjours Content, Toujours Joyeux.' "
+      width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;have an indescribable luminosity,&mdash;a
+      wonderful power of bringing out the fine warm tints of this tropical
+      flesh. Such are the hues of those rich costumes Nature gives to her
+      nearest of kin and her dearest,&mdash;her honey-lovers&mdash;her insects:
+      these are wasp-colors. I do not know whether the fact ever occurred to the
+      childish fancy of this strange race; but there is a creole expression
+      which first suggested it to me;&mdash;in the patois, <i>pouend guêpe</i>,
+      "to catch a wasp," signifies making love to a pretty colored girl.... And
+      the more one observes these costumes, the more one feels that only Nature
+      could have taught such rare comprehension of powers and harmonies among
+      colors,&mdash;such knowledge of chromatic witchcrafts and chromatic laws.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... This evening, as I write, La Pelée is more heavily coiffed than is her
+      wont. Of purple and lilac cloud the coiffure is,&mdash;a magnificent
+      Madras, yellow-banded by the sinking sun. La Pelée is in <i>costume de
+      fête</i>, like a <i>capresse</i> attired for a baptism or a ball; and in
+      her phantom turban one great star glimmers for a brooch.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      XIII.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Following the Rue Victor Hugo in the direction of the Fort,&mdash;crossing
+      the Rivière Roxelane, or Rivière des Blanchisseuses, whose rocky bed is
+      white with unsoaped linen far as the eye can reach,&mdash;you descend
+      through some tortuous narrow streets into the principal marketplace. <a
+      href="#linknote-1" name="linknoteref-1" id="linknoteref-1">[1]</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A square&mdash;well paved and well shaded&mdash;with a fountain in the
+      midst. Here the dealers are seated in rows;&mdash;one half of the market
+      is devoted to fruits and vegetables; the other to the sale of fresh fish
+      and meats. On first entering you are confused by the press and deafened by
+      the storm of creole chatter;&mdash;then you begin to discern some order in
+      this chaos, and to observe curious things.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the middle of the paved square, about the market fountain, are lying
+      boats filled with fish, which have been carried up from the water upon
+      men's shoulders,&mdash;or, if very heavy, conveyed on rollers.... Such
+      fish!&mdash;blue, rosy, green, lilac, scarlet, gold: no spectral tints
+      these, but luminous and strong like fire. Here also you see heaps of long
+      thin fish looking like piled bars of silver,&mdash;absolutely dazzling,&mdash;of
+      almost equal thickness from head to tail;&mdash;near by are heaps of flat
+      pink creatures;&mdash;beyond these, again, a mass of azure backs and
+      golden bellies. Among the stalls you can study the monsters,&mdash;twelve
+      or fifteen feet long,&mdash;the shark, the <i>vierge</i>, the sword fish,
+      the <i>tonne</i>,&mdash;or the eccentricities. Some are very thin round
+      disks, with long, brilliant, wormy feelers in lieu of fins, flickering in
+      all directions like a moving pendent silver fringe;&mdash;others bristle
+      with spines;&mdash;others, serpent-bodied, are so speckled as to resemble
+      shapes of red polished granite. These are <i>moringues</i>. The <i>balaou,
+      couliou, macriau, lazard, tcha-tcha, bonnique</i>, and <i>zorphi</i>
+      severally represent almost all possible tints of blue and violet. The <i>souri</i>
+      is rose-color and yellow; the <i>cirurgien</i> is black, with yellow and
+      red stripes; the <i>patate</i>, black and yellow; the <i>gros-zié</i> is
+      vermilion; the <i>couronné</i>, red and black. Their names are not less
+      unfamiliar than their shapes and tints;-the <i>aiguille-de-mer</i>, or
+      sea-needle, long and thin as a pencil;-the <i>Bon-Dié-manié-moin</i> ("the
+      Good-God handled me"), which has something like finger-marks upon it;&mdash;the
+      <i>lambi</i>, a huge sea-snail;&mdash;the <i>pisquette</i>, the <i>laline</i>
+      (the Moon);&mdash;the <i>crapaud-de-mer</i>, or sea-toad, with a dangerous
+      dorsal fin;&mdash;the <i>vermeil</i>, the <i>jacquot</i>, the <i>chaponne</i>,
+      and fifty others.... As the sun gets higher, banana or balisier leaves are
+      laid over the fish.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Even more puzzling, perhaps, are the astonishing varieties of green,
+      yellow, and parti-colored vegetables,&mdash;and fruits of all hues and
+      forms,&mdash;out of which display you retain only a confused general
+      memory of sweet smells and luscious colors. But there are some oddities
+      which impress the recollection in a particular way. One is a great
+      cylindrical ivory-colored thing,&mdash;shaped like an elephant's tusk,
+      except that it is not curved: this is the head of the cabbage-palm, or
+      palmiste,&mdash;the brain of one of the noblest trees in the tropics,
+      which must be totally destroyed to obtain it. Raw or cooked, it is eaten
+      in a great variety of ways,&mdash;in salads, stews, fritters, or <i>akras</i>.
+      Soon after this compact cylinder of young germinating leaves has been
+      removed, large worms begin to appear in the hollow of the dead tree,&mdash;the
+      <i>vers-palmiste</i>. You may see these for sale in the market, crawling
+      about in bowls or cans: they are said, when fried alive, to taste like
+      almonds, and are esteemed as a great luxury.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... 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,&mdash;such as <i>peau-chapotille</i>,
+      "sapota-skin." The <i>sapota</i> or <i>sapotille</i> is a juicy brown
+      fruit with a rind satiny like a human cuticle, and just the color, when
+      flushed and ripe, of certain half-breed skins. But among the brighter
+      half-breeds, the colors, I think, are much more fruit-like;&mdash;there
+      are banana-tints, lemon-tones, orange-hues, with sometimes such a mingling
+      of ruddiness as in the pink ripening of a mango. Agreeable to the eye the
+      darker skins certainly are, and often very remarkable&mdash;all clear
+      tones of bronze being represented; but the brighter tints are absolutely
+      beautiful. Standing perfectly naked at door-ways, or playing naked in the
+      sun, astonishing children may sometimes be seen,&mdash;banana-colored or
+      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;&mdash;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?&mdash;there is some
+      strange blood in the blending,&mdash;not of coolie, nor of African, nor of
+      Chinese, although there are Chinese types here of indubitable beauty. <a
+      href="#linknote-2" name="linknoteref-2" id="linknoteref-2">[2]</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... All this population is vigorous, graceful, healthy: all you see
+      passing by are well made&mdash;there are no sickly faces, 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,&mdash;the serpent whose venom putrefies living tissue....
+      Without fear of exaggerating facts, I can venture to say that the muscular
+      development of the working-men here is something which must be seen in
+      order to be believed;&mdash;to study fine displays of it, one should watch
+      the blacks and half-breeds working naked to the waist,&mdash;on the
+      landings, in the gas-houses and slaughter-houses or on the nearest
+      plantations. They are not generally large men, perhaps not extraordinarily
+      powerful; but they have the aspect of sculptural or even of anatomical
+      models; they seem absolutely devoid of adipose tissue; their muscles stand
+      out with a saliency that astonishes the eye. At a tanning-yard, while I
+      was watching a dozen blacks at work, a young mulatto with the mischievous
+      face of a faun walked by, wearing nothing but a clout (<i>lantcho</i>)
+      about his loins; and never, not even in bronze, did I see so beautiful a
+      play of muscles. A demonstrator of anatomy could have used him for a
+      class-model;&mdash;a sculptor wishing to shape a fine Mercury would have
+      been satisfied to take a cast of such a body without thinking of making
+      one modification from neck to heel. "Frugal diet is the cause of this
+      physical condition," a young French professor assures me; "all these men,"
+      he says, "live upon salt codfish and fruit." But frugal living alone could
+      never produce such symmetry and saliency of muscles: race-crossing,
+      climate, perpetual exercise, healthy labor&mdash;many conditions must have
+      combined to cause it. Also it is certain that this tropical sun has a
+      tendency to dissolve spare flesh, to melt away all superfluous tissue,
+      leaving the muscular fibre dense and solid as mahogany.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the <i>mouillage</i>, below a green <i>morne</i>, is the bathing-place.
+      A rocky beach rounding away under heights of tropical wood;&mdash;palms
+      curving out above the sand, or bending half-way across it. Ships at anchor
+      in blue water, against golden-yellow horizon. A vast blue glow. Water
+      clear as diamond, and lukewarm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is about one hour after sunrise; and the 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;&mdash;men go in very sparsely clad;&mdash;there
+      are lads wearing nothing. Young boys&mdash;yellow and brown little fellows&mdash;run
+      in naked, and swim out to pointed rocks that jut up black above the bright
+      water. They climb up one at a time to dive down. Poised for the leap upon
+      the black lava crag, and against the blue light of the sky, each lithe
+      figure, gilded by the morning sun, has a statuesqueness and a luminosity
+      impossible to paint in words. These bodies seem to radiate color; and the
+      azure light intensifies the hue: it is idyllic, incredible;&mdash;Coomans
+      used paler colors in his Pompeiian studies, and his figures were never so
+      symmetrical. This flesh does not look like flesh, but like fruit-pulp....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      XIV.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... 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&mdash;some two thousand feet above the sea,
+      and about an hour's drive from St. Pierre&mdash;is chiefly remarkable for
+      such displays: it is a place of pilgrimage as well as a health resort.
+      Above the village, upon the steep slope of a higher morne, one may note a
+      singular succession of little edifices ascending to the summit,&mdash;fourteen
+      little tabernacles, each containing a <i>relievo</i> representing some
+      incident of Christ's Passion. This is called <i>Le Calvaire</i>: it
+      requires more than a feeble piety to perform the religious exercise of
+      climbing the height, and saying a prayer before each little shrine on the
+      way. From the porch of the crowning structure the village of Morne Rouge
+      appears so far below that it makes one almost dizzy to look at it; but
+      even for the profane one ascent is well worth making, for the sake of the
+      beautiful view. On all the neighboring heights around are votive chapels
+      or great crucifixes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      St. Pierre is less peopled with images than Morne Rouge; but it has
+      several colossal ones, which may be seen from any part of the harbor. On
+      the heights above the middle quarter, or <i>Centre</i>, a gigantic Christ
+      overlooks the bay; and from the Morne d'Orange, which bounds the city on
+      the south, a great white Virgin-Notre Dame de la Garde, patron of mariners&mdash;watches
+      above the ships at anchor in the mouillage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... Thrice daily, from the towers of the white cathedral, a superb chime
+      of bells rolls its <i>carillon</i> through the town. On great holidays the
+      bells are wonderfully rung;&mdash;the ringers are African, and something
+      of African feeling is observable in their impressive but in cantatory
+      manner of ringing. The <i>bourdon</i> must have cost a fortune. When it is
+      made to speak, the effect is startling: all the city vibrates to a weird
+      sound difficult to describe,&mdash;an abysmal, quivering moan, producing
+      unfamiliar harmonies as the voices of the smaller bells are seized and
+      interblended by it....One will not easily forget the ringing of a <i>bel-midi</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... Behind the cathedral, above the peaked city roofs, and at the foot of
+      the wood-clad Morne d'Orange, is the <i>Cimetière du Mouillage</i>.... It
+      is full of beauty,&mdash;this strange tropical cemetery. Most of the low
+      tombs are covered with small square black and white tiles, set exactly
+      after the fashion of the squares on a chess-board; at the foot of each
+      grave stands a black cross, bearing 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,&mdash;containing white Madonnas and Christs and little angels,&mdash;while
+      flowering creepers climb and twine about the pillars. Death seems so
+      luminous here that one thinks of it unconciously as a soft rising from
+      this soft green earth,&mdash;like a vapor invisible,&mdash;to melt into
+      the prodigious day. Everything is bright and neat and beautiful; the air
+      is sleepy with jasmine scent and odor of white lilies; and the palm&mdash;emblem
+      of immortality&mdash;lifts its head a hundred feet into the blue light.
+      There are rows of these majestic and symbolic trees;&mdash;two enormous
+      ones guard the entrance;&mdash;the others rise from among the tombs,&mdash;white-stemmed,
+      out-spreading their huge parasols of verdure higher than the cathedral
+      towers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0003" id="linkimage-0003">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%">
+      <img src="images/03-Cimetiere.jpg"
+      alt="In the Cimetère Du Mouillage, St. Pierre. " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      Behind all this, the dumb green life of the morne seems striving to
+      descend, to invade the rest of the dead. It thrusts green hands over the
+      wall,&mdash;pushes strong roots underneath;&mdash;it attacks every joint
+      of the stone-work, patiently, imperceptibly, yet almost irresistibly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... Some day there may be a great change in the little city of St. Pierre;&mdash;there
+      may be less money and less zeal and less remembrance of the lost. Then
+      from the morne, over the bulwark, the green host will move down unopposed;&mdash;creepers
+      will prepare the way, dislocating the pretty tombs, pulling away the
+      checkered tiling;&mdash;then will corne the giants, rooting deeper,&mdash;feeling
+      for the dust of hearts, groping among the bones;&mdash;and all that love
+      has hidden away shall be restored to Nature,&mdash;absorbed into the rich
+      juices of her verdure,&mdash;revitalized in her bursts of color,&mdash;resurrected
+      in her upliftings of emerald and gold to the great sun....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      XV.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Seen from the bay, the little red-white-and-yellow city forms but one
+      multicolored streak against the burning green of the lofty island. There
+      is no naked soil, no bare rock: the chains of the mountains, rising by
+      successive ridges towards the interior, are still covered with forests;&mdash;tropical
+      woods ascend the peaks to the height of four and five thousand feet. To
+      describe the beauty of these woods&mdash;even of those covering the mornes
+      in the immediate vicinity of St. Pierre&mdash;seems to me almost
+      impossible;&mdash;there are forms and colors which appear to demand the
+      creation of new words to express. Especially is this true in regard to
+      hue;&mdash;the green of a tropical forest is something which one familiar
+      only with the tones of Northern vegetation can form no just conception of:
+      it is a color that conveys the idea of green fire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      You have only to follow the high-road leading out of St. Pierre by way of
+      the Savane du Fort to find yourself, after twenty minutes' walk, in front
+      of the Morne Parnasse, and before the verge of a high wood,&mdash;remnant
+      of the enormous growth once covering all the island. What a tropical
+      forest is, as seen from without, you will then begin to feel, with a sort
+      of awe, while you watch that beautiful upclimbing of green shapes to the
+      height of perhaps a thousand feet overhead. It presents one seemingly
+      solid surface of vivid color,&mdash;rugose like a cliff. You do not
+      readily distinguish whole trees in the mass;&mdash;you only perceive
+      suggestions, dreams of trees, Doresqueries. Shapes that seem to be
+      staggering under weight of creepers rise a hundred feet above you;&mdash;others,
+      equally huge, are towering above these; and still higher, a legion of
+      monstrosities are nodding, bending, tossing up green arms, pushing out
+      great knees, projecting curves as of backs and shoulders, intertwining
+      mockeries of limbs. No distinct head appears except where some palm pushes
+      up its crest in the general fight for sun. All else looks as if under a
+      veil,&mdash;hidden and half smothered by heavy drooping things. Blazing
+      green vines cover every branch and stem;&mdash;they form draperies and
+      tapestries and curtains and motionless cascades&mdash;pouring down over
+      all projections like a thick silent flood: an amazing inundation of
+      parasitic life.... It is a weird 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The absolutism of green does not, however, always prevail in these woods.
+      During a brief season, corresponding to some of our winter months, the
+      forests suddenly break into a very conflagration of color, caused by
+      blossoming of the lianas&mdash;crimson, canary-yellow, blue and white.
+      There are other flowerings, indeed; but that of the lianas alone has
+      chromatic force enough to change the aspect of a landscape.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      XVI.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... If it is possible for a West Indian forest to be described at all, it
+      could not be described more powerfully than it has been by Dr. E. Rufz, a
+      creole of Martinique, one of whose works I venture to translate the
+      following remarkable pages:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... "The sea, the sea alone, because it is the most colossal of earthly
+      spectacles,&mdash;only the sea can afford us any terms of comparison for
+      the attempt to describe a <i>grand-bois</i>;&mdash;but even then one must
+      imagine the sea on a day of 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,&mdash;in immense
+      billowings of foliage. Only, instead of a blue line at the horizon, you
+      have a green line; instead of flashings of blue, you have flashings of
+      green,&mdash;and in all the tints, in all the combinations of which green
+      is capable: deep green, light green, yellow-green, black-green.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "When your eyes grow weary&mdash;if it indeed be possible for them to
+      weary&mdash;of contemplating the exterior of these tremendous woods, try
+      to penetrate a little into their interior. What an inextricable chaos it
+      is! The sands of a sea are not more closely pressed together than the
+      trees are here: some straight, some curved, some upright, some toppling,&mdash;fallen,
+      or leaning against one another, or heaped high upon each other. Climbing
+      lianas, which cross from one tree to the other, like ropes passing from
+      mast to mast, help to fill up all the gaps in this treillage; and
+      parasites&mdash;not timid parasites like ivy or like moss, but parasites
+      which are trees self-grafted upon trees&mdash;dominate the primitive
+      trunks, overwhelm them, usurp the place of their foliage, and fall back to
+      the ground, forming factitious weeping-willows. You do not find here, as
+      in the great forests of the North, the eternal monotony of birch and fir:
+      this is the kingdom of infinite variety;&mdash;species the most diverse
+      elbow each other, interlace, strangle and devour each other: all ranks and
+      orders are confounded, as in a human mob. The soft and tender <i>balisier</i>
+      opens its parasol of leaves beside the <i>gommier</i>, which is the cedar
+      of the colonies you see the <i>acomat</i>, the <i>courbaril</i>, the
+      mahogany, the <i>tedre-à-caillou</i>, the iron-wood... but as well
+      enumerate by name all the soldiers of an army! Our oak, the balata, forces
+      the palm to lengthen itself prodigiously in order to get a few thin beams
+      of sunlight; for it is as difficult here for the poor trees to obtain one
+      glance from this King of the world, as for us, subjects of a monarchy, to
+      obtain one look from our monarch. As for the soil, it is needless to think
+      of looking at it: it lies as far below us probably as the bottom of the
+      sea;&mdash;it disappeared, ever so long ago, under the heaping of debris,&mdash;under
+      a sort of manure that has been accumulating there since the creation: you
+      sink into it as into slime; you walk upon putrefied trunks, in a dust that
+      has no name! Here indeed it is that one can get some comprehension of what
+      vegetable antiquity signifies;&mdash;a lurid light (<i>lurida lux</i>),
+      greenish, as wan at noon as the light of the moon at midnight, confuses
+      forms and lends them a vague and fantastic aspect; a mephitic humidity
+      exhales from all parts; an odor of death prevails; and a calm which is not
+      silence (for the ear fancies it can hear the great movement of composition
+      and of decomposition perpetually going on) tends to inspire you with that
+      old mysterious horror which the ancients felt in the primitive forests of
+      Germany and of Gaul:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'Arboribus suus horror inest.'" *
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * "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).
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      XVII.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the sense of awe inspired by a tropic forest is certainly greater than
+      the mystic fear which any wooded wilderness of the North could ever have
+      created. The brilliancy of colors that seem almost preternatural; the
+      vastness of the ocean of frondage, and the violet blackness of rare gaps,
+      revealing its in conceived profundity; and the million mysterious sounds
+      which make up its perpetual murmur,&mdash;compel the idea of a creative
+      force that almost terrifies. Man feels here like an insect,&mdash;fears
+      like an insect on the alert for merciless enemies; and the fear is not
+      unfounded. To enter these green abysses without a guide were folly: even
+      with the best of guides there is peril. Nature is dangerous here: the
+      powers that build are also the powers that putrefy; here life and death
+      are perpetually interchanging office in the never-ceasing transformation
+      of forces,&mdash;melting down and reshaping living substance
+      simultaneously within the same vast crucible. There are trees distilling
+      venom, there are plants that have fangs, there are perfumes that affect
+      the brain, there are cold green creepers whose touch blisters flesh like
+      fire; while in all the recesses and the shadows is a swarming of
+      unfamiliar life, beautiful or hideous,&mdash;insect, reptile, bird,&mdash;inter-warring,
+      devouring, preying.... But the great peril of the forest&mdash;the danger
+      which deters even the naturalist;&mdash;is the presence of the terrible <i>fer-de-lance
+      (trigonocephalus lanceolatus,&mdash;bothrops lanceolatus,&mdash;craspodecephalus</i>),&mdash;deadliest
+      of the Occidental thanatophidia, and probably one of the deadliest
+      serpents of the known world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... There are no less than eight varieties of it,&mdash;the most common
+      being the dark gray, speckled with black&mdash;precisely the color that
+      enables the creature to hide itself among the protruding roots of the
+      trees, by simply coiling about them, and concealing its triangular head.
+      Sometimes the snake is a clear bright yellow: then it is difficult to
+      distinguish it from the bunch of bananas among which it conceals itself.
+      Or the creature may be a dark yellow,&mdash;or a yellowish brown,&mdash;or
+      the color of wine-lees, speckled pink and black,&mdash;or dead black with
+      a yellow belly,&mdash;or black with a pink belly: all hues of tropical
+      forest-mould, of old bark, of decomposing trees.... The iris of the eye is
+      orange,&mdash;with red flashes: it glows at night like burning charcoal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the fer-de-lance reigns absolute king over the mountains and the
+      ravines; he is lord of the forest and 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
+      <i>panseur</i> or the physician arrives in time, and no vein has been
+      pierced, there is hope; but it more often happens that the blow is
+      received directly on a vein of the foot or ankle,&mdash;in which case
+      nothing can save the victim. Even when life is saved the danger is not
+      over. Necrosis of the tissues is likely to set in: the flesh corrupts,
+      falls from the bone sometimes in tatters; and the colors of its
+      putrefaction simuulate the hues of vegetable decay,&mdash;the ghastly
+      grays and pinks and yellows of trunks rotting down into the dark soil
+      which gave them birth. The human victim moulders as the trees moulder,&mdash;crumbles
+      and dissolves as crumbles the substance of the dead palms and balatas: the
+      Death-of-the-Woods is upon him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To-day a fer-de-lance is seldom found exceeding six feet length; but the
+      dimensions of the reptile, at least, would seem to have been decreased
+      considerably by man's warring upon it since the time of Père Labat, who
+      mentions having seen a fer-de-lance nine feet long and five inches in
+      diameter. He also speaks of a <i>couresse</i>&mdash;a beautiful and
+      harmless serpent said to kill the fer-de-lance&mdash;over ten feet long
+      and thick as a man's leg; but a large couresse is now seldom seen. The
+      negro woodsmen kill both creatures indiscriminately; and as the older
+      reptiles are the least likely to escape observation, the chances for the
+      survival of extraordinary individuals lessen with the yearly decrease of
+      forest-area.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... But it may be doubted whether the number of deadly snakes has been
+      greatly lessened since the early colonial period. Each female produces
+      viviparously from forty to sixty young at a birth. The favorite haunts of
+      the fer-de-lance are to a large extent either inaccessible or unexplored,
+      and its multiplication is prodigious. It is really only the surplus of its
+      swarming that overpours into the cane-fields, and makes the public roads
+      dangerous after dark;&mdash;yet more than three hundred snakes have been
+      killed in twelve months on a single plantation. The introduction of the
+      Indian mongoos, or <i>mangouste</i> (ichneumon), proved futile as a means
+      of repressing the evil. The mangouste kills the fer-de-lance when it has a
+      chance but it also kills fowls and sucks their eggs, which condemns it
+      irrevocably with the country negroes, who live to a considerable extent by
+      raising and selling chickens.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0004" id="linkimage-0004">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%">
+      <img src="images/04-Jardin.jpg"
+      alt="In the Jardin Des Plantes, St. Pierre. " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      ... Domestic animals are generally able to discern the presence of their
+      deadly enemy long before a human eye, can perceive it. If your horse rears
+      and plunges in the darkness, trembles and sweats, do not try to ride on
+      until you are assured the way is clear. Or your dog may come running back,
+      whining, shivering: you will do well to accept his warning. The animals
+      kept about country residences usually try to fight for their lives; the
+      hen battles for her chickens; the bull endeavors to gore and stamp 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,&mdash;teasing him, startling him, trying to draw his blow. How
+      the emerald and the topazine eyes glow then!&mdash;they are flames! A
+      moment more and the triangular head, hissing from the coil, flashes swift
+      as if moved by wings. But swifter still the stroke of the armed paw that
+      dashes the horror aside, flinging it mangled in the dust. Nevertheless,
+      pussy does not yet dare to spring;&mdash;the enemy, still active, has
+      almost instantly reformed his coil;&mdash;but she is again in front of
+      him, watching,&mdash;vertical pupil against vertical pupil. Again the
+      lashing stroke; again the beautiful countering;&mdash;again the living
+      death is hurled aside; and now the scaled skin is deeply torn,&mdash;one
+      eye socket has ceased to flame. Once more the stroke of the serpent once
+      more the light, quick, cutting blow. But the trionocephalus is blind, is
+      stupefied;&mdash;before he can attempt to coil pussy has leaped upon him,&mdash;nailing
+      the horrible flat head fast to the ground with her two sinewy Now let him
+      lash, writhe, twine, strive to strangle her!&mdash;in vain! he will never
+      lift his head: an instant more and he lies still:&mdash;the keen white
+      teeth of the cat have severed the vertebra just behind the triangular
+      skull!...
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      XVIII.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Jardin des Plantes is not absolutely secure from visits of the
+      serpent; for the trigonocephalus goes everywhere,&mdash;mounting to the
+      very summits of the cocoa-palms, swimming rivers, ascending walls, hiding
+      in thatched roofs, breeding in bagasse heaps. But, despite what has been
+      printed to the contrary, this reptile fears man and hates light: it rarely
+      shows itself voluntarily during the day. Therefore, if you desire, to
+      obtain some conception of the magnificence of Martinique vegetation,
+      without incurring the risk of entering the high woods, you can do so by
+      visiting the Jardin des Plantes,&mdash;only taking care to use your eyes
+      well while climbing over fallen trees, or picking your way through dead
+      branches. The garden is less than a mile from the city, on the slopes of
+      the Morne Parnasse; and the primitive forest itself has been utilized in
+      the formation of it,&mdash;so that the greater part of the garden is a
+      primitive growth. Nature has accomplished here infinitely more than art of
+      man (though such art has done much to lend the place its charm),&mdash;and
+      until within a very recent time the result might have been deemed, without
+      exaggeration, one of the wonders of the world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A moment after passing the gate you are in twilight,&mdash;though the sun
+      may be blinding on the white road without. All about you is a green
+      gloaming, up through which you see immense trunks rising. Follow the first
+      path that slopes up on your left as you proceed, if you wish to obtain the
+      best general view of the place in the shortest possible time. As you
+      proceed, the garden on your right deepens more and more into a sort of
+      ravine;&mdash;on your left rises a sort of foliage-shrouded cliff; and all
+      this in a beautiful crepuscular dimness, made by the foliage of great
+      trees meeting overhead. Palms rooted a hundred feet below you hold their
+      heads a hundred feet above you; yet they can barely reach the light....
+      Farther on the ravine widens to frame in two tiny lakes, dotted with
+      artificial islands, which are miniatures of Martinique, Guadeloupe, and
+      Dominica: these are covered with tropical plants, many of which are total
+      strangers even here: they are natives of India, Senegambia, Algeria, and
+      the most eastern East. Arbores. cent ferps of unfammiliar elegance curve
+      up from path-verge lake-brink; and the great <i>arbre-du-voyageur</i>
+      outspreads its colossal fan. Giant lianas droop down over the way in loops
+      and festoons; tapering green cords, which are creepers descending to take
+      root, hang everywhere; and parasites with stems thick as cables coil about
+      the trees like boas. Trunks shooting up out of sight, into the green
+      wilderness above, display no bark; you cannot guess what sort of trees
+      they are; they are so thickly wrapped in creepers as to seem pillars of
+      leaves. Between you and the sky, where everything is fighting for sun,
+      there is an almost unbroken vault of leaves, a cloudy green confusion in
+      which nothing particular is distinguishable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      You come to breaks now and then in the green steep to your left,&mdash;openings
+      created for cascades pouring down from one mossed basin of brown stone to
+      another,&mdash;or gaps occupied by flights of stone steps, green with
+      mosses, and chocolate-colored by age. These steps lead to loftier paths;
+      and all the stone-work,-the grottos, bridges, basins, terraces, steps,&mdash;are
+      darkened by time and velveted with mossy things.... It is of another
+      century, this garden: special ordinances were passed concerning it during
+      the French Revolution (<i>An. II.</i>);&mdash;it is very quaint; it
+      suggests an art spirit as old as Versailles, or older; but it is
+      indescribably beautiful even now.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... At last you near the end, to hear the roar of falling water;&mdash;there
+      is a break in the vault of green above the bed of a river below you; and
+      at a sudden turn you 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!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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,&mdash;flanked at its summit by white-stemmed palms which
+      lift their leaves so high into the light that the loftiness of them gives
+      the sensation of vertigo.... Dizzy also the magnificence of the great
+      colonnade of palmistes and angelins, two hundred feet high, through which:
+      you pass if you follow the river-path from the cascade&mdash;the famed <i>Allée
+      des duels</i>....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The vast height, the pillared solemnity of the ancient trees in the green
+      dimness, the solitude, the strangeness of shapes but half seen,&mdash;suggesting
+      fancies of silent aspiration, or triumph, or despair,&mdash;all combine to
+      produce a singular impression of awe.... You are alone; you hear no human
+      voice,&mdash;no sounds but the rushing of the river over its volcanic
+      rocks, and the creeping of millions of lizards and tree-frogs and little
+      toads. You see no human face; but you see all around you the labor of man
+      being gnawed and devoured by nature,&mdash;broken bridges, sliding steps,
+      fallen arches, strangled fountains with empty basins;&mdash;and everywhere
+      arises the pungent odor of decay. This omnipresent odor affects one
+      unpleasantly;&mdash;it never ceases to remind you that where Nature is
+      most puissant to charm, there also is she mightiest to destroy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0005" id="linkimage-0005">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%">
+      <img src="images/05-Cascade.jpg" alt="Cascade in the Jardin Des Plantes. "
+      width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      The beautiful garden is now little more than a wreck of what it once was;
+      since the fall of the Empire it has been shamefully abused and neglected.
+      Some <i>agronome</i> sent out to take charge of it by the Republic, began
+      its destruction by cutting down acres of enormous and magnificent trees,&mdash;including
+      a superb alley of plants,&mdash;for the purpose of experimenting with
+      roses. But the rose-trees would not be cultivated there; and the serpents
+      avenged the demolition by making the experimental garden unsafe to enter;&mdash;they
+      always swarm into underbrush and shrubbery after forest-trees have been
+      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;&mdash;barbarism was necessary! Under the present negro-radical
+      regime orders have been given for the wanton destruction of trees older
+      than the colony itself;&mdash;and marvels that could not be replaced in a
+      hundred generations were cut down and converted into charcoal for the use
+      of public institutions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      XIX.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      How gray seem the words of poets in the presence is Nature!... The
+      enormous silent poem of color and light&mdash;(you who know only the North
+      do not know color, do not know light!)&mdash;of sea and sky, of the woods
+      and the peaks, so far surpasses imagination as to paralyze it&mdash;mocking
+      the language of admiration, 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,&mdash;the products of human endeavor: here one views only
+      the work of Nature,&mdash;but Nature in all her primeval power, as in the
+      legendary frostless morning of creation. Man here seems to bear scarcely
+      more relation to the green life about him than the insect; and the results
+      of human effort seem impotent by comparison 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,&mdash;soporific,
+      and yet pregnant with activities of dissolution so powerful that the
+      mightiest tree begins to melt like wax from the moment it has ceased to
+      live. For man merely to exist is an effort; and doubtless in the perpetual
+      struggle of the blood to preserve itself from fermentation, there is such
+      an expenditure of vital energy as leaves little surplus for mental
+      exertion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... Scarcely less than poet or philosopher, the artist, I fancy, would
+      feel his helplessness. In the city he may find wonderful picturesqueness
+      to invite his pencil, but when he stands face to face alone with Nature he
+      will discover that he has no colors! The luminosities of tropic foliage
+      could only be imitated in fire. He who desires to paint a West Indian
+      forest,&mdash;a West Indian landscape,&mdash;must take his view from some
+      great height, through which the colors come to his eye softened and
+      subdued by distance,&mdash;toned with blues or purples by the astonishing
+      atmosphere.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... It is sunset as I write these lines, and there are witchcrafts of
+      color. Looking down the narrow, steep street opening to the bay, I see the
+      motionless silhouette of the steamer on a perfectly green sea,&mdash;under
+      a lilac sky,&mdash;against a prodigious orange light.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      XX.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In these tropic latitudes Night does not seem "to fall,"&mdash;to descend
+      over the many-peaked land: it appears to rise up, like an exhalation, from
+      the ground. The coast-lines darken first;&mdash;then the slopes and the
+      lower hills and valleys become shadowed;&mdash;then, very swiftly, the
+      gloom mounts to the heights, whose very loftiest peak may remain glowing
+      like a volcano at its tip for several minutes after the rest of the island
+      is veiled in blackness and all the stars are out....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0006" id="linkimage-0006">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%">
+      <img src="images/Departure_Steamer.jpg"
+      alt="Departure of Steamer for Fort-de-france. " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      ... Tropical nights have a splendor that seems strange to northern eyes.
+      The sky does not look so high&mdash;so far way as in the North; but the
+      stars are larger, and the luminosity greater.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With the rising of the moon all the violet of the sky flushes;&mdash;there
+      is almost such a rose-color as heralds northern dawn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the moon appears over the mornes, very large, very bright&mdash;brighter
+      certainly than many a befogged sun one sees in northern Novembers; and it
+      seems to have a weird magnetism&mdash;this tropical moon. Night-birds,
+      insects, frogs,&mdash;everything that can sing,&mdash;all sing very low on
+      the nights of great moons. Tropical wood-life begins with dark: in the
+      immense white light of a full moon this nocturnal life seems afraid to cry
+      out as usual. Also, this moon has a singular effect on the nerves. It is
+      very difficult to sleep on such bright nights: you feel such a vague
+      uneasiness as the coming of a great storm gives....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      XXI.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      You reach Fort-de-France, the capital of Martinique, steamer from St.
+      Pierre, in about an hour and a... There is an overland route&mdash;<i>La
+      Trace</i>, 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rebuilt in wood after the almost total destruction by an earthquake of its
+      once picturesque streets of stone, Fort-de-France (formerly Fort-Royal)
+      has little of outward interest by comparison with St. Pierre. It lies in a
+      low, moist plain, and has few remarkable buildings: you can walk allover
+      the little town in about half an hour. But the Savane,&mdash;the great
+      green public square, with its grand tamarinds and <i>sabliers</i>,&mdash;would
+      be worth the visit alone, even were it not made romantic by the marble
+      memory of Josephine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I went to look at the white dream of her there, a creation of
+      master-sculptors.... It seemed to me absolutely lovely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sea winds have bitten it; tropical rains have streaked it: some
+      microscopic growth has darkened the exquisite hollow of the throat. And
+      yet such is the human charm of the figure that you almost fancy you are
+      gazing at a living presence.... Perhaps the profile is less artistically
+      real,&mdash;statuesque to the point of betraying the chisel; but when you
+      look straight up into the sweet creole face, you can believe she lives:
+      all the wonderful West Indian charm of the woman is there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She is standing just in the centre of the Savane, robed in the fashion of
+      the First Empire, with gracious arms and shoulders bare: one hand leans
+      upon a medallion bearing the eagle profile of Napoleon.... Seven tall
+      palms stand in a circle around her, lifting their comely heads into the
+      blue glory of the tropic day. Within their enchanted circle you feel that
+      you tread holy ground,&mdash;the sacred soil of artist and poet;&mdash;here
+      the recollections of memoir-writers vanish away; the gossip of history is
+      hushed for you; you no longer care to know how rumor has it that she spoke
+      or smiled or wept: only the bewitchment of her lives under the thin, soft,
+      swaying shadows of those feminine palms.... Over violet space of summer
+      sea; through the vast splendor of azure light, she is looking back to the
+      place of her birth, back to beautiful drowsy Trois-Islets,&mdash;and
+      always with the same half-dreaming, half-plaintive smile,&mdash;unutterably
+      touching....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0007" id="linkimage-0007">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%">
+      <img src="images/06-Josephine.jpg" alt="Statue of Josephine. " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      XXII.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One leaves Martinique with regret, even after so brief a stay: the old
+      colonial life itself, not less than the revelation of tropic nature,
+      having in this island a quality of uniqueness, a special charm, unlike
+      anything previously seen.... We steam directly for Barbadoes;&mdash;the
+      vessel will touch at the intervening islands only on her homeward route.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... Against a hot wind south,&mdash;under a sky always deepening in
+      beauty. Towards evening dark clouds begin to rise before us; and by
+      nightfall they spread into one pitch-blackness over all the sky. Then
+      comes a wind in immense sweeps, lifting the water,&mdash;but a wind that
+      is still strangely warm. The ship rolls heavily in the dark for an hour or
+      more;&mdash;then torrents of tepid rain make the sea smooth again; the
+      clouds pass, and the viole transparency of tropical night reappears,&mdash;ablaze
+      with stars.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At early morning a long low land appears on the horizon,&mdash;totally
+      unlike the others we have seen; it has no visable volcanic forms. That is
+      Barbadoes,&mdash;a level burning coral coast,&mdash;a streak of green,
+      white-edged, on the verge of the sea. But hours pass before the green line
+      begins to show outlines of foliage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... As we approach the harbor an overhanging black cloud suddenly bursts
+      down in illuminated rain,&mdash;through which the shapes of moored ships
+      seem magnified as through a golden fog. It ceases as suddenly as it begun;
+      the cloud vanishes utterly; and the azure is revealed unflecked, dazzling,
+      wondrous.... It is a sight worth the whole journey,&mdash;the splendor of
+      this noon sky at Barbadoes;&mdash;the horizon glow is almost blinding, the
+      sea-line sharp as a razor-edge; and motionless upon the sapphire water
+      nearly a hundred ships lie,&mdash;masts, spars, booms, cordage, cutting
+      against the amazing magnificence of blue.... 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;&mdash;then the deep
+      green fringe of vegetation through which roofs and spires project here and
+      there, and quivering feathery heads of palms with white trunks. The
+      general tone of this verdure is sombre green, though it is full of lustre:
+      there is a glimmer in it as of metal. Beyond all this coast-front long
+      undulations of misty pale, green are visible,&mdash;far slopes of low hill
+      and plain the highest curving line, the ridge of the island, bears a row
+      of cocoa-palms, They are so far that their stems diminish almost to
+      invisibility: only the crests are clearly distinguishable,&mdash;like
+      spiders hanging between land and sky. But there are no forests: the land
+      is a naked unshadowed green far as the eye can reach beyond the
+      coast-line. There is no waste space in Barbadoes: it is perhaps one of the
+      most densely-peopled places on the globe&mdash;(one thousand and
+      thirty-five inhabitants to the square mile)&mdash;.and it sends black
+      laborers by thousands to the other British colonies every year,&mdash;the
+      surplus of its population.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... The city of Bridgetown disappoints the stranger who expects to find
+      any exotic features of architecture or custom,&mdash;disappoints more,
+      perhaps, than any other tropical port in this respect. Its principal
+      streets give you the impression of walking through an English town,&mdash;not
+      an old-time town, but a new one, plain almost to commonplaceness, in spite
+      of Nelson's monument. Even the palms are powerless to lend the place a
+      really tropical look;&mdash;the streets are narrow without being
+      picturesque, white as lime roads and full of glare;&mdash;the manners, the
+      costumes, the style of living, the system of business are thoroughly
+      English;&mdash;the population lacks visible originality; and its
+      extraordinary activity, so oddly at variance with the quiet indolence of
+      other West Indian peoples, seems almost unnatural. Pressure of numbers has
+      largely contributed to this characteristic; but Barbadoes would be in any
+      event, by reason of position alone, a busy colony. As the most windward of
+      the West Indies it has naturally become not only the chief port, but also
+      the chief emporium of the Antilles. It has railroads, telephones,
+      street-cars, fire and life insurance companies, good hotels, libraries and
+      reading-rooms, and excellent public schools. Its annual export trade
+      figures for nearly $6,000,000.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0008" id="linkimage-0008">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%">
+      <img src="images/07-Bridgetown.jpg"
+      alt="Inner Basin, Bridgetown, Barbadoes. " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      The fact which seems most curious to the stranger, on his first
+      acquaintance with the city, is that most of this business activity is
+      represented by black men&mdash;black merchants, shopkeepers, clerks.
+      Indeed, the Barbadian population, as a mass, strikes one as the darkest in
+      the West Indies. Black regiments march through the street to the sound of
+      English music,&mdash;uniformed as Zouaves; black police, in white helmets
+      and white duck uniforms, maintain order; black postmen distribute the
+      mails; black cabmen wait for customers at a shilling an hour. It is by no
+      means an attractive population, physically,&mdash;rather the reverse, and
+      frankly brutal as well&mdash;different as possible from the colored race
+      of Martinique; but it has immense energy, and speaks excellent English.
+      One is almost startled on hearing Barbadian negroes speaking English with
+      a strong Old Country accent Without seeing the speaker, you could scarcely
+      believe such English uttered by black lips; and the commonest negro
+      laborer about the port pronounces as well as a Londoner. The purity of
+      Barbadian English is partly due, no doubt, to the fact that, unlike most
+      of the other islands, Barbadoes has always remained in the possession of
+      Great Britain. Even as far back as 1676 Barbadoes was in a very different
+      condition of prosperity from that of the other colonies, and offered a
+      totally different social aspect&mdash;having a white population of 50,000.
+      At that time the island could muster 20,000 infantry and 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Barbadoes differs also from most of the Antilles geologically; and
+      there can be no question that the nature of its soil has considerably
+      influenced the physical character of its inhabitants. Although Barbadoes
+      is now known to be also of volcanic origin,&mdash;a fact which its low
+      undulating surface could enable no unscientific observer to suppose,&mdash;it
+      is superficially a calcareous formation; and the remarkable effect of
+      limestone soil upon the bodily development of a people is not less marked
+      in this latitude than elsewhere. In most of the Antilles the white race
+      degenerates and dwarfs under the influence of climate and environment; but
+      the Barbadian creole&mdash;tall, muscular, large of bone&mdash;preserves
+      and perpetuates in the tropics the strength and sturdiness of his English
+      forefathers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      XXIII.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... Night: steaming for British Guiana;&mdash;we shall touch at no port
+      before reaching Demerara.... A strong warm gale, that compels the taking
+      in of every awning and wind-sail. Driving tepid rain; and an intense
+      darkness, broken only by the phosphorescence of the sea, which to-night
+      displays extraordinary radiance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0009" id="linkimage-0009">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%">
+      <img src="images/08-Trafalgar.jpg"
+      alt="Trafalgar Square, Bridgetown, Barbadoes. " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      The steamer's wake is a great broad, seething river of fire,&mdash;white
+      like strong moonshine: the glow is bright enough to read by. At its centre
+      the trail is brightest;&mdash;towards either edge it pales off cloudily,&mdash;curling
+      like smoke of phosphorus. Great sharp lights burst up momentarily through
+      it like meteors. Weirder than this strange wake are the long slow fires
+      that keep burning at a distance, out in the dark. Nebulous incandescences
+      mount up from the depths, change form, and pass;&mdash;serpentine flames
+      wriggle by;&mdash;there are long billowing crests of fire. These seem to
+      be formed of millions of tiny sparks, that light up all at the same time,
+      glow for a while, disappear, reappear, and swirl away in a prolonged
+      smouldering.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There are warm gales and heavy rain each night,&mdash;it is the hurricane
+      season;&mdash;and it seems these become more violent the farther south we
+      sail. But we are nearing those equinoctial regions where the calm of
+      nature is never disturbed by storms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... Morning: still steaming south, through a vast blue day. The azure of
+      the heaven always seems to be growing deeper. There is a bluish-white glow
+      in the horizon,&mdash;almost too bright to look at. An indigo sea....
+      There are no clouds; and the splendor endures until sunset.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then another night, very luminous and calm. The Southern constellations
+      burn whitely.... We are nearing the great shallows of the South American
+      coast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      XXIV.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... It is the morning of the third day since we left Barbadoes, and for
+      the first time since entering tropic waters all things seem changed. The
+      atmosphere is heavy with strange mists; and the light of an orange-colored
+      sun, immensely magnified by vapors, illuminates a greenish-yellow sea,&mdash;foul
+      and opaque, as if stagnant.... I remember just such a sunrise over the
+      Louisiana gulf-coast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We are in the shallows, moving very slowly. The line-caster keeps calling,
+      at regular intervals: "Quarter less five, sir!" "And a half four, sir!"...
+      There is little variation in his soundings&mdash;a quarter of a fathom or
+      half a fathom difference. The warm air has a sickly heaviness, like the
+      air of a swamp; the water shows olive and ochreous tones alternately;&mdash;the
+      foam is yellow in our wake. These might be the colors of a fresh-water
+      inundation....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A fellow-traveller tells me, as we lean over the rail, that this same
+      viscous, glaucous sea washes the great penal colony of Cayenne&mdash;which
+      he visited. When a convict dies there, the corpse, sewn up in a sack, is
+      borne to the water, and a great bell tolled. Then the still surface is
+      suddenly broken by fins innumerable&mdash;black fins of sharks rushing to
+      the hideous funeral: they know the Bell!...
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is land in sight&mdash;very low land,&mdash;a thin dark line
+      suggesting marshiness; and the nauseous color of the water always deepens.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the land draws near, it reveals a beautiful tropical appearance. The
+      sombre green line brightens color, I sharpens into a splendid fringe of
+      fantastic evergreen fronds, bristling with palm crests. Then a mossy
+      sea-wall comes into sight&mdash;dull gray stone&mdash;work, green-lined at
+      all its joints. There is a fort. The steamer's whistle is exactly mocked
+      by a queer echo, and the cannon-shot once reverberated&mdash;only once:
+      there are no mountains here to multiply a sound. And all the while the
+      water becomes a thicker and more turbid green; the wake looks more and
+      more ochreous, the foam ropier and yellower. Vessels becalmed everywhere
+      speck the glass-level of the sea, like insects sticking upon a mirror. It
+      begins, all of a sudden, to rain torrentially; and through the white storm
+      of falling drops nothing is discernible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      XXV.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At Georgetown, steamers entering the river can lie close to the wharf;&mdash;we
+      can enter the Government warehouses without getting wet. In fifteen
+      minutes the shower ceases; and we leave the warehouses to find ourselves
+      in a broad, palm-bordered street illuminated by the most prodigious day
+      that yet shone upon our voyage. The rain has cleared the air and dissolved
+      the mists; and the light is wondrous.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0010" id="linkimage-0010">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%">
+      <img src="images/09-Street.jpg" alt="Street in Georgetown, Demerara. "
+      width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      My own memory of Demerara will always be a memory of enormous light. The
+      radiance has an indescribable dazzling force that conveys the idea of
+      electric fire;&mdash;the horizon blinds like a motionless sheet of
+      lightning; and you dare not look at the zenith.... The brightest
+      summer-day in the North is a gloaming to this. Men walk only under
+      umbrellas, or with their eyes down&mdash;and the pavements, already dry,
+      flare almost unbearably.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... Georgetown has an exotic aspect peculiar to itself,&mdash;different
+      from that of any West Indian city we have seen; and this is chiefly due to
+      the presence of palm-trees. For the edifices, the plan, the general idea
+      of the town, are modern; the white streets, laid out very broad to the
+      sweep of the sea-breeze, and drained by canals running through their
+      centres, with bridges at cross-streets, display the value of
+      nineteenth-century knowledge regarding house-building with a view to
+      coolness as well as to beauty. The architecture might be described as a
+      tropicalized Swiss style&mdash;Swiss eaves are developed into veranda
+      roofs, and Swiss porches prolonged and lengthened into beautiful piazzas
+      and balconies. The men who devised these large cool halls, these admirably
+      ventilated rooms, these latticed windows opening to the ceiling, may have
+      lived in India; but the physiognomy of the town also reveals a fine sense
+      of beauty in the designers: all that is strange and beautiful in the
+      vegetation of the tropics has had a place contrived for it, a home
+      prepared for it. Each dwelling has its garden; each garden blazes with
+      singular and lovely color; but everywhere and always tower the palms.
+      There are colonnades of palms, clumps of palms, groves of palms-sago and
+      cabbage and cocoa and fan palms. You can see that the palm is cherished
+      here, is loved for its beauty, like a woman. Everywhere you find palms, in
+      all stages of development, from the first sheaf of tender green plumes
+      rising above the soil to the wonderful colossus that holds its head a
+      hundred feet above the roofs; palms border the garden walks in colonnades;
+      they are grouped in exquisite poise about the basins of fountains; they
+      stand like magnificent pillars at either side of gates; they look into the
+      highest windows of public buildings and hotels.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... For miles and miles and miles we drive along avenues of palms&mdash;avenues
+      leading to opulent cane-fields, traversing queer coolie villages. Rising
+      on either side of the road to the same level, the palms present the vista
+      of a long unbroken double colonnade of dead-silver trunks, shining tall
+      pillars with deep green plume-tufted summits, almost touching, almost
+      forming something like the dream of an interminable Moresque arcade.
+      Sometimes for a full mile the trees are only about thirty or forty feet
+      high; then, turning into an older alley, we drive for half a league
+      between giants nearly a hundred feet in altitude. The double perspective
+      lines of their crests, meeting before us and behind us in a bronze-green
+      darkness, betray only at long intervals any variation of color, where some
+      dead leaf droops like an immense yellow feather.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      XXVI.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the marvellous light, which brings out all the rings of their bark,
+      these palms sometimes produce a singular impression of subtle, fleshy,
+      sentient life,&mdash;seem to move with a slowly stealthy motion as you
+      ride or drive past them. The longer you watch them, the stronger this idea
+      becomes,&mdash;the more they seem alive,&mdash;the more their long
+      silver-gray articulated bodies seem to poise, undulate, stretch....
+      Certainly the palms of a Demerara country-road evoke no such real emotion
+      as that produced by the stupendous palms of the Jardin des Plantes in
+      Martinique. That beautiful, solemn, silent life up-reaching through
+      tropical forest to the sun for warmth, for color, for power,&mdash;filled
+      me, I remember, with a sensation of awe different from anything which I
+      had ever experienced.... But even here in Guiana, standing alone under the
+      sky, the palm still seems a creature rather than a tree,&mdash;gives you
+      the idea of personality;&mdash;you could almost believe each lithe shape
+      animated by a thinking force,&mdash;believe that all are watching you with
+      such passionless calm as legend lends to beings super-natural.... And I
+      wonder if some kindred fancy might not have inspired the name given by the
+      French colonists to the male palmiste,&mdash;<i>angelin</i>....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0011" id="linkimage-0011">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%">
+      <img src="images/Avenue_Georgetown.jpg"
+      alt="Avenue in Georgetown, Demerara. " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      Very wonderful is the botanical garden here. It is new; and there are no
+      groves, no heavy timber, no shade; but the finely laid-out grounds,&mdash;alternations
+      of lawn and flower-bed,&mdash;offer everywhere surprising sights. You
+      observe curious orange-colored shrubs; plants speckled with four different
+      colors; plants that look like wigs of green hair; plants with enormous
+      broad leaves that seem made of colored crystal; plants that do not look
+      like natural growths, but like idealizations of plants,&mdash;those
+      beautiful fantasticalities imagined by sculptors. All these we see in
+      glimpses from a carriage-window,&mdash;yellow, indigo, black, and crimson
+      plants.... We draw rein only to observe in the ponds the green navies of
+      the Victoria Regia,&mdash;the monster among water-lilies. It covers all
+      the ponds and many of the canals. Close to shore the leaves are not
+      extraordinarily large; but they increase in breadth as they float farther
+      out, as if gaining bulk proportionately to the depth of water. A few yards
+      off, they are large as soup-plates; farther out, they are broad as
+      dinner-trays; in the centre of the pond or canal they have surface large
+      as tea-tables. And all have an up-turned edge, a perpendicular rim. Here
+      and there you see the imperial flower,&mdash;towering above the leaves....
+      Perhaps, if your hired driver be a good guide, he will show you the
+      snake-nut,&mdash;the fruit of an extraordinary tree native to the Guiana
+      forests. This swart nut&mdash;shaped almost like a clam-shell, and halving
+      in the same way along its sharp edges&mdash;encloses something almost
+      incredible. There is a pale envelope about the kernel; remove it, and you
+      find between your fingers a little viper, triangular-headed, coiled thrice
+      upon itself, perfect in every detail of form from head to tail. Was this
+      marvellous mockery evolved for a protective end? It is no eccentricity: in
+      every nut the serpent-kernel lies coiled the same.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... Yet in spite of a hundred such novel impressions, what a delight it is
+      to turn again cityward through the avenues of palms, and to feel once more
+      the sensation of being watched, without love or hate, by all those lithe,
+      tall, silent, gracious shapes!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      XXVII.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;measurement physical and moral. In the mighty
+      swarming of India these have learned the full meaning and force of life's
+      law as we Occidentals rarely learn it. Under the dark fixed frown eye
+      glitters like a serpent's.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0012" id="linkimage-0012">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%">
+      <img src="images/10-Victoria_Regia.jpg"
+      alt="Victoria Regia in the Canal at Georgetown " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      Nearly all wear the same Indian dress; the thickly folded turban, usually
+      white, white drawers reaching but half-way down the thigh, leaving the
+      knees and the legs bare, and white jacket. A few don long blue robes, and
+      wear a colored head-dress: these are babagees-priests. Most of the men
+      look tall; they are slender and small-boned, but the limbs are well
+      turned. They are grave&mdash;talk in low tones, and seldom smile. Those
+      you see 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&mdash;a costume
+      leaving shoulders, arms, and ankles bare. The dark arm is always tapered
+      and rounded; the silver-circled ankle always elegantly knit to the light
+      straight foot. Many slim girls, whether standing or walking or in repose,
+      offer remarkable studies of grace; their attitude when erect always
+      suggests lightness and suppleness, like the poise of a dancer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... A coolie mother passes, carrying at her hip a very pretty naked baby.
+      It has exquisite delicacy of limb: its tiny ankles are circled by thin
+      bright silver rings; it looks like a little bronze statuette, a statuette
+      of Kama, the Indian Eros. The mother's arms are covered from elbow to
+      wrist with silver bracelets,&mdash;some flat and decorated; others coarse,
+      round, smooth, with ends hammered into the form of viper-heads. She has
+      large flowers of gold in her ears, a small gold flower in her very
+      delicate little nose. This nose ornament does not seem absurd; on these
+      dark skins the effect is almost as pleasing as it is bizarre. This
+      jewellery is pure metal;&mdash;it is thus the coolies carry their savings,&mdash;melting
+      down silver or gold coin, and recasting it into bracelets, ear-rings, and
+      nose ornaments.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0013" id="linkimage-0013">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%">
+      <img src="images/11-Coolie_Girl.jpg" alt="Demerara Coolie Girl. "
+      width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      ... Evening is brief: all this time the days have been growing shorter: it
+      will be black at 6 P.M. One does not regret it;&mdash;the glory of such a
+      tropical day as this is almost too much to endure for twelve hours. The
+      sun is already low, and yellow with a tinge of orange: as he falls between
+      the palms his stare colors the world with a strange hue&mdash;such a
+      phantasmal light as might be given by a nearly burnt-out sun. The air is
+      full of unfamiliar odors. We pass a flame-colored bush; and an
+      extraordinary perfume&mdash;strange, rich, sweet&mdash;envelops us like a
+      caress: the soul of a red jasmine....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... What a tropical sunset is this-within two days' steam-journey of the
+      equator! Almost to the zenith the sky flames up from the sea,&mdash;one
+      tremendous orange incandescence, rapidly deepening to vermilion as the 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&mdash;a fleshy liquor that falls in immense
+      drops.... The night grows chill with dews, with vegetable breath; and we
+      sleep with windows nearly closed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      XXVIII.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... Another sunset like the conflagration of a world, as we steam away
+      from Guiana;&mdash;another unclouded night; and morning brings back to us
+      that bright blue in the sea-water which we missed for the first time on
+      our approach to the main-land. There is a long swell all day, and tepid
+      winds. But towards evening the water once more shifts its hue&mdash;takes
+      olive tint&mdash;the mighty flood of the Orinoco is near.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It first takes definite form as a prolonged, undulating, pale gray
+      mountain chain,&mdash;the outline of a sierra. Approaching nearer, we
+      discern other hill summits rounding up and shouldering away behind the
+      chain itself. Then the nearest heights begin to turn faint green&mdash;very
+      slowly. Right before the outermost spur of cliff, fantastic shapes of rock
+      are rising sheer from the water: partly green, partly reddish-gray where
+      the surface remains unclothed by creepers and shrubs. Between them the sea
+      leaps and whitens.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... And we begin to steam along a magnificent tropical coast,&mdash;before
+      a billowing of hills wrapped in forest from sea to summit,&mdash;astonishing
+      forest, dense, sombre, impervious to sun&mdash;every gap a blackness as of
+      ink. Giant palms here and there overtop the denser foliage; and queer
+      monster trees rise above the forest-level against the blue,&mdash;spreading
+      out huge flat crests from which masses of lianas stream down. This
+      forest-front has the apparent solidity of a wall, and forty-five miles of
+      it undulate uninterruptedly by us-rising by terraces, or projecting like
+      turret-lines, or shooting up into semblance of cathedral forms or
+      suggestions of castellated architecture.... But the secrets of these woods
+      have not been unexplored;&mdash;one of the noblest writers of our time has
+      so beautifully and fully written of them as to leave little for 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Even as observed from the steamer's deck, the mountains and forests of
+      Trinidad have an aspect very different from those of the other Antilles.
+      The heights are less lofty,&mdash;less jagged and abrupt,&mdash;with
+      rounded summits; the peaks of Martinique or Dominica rise fully two
+      thousand feet higher. The land itself is a totally different formation,&mdash;anciently
+      being a portion of the continent; and its flora and fauna are of South
+      America.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... There comes a great cool whiff of wind,&mdash;another and another;&mdash;then
+      a mighty breath begins to blow steadily upon us,&mdash;the breath of the
+      Orinoco.... It grows dark before we pass through the Ape's Mouth, to
+      anchor in one of the calmest harbors in the world,&mdash;never disturbed
+      by hurricanes. Over unruffled water the lights of Port-of-Spain shoot long
+      still yellow beams. The night grows chill;&mdash;the air is made frigid by
+      the breath of the enormous river and the vapors of the great woods.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      XXIX.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... Sunrise: a morning of supernal beauty,&mdash;the sky of a fairy tale,&mdash;the
+      sea of a love-poem.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Under a heaven of exquisitely tender blue, the whole smooth sea has a
+      perfect luminous dove-color,&mdash;the horizon being filled to a great
+      height with greenish-golden haze,&mdash;a mist of unspeakably sweet tint,
+      a hue that, imitated in any aquarelle, would be cried out against as an
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, as the sun rises higher, green masses begin to glimmer among the
+      grays; the outlines of the forest summits commence to define themselves
+      through the vapory light, to left and right of the great glow. Only the
+      city still remains invisible; it lies exactly between us and the downpour
+      of solar splendor, and the mists there have caught such radiance that the
+      place seems hidden by a fog of fire. Gradually the gold-green of the
+      horizon changes to a pure yellow; the hills take soft, rich, sensuous
+      colors. One of the more remote has turned a marvellous tone&mdash;a
+      seemingly diaphanous aureate color, the very ghost of gold. But at last
+      all of them sharpen bluely, show bright folds and ribbings of green
+      through their haze. The valleys remain awhile clouded, as if filled with
+      something like blue smoke; but the projecting masses of cliff and slope
+      swiftly change their misty green to a warmer hue. All these tints and
+      colors have a spectral charm, a preternatural loveliness; everything seems
+      subdued, softened, semi-vaporized,&mdash;the only very sharply defined
+      silhouettes being those of the little becalmed ships sprinkling the
+      western water, all spreading colored wings to catch the morning breeze.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The more the sun ascends, the more rapid the development of the landscape
+      out of vapory blue; the hills all become green-faced, reveal the details
+      of frondage. The wind fills the waiting sails&mdash;white, red, yellow,&mdash;ripples
+      the water, and turns it green. Little fish begin to leap; they spring and
+      fall in glittering showers like opalescent blown spray. And at last,
+      through the fading vapor, dew-glittering red-tiled roofs reveal
+      themselves: the city is unveiled-a city full of color, somewhat quaint,
+      somewhat Spanish-looking&mdash;a little like St. Pierre, a little like New
+      Orleans in the old quarter; everywhere fine tall palms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      XXX.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ashore, through a black swarming and a great hum of creole chatter....
+      Warm yellow narrow streets under a burning blue day;&mdash;a confused
+      impression of long vistas, of low pretty houses and cottages, more or less
+      quaint, bathed in sun and yellow-wash,&mdash;and avenues of shade-trees,&mdash;and
+      low garden-walls overtopped by waving banana leaves and fronds of
+      palms.... A general sensation of drowsy warmth and vast light and exotic
+      vegetation,&mdash;coupled with some vague disappointment 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,&mdash;English, Spanish, and French,&mdash;besides its
+      German and Madeiran settlers. There is also a special black or half-breed
+      element, corresponding to each creole race, and speaking the language of
+      each; there are fifty thousand Hindoo coolies, and a numerous body of
+      Chinese. Still, this extraordinary diversity of race elements does not
+      make itself at once apparent to the stranger. Your first 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 all this colonial life, this strong, bearded English visage
+      takes something of heroic relief;&mdash;one feels, in a totally novel way,
+      the dignity of a white skin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0014" id="linkimage-0014">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%">
+      <img src="images/12-St_James_Ave.jpg"
+      alt="St. James Avenue, Port-of-spain, Trinidad. " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      ... I hire a carriage to take me to the nearest coolie village;&mdash;a
+      delightful drive.... Sometimes the smooth white road curves round the
+      slope of a forest-covered mountain;&mdash;sometimes overlooks a valley
+      shining with twenty different shades of surface green;&mdash;sometimes
+      traverses marvellous natural arcades formed by the interweaving and
+      intercrossing of bamboos fifty feet high. Rising in vast clumps, and
+      spreading out 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&mdash;burning,
+      flashing green&mdash;covered with parasitic green creepers and vines; they
+      show enormous forms, or rather dreams of form, fetichistic and startling.
+      Banana leaves flicker and flutter along the way-side; palms shoot up to
+      vast altitudes, like pillars of white metal; and there is a perpetual
+      shifting of foliage color, from yellow-green to orange, from reddish-green
+      to purple, from emerald-green to black-green. But the background color,
+      the dominant tone, is like the plumage of a green parrot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... We drive into the coolie village, along a narrower way, lined with
+      plantain-trees, bananas, flamboyants, and unfamiliar shrubs with large
+      broad leaves. Here and there are cocoa-palms. Beyond the little ditches on
+      either side, occupying openings in the natural hedge, are the dwellings&mdash;wooden
+      cabins, widely separated from each other. The narrow lanes that enter the
+      road are also lined with habitations, half hidden by banana-trees. There
+      is a prodigious glare, an intense heat. Around, above the trees and the
+      roofs, rise the far hill shapes, some brightly verdant, some cloudy blue,
+      some gray. The road and the lanes are almost deserted; there is little
+      shade; only at intervals some slender brown girl or naked baby appears at
+      a door-way. The carriage halts before a shed built against a wall&mdash;a
+      simple roof of palm thatch supported upon jointed posts of bamboo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is a little coolie temple. A few weary Indian laborers slumber in its
+      shadow; pretty naked children, with silver rings round their ankles, are
+      playing there with a white dog. Painted over the wall surface, in red,
+      yellow, brown, blue, and green designs upon a white ground, are
+      extraordinary figures of gods and goddesses. They have several pairs of
+      arms, brandishing mysterious things,&mdash;they seem to dance,
+      gesticulate, threaten; but they are all very naïf;&mdash;remind one of the
+      first efforts of a child with the first box of paints. While I am looking
+      at these things, one coolie after another wakes up (these men sleep
+      lightly) and begins to observe me almost as curiously, and I fear much
+      less kindly, than I have been observing the gods. "Where is your babagee?"
+      I inquire. No one seems to comprehend my question; the gravity of each
+      dark face remains unrelaxed. Yet I would have liked to make an offering
+      unto Siva.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... 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;&mdash;then,
+      noiselessly as a phantom, the nude-limbed smith enters by a rear door,&mdash;squats
+      down, without a word, on his little mat beside his little anvil,&mdash;and
+      turns towards me, inquiringly, a face half veiled by a black beard,&mdash;a
+      turbaned Indian face, sharp, severe, and slightly unpleasant in
+      expression. "<i>Vlé béras!</i>" explains my creole driver, pointing to his
+      client. The smith opens his lips to utter in the tone of a call the single
+      syllable "<i>Ra</i>!" then folds his arms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0015" id="linkimage-0015">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%">
+      <img src="images/13-Coolies.jpg" alt="Coolies of Trinidad. " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      Almost immediately a young Hindoo woman enters, squats down on the earthen
+      floor at the end of the bench which forms the only furniture of the shop,
+      and turns upon me a pair of the finest black eyes I have ever seen,&mdash;like
+      the eyes of a fawn. She is very simply clad, in a coolie robe leaving arms
+      and ankles bare, and clinging about the figure in gracious folds; her
+      color is a clear bright brown-new bronze; her face a fine oval, and
+      charmingly aquiline. I perceive a little silver ring, in the form of a
+      twisted snake, upon the slender second toe of each bare foot; upon each
+      arm she has at least ten heavy silver rings; there are also large silver
+      rings about her ankles; a gold flower is fixed by a little hook in one
+      nostril, and two immense silver circles, shaped like new moons, shimmer in
+      her ears. The smith mutters something to her in his Indian tongue. She
+      rises, and seating herself on the bench beside me, in an attitude of
+      perfect grace, holds out one beautiful brown arm to me that I may choose a
+      ring.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The arm is much more worthy of attention than the rings: it has the tint,
+      the smoothness, the symmetry, of a fine statuary's work in metal;&mdash;the
+      upper arm, tattooed with a bluish circle of arabesques, is otherwise
+      unadorned; all the bracelets are on the fore-arm. Very clumsy and coarse
+      they prove to be on closer examination: it was the fine dark skin which by
+      color contrast made them look so pretty. I choose the outer one, a round
+      ring with terminations shaped like viper heads;&mdash;the smith inserts a
+      pair of tongs between these ends, presses outward slowly and strongly, and
+      the ring is off. It has a faint musky odor, not unpleasant, the perfume of
+      the tropical flesh it clung to. I would have taken it thus; but the smith
+      snatches it from me, heats it red in his little charcoal furnace, hammers
+      it into a nearly perfect circle again, slakes it, and burnishes it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then I ask for children's <i>béras</i>, or bracelets; and the young mother
+      brings in her own baby girl,&mdash;a little darling just able to walk. She
+      has extraordinary eyes;&mdash;the mother's eyes magnified (the father's
+      are small and fierce). I bargain for the single pair of thin rings on her
+      little wrists;&mdash;while the smith is taking them off, the child keeps
+      her wonderful gaze fixed on my face. Then I observe that the peculiarity
+      of the eye is the size of the iris rather than the size of the ball. These
+      eyes are not soft like the mother's, after all; they are ungentle,
+      beautiful as they are; they have the dark and splendid flame of the eyes
+      of a great bird&mdash;a bird of prey.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... She will grow up, this little maid, into a slender, graceful woman,
+      very beautiful, no doubt; perhaps a little dangerous. She will marry, of
+      course: probably she is betrothed even now, according to Indian custom,&mdash;pledged
+      to some brown boy, the son of a friend. It will not be so many years
+      before the day of their noisy wedding: girls shoot up under this sun with
+      as swift a growth as those broad-leaved beautiful shapes which fill the
+      open door-way with quivering emerald. And she will know the witchcraft of
+      those eyes, will feel the temptation to use them,&mdash;perhaps to smile
+      one of those smiles which have power over life and death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0016" id="linkimage-0016">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%">
+      <img src="images/14-Coolie_Servant.jpg" alt="Coolie Servant. " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      And then the old coolie story! One day, in the yellowing cane-fields,
+      among the swarm of veiled and turbaned workers, a word is overheard, a
+      side glance intercepted;&mdash;there is the swirling flash of a cutlass
+      blade; a shrieking gathering of women about a headless corpse in the sun;
+      and passing cityward, between armed and helmeted men, the vision of an
+      Indian prisoner, blood-crimsoned, walking very steadily, very erect, with
+      the solemnity of a judge, the dry bright gaze of an idol....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      XXXI.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... We steam very slowly into the harbor of St. George, Grenada, in dead
+      silence. No cannon-signal allowed here.... Some one suggests that the
+      violence of the echoes in this harbor renders the firing of cannon
+      dangerous; somebody else says the town is in so ruinous a condition that
+      the report of a gun would shake it down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... There are heavy damp smells in the warm air as of mould, or of wet
+      clay freshly upturned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This harbor is a deep clear basin, surrounded and shadowed by immense
+      volcanic hills, all green. The opening by which we entered is cut off from
+      sight by a promontory, and hill shapes beyond the promontory;&mdash;we
+      seem to be in the innermost ring of a double crater. There is a continuous
+      shimmering and plashing of leaping fish in the shadow of the loftiest
+      height, which reaches half across the water.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As it climbs up the base of the huge hill at a precipitous angle, the city
+      can be seen from the steamer's deck almost as in a bird's-eye view. A
+      senescent city; mostly antiquated Spanish architecture,&mdash;ponderous
+      archways and earthquake-proof walls. The yellow buildings fronting us
+      beyond the wharf seem half decayed; they are strangely streaked with
+      green, look as if they had been long under water. We row ashore, land in a
+      crowd of lazy-looking, silent blacks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... What a quaint, dawdling, sleepy place it is! All these narrow streets
+      are falling into ruin; everywhere the same green stains upon the walls, as
+      of slime left by a flood; everywhere disjointed brickwork, crumbling
+      roofs, pungent odors of mould. Yet this Spanish architecture was built to
+      endure; those yellow, blue, or green walls were constructed with the
+      solidity of fortress-work; the very stairs are stone; the balustrades and
+      the railings were made of good wrought iron. In a Northern clime such
+      edifices would resist the wear and tear of five hundred years. But here
+      the powers of disintegration are extraordinary, and the very air would
+      seem to have the devouring force of an acid. All surfaces and angles are
+      yielding to the attacks of time, weather, and microscopic organisms; paint
+      peels, stucco falls, tiles tumble, stones slip out of place, and in every
+      chink tiny green things nestle, propagating themselves through the
+      jointures and dislocating the masonry. There is an appalling mouldiness,
+      an exaggerated mossiness&mdash;the mystery and the melancholy of a city
+      deserted. Old warehouses without signs, huge and void, are opened
+      regularly every day for so many hours; yet the business of the aged
+      merchants within seems to be a problem;&mdash;you might fancy those gray
+      men were always waiting for ships that sailed away a generation ago, and
+      will never return. You see no customers entering the stores, but only a
+      black mendicant from time to time. And high above all this, overlooking
+      streets too steep for any vehicle, slope the red walls of the mouldering
+      fort, patched with the viridescence of ruin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0017" id="linkimage-0017">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%">
+      <img src="images/15-Coolie_Merchant.jpg" alt="Coolie Merchant. "
+      width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      By a road leading up beyond the city, you reach the cemetery. The
+      staggering iron gates by which you enter it are almost rusted from their
+      hinges, and the low wall enclosing it is nearly all verdant. Within, you
+      see a wilderness of strange weeds, vines, creepers, fantastic shrubs run
+      mad, with a few palms mounting above the green confusion;&mdash;only here
+      and there a gleam of slabs with inscriptions half erased. Such as you can
+      read are epitaphs of seamen, dating back to the years 1800, 1802, 1812.
+      Over these lizards are running; undulations in the weeds warn you to
+      beware of snakes; toads leap away as you proceed; and you observe
+      everywhere crickets perched&mdash;grass-colored creatures with two ruby
+      specks for eyes. They make a sound shrill as the scream of machinery
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... A gloomy road winds high around one cliff overlooking the hollow of
+      the bay, Following it, you pass under extraordinarily dark shadows of
+      foliage, and over a blackish soil strewn with pretty bright green fruit
+      that has fallen from above. Do not touch them even with the tip of your
+      finger! Those are manchineel apples; with their milky juice the old Caribs
+      were wont to poison the barbs of their parrot-feathered arrows. Over the
+      mould, swarming among the venomous fruit, innumerable crabs make a sound
+      almost like the murmuring of water. Some are very large, with prodigious
+      stalked eyes, and claws white as ivory, and a red cuirass; others, very
+      small and very swift in their movements, are raspberry-colored; others,
+      again, are apple-green, with queer mottlings of black and white. There is
+      an unpleasant odor of decay in the air&mdash;vegetable decay.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Emerging from the shadow of the manchineel-trees, you may follow the road
+      up, up, up, under beetling cliffs of plutonian rock that seem about to
+      topple down upon the path-way. The rock is naked and black near the road;
+      higher, it is veiled by a heavy green drapery of lianas, curling creepers,
+      unfamiliar vines. All around you are sounds of crawling, dull echoes of
+      dropping; the thick growths far up waver in the breathless air as if
+      something were moving sinuously through them. And always the odor of humid
+      decomposition. Farther on, the road looks wilder, sloping between black
+      rocks, through strange vaultings of foliage and night-black shadows. Its
+      lonesomeness oppresses; one returns without regret, by rusting gate-ways
+      and tottering walls, back to the old West Indian city rotting in the sun.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... Yet Grenada, despite the dilapidation of her capital and the seeming
+      desolation of its environs, is not the least prosperous of the Antilles.
+      Other islands have been less fortunate: the era of depression has almost
+      passed for Grenada; through the rapid development of her secondary
+      cultures&mdash;coffee and cocoa&mdash;she hopes with good reason to repair
+      some of the vast losses involved by the decay of the sugar industry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Still, in this silence of mouldering streets, this melancholy of abandoned
+      dwellings, this invasion of vegetation, there is a suggestion of what any
+      West Indian port might become when the resources of the island had been
+      exhausted, and its commerce ruined. After all persons of means and energy
+      enough to seek other fields of industry and enterprise had taken their
+      departure, and the plantations had been abandoned, and the warehouses
+      closed up forever, and the voiceless wharves left to rot down into the
+      green water, Nature would soon so veil the place as to obliterate every
+      outward visible sign of the past. In scarcely more than a generation from
+      the time that the last merchant steamer had taken her departure some
+      traveller might look for the once populous and busy mart in vain:
+      vegetation would have devoured it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... In the mixed English and creole speech of the black population one can
+      discern evidence of a linguistic transition. The original French <i>patois</i>
+      is being rapidly forgotten or transformed irrecognizably.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, in almost every island the negro idiom is different. So often have
+      some of the Antilles changed owners, moreover, that in them the negro has
+      never been able to form a true <i>patois</i>. He had scarcely acquired
+      some idea of the language of his first masters, when other rulers and
+      another tongue were thrust upon him,&mdash;and this may have occurred
+      three or four times! The result is a totally incoherent agglomeration of
+      speech-forms&mdash;a baragouin fantastic and unintelligible beyond the
+      power of anyone to imagine who has not heard it....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      XXXII.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... A beautiful fantastic shape floats to us through the morning light;
+      first cloudy gold like the horizon, then pearly gray, then varying blue,
+      with growing green lights;&mdash;Saint Lucia. Most strangely formed of all
+      this volcanic family;&mdash;everywhere mountainings sharp as broken
+      crystals. Far off the Pitons&mdash;twin peaks of the high coast-show
+      softer contours, like two black breasts pointing against the sky....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... As we enter the harbor of Castries, the lines of the land seem no less
+      exquisitely odd, in spite of their rich verdure, than when viewed afar
+      off;&mdash;they have a particular pitch of angle.... Other of these
+      islands show more or less family resemblance;&mdash;you might readily
+      mistake one silhouette for another as seen at a distance, even after
+      several West Indian journeys. But Saint Lucia at once impresses you by its
+      eccentricity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0018" id="linkimage-0018">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%">
+      <img src="images/16-Churh_Street.jpg"
+      alt="Church Street, St. George, Grenada. " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      Castries, drowsing under palm leaves at the edge of its curving harbor,&mdash;perhaps
+      an ancient crater,&mdash;seems more of a village than a town: streets of
+      low cottages and little tropic gardens. It has a handsome half-breed
+      population: the old French colonial manners have been less changed here by
+      English influence than in Saint Kitt's and elsewhere;&mdash;the creole <i>patois</i>
+      is still spoken, though the costumes have changed.... A more beautiful
+      situation could scarcely be imagined,&mdash;even in this tropic world. In
+      the massing of green heights about the little town are gaps showing groves
+      of palm beyond; but the peak summits catch the clouds. Behind us the
+      harbor mouth seems spanned by steel-blue bars: these are lines of
+      currents. Away, on either hand, volcanic hills are billowing to vapory
+      distance; and in their nearer hollows are beautiful deepenings of color:
+      ponded shades of diaphanous blue or purplish tone.... I first remarked
+      this extraordinary coloring of shadows in Martinique, where it exists to a
+      degree that tempts one to believe the island has a special atmosphere of
+      its own.... A friend tells me the phenomenon is probably due to inorganic
+      substances floating in the air&mdash;each substance in diffusion having
+      its own index of refraction. Substances so held in suspension by vapors
+      would vary according to the nature of soil in different islands, and might
+      thus produce special local effects of atmospheric tinting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... We remain but half an hour at Castries; then steam along the coast to
+      take in freight at another port. Always the same delicious color-effects
+      as we proceed, with new and surprising visions of hills. The near slopes
+      descending to the sea are a radiant green, with streaks and specklings of
+      darker verdure;&mdash;the farther-rising hills faint blue, with green
+      saliencies catching the sun;&mdash;and beyond these are upheavals of
+      luminous gray&mdash;pearl-gray&mdash;sharpened in the silver glow of the
+      horizon.... The general impression of the whole landscape is one of motion
+      suddenly petrified,&mdash;of an earthquake surging and tossing suddenly
+      arrested and fixed: a raging of cones and peaks and monstrous truncated
+      shapes.... We approach the Pitons.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Seen afar off, they first appeared twin mammiform peaks,&mdash;naked and
+      dark against the sky; but now they begin to brighten a little and show
+      color,&mdash;also to change form. They take a lilaceous hue, broken by
+      gray and green 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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Out of a bright sea of verdure, speckled with oases of darker foliage,
+      these Pitons from the land side tower in sombre vegetation. Very high up,
+      on the nearer one, amid the wooded slopes, you can see houses perched; and
+      there are bright breaks in the color there&mdash;tiny mountain pastures
+      that look like patches of green silk velvet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is disappointing, the village: it is merely one cross of brief streets,
+      lined with blackening wooden dwellings there are no buildings worth
+      looking at, except the queer old French church, steep-roofed and bristling
+      with points that look like extinguishers. Over broad reaches of lava rock
+      a shallow river flows by the village to the sea, gurgling under shadows of
+      tamarind foliage. It passes beside the market-place&mdash;a market-place
+      without stalls, benches, sheds, or pavements: meats, fruits, and
+      vegetables are simply fastened to the trees. Women are washing and naked
+      children bathing in the stream; they are bronze-skinned, a fine dark color
+      with a faint tint of red in it.... There is little else to look at: steep
+      wooded hills cut off the view towards the interior.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But over the verge of the sea there is something strange growing visible,
+      looming up like a beautiful yellow cloud. It is an island, so lofty, so
+      luminous, so phantom-like, that it seems a vision of the Island of the
+      Seven Cities. It is only the form of St. Vincent, bathed in vapory gold by
+      the sun.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And you behold before you a geological dream, a vision of the primeval
+      sea: the apparition of the land as first brought forth, all peak-tossed
+      and fissured and naked and grim, in the tremendous birth of an
+      archipelago.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      XXXIII.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Homeward bound.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Again the enormous poem of azure and emerald unrolls before us, but in
+      order inverse; again is the island&mdash;Litany of the Saints repeated for
+      us, but now backward. All the bright familiar harbors once more open to
+      receive us;&mdash;each lovely Shape floats to us again, first golden
+      yellow, then vapory gray, then ghostly blue, but always sharply radiant at
+      last, symmetrically exquisite, as if chiselled out of amethyst and emerald
+      and sapphire. We review the same wondrous wrinkling of volcanic hills, the
+      cities that sit in extinct craters, the woods that tower to heaven, the
+      peaks perpetually wearing that luminous cloud which seems the breathing of
+      each island-life,&mdash;its vital manifestation....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0019" id="linkimage-0019">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%">
+      <img src="images/17-Castries.jpg" alt="Castries, St. Lucia. " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      ... Only now do the long succession of exotic and unfamiliar impressions
+      received begin to group and blend, to form homogeneous results,&mdash;general
+      ideas or convictions. Strongest among these is the belief that the white
+      race is disappearing from these islands, acquired and held at so vast a
+      cost of blood and treasure. Reasons almost beyond enumeration have been
+      advanced&mdash;economical, climatic, ethnical, political&mdash;all of
+      which contain truth, yet no single one of which can wholly explain the
+      fact. Already the white West Indian populations are diminishing at a rate
+      that almost staggers credibility. In the island paradise of Martinique in
+      1848 there were 12,000 whites; now, against more than 160,000 blacks and
+      half-breeds, there are perhaps 5000 whites left to maintain the ethnic
+      struggle, and the number of these latter is annually growing less. Many of
+      the British islands have been almost deserted by their former cultivators:
+      St. Vincent is becoming desolate: Tobago is a ruin; St. Martin lies half
+      abandoned; St. Christopher is crumbling; Grenada has lost more than half
+      her whites; St. Thomas, once the most prosperous, the most active, the
+      most cosmopolitan of West Indian ports, is in full decadence. And while
+      the white element is disappearing, the dark races are multiplying as never
+      before;&mdash;the increase of the negro and half-breed populations has
+      been everywhere one of the startling results of emancipation. The general
+      belief among the creole whites of the Lesser Antilles would seem to
+      confirm the old prediction that the slave races of the past must become
+      the masters of the future. Here and there the struggle may be greatly
+      prolonged, but everywhere the ultimate result must be the same, unless the
+      present conditions of commerce and production become marvellously changed.
+      The exterminated Indian peoples of the Antilles have already been replaced
+      by populations equally fitted to cope with the forces of the nature about
+      them,&mdash;that splendid and terrible Nature of the tropics which
+      consumes the energies of the races of the North, which devours all that
+      has been accomplished by their heroism or their crimes,&mdash;effacing
+      their cities, rejecting their civilization. To those peoples
+      physiologically in harmony with this Nature belong all the chances of
+      victory in the contest&mdash;already begun&mdash;for racial supremacy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But with the disappearance of the white populations the ethnical problem
+      would be still unsettled. Between the black and mixed peoples prevail
+      hatreds more enduring and more intense than any race prejudices between
+      whites and freedmen in the past;&mdash;a new struggle for supremacy could
+      not fail to begin, with the perpetual augmentation of numbers, the
+      ever-increasing competition for existence. And the true black element,
+      more numerically powerful, more fertile, more cunning, better adapted to
+      pyrogenic climate and tropical environment, would surely win. All these
+      mixed races, all these beautiful fruit-colored populations, seem doomed to
+      extinction: the future tendency must be to universal blackness, if
+      existing conditions continue&mdash;perhaps to universal savagery.
+      Everywhere the sins of the past have borne the same 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&mdash;who never forgives&mdash;shall
+      have exacted the utmost possible retribution for all the crimes and
+      follies of three hundred years?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_PART2" id="link2H_PART2">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      PART TWO&mdash;MARTINIQUE SKETCHES.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0001" id="link2HCH0001">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER I. &mdash; LES PORTEUSES.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When you find yourself for the first time, upon some unshadowed day, in
+      the delightful West Indian city of St. Pierre,&mdash;supposing that you
+      own the sense of poetry, the recollections of a student,&mdash;there is
+      apt to steal upon your fancy an impression of having seen it all before,
+      ever so long ago,&mdash;you cannot tell where. The sensation of some happy
+      dream you cannot wholly recall might be compared to this feeling. In the
+      simplicity and solidity of the quaint architecture,&mdash;in the
+      eccentricity of bright narrow streets, all aglow with warm coloring,&mdash;in
+      the tints of roof and wall, antiquated by streakings and patchings of
+      mould greens and grays,&mdash;in the startling absence of window-sashes,
+      glass, gas lamps, and chimneys,&mdash;in the blossom-tenderness of the
+      blue heaven, the splendor of tropic light, and the warmth of the tropic
+      wind,&mdash;you find less the impression of a scene of to-day than the
+      sensation of something that was and is not. Slowly this feeling
+      strengthens with your pleasure in the colorific radiance of costume,&mdash;the
+      semi-nudity of passing figures,&mdash;the puissant shapeliness of torsos
+      ruddily swart like statue metal,&mdash;the rounded outline of limbs yellow
+      as tropic fruit,&mdash;the grace of attitudes,&mdash;the unconscious
+      harmony of groupings,&mdash;the gathering and folding and falling of light
+      robes that oscillate with swaying of free hips,&mdash;the sculptural
+      symmetry of unshod feet. You look up and down the lemon-tinted streets,&mdash;down
+      to the dazzling azure brightness of meeting sky and sea; up to the
+      perpetual verdure of mountain woods&mdash;wondering at the mellowness of
+      tones, the sharpness of lines in the light, the diaphaneity of colored
+      shadows; always asking memory: "When?... where did I see all this... long
+      ago?"....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, perhaps, your gaze is suddenly riveted by the vast and solemn beauty
+      of the verdant violet-shaded mass of the dead Volcano,&mdash;high-towering
+      above the town, visible from all its ways, and umbraged, maybe, with
+      thinnest curlings of cloud,&mdash;like spectres of its ancient smoking to
+      heaven. And all at once the secret of your dream is revealed, with the
+      rising of many a luminous memory,&mdash;dreams of the Idyllists, flowers
+      of old Sicilian song, fancies limned upon Pompeiian walls. For a moment
+      the illusion is delicious: you comprehend as never before the charm of a
+      vanished world,&mdash;the antique life, the story of terra-cottas and
+      graven stones and gracious things exhumed: even the sun is not of to-day,
+      but of twenty centuries gone;&mdash;thus, and under such a light, walked
+      the women of the elder world. You know the fancy absurd;&mdash;that the
+      power of the orb has visibly abated nothing in all the eras of man,&mdash;that
+      millions are the ages of his almighty glory; but for one instant of
+      reverie he seemeth larger,&mdash;even that sun impossible who coloreth the
+      words, coloreth the works of artist-lovers of the past, with the gold
+      light of dreams.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Too soon the hallucination is broken by modern sounds, dissipated by
+      modern sights,&mdash;rough trolling of sailors descending to their boats,&mdash;the
+      heavy boom of a packet's signal-gun,&mdash;the passing of an American
+      buggy. Instantly you become aware that the melodious tongue spoken by the
+      passing throng is neither Hellenic nor Roman: only the beautiful childish
+      speech of French slaves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      II.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But what slaves were the fathers of this free generation? Your
+      anthropologists, your ethnologists, seem at fault here: the African traits
+      have become transformed; the African characteristics have been so modified
+      within little more than two hundred years&mdash;by inter-blending of
+      blood, by habit, by soil and sun and all those natural powers which shape
+      the mould of races,&mdash;that you may look in vain for verification of
+      ethnological assertions.... No: the heel does <i>not</i> protrude;&mdash;the
+      foot is <i>not</i> flat, but finely arched;&mdash;the extremities are not
+      large;&mdash;all the limbs taper, all the muscles are developed; and
+      prognathism has become so rare that months of research may not yield a
+      single striking case of it.... No: this is a special race, peculiar to the
+      island as are the shapes of its peaks,&mdash;a mountain race; and mountain
+      races are comely.... Compare it with the population of black Barbadoes,
+      where the apish grossness of African coast types has been perpetuated
+      unchanged;&mdash;and the contrast may well astonish!...
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      III.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The erect carriage and steady swift walk of the women who bear burdens is
+      especially likely to impress the artistic observer: it is the sight of
+      such passers-by which gives, above all, the antique tone and color to his
+      first sensations;&mdash;and the larger part of the female population of
+      mixed race are practised carriers. Nearly all the transportation of light
+      merchandise, as well as of meats, fruits, vegetables, and food stuffs,&mdash;to
+      and from the interior,&mdash;is effected upon human heads. At some of the
+      ports the regular local packets are loaded and unloaded by women and
+      girls,&mdash;able to carry any trunk or box to its destination. At
+      Fort-de-France the great steamers of the Compagnie Générale
+      Transatlantique, are entirely coaled by women, who carry the coal on their
+      heads, singing as they come and go in processions of hundreds; and the
+      work is done with incredible rapidity. Now, the creole <i>porteuse</i>, or
+      female carrier, is certainly one of the most remarkable physical types in
+      the world; and whatever artistic enthusiasm her graceful port, lithe walk,
+      or half-savage beauty may inspire you with, you can form no idea, if a
+      total stranger, what a really wonderful being she is.... Let me tell you
+      something about that highest type of professional female carrier, which is
+      to the <i>charbonnière</i>, or coaling-girl, what the thorough-bred racer
+      is to the draught-horse,&mdash;the type of porteuse selected for swiftness
+      and endurance to distribute goods in the interior parishes, or to sell on
+      commission at long distances. To the same class naturally belong those
+      country carriers able to act as porteuses of plantation produce, fruits,
+      or vegetables,&mdash;between the nearer ports and their own interior
+      parishes.... Those who believe that great physical endurance and physical
+      energy cannot exist in the tropics do not know the creole carrier-girl.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      IV.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At a very early age&mdash;perhaps at five years&mdash;she learns to carry
+      small articles upon her head,&mdash;a bowl of rice,&mdash;a dobanne, or
+      red earthen decanter, full of water,&mdash;even an orange on a plate; and
+      before long she is able to balance these perfectly without using her hands
+      to steady them. (I have often seen children actually run with cans of
+      water upon their heads, and never spill a drop.) At nine or ten she is
+      able to carry thus a tolerably heavy basket, or a <i>trait</i> (a wooden
+      tray with deep outward sloping sides) containing a weight of from twenty
+      to thirty pounds; and is able to accompany her mother, sister, or cousin
+      on long peddling journeys,&mdash;walking barefoot twelve and fifteen miles
+      a day. At sixteen or seventeen she is a tall robust girl,&mdash;lithe,
+      vigorous, tough,&mdash;all of tendon and hard flesh;&mdash;she carries a
+      tray or a basket of the largest size, and a burden of one hundred and
+      twenty to one hundred and fifty pounds weight;&mdash;she can now earn
+      about thirty francs (about six dollars) a month, <i>by walking fifty miles
+      a day</i>, as an itinerant seller. Among her class there are figures to
+      make you dream of Atalanta;&mdash;and all, whether ugly or attractive as
+      to feature, are finely shapen as to body and limb. Brought into existence
+      by extraordinary necessities of environment, the type is a peculiarly
+      local one,&mdash;a type of human thorough-bred representing the true
+      secret of grace: economy of force. There are no corpulent porteuses for
+      the long interior routes; all are built lightly and firmly as those
+      racers. There are no old porteuses;&mdash;to do the work even at forty
+      signifies a constitution of astounding solidity. After the full force of
+      youth and health is spent, the poor carrier must seek lighter labor;&mdash;she
+      can no longer compete with the girls. For in this calling the young body
+      is taxed to its utmost capacity of strength, endurance, and rapid motion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As a general rule, the weight is such that no well-freighted porteuse can,
+      unassisted, either "load" or "unload" (<i>châgé</i> or <i>déchâgé</i>, in
+      creole phrase); the effort to do so would burst a blood-vessel, wrench a
+      nerve, rupture a muscle. She cannot even sit down under her burden without
+      risk of breaking her neck: absolute perfection of the balance is necessary
+      for self-preservation. A case came under my own observation of a woman
+      rupturing a muscle in her arm through careless haste in the mere act of
+      aiding another to unload.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And no one not a brute will ever refuse to aid a woman to lift or to
+      relieve herself of her burden;&mdash;you may see the wealthiest merchant,
+      the proudest planter, gladly do it;&mdash;the meanness of refusing, or of
+      making any conditions for the performance of this little kindness has only
+      been imagined in those strange Stories of Devils wherewith the oral and
+      uncollected literature of the creole abounds. <a href="#linknote-3"
+      name="linknoteref-3" id="linknoteref-3">[3]</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      V.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Preparing for her journey, the young <i>màchanne</i> (marchande) puts on
+      the poorest and briefest chemise in her possession, and the most worn of
+      her light calico robes. These are all she wears. The robe is drawn upward
+      and forward, so as to reach a little below the knee, and is confined thus
+      by a waist-string, or a long kerchief bound tightly round the loins.
+      Instead of a Madras or painted turban-kerchief, she binds a plain <i>mouchoir</i>
+      neatly and closely about her head; and if her hair be long, it is combed
+      back and gathered into a loop behind. Then, with a second mouchoir of
+      coarser quality she makes a pad, or, as she calls it, <i>tòche</i>, by
+      winding the kerchief round her fingers as you would coil up a piece of
+      string;&mdash;and the soft mass, flattened with a patting of the hand, is
+      placed upon her head, over the coiffure. On this the great loaded trait is
+      poised.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0020" id="linkimage-0020">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%">
+      <img src="images/18-Ti_Marie.jpg"
+      alt="'ti Marie (on the Route from St. Pierre To Basse-pointe.) "
+      width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      She wears no shoes! To wear shoes and do her work swiftly and well in such
+      a land of mountains would be impossible. She must climb thousands and
+      descend thousands of feet every day,&mdash;march up and down slopes so
+      steep that the horses of the country all break down after a few years of
+      similar journeying. The girl invariably outlasts the horse,&mdash;though
+      carrying an equal weight. Shoes, unless extraordinarily well made, would
+      shift place a little with every change from ascent to descent, or the
+      reverse, during the march,&mdash;would yield and loosen with the
+      ever-varying strain,&mdash;would compress the toes,&mdash;produce corns,
+      bunions, raw places by rubbing, and soon cripple the porteuse. Remember,
+      she has to walk perhaps fifty miles between dawn and dark, under a sun to
+      which a single hour's exposure, without the protection of an umbrella, is
+      perilous to any European or American&mdash;the terrible sun of the
+      tropics! Sandals are the only conceivable foot-gear suited to such a
+      calling as hers; but she needs no sandals: the soles of her feet are
+      toughened so as to feel no asperities, and present to sharp pebbles a
+      surface at once yielding and resisting, like a cushion of solid
+      caoutchouc.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Besides her load, she carries only a canvas purse tied to her girdle on
+      the right side, and on the left a very small bottle of rum, or white <i>tafia</i>,&mdash;usually
+      the latter, because it is so cheap.... For she may not always find the
+      Gouyave Water to drink,&mdash;the cold clear pure stream conveyed to the
+      fountains of St. Pierre from the highest mountains by a beautiful and
+      marvellous plan of hydraulic engineering: she will have to drink betimes
+      the common spring-water of the bamboo-fountains on the remoter high-roads;
+      and this may cause dysentery if swallowed without a spoonful of spirits.
+      Therefore she never travels without a little liquor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      VI.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... So!&mdash;She is ready: "<i>Châgé moin, souplè, chè!</i>" She bends to
+      lift the end of the heavy trait: some one takes the other,&mdash;<i>yon!-dé!&mdash;toua!</i>&mdash;it
+      is on her head. Perhaps she winces an instant;&mdash;the weight is not
+      perfectly balanced; she settles it with her hands,&mdash;gets it in the
+      exact place. Then, all steady,&mdash;lithe, light, half naked,&mdash;away
+      she moves with a long springy step. So even her walk that the burden never
+      sways; yet so rapid her motion that however good a walker you may fancy
+      yourself to be you will tire out after a sustained effort of fifteen
+      minutes to follow her uphill. Fifteen minutes;&mdash;and she can keep up
+      that pace without slackening&mdash;save for a minute to eat and drink at
+      mid-day,&mdash;for at least twelve hours and fifty-six minutes, the
+      extreme length of a West Indian day. She starts before dawn; tries to
+      reach her resting-place by sunset: after dark, like all her people, she is
+      afraid of meeting <i>zombis</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Let me give you some idea of her average speed under an average weight of
+      one hundred and twenty-five pounds,&mdash;estimates based partly upon my
+      own observations, partly upon the declarations of the trustworthy
+      merchants who employ her, and partly on the assertion of habitants of the
+      burghs or cities named&mdash;all of which statements perfectly agree. From
+      St. Pierre to Basse-Pointe, by the national road, the distance is a trifle
+      less than twenty-seven kilometres and three-quarters. She makes the
+      transit easily in three hours and a half; and returns in the afternoon,
+      after an absence of scarcely more than eight hours. From St. Pierre to
+      Morne Rouge&mdash;two thousand feet up in the mountains (an ascent so
+      abrupt that no one able to pay carriage-fare dreams of attempting to walk
+      it)&mdash;the distance is seven kilometres and three-quarters. She makes
+      it in little more than an hour. But this represents only the beginning of
+      her journey. She passes on to Grande Anse, twenty-one and three-quarter
+      kilometres away. But she does not rest there: she returns at the same
+      pace, and reaches St. Pierre before dark. From St. Pierre to Gros-Morne
+      the distance to be twice traversed by her is more than thirty-two
+      kilometres. A journey of sixty-four kilometres,&mdash;daily, perhaps,&mdash;forty
+      miles! And there are many màchannes who make yet longer trips,&mdash;trips
+      of three or four days' duration;&mdash;these rest at villages upon their
+      route.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      VII.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such travel in such a country would be impossible but for the excellent
+      national roads,&mdash;limestone highways, solid, broad, faultlessly
+      graded,&mdash;that wind from town to town, from hamlet to hamlet, over
+      mountains, over ravines; ascending by zigzags to heights of twenty-five
+      hundred feet; traversing the primeval forests of the interior; now
+      skirting the dizziest precipices, now descending into the loveliest
+      valleys. There are thirty-one of these magnificent routes, with a total
+      length of 488,052 metres (more than 303 miles), whereof the construction
+      required engineering talent of the highest order,&mdash;the building of
+      bridges beyond counting, and devices the most ingenious to provide against
+      dangers of storms, floods, and land-slips. Most have drinking-fountains
+      along their course at almost regular intervals,&mdash;generally made by
+      the negroes, who have a simple but excellent plan for turning the water of
+      a spring through bamboo pipes to the road-way. Each road is also furnished
+      with 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,&mdash;visions of mountains so
+      many-tinted and so singular of outline that they would almost seem to have
+      been created for the express purpose of compelling astonishment. This
+      tropic Nature appears to call into being nothing ordinary: the shapes
+      which she evokes are always either gracious or odd,&mdash;and her
+      eccentricities, her extravagances, have a fantastic charm, a grotesqueness
+      as of artistic whim. Even where the landscape-view is cut off by high
+      woods the forms of ancient trees&mdash;the infinite interwreathing of vine
+      growths all on fire with violence of blossom-color,&mdash;the enormous
+      green outbursts of balisiers, with leaves ten to thirteen feet long,&mdash;the
+      columnar solemnity of great palmistes,&mdash;the pliant quivering
+      exqisiteness of bamboo,&mdash;the furious splendor of roses run mad&mdash;more
+      than atone for the loss of the horizon. Sometimes you approach a steep
+      covered with a growth of what, at first glance, looks precisely like fine
+      green fur: it is a first-growth of young bamboo. Or you see a hill-side
+      covered with huge green feathers, all shelving down and overlapping as in
+      the tail of some unutterable bird: these are baby ferns. And where the
+      road leaps some deep ravine with a double or triple bridge of white stone,
+      note well what delicious shapes spring up into sunshine from the black
+      profundity on either hand! Palmiform you might hastily term them,&mdash;but
+      no palm was ever so gracile; no palm ever bore so dainty a head of green
+      plumes light as lace! These likewise are ferns (rare survivors, maybe, of
+      that period of monstrous vegetation which preceded the apparition of man),
+      beautiful tree-ferns, whose every young plume, unrolling in a spiral from
+      the bud, at first assumes the shape of a crozier,&mdash;a crozier of
+      emerald! Therefore are some of this species called "archbishop-trees," no
+      doubt.... But one might write for a hundred years of the sights to be seen
+      upon such a mountain road.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      VIII.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In every season, in almost every weather, the porteuse makes her journey,&mdash;never
+      heeding rain;&mdash;her goods being protected by double and triple
+      water-proof coverings well bound down over her trait. Yet these tropical
+      rains, coming suddenly with a cold wind upon her heated and almost naked
+      body, are to be feared. To any European or 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,&mdash;a
+      pneumonia that carries off the victim within forty-eight hours. Happily,
+      among her class, these fatalities are very rare.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And scarcely less rare than such sudden deaths are instances of failure to
+      appear on time. In one case, the employer, a St. Pierre shopkeeper, on
+      finding his <i>marchande</i> more than an hour late, felt so certain
+      something very extraordinary must have happened that he sent out
+      messengers in all directions to make inquiries. It was found that the
+      woman had become a mother when only half-way upon her journey home. The
+      child lived and thrived;&mdash;she is now a pretty chocolate-colored girl
+      of eight, who follows her mother every day from their mountain ajoupa down
+      to the city, and back again,&mdash;bearing a little trait upon her head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Murder for purposes of robbery is not an unknown crime in Martinique; but
+      I am told the porteuses are never molested. And yet some of these girls
+      carry merchandise to the value of hundreds of francs; and all carry money,&mdash;the
+      money received for goods sold, often a considerable sum. This immunity may
+      be partly owing to the fact that they travel during the greater part of
+      the year only by day,&mdash;and usually in company. A very pretty girl is
+      seldom suffered to journey unprotected: she has either a male escort or
+      several experienced and powerful women with her. In the cacao season-when
+      carriers start from Grande Anse as early as two o'clock in the morning, so
+      as to reach St. Pierre by dawn&mdash;they travel in strong companies of
+      twenty or twenty-five, singing on the way. As a general rule the younger
+      girls at all times go two together,&mdash;keeping step perfectly as a pair
+      of blooded fillies; only the veterans, or women selected for special work
+      by reason of extraordinary physical capabilities, go alone. To the latter
+      class belong certain girls employed by the great bakeries of
+      Fort-de-France and St. Pierre: these are veritable caryatides. They are
+      probably the heaviest-laden of all, carrying baskets of astounding size
+      far up into the mountains before daylight, so as to furnish country
+      families with fresh bread at an early hour; and for this labor they
+      receive about four dollars (twenty francs) a month and one loaf of bread
+      per diem.... While stopping at a friend's house among the hills, some two
+      miles from Fort-de-France, I saw the local bread-carrier halt before our
+      porch one morning, and a finer type of the race it would be difficult for
+      a sculptor to imagine. Six feet tall,&mdash;strength and grace united
+      throughout her whole figure from neck to heel; with that clear black skin
+      which is beautiful to any but ignorant or prejudiced eyes; and the smooth,
+      pleasing, solemn features of a sphinx,&mdash;she looked to me, as she
+      towered there in the gold light, a symbolic statue of Africa. Seeing me
+      smoking one of those long thin Martinique cigars called <i>bouts</i>, she
+      begged one; and, not happening to have another, I gave her the price of a
+      bunch of twenty,&mdash;ten sous. She took it without a smile, and went her
+      way. About an hour and a half later she came back and asked for me,&mdash;to
+      present me with the finest and largest mango I had ever seen, a monster
+      mango. She said she wanted to see me eat it, and sat down on the ground to
+      look on. While eating it, I learned that she had walked a whole mile out
+      of her way under that sky of fire, just to bring her little gift of
+      gratitude.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0021" id="linkimage-0021">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%">
+      <img src="images/19-Fort_de_France.jpg"
+      alt="Fort-de-france, Martinique--(formerly Fort Royal.) " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      IX.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Forty to fifty miles a day, always under a weight of more than a hundred
+      pounds,&mdash;for when the trait has been emptied she puts in stones for
+      ballast;&mdash;carrying her employer's merchandise and money over the
+      mountain ain ranges, beyond the peaks, across the ravines, through the
+      tropical forest, sometimes through by-ways haunted by the fer-de-lance,&mdash;and
+      this in summer or winter, the 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?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There are twenty sous to the franc. The girl leaves St. Pierre with her
+      load at early morning. At the second village, Morne Rouge, she halts to
+      buy one, two, or three biscuits at a sou apiece; and reaching
+      Ajoupa-Bouillon later in the forenoon, she may buy another biscuit or two.
+      Altogether she may be expected to eat five Sous of biscuit or bread before
+      reaching Grande Anse, where she probably has a meal waiting for her. This
+      ought to cost her ten sous,&mdash;especially if there be meat in her
+      ragoût: which represents a total expense of fifteen sous for eatables.
+      Then there is the additional cost of the cheap liquor, which she must mix
+      with her drinking-water, as it would be more than dangerous to swallow
+      pure cold water in her heated condition; two or three sous more. This
+      almost makes the franc. But such a hasty and really erroneous estimate
+      does not include expenses of lodging and clothing;&mdash;she may sleep on
+      the bare floor sometimes, and twenty francs a year may keep her in
+      clothes; but she must rent the floor and pay for the clothes out of that
+      franc. As a matter of fact she not only does all this upon her twenty sous
+      a day, but can even economize something which will enable her, when her
+      youth and force decline, to start in business for herself. And her economy
+      will not seem so wonderful when I assure you that thousands of men here&mdash;huge
+      men muscled like bulls and lions&mdash;live upon an average expenditure of
+      five sous a day. One sou of bread, two sous of manioc flour, one sou of
+      dried codfish, one sou of tafia: such is their meal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There are women carriers who earn more than a franc a day,&mdash;women
+      with a particular talent for selling, who are paid on commission&mdash;from
+      ten to fifteen per cent. These eventually make themselves independent in
+      many instances;&mdash;they continue to sell and bargain in person, but
+      hire a young girl to carry the goods.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      X.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... "<i>Ou 'lè màchanne!</i>" rings out a rich alto, resonant as the tone
+      of a gong, from behind the balisiers that shut in our garden. There are
+      two of them&mdash;no, three&mdash;Maiyotte, Chéchelle, and Rina. Maiyotte
+      and Chéchelle have just arrived from St. Pierre;&mdash;Rina 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... "<i>Bonjou', Maiyotte;&mdash;bonjou', Chéchelle! coument ou kallé,
+      Rina, chè!</i>"... Throw open the folding-doors to let the great trays
+      pass.... Now all three are unloaded by old Théréza and by young Adou;&mdash;all
+      the packs are on the floor, and the water-proof wrappings are being
+      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; <i>pelotes</i>
+      of thread, and tapes, and ribbons, and laces, and Madeira wine; cuffs, and
+      collars, and dancing-shoes, and tobacco <i>sachets</i>.... But what is in
+      that little flat bundle? Presents for your <i>guêpe</i>, if you have
+      one.... <i>Fesis-Maïa!</i>&mdash;the pretty foulards! Azure and yellow in
+      checkerings; orange and crimson in stripes; rose and scarlet in plaidings;
+      and bronze tints, and beetle-tints of black and green.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Chéchelle, what a <i>bloucoutoum</i> if you should ever let that tray
+      fall&mdash;<i>aïe yaïe yaïe!</i>" Here is a whole shop of crockeries and
+      porcelains;&mdash;plates, dishes, cups,&mdash;earthen-ware <i>canaris</i>
+      and <i>dobannes</i>, and gift-mugs and cups bearing creole girls' names,&mdash;all
+      names that end in <i>ine</i>. "Micheline," "Honorine," "Prospérine" [you
+      will never sell that, Chéchelle: there is not a Prospérine this side of
+      St. Pierre], "Azaline," "Leontine," "Zéphyrine," "Albertine,"
+      "Chrysaline," "Florine," "Coralline," "Alexandrine."...And knives and
+      forks, and cheap spoons, and tin coffee-pots, and tin rattles for babies,
+      and tin flutes for horrid little boys,&mdash;and pencils and note-paper
+      and envelopes!...
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... "Oh, Rina, what superb oranges!&mdash;fully twelve inches round&mdash;!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... "and these, which look something like our mandarins, what do you call
+      them?" "Zorange-macaque!" (monkey-oranges). And here are avocados&mdash;beauties!&mdash;guavas
+      of three different kinds,&mdash;tropical cherries (which have four seeds
+      instead of one),&mdash;tropical raspberries, whereof the entire eatable
+      portion comes off in one elastic piece, lined with something like white
+      silk.... Here are fresh nutmegs: the thick green case splits in equal
+      halves at a touch; and see the beautiful heart within,&mdash;deep dark
+      glossy red, all wrapped in a bright net-work of flat blood-colored fibre,
+      spun over it like branching veins.... This big heavy red-and-yellow thing
+      is a <i>pomme-cythère</i>: the smooth cuticle, bitter as gall, covers a
+      sweet juicy pulp, interwoven with something that seems like cotton
+      thread.... Here is a <i>pomme-cannelle</i>: inside its scaly covering is
+      the most delicious yellow custard conceivable, with little black seeds
+      floating in it. This larger <i>corossol</i> has almost as delicate an
+      interior, only the custard is white instead of yellow.... Here are <i>christophines</i>,&mdash;great
+      pear-shaped things, white and green, according to kind, with a peel
+      prickly and knobby as the skin of a horned toad; but they stew
+      exquisitely. And <i>mélongènes</i>, or egg-plants; and palmiste-pith, and
+      <i>chadèques</i>, and <i>pommes-d' Haïti</i>,&mdash;and roots that at
+      first sight look all alike, but they are not: there are <i>camanioc</i>,
+      and <i>couscous</i>, and <i>choux-caraïbes</i>, and <i>zignames</i>, and
+      various kinds of <i>patates</i> among them. Old Théréza's magic will
+      transform these shapeless muddy things, before evening, into pyramids of
+      smoking gold,&mdash;into odorous porridges that will look like messes of
+      molten amber and liquid pearl;&mdash;for Rina makes a good sale.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Chéchelle manages to dispose of a tin coffee-pot and a big canari....
+      And Maiyotte makes the best sale of all; for the sight of a funny <i>biscuit</i>
+      doll has made Ah-Manmzell cry and smile so at the same time that I should
+      feel unhappy for the rest of my life if I did not buy it for her. I know I
+      ought to get some change out of that six francs;&mdash;and Maiyotte, who
+      is black but comely as the tents of Kedar, as the curtains of Solomon,
+      seems to be aware of the fact.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Oh, Maiyotte, how plaintive that pretty sphinx face of yours, now turned
+      in profile;&mdash;as if you knew you looked beautiful thus,&mdash;with the
+      great gold circlets of your ears glittering and swaying as you bend! And
+      why are you so long, so long untying that poor little canvas purse?&mdash;fumbling
+      and fingering it?&mdash;is it because you want me to think of the weight
+      of that trait and the sixty kilometres you must walk, and the heat, and
+      the dust, and all the disappointments? Ah, you are cunning, Maiyotte! No,
+      I do not want the change!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      XI.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... Travelling together, the porteuses often walk in silence for hours at
+      a time;&mdash;this is when they feel weary. Sometimes they sing,&mdash;most
+      often when approaching their destination;&mdash;and when they chat, it is
+      in a key so high-pitched that their voices can be heard to a great
+      distance in this land of echoes and elevations. But she who travels alone
+      is rarely silent: she talks to herself or to inanimate things;&mdash;you
+      may hear her talking to the trees, to the flowers,&mdash;talking to the
+      high clouds and the far peaks of changing color,&mdash;talking to the
+      setting sun!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Over the miles of the morning she sees, perchance, the mighty Piton Gélé,
+      a cone of amethyst in the light; and she talks to it: "<i>Ou jojoll, oui!&mdash;moin
+      ni envie monté assou ou, pou moin ouè bien, bien!</i>" (Thou art pretty,
+      pretty, aye!&mdash;I would I might climb thee, to see far, far off!) By a
+      great grove of palms she passes;&mdash;so thickly mustered they are that
+      against the sun their intermingled heads form one unbroken awning of
+      green. Many rise straight as masts; some bend at beautiful angles, seeming
+      to intercross their long pale single limbs in a fantastic dance; others
+      curve like bows: there is one that undulates from foot to crest, like a
+      monster serpent poised upon its tail. She loves to look at that one&mdash;"<i>joli
+      pié-bois-là!</i>"&mdash;talks to it as she goes by,&mdash;bids it
+      good-day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Or, looking back as she ascends, she sees the huge blue dream of the sea,&mdash;the
+      eternal haunter, that ever becomes larger as she mounts the road; and she
+      talks to it: "<i>Mi lanmé ka gaudé moin!</i>" (There is the great sea
+      looking at me!) "<i>Màché toujou deïé moin, lanmè!</i>" (Walk after me, 0
+      Sea!)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Or she views the clouds of Pelée, spreading gray from the invisible
+      summit, to shadow against the sun; and she fears the rain, and she talks
+      to it: "<i>Pas mouillé moin, laplie-à! Quitté moin rivé avant mouillé
+      moin!</i>" (Do not wet me, 0 Rain! Let me get there before thou wettest
+      me!)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sometimes a dog barks at her, menaces her bare limbs; and she talks to the
+      dog: "<i>Chien-a, pas mòdé moin, chien&mdash;anh! Moin pa fé ou arien,
+      chien, pou ou mòdé moin!</i>" (Do not bite me, 0 Dog! Never did I anything
+      to thee that thou shouldst bite me, 0 Dog! Do not bite me, dear! Do not
+      bite me, <i>doudoux</i>!)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sometimes she meets a laden sister travelling the opposite way.... "<i>Coument
+      ou yé, chè?</i>" she cries. (How art thou, dear?) And the other makes
+      answer, "<i>Toutt douce, chè,&mdash;et ou?</i>" (All sweetly, dear,&mdash;and
+      thou?) And each passes on without pausing: they have no time!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... It is perhaps the last human voice she will hear for many a mile.
+      After that only the whisper of the grasses&mdash;<i>graïe-gras,
+      graïe-gras!</i>&mdash;and the gossip of the canes&mdash;<i>chououa,
+      chououa!</i>&mdash;and the husky speech of the <i>pois-Angole, ka babillé
+      conm yon vié fenme</i>,&mdash;that babbles like an old woman;&mdash;and
+      the murmur of the <i>filao</i>-trees, like the murmur of the River of the
+      Washerwomen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      XII.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... Sundown approaches: the light has turned a rich yellow;&mdash;long
+      black shapes lie across the curving road, shadows of balisier and palm,
+      shadows of tamarind and Indian-reed, shadows of ceiba and giant-fern. And
+      the porteuses are coming down through the lights and darknesses of the way
+      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,&mdash;as he stands
+      there naked to the waist!... His day's work is done; but he likes to wait
+      for the girls, though he is old now, and has sons as tall as himself. It
+      is a habit: some say that he had a daughter once,&mdash;a porteuse like
+      those coming, and used to wait for her thus at that very door-way until
+      one evening that she failed to appear, and never returned till he carried
+      her home in his arms dead,&mdash;stricken by a serpent in some mountain
+      path where there was none to aid.... The roads were not as good then as
+      now.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... Here they come, the girls&mdash;yellow, red, black. See the flash of
+      the yellow feet where they touch the light! And what impossible tint the
+      red limbs take in the changing glow!... Finotte, Pauline, Médelle,-all
+      together, as usual,&mdash;with Ti-Clê trotting behind, very tired....
+      Never mind, Ti-Clê!&mdash;you will outwalk your cousins when you are a few
+      years older,&mdash;pretty Ti-Clê.... Here come Cyrillia and Zabette, and
+      Fêfê and Dodotte and Fevriette. And behind them are coming the two <i>chabines</i>,&mdash;golden
+      girls: the twin-sisters who sell silks and threads and foulards; always
+      together, always wearing robes and kerchiefs of similar color,&mdash;so
+      that you can never tell which is Lorrainie and which Édoualise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And all smile to see Jean-Marie waiting for them, and to hear his deep
+      kind voice calling, "<i>Coument ou yé, chè? coument ou kallé?</i>" ...(How
+      art thou, dear?&mdash;how goes it with thee?)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And they mostly make answer, <i>"Toutt douce, chè,&mdash;et ou?</i>" (All
+      sweetly, dear,&mdash;and thou?) But some, over-weary, cry to him, "<i>Ah!
+      déchâgé moin vite, chè! moin lasse, lasse!</i>" (Unload me quickly, dear;
+      for I am very, very weary.) Then he takes off their burdens, and fetches
+      bread for them, and says foolish little things to make them laugh. And
+      they are pleased, and laugh, just like children, as they sit right down on
+      the road there to munch their dry bread.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... So often have I watched that scene!... Let me but close my eyes one
+      moment, and it will come back to me,&mdash;through all the thousand miles,&mdash;over
+      the graves of the days....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Again I see the mountain road in the yellow glow, banded with umbrages of
+      palm. Again I watch the light feet coming,&mdash;now in shadow, now in
+      sun,&mdash;soundlessly as falling leaves. Still I can hear the voices
+      crying, "<i>Ah! déchâgé moin vite, chè! moin lasse!</i>"&mdash;and see the
+      mighty arms outreach to take the burdens away. ... Only, there is a
+      change',&mdash;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,&mdash;sunset
+      that is ever larger and nearer to us than dawn, even as death than birth.
+      And the weird way appeareth a way whose dust is the dust of generations;&mdash;and
+      the Shape that waits is never Jean-Marie, but one darker; and stronger;&mdash;and
+      these are surely voices of tired souls. I who cry to Thee, thou dear black
+      Giver of the perpetual rest, "<i>Ah! déchâgé moin vite, chè! moin lasse!</i>"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0002" id="link2HCH0002">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER II. &mdash; LA GRANDE ANSE.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the village of Morne Rouge, I was frequently impressed by the singular
+      beauty of young girls from the north-east coast&mdash;all porteuses, who
+      passed almost daily on their way from Grande Anse to St. Pierre and back
+      again&mdash;a total trip of thirty-five miles.... I knew they were from
+      Grande Anse, because the village baker, at whose shop they were wont to
+      make brief halts, told me a good deal about them: he knew each one by
+      name. Whenever a remarkably attractive girl appeared, and I would inquire
+      whence she came, the invariable reply (generally preceded by that
+      peculiarly intoned French "Ah!" signifying, "Why, you certainly ought to
+      know!") was "Grand Anse."...<i>Ah! c'est de Grande Anse, ça!</i> And if
+      any commonplace, uninteresting type showed itself it would be signalled as
+      from somewhere else&mdash;Gros-Morne, Capote, Marigot, perhaps,&mdash;but
+      never from 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Are they all banana-colored at Grande Anse?" I asked,&mdash;"and all as
+      pretty as these?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I was never at Grande Anse," the little baker answered, "although I have
+      been forty years in Martinique; but I know there is a fine class of young
+      girls there: <i>il y a une belle jeunesse là, mon cher!</i>"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then I wondered why the youth of Grande Anse should be any finer than the
+      youth of other places; and it seemed to me that the baker's own statement
+      of his never having been there might possibly furnish a clew.... Out of
+      the thirty-five thousand inhabitants of St. Pierre and its suburbs, there
+      are at least twenty thousand who never have been there, and most probably
+      never will be. Few dwellers of the west coast visit the east coast: in
+      fact, except among the white creoles, who represent but a small percentage
+      of the total population, there are few persons to be met with who are
+      familiar with all parts of their native island. It is so mountainous, and
+      travelling is so wearisome, that populations may live and die in adjacent
+      valleys without climbing the intervening ranges to look at one another.
+      Grande Anse is only about twenty miles from the principal city; but it
+      requires some considerable inducement to make the journey on horseback;
+      and only the professional carrier-girls, plantation messengers, and
+      colored people of peculiarly tough constitution attempt it on foot. Except
+      for the transportation of sugar and rum, there is practically no
+      communication by sea between the west and the north-east coast&mdash;the
+      sea is too dangerous&mdash;and thus the populations on either side of the
+      island are more or less isolated from each other, besides being further
+      subdivided and segregated by the lesser mountain chains crossing their
+      respective territories.... In view of all these things I wondered whether
+      a community so secluded might not assume special characteristics within
+      two hundred years&mdash;might not develop into a population of some
+      yellow, red, or brown type, according to the predominant element of the
+      original race-crossing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      II.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I had long been anxious to see the city of the Porteuses, when the
+      opportunity afforded itself to make the trip with a friend obliged to go
+      thither on some important business;&mdash;I do not think I should have
+      ever felt resigned to undertake it alone. With a level road the distance
+      might be covered very quickly, but over mountains the journey is slow and
+      wearisome in the perpetual tropic heat. Whether made on horseback or in a
+      carriage, it takes between four and five hours to go from St. Pierre to
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Going to Grande Anse from the chief city, one can either hire a horse or
+      carriage at St. Pierre, or ascend to Morne Rouge by the public conveyance,
+      and there procure a vehicle or animal, which latter is the cheaper and
+      easier plan. About a mile beyond Morne Rouge, where the old Calebasse road
+      enters the public highway, you reach the highest point of the journey,&mdash;the
+      top of the enormous ridge dividing the north-east from the western coast,
+      and cutting off the trade-winds from sultry St. Pierre. By climbing the
+      little hill, with a tall stone cross on its summit, overlooking the
+      Champ-Flore just here, you can perceive the sea on both sides of the
+      island at once&mdash;<i>lapis lazuli</i> blue. From this elevation the
+      road descends by a hundred windings and lessening undulations to the
+      eastern shore. It sinks between mornes wooded to their summits,&mdash;bridges
+      a host of torrents and ravines,&mdash;passes gorges from whence colossal
+      trees tower far overhead, through heavy streaming of lianas, to mingle
+      their green crowns in magnificent gloom. Now and then you hear a low long
+      sweet sound like the deepest tone of a silver flute,&mdash;a bird-call,
+      the cry of the <i>siffleur-de-montagne</i>; then all is stillness. You are
+      not 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,&mdash;the fine brown girls bearing trays, the dark
+      laborers bowed under great burdens of bamboo-grass,&mdash;<i>Bonjou',
+      Missié!</i> Then you should reply, if the speaker be a woman and pretty,
+      "Good-day, dear" (<i>bonjou', chè</i>), or, "Good-day, my daughter" (<i>mafi</i>)
+      even if she be old; while if the passer-by be a man, your proper reply is,
+      "Good-day, my son" (<i>monfi</i>).... They are less often uttered now than
+      in other years, these kindly greetings, but they still form part of the
+      good and true creole manners.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0022" id="linkimage-0022">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%">
+      <img src="images/20-Creole.jpg" alt="A Creole Capre in Working Garb. "
+      width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      The feathery beauty of the tree-ferns shadowing each brook, the grace of
+      bamboo and arborescent grasses, seem to decrease as the road descends,&mdash;but
+      the palms grow taller. Often the way skirts a precipice dominating some
+      marvellous valley prospect; again it is walled in by high green banks or
+      shrubby slopes which cut off the view; and always it serpentines so that
+      you cannot see more than a few hundred feet of the white track before you.
+      About the fifteenth kilometre a glorious landscape opens to the right,
+      reaching to the Atlantic;&mdash;the road still winds very high; forests
+      are billowing hundreds of yards below it, and rising miles away up the
+      slopes of mornes, beyond which, here and there, loom strange shapes of
+      mountain,&mdash;shading off from misty green to violet and faintest gray.
+      And through one grand opening in this multicolored surging of hills and
+      peaks you perceive the gold-yellow of cane-fields touching the sky-colored
+      sea. Grande Anse lies somewhere in that direction.... At the eighteenth
+      kilometre you pass a cluster of little country cottages, a church, and one
+      or two large buildings framed in shade-trees&mdash;the hamlet of
+      Ajoupa-Bouillon. Yet a little farther, and you find you have left all the
+      woods behind you. But the road continues its bewildering curves around and
+      between low mornes covered with cane or cocoa plants: it dips down very
+      low, rises again, dips once more;&mdash;and you perceive the soil is
+      changing color; it is taking a red tint like that of the land of the
+      American cotton-belt. Then you pass the Rivière Falaise (marked <i>Filasse</i>
+      upon old maps),&mdash;with its shallow crystal torrent flowing through a
+      very deep and rocky channel,&mdash;and the Capote and other streams; and
+      over the yellow rim of cane-hills the long blue bar of the sea appears,
+      edged landward with a dazzling fringe of foam. The heights you have passed
+      are no longer verqant, but purplish or gray,&mdash;with Pelée's
+      cloud-wrapped enormity overtopping all. A very strong warm wind is blowing
+      upon you&mdash;the trade-wind, always driving the clouds west: this is the
+      sunny side of Martinique, where gray days and heavy rains are less
+      frequent. Once or twice more the sea disappears and reappears, always over
+      canes; and then, after passing a bridge and turning a last curve, the road
+      suddenly drops down to the shore and into the burgh of Grande Anse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      III.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Leaving Morne Rouge at about eight in the morning, my friend and I reached
+      Grande Anse at half-past eleven. Everything had been arranged to make us
+      comfortable, I was delighted with the airy corner room, commanding at once
+      a view of the main street and of the sea&mdash;a very high room, all open
+      to the trade-winds&mdash;which had been prepared to receive me. But after
+      a long carriage ride in the heat of a tropical June day, one always feels
+      the necessity of a little physical exercise. I lingered only a minute or
+      two in the house, and went out to look at the little town and its
+      surroundings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As seen from the high-road, the burgh of Grande Anse makes a long patch of
+      darkness between the green of the coast and the azure of the water: it is
+      almost wholly black and gray&mdash;suited to inspire an etching, High
+      slopes of cane and meadow rise behind it and on either side, undulating up
+      and away to purple and gray tips of mountain ranges. North and south, to
+      left and right, the land reaches out in two high promontories, mostly
+      green, and about a mile apart&mdash;the Pointe du Rochet and the Pointe de
+      Séguinau, or Croche-Mort, which latter name preserves the legend of an
+      insurgent slave, a man of color, shot dead upon the cliff. These
+      promontories form the semicircular bay of Grande Anse. All this Grande
+      Anse, or "Great Creek," valley is an immense basin of basalt; and narrow
+      as it is, no less than five streams water it, including the Riviere de la
+      Grande Anse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There are only three short streets in the town. The principal, or Grande
+      Rue, is simply a continuation of the national road; there is a narrower
+      one below, which used to be called the Rue de la Paille, because the
+      cottages lining it were formerly all thatched with cane straw; and there
+      is one above it, edging the cane-fields that billow away to the meeting of
+      morne and sky. There is nothing of architectural interest, and all is
+      sombre,&mdash;walls and roofs and pavements. But after you pass through
+      the city and follow the southern route that ascends the Séguinau
+      promontory, you can obtain some lovely landscape views 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,&mdash;not as
+      you see it from the other coast, but an enormous ghostly silhouette, with
+      steep sides and almost square summit, so pale as to seem transparent. Then
+      if you cross the promontory southward, the same road will lead you into
+      another very beautiful valley, watered by a broad rocky torrent,&mdash;the
+      Valley of the Rivière du Lorrain. This clear stream rushes to the sea
+      through a lofty opening in the hills; and looking westward between them,
+      you will be charmed by the exquisite vista of green shapes piling and
+      pushing up one behind another to reach a high blue ridge which forms the
+      background&mdash;a vision of tooth-shaped and fantastical mountains,&mdash;part
+      of the great central chain running south and north through nearly the
+      whole island. It is over those blue summits that the wonderful road called
+      <i>La Trace</i> winds between primeval forest walls.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the more you become familiar with the face of the little town itself,
+      the more you are impressed by the strange swarthy tone it preserves in all
+      this splendid expanse of radiant tinting. There are only two points of
+      visible color in it,&mdash;the church and hospital, built of stone, which
+      have been painted yellow: as a mass in the landscape, lying between the
+      dead-gold of the cane-clad hills and the delicious azure of the sea, it
+      remains almost black under the prodigious blaze of light. The foundations
+      of volcanic rock, three or four feet high, on which the frames of the
+      wooden dwellings rest, are black; and the sea-wind appears to have the
+      power of blackening all timber-work here through any coat of paint. Roofs
+      and façades look as if they had been long exposed to coal-smoke, although
+      probably no one in Grande Anse ever saw coal; and the pavements of pebbles
+      and cement are of a deep ash-color, full of micaceous scintillation, and
+      so hard as to feel disagreeable even to feet protected by good thick
+      shoes. By-and-by you notice walls of black stone, bridges of black stone,
+      and perceive that black forms an element of all the landscape about you.
+      On the roads leading from the town you note from time to time masses of
+      jagged rock or great bowlders protruding through the green of the slopes,
+      and dark as ink. These black surfaces also sparkle. The beds of all the
+      neighboring rivers are filled with dark gray stones; and many of these,
+      broken by those violent floods which dash rocks together,&mdash;deluging
+      the valleys, and strewing the soil of the bottom-lands (<i>fonds</i>) with
+      dead serpents,&mdash;display black cores. Bare crags projecting from the
+      green cliffs here and there are soot-colored, and the outlying rocks of
+      the coast offer a similar aspect. And the sand of the beach is funereally
+      black&mdash;looks almost like powdered charcoal; and as you walk over it,
+      sinking three or four inches every step, you are amazed by the multitude
+      and brilliancy of minute flashes in it, like a subtle silver
+      effervescence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This extraordinary sand contains ninety per cent of natural steel, and
+      efforts have been made to utilize it industrially. Some years ago a
+      company was formed, and a machine invented to separate the metal from the
+      pure sand,&mdash;an immense revolving magnet, which, being set in motion
+      under a sand shower, caught the ore upon it. When the covering thus formed
+      by the adhesion of the steel became of a certain thickness, the simple
+      interruption of an electric current precipitated the metal into
+      appropriate receptacles. Fine bars were made from this volcanic steel, and
+      excellent cutting tools manufactured from it: French metallurgists
+      pronounced the product of peculiar excellence, and nevertheless the
+      project of the company was abandoned. Political disorganization consequent
+      upon the establishment of universal suffrage frightened capitalists who
+      might have aided the undertaking under a better condition of affairs; and
+      the lack of large means, coupled with the cost of freight to remote
+      markets, ultimately baffled this creditable attempt to found a native
+      industry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sometimes after great storms bright brown sand is flung up from the
+      sea-depths; but the heavy black sand always reappears again to make the
+      universal color of the beach.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      IV.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Behind the roomy wooden house in which I occupied an apartment there was a
+      small garden-plot surrounded with a hedge strengthened by bamboo fencing,
+      and radiant with flowers of the <i>loseille-bois</i>,&mdash;the creole
+      name for a sort of begonia, whose closed bud exactly resembles a pink and
+      white dainty bivalve shell, and whose open blossom imitates the form of a
+      butterfly. Here and there, on the grass, were nets drying, and <i>nasses</i>&mdash;curious
+      fish-traps made of split bamboos interwoven and held in place with <i>mibi</i>
+      stalks (the mibi is a liana heavy and tough as copper wire); and
+      immediately behind the garden hedge appeared the white flashing of the
+      surf. The most vivid recollection connected with my trip to Grande Anse is
+      that of the first time that I went to the end of that garden, opened the
+      little bamboo gate, and found myself overlooking the beach&mdash;an
+      immense breadth of soot-black sand, with pale green patches and stripings
+      here and there upon it&mdash;refuse of cane thatch, decomposing rubbish
+      spread out by old tides. The one solitary boat owned in the community lay
+      there before me, high and dry. It was the hot period of the afternoon; the
+      town slept; there was no living creature in sight; and the booming of the
+      surf drowned all other sounds; the scent of the warm strong sea-wind
+      annihilated all other odors. Then, very suddenly, there came to me a
+      sensation absolutely weird, while watching the strange wild sea roaring
+      over its beach of black sand,&mdash;the sensation of seeing something
+      unreal, looking at something that had no more tangible existence than a
+      memory! Whether suggested by the first white vision of the surf over the
+      bamboo hedge,&mdash;or by those old green tide-lines on the desolation of
+      the black beach,&mdash;or by some tone of the speaking of the sea,&mdash;or
+      something indefinable in the living touch of the wind,&mdash;or by all of
+      these, I cannot say;&mdash;but slowly there became defined within me the
+      thought of having beheld just such a coast very long ago, I could not tell
+      where,&mdash;in those child-years of which the recollections gradually
+      become indistinguishable from dreams.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Soon as darkness comes upon Grande Anse the face of the clock in the
+      church-tower is always lighted: you see it suddenly burst into yellow glow
+      above the roofs and the cocoa-palms,&mdash;just like a pharos. In my room
+      I could not keep the candle lighted because of the sea-wind; but it never
+      occurred to me to close the shutters of the great broad windows,&mdash;sashless,
+      of course, like all the glassless windows of Martinique;&mdash;the breeze
+      was too delicious. It seemed full of something vitalizing that made one's
+      blood warmer, and rendered one full of contentment&mdash;full of eagerness
+      to believe life all sweetness. Likewise, I found it soporific&mdash;this
+      pure, dry, warm wind. And I thought there could be no greater delight in
+      existence than to lie down at night, with all the windows open,&mdash;and
+      the Cross of the South visible from my pillow,&mdash;and the sea-wind
+      pouring over the bed,&mdash;and the tumultuous whispering and muttering of
+      the surf in one's ears,&mdash;to dream of that strange sapphire sea
+      white-bursting over its beach of black sand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      V.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Considering that Grande Anse lies almost opposite to St. Pierre, at a
+      distance of less than twenty miles even by the complicated windings of the
+      national road, the differences existing in the natural conditions of both
+      places are remarkable enough. Nobody in St. Pierre sees the sun rise,
+      because the mountains immediately behind the city continue to shadow its
+      roofs long after the eastern coast is deluged with light and heat. At
+      Grande Anse, on the other hand, those tremendous sunsets which delight
+      west coast dwellers are not visible at all; and during the briefer West
+      Indian days Grande Anse is all wrapped in darkness as early as half-past
+      four,&mdash;or nearly an hour before the orange light has ceased to flare
+      up the streets of St. Pierre from the sea;&mdash;since the great mountain
+      range topped by Pelée cuts off all the slanting light from the east
+      valleys. And early as folks rise in St. Pierre, they rise still earlier at
+      Grande Anse&mdash;before the sun emerges from the rim of the Atlantic:
+      about half-past four, doors are being opened and coffee is ready. At St.
+      Pierre one can enjoy a sea bath till seven or half-past seven o'clock,
+      even during the time of the sun's earliest rising, because the shadow of
+      the mornes still reaches out upon the bay;&mdash;but bathers leave the
+      black beach of Grande Anse by six o'clock; for once the sun's face is up,
+      the light, levelled straight at the eyes, becomes blinding. Again, at St.
+      Pierre it rains almost every twenty-four hours for a brief while, during
+      at least the greater part of the year; at Grande Anse it rains more
+      moderately and less often. The atmosphere at St. Pierre is always more or
+      less impregnated with vapor, and usually an enervating heat prevails,
+      which makes exertion unpleasant; at Grande Anse the warm wind keeps the
+      skin comparatively dry, in spite of considerable exercise. It is quite
+      rare to see a heavy surf at St, Pierre, but it is much rarer not to see it
+      at Grande Anse.... A curious fact concerning custom is that few white
+      creoles care to bathe in front of the town, notwithstanding the superb
+      beach and magnificent surf, both so inviting to one accustomed to the deep
+      still water and rough pebbly shore of St, Pierre. The creoles really
+      prefer their rivers as bathing-places; and when willing to take a sea
+      bath, they will walk up and down hill for kilometres in order to reach
+      some river mouth, so as to wash off in the fresh-water afterwards. They
+      say that the effect of sea-salt upon the skin gives <i>bouton chauds</i>
+      (what we call "prickly heat"). Friends took me all the way to the mouth of
+      the Lorrain one morning that I might have the experience of such a double
+      bath; but after leaving the tepid sea, I must confess the plunge into the
+      river was something terrible&mdash;an icy shock which cured me of all
+      further desire for river baths. My willingness to let the sea-water dry
+      upon me was regarded as an eccentricity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      VI.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It may be said that on all this coast the ocean, perpetually moved by the
+      blowing of the trade-winds, never rests&mdash;never hushes its roar, Even
+      in the streets of Grande Anse, one must in breezy weather lift one's voice
+      above the natural pitch to be heard; and then the breakers come in lines
+      more than a mile long, between the Pointe du Rochet and the Pointe de
+      Séguinau,&mdash;every unfurling 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sugar is very difficult to ship; rum and tafia can be handled with less
+      risk. It is nothing less than exciting to watch a shipment of tafia from
+      Grande Anse to St. Pierre.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A little vessel approaches the coast with extreme caution, and anchors in
+      the bay some hundred yards beyond the breakers. She is what they call a <i>pirogue</i>
+      here, but not at all what is called a pirogue in the United States: she
+      has a long narrow hull, two masts, no deck; she has usually a crew of
+      five, and can carry thirty barrels of tafia. One of the pirogue men puts a
+      great shell to his lips and sounds a call, very mellow and deep, that can
+      be heard over the roar of the waves far up among the hills. The shell is
+      one of those great spiral shells, weighing seven or eight pounds&mdash;rolled
+      like a scroll, fluted and scalloped about the edges, and pink-pearled
+      inside,&mdash;such as are sold in America for mantle-piece ornaments,&mdash;the
+      shell of a <i>lambi</i>. Here you can often see the lambi crawling about
+      with its nacreous house upon its back: an enormous sea-snail with a
+      yellowish back and rose-colored belly, with big horns and eyes in the tip
+      of each horn&mdash;very pretty 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. <a href="#linknote-4"
+      name="linknoteref-4" id="linknoteref-4">[4]</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the sound of the blowing of the lambi-shell, wagons descend to the
+      beach, accompanied by young colored men running beside the mules. Each
+      wagon discharges a certain number of barrels of tafia, and simultaneously
+      the young men strip. They are slight, well built, and generally well
+      muscled. Each man takes a barrel of tafia, pushes it before him into the
+      surf, and then begins to swim to the pirogue,&mdash;impelling the barrel
+      before him. I have never seen a swimmer attempt to convey more than one
+      barrel at a time; but I am told there are experts who manage as many as
+      three barrels together,&mdash;pushing them forward in line, with the head
+      of one against the bottom of the next. It really requires much dexterity
+      and practice to handle even one barrel or cask. As the swimmer advances he
+      keeps close as possible to his charge,&mdash;so as to be able to push it
+      forward with all his force against each breaker in succession,&mdash;making
+      it dive through. If it once glide well out of his reach while he is in the
+      breakers, it becomes an enemy, and he must take care to keep out of its
+      way,&mdash;for if a wave throws it at him, or rolls it over him, he may be
+      seriously injured; but the expert seldom abandons a barrel. Under the most
+      favorable conditions, man and barrel will both disappear a score of times
+      before the clear swells are reached, after which the rest of the journey
+      is not difficult. Men lower ropes from the pirogue, the swimmer passes
+      them under his barrel, and it is hoisted aboard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... Wonderful surf-swimmers these men are;&mdash;they will go far out for
+      mere sport in the roughest kind of a sea, when the waves, abnormally
+      swollen by the peculiar conformation of the bay, come rolling in thirty
+      and forty feet high. Sometimes, with the swift impulse of ascending a
+      swell, the swimmer seems suspended in air as it passes beneath him, before
+      he plunges into the trough beyond. The best swimmer is a young capre who
+      cannot weigh more than a hundred and twenty pounds. Few of the Grande Anse
+      men are heavily built; they do not compare for stature and thew with those
+      longshoremen at St. Pierre who can be seen any busy afternoon on the
+      landing, lifting heavy barrels at almost the full reach of their swarthy
+      arms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... There is but one boat owned in the whole parish of Grande Anse,&mdash;a
+      fact due to the continual roughness of the sea. It has a little mast and
+      sail, and can hold only three men. When the water is somewhat less angry
+      than usual, a colored crew take it out for a fishing expedition. There is
+      always much interest in this event; a crowd gathers on the beach; and the
+      professional swimmers help to bring the little craft beyond the breakers.
+      When the boat returns after a disappearance of several hours, everybody
+      runs down from the village to meet it. Young colored women twist their
+      robes up about their hips, and wade out to welcome it: there is a display
+      of limbs of all colors on such occasions, which is not without grace, that
+      untaught grace which tempts an artistic pencil. Every <i>bonne</i> and
+      every house-keeper struggles for the first chance to buy the fish;&mdash;young
+      girls and children dance in the water for delight, all screaming, "<i>Rhalé
+      bois-canot!</i>"... Then as the boat is pulled through the surf and hauled
+      up on the sand, the pushing and screaming and crying become irritating and
+      deafening; the fishermen lose patience and say terrible things. But nobody
+      heeds them in the general clamoring and haggling and furious bidding for
+      the <i>pouèsson-ououge</i>, the <i>dorades</i>, the <i>volants</i>
+      (beautiful purple-backed flying-fish with silver bellies, and fins all
+      transparent, like the wings of dragon-flies). There is great bargaining
+      even for a young shark,&mdash;which makes very nice eating cooked after
+      the creole fashion. So seldom can the fishermen venture out that each trip
+      makes a memorable event for the village.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The St. Pierre fishermen very seldom approach the bay, but they do much
+      fishing a few miles beyond it, almost in front of the Pointe du Rochet and
+      the Roche à Bourgaut. There the best flying-fish are caught,&mdash;and
+      besides edible creatures, many queer things are often brought up by the
+      nets: monstrosities such as the <i>coffre</i>-fish, shaped almost like a
+      box, of which the lid is represented by an extraordinary conformation of
+      the jaws;&mdash;and the <i>barrique-de-vin</i> ("wine cask"), with round
+      boneless body, secreting in a curious vesicle a liquor precisely
+      resembling wine lees;&mdash;and the "needle-fish" (<i>aiguille de mer</i>),
+      less thick than a Faber lead-pencil, but more than twice as long;&mdash;and
+      huge cuttle-fish and prodigious eels. One conger secured off this coast
+      measured over twenty feet in length, and weighed two hundred and fifty
+      pounds&mdash;a veritable sea-serpent.... But even the fresh-water
+      inhabitants of Grande Anse are amazing. I have seen crawfish by actual
+      measurement fifty centimetres long, but these were not considered
+      remarkable. Many are said to much exceed two feet from the tail to the tip
+      of the claws and horns. They are of an iron-black color, and have
+      formidable pincers with serrated edges and tip-points inwardly converging,
+      which cannot crush like the weapons of a lobster, but which will cut the
+      flesh and make a small ugly wound. At first sight one not familiar with
+      the crawfish of these regions can hardly believe he is not viewing some
+      variety of gigantic lobster instead of the common fresh-water crawfish of
+      the east coast. When the head, tail, legs, and cuirass have all been
+      removed, after boiling, the curved trunk has still the size and weight of
+      a large pork sausage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These creatures are trapped by lantern-light. Pieces of manioc root tied
+      fast to large bowlders sunk in the river are the only bait;&mdash;the
+      crawfish will flock to eat it upon any dark night, and then they are
+      caught with scoop-nets and dropped into covered baskets.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      VII.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;notably a pair of twin-sisters,
+      and perhaps a dozen school-girls from eight to ten years of age&mdash;displayed
+      the same characteristics I have noted in the adult porteuses of Grande
+      Anse; but within the town itself this brighter element is in the minority.
+      The predominating race element of the whole commune is certainly colored
+      (Grande Anse is even memorable because of the revolt of its <i>hommes de
+      couleur</i> some fifty years ago);&mdash;but the colored population is not
+      concentrated in the town; it belongs rather to the valleys and the heights
+      surrounding the <i>chef-lieu</i>. Most of the porteuses are country girls,
+      and I found that even those living in the village are seldom visible on
+      the streets except when departing upon a trip or returning from one. An
+      artist wishing to study the type might, however, pass a day at the bridge
+      of the Rivière Falaise to advantage, as all the carrier-girls pass it at
+      certain hours of the morning and evening.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the best possible occasion on which to observe what my friend the
+      baker called <i>la belle jeunesse</i>, is a confirmation day,&mdash;when
+      the bishop drives to Grande Anse over the mountains, and all the
+      population turns out in holiday garb, and the bells are tapped like
+      tam-tams, and triumphal arches&mdash;most awry to behold!&mdash;span the
+      road-way, bearing in clumsiest lettering the welcome, <i>Vive Monseigneur</i>.
+      On that event, the long procession of young girls to be confirmed&mdash;all
+      in white robes, white veils, and white satin slippers&mdash;is a numerical
+      surprise. It is a moral surprise also,&mdash;to the stranger at least; for
+      it reveals the struggle of a poverty extraordinary with the self-imposed
+      obligations of a costly ceremonialism.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No white children ever appear in these processions: there are not half a
+      dozen white families in the whole urban population of about seven thousand
+      souls; and those send their sons and daughters to St. Pierre or Morne
+      Rouge for their religious training and education. But many of the colored
+      children look very charming in their costume of confirmation;&mdash;you
+      could not easily recognize one of them as the same little <i>bonne</i> who
+      brings your morning cup of coffee, or another as the daughter of a
+      plantation <i>commandeur</i> (overseer's assistant),&mdash;a brown slip of
+      a girl who will probably never wear shoes again. And many of those white
+      shoes and white veils have been obtained only by the hardest physical
+      labor and self-denial of poor parents and relatives: fathers, brothers,
+      and mothers working with cutlass and hoe in the snake-swarming
+      cane-fields;&mdash;sisters walking bare-footed every day to St. Pierre and
+      back to earn a few francs a month.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0023" id="linkimage-0023">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%">
+      <img src="images/21-Confirmation.jpg" alt="A Confirmation Procession. "
+      width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      ... While watching such a procession it seemed to me that I could discern
+      in the features and figures of the young confirmants something of a
+      prevailing type and tint, and I asked an old planter beside me if he
+      thought my impression correct.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Partly," he answered; "there is certainly a tendency towards an
+      attractive physical type here, but the tendency itself is less stable than
+      you imagine; it has been changed during the last twenty years within my
+      own recollection. In different parts of the island particular types appear
+      and disappear with a generation. There is a sort of race-fermentation
+      going on, which gives no fixed result of a positive sort for any great
+      length of time. It is true that certain elements continue to dominate in
+      certain communes, but the particular characteristics come and vanish in
+      the most mysterious way. As to color, I doubt if any correct
+      classification can be made, especially by a stranger. Your eyes give you
+      general ideas about a red type, a yellow type, a brown type; but to the
+      more experienced eyes of a creole, accustomed to live in the country
+      districts, every individual of mixed race appears to have a particular
+      color of his own. Take, for instance, the so-called capre type, which
+      furnishes the finest physical examples of all,&mdash;you, a stranger, are
+      at once impressed by the general red tint of the variety; but you do not
+      notice the differences of that tint in different persons, which are more
+      difficult to observe than shade-differences of yellow or brown. Now, to
+      me, every capre or capresse has an individual color; and I do not believe
+      that in all Martinique there are two half-breeds&mdash;not having had the
+      same father and mother&mdash;in whom the tint is precisely the same."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      VIII.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I thought Grande Anse the most sleepy place I had ever visited. I suspect
+      it is one of the sleepiest in the whole world. The wind, which tans even a
+      creole of St. Pierre to an unnatural brown within forty-eight hours of his
+      sojourn in the village, has also a peculiarly somnolent effect. The moment
+      one has nothing particular to do, and ventures to sit down idly with the
+      breeze in one's face, slumber comes; and everybody who can spare the time
+      takes a long nap in the afternoon, and little naps from hour to hour. For
+      all that, the heat of the east coast is not enervating, like that of St.
+      Pierre; one can take a great deal of exercise in the sun without feeling
+      much the worse. Hunting excursions, river fishing parties, surf-bathing,
+      and visits to neighboring plantations are the only amusements; but these
+      are enough to make existence very pleasant at Grande Anse. The most
+      interesting of my own experiences were those of a day passed by invitation
+      at one of the old colonial estates on the hills near the village.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is not easy to describe the charm of a creole interior, whether in the
+      city or the country. The cool shadowy court, with its wonderful plants and
+      fountain of sparkling mountain water, or the lawn, with its ancestral
+      trees,&mdash;the delicious welcome of the host, whose fraternal easy
+      manner immediately makes you feel at home,&mdash;the coming of the
+      children to greet you, each holding up a velvety brown cheek to be kissed,
+      after the old-time custom,&mdash;the romance of the unconventional chat,
+      over a cool drink, under the palms and the ceibas,&mdash;the visible
+      earnestness of all to please the guest, to inwrap him in a very atmosphere
+      of quiet happiness,&mdash;combine to make a memory which you will never
+      forget. And maybe you enjoy all this upon some exquisite site, some
+      volcanic summit, overlooking slopes of a hundred greens,&mdash;mountains
+      far winding in blue and pearly shadowing,&mdash;rivers singing seaward
+      behind curtains of arborescent reeds and bamboos,&mdash;and, perhaps,
+      Pelee, in the horizon, dreaming violet dreams under her foulard of vapors,&mdash;and,
+      encircling all, the still sweep of the ocean's azure bending to the verge
+      of day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... My host showed or explained to me all that he thought might interest a
+      stranger. He had brought to me a nest of the <i>carouge</i>, a bird which
+      suspends its home, hammock-fashion, under the leaves of the banana-tree;&mdash;showed
+      me a little fer-de-lance, freshly killed by one of his field hands; and a
+      field lizard (<i>zanoli tè</i> in creole), not green like the lizards
+      which haunt the roofs of St. Pierre, but of a beautiful brown bronze, with
+      shifting tints; and eggs of the <i>zanoli</i>, little soft oval things
+      from which the young lizards will perhaps run out alive as fast as you
+      open the shells; and the <i>matoutou falaise</i>, or spider of the cliffs,
+      of two varieties, red or almost black when adult, and bluish silvery tint
+      when young,&mdash;less in size than the tarantula, but equally hairy and
+      venomous; and the <i>crabe-c'est-ma-faute</i> (the "Through-my-fault
+      Crab"), having one very small and one very large claw, which latter it
+      carries folded up against its body, so as to have suggested the idea of a
+      penitent striking his bosom, and uttering the sacramental words of the
+      Catholic confession, "Through my fault, through my fault, through my most
+      grievous fault."... Indeed I cannot recollect one-half of the queer birds,
+      queer insects, queer reptiles, and queer plants to which my attention was
+      called. But speaking of plants, I was impressed by the profusion of the <i>zhèbe-moin-misé</i>&mdash;a
+      little sensitive-plant I had rarely observed on the west coast. On the
+      hill-sides of Grande Anse it prevails to such an extent as to give certain
+      slopes its own peculiar greenish-brown color. It has many-branching
+      leaves, only one inch and a half to two inches long, but which recall the
+      form of certain common ferns; these lie almost flat upon the ground. They
+      fold together upward from the central stem at the least touch, and the
+      plant thus makes itself almost imperceptible;&mdash;it seems to live so,
+      that you feel guilty of murder if you break off a leaf. It is called <i>Zhèbe-moin-misé</i>,
+      or "Plant-did-I-amuse-myself," because it is supposed to tell naughty
+      little children who play truant, or who delay much longer than is
+      necessary in delivering a message, whether they deserve a whipping or not.
+      The guilty child touches the plant, and asks, "<i>Ess moin amisé moin?</i>"
+      (Did I amuse myself?); and if the plant instantly shuts its leaves up,
+      that means, "Yes, you did." Of course the leaves invariably close; but I
+      suspect they invariably tell the truth, for all colored children, in
+      Grande Anse at least, are much more inclined to play than work.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The kind old planter likewise conducted me over the estate. He took me
+      through the sugar-mill, and showed me, among other more recent inventions,
+      some machinery devised nearly two centuries ago by the ingenious and
+      terrible Père Labat, and still quite serviceable, in spite of all modern
+      improvements in sugar-making;&mdash;took me through the <i>rhummerie</i>,
+      or distillery, and made me taste some colorless rum which had the aroma
+      and something of the taste of the most delicate gin;&mdash;and finally
+      took me into the <i>cases-à-vent</i>, or "wind-houses,"&mdash;built as
+      places of refuge during hurricanes. Hurricanes are rare, and more rare in
+      this century by far than during the previous one; but this part of the
+      island is particularly exposed to such visitations, and almost every old
+      plantation used to have one or two cases-à-vent. They were always built in
+      a hollow, either natural or artificial, below the land-level,&mdash;with
+      walls of rock several feet thick, and very strong doors, but no windows.
+      My host told me about the experiences of his family in some case-à-vent
+      during a hurricane which he recollected. It was found necessary to secure
+      the door within by means of strong ropes; and the mere task of holding it
+      taxed the strength of a dozen powerful men: it would bulge in under the
+      pressure of the awful wind,&mdash;swelling like the side of a barrel; and
+      had not its planks been made of a wood tough as hickory, they would have
+      been blown into splinters.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I had long desired to examine a plantation drum, and see it played upon
+      under conditions more favorable than the excitement of a holiday <i>caleinda</i>
+      in the villages, where the amusement is too often terminated by a <i>voum</i>
+      (general row) or a <i>goumage</i> (a serious fight);&mdash;and when I
+      mentioned this wish to the planter he at once sent word to his commandeur,
+      the best drummer in the settlement, to come up to the house and bring his
+      instrument with him. I was thus enabled to make the observations
+      necessary, and also to take an instantaneous photograph of the drummer in
+      the very act of playing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The old African dances, the <i>caleinda</i> and the <i>bélé</i> (which
+      latter is accompanied by chanted improvisation) are danced on Sundays to
+      the sound of the drum on almost every plantation in the island. The drum,
+      indeed, is an instrument to which the country-folk are so much attached
+      that they swear by it,&mdash;<i>Tambou!</i> being the oath uttered upon
+      all ordinary occasions of surprise or vexation. But the instrument is
+      quite as often called <i>ka</i>, because made out of a quarter-barrel, or
+      <i>quart</i>,&mdash;in the patois "ka." Both ends of the barrel having
+      been removed, a wet hide, well wrapped about a couple of hoops, is driven
+      on, and in drying the stretched skin obtains still further tension. The
+      other end of the ka is always left open. Across the face of the skin a
+      string is tightly stretched, to which are attached, at intervals of about
+      an inch apart, very short thin fragments of bamboo or cut feather stems.
+      These lend a certain vibration to the tones.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the time of Père Labat the negro drums had a somewhat different form.
+      There were then two kinds of drums&mdash;a big tamtam and a little one,
+      which used to be played together. Both consisted of skins tightly
+      stretched over one end of a wooden cylinder, or a section of hollow tree
+      trunk. The larger was from three to four feet long with a diameter of
+      fifteen to sixteen inches; the smaller, called <i>baboula</i>, <a
+      href="#linknote-5" name="linknoteref-5" id="linknoteref-5">[5]</a> was of
+      the same length, but only eight or nine inches in diameter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Père Labat also speaks, in his West Indian travels, of another musical
+      instrument, very popular among the Martinique slaves of his time&mdash;"a
+      sort of guitar" made out of a half-calabash or <i>couï</i>, covered with
+      some kind of skin. It had four strings of silk or catgut, and a very long
+      neck. The tradition or this African instrument is said to survive in the
+      modern "<i>banza</i>" (<i>banza nèg Guinée</i>).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The skilful player (<i>bel tambouyé</i>) straddles his ka stripped to the
+      waist, and plays upon it with the finger-tips of both hands
+      simultaneously,&mdash;taking care that the vibrating string occupies a
+      horizontal position. Occasionally the heel of the naked foot is pressed
+      lightly or vigorously against the skin, so as to produce changes of tone.
+      This is called "giving heel" to the drum&mdash;<i>baill y talon</i>.
+      Meanwhile a boy keeps striking the drum at the uncovered end with a stick,
+      so as to produce a dry clattering accompaniment. The sound of the drum
+      itself, well played, has a wild power that makes and masters all the
+      excitement of the dance&mdash;a complicated double roll, with a peculiar
+      billowy rising and falling. The creole onomatopes, <i>b'lip-b'lib-b'lib-b'lip</i>,
+      do not fully render the roll;&mdash;for each <i>b'lip</i> or <i>b'lib</i>
+      stands really for a series of sounds too rapidly filliped out to be
+      imitated by articulate speech. The tapping of a ka can be heard at
+      surprising distances; and experienced players often play for hours at a
+      time without exhibiting wearisomeness, or in the least diminishing the
+      volume of sound produced.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It seems there are many ways of playing&mdash;different measures familiar
+      to all these colored people, but not easily distinguished by anybody else;
+      and there are great matches sometimes between celebrated <i>tambouyé</i>.
+      The same <i>commandè</i> whose portrait I took while playing told me that
+      he once figured in a contest of this kind, his rival being a drummer from
+      the neighboring burgh of Marigot.... "<i>Aïe, aïe, yaïe! mon chè!&mdash;y
+      fai tambou-à pàlé!</i>" said the commandè, describing the execution of his
+      antagonist;&mdash;"my dear, he just made that drum talk! I thought I was
+      going to be beaten for sure; I was trembling all the time&mdash;<i>aïe,
+      aïe, yaïe!</i> Then he got off that ka, mounted it; I thought a moment;
+      then I struck up the 'River-of-the-Lizard,'&mdash;<i>mais, mon chè, yon
+      larivie-Léza toutt pi!</i>&mdash;such a River-of-the-Lizard, ah! just
+      perfectly pure! I gave heel to that ka; I worried that ka;&mdash;I made it
+      mad&mdash;I made it crazy;&mdash;I made it talk;&mdash;I won!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      During some dances a sort of chant accompanies the music&mdash;a long
+      sonorous cry, uttered at intervals of seven eight seconds, which perfectly
+      times a particular measure in the drum roll. It may be the burden of a
+      song: a mere improvisation:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "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.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      ... The <i>crieur</i>, or chanter, is also the leader of the dance. The
+      caleinda is danced by men only, all stripped to the waist, and twirling
+      heavy sticks in a mock fight, Sometimes, however&mdash;especially at the
+      great village gatherings, when the blood becomes oyerheated by tafia&mdash;the
+      mock fight may become a real one; and then even cutlasses are brought into
+      play.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But in the old days, those improvisations which gave one form of dance its
+      name, <i>bélé</i> (from the French <i>bel air</i>), were often remarkable
+      rhymeless poems, uttered with natural simple emotion, and full of
+      picturesque imagery. I cite part of one, taken down from the dictation of
+      a common field-hand near Fort-de-France. I offer a few lines of the creole
+      first, to indicate the form of the improvisation. There is a dancing pause
+      at the end of each line during the performance:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     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!"
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      The best part of the composition, which is quite long, might be rendered
+      as follows:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     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, <i>la Garde Royale!</i>"
+     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;&mdash;
+     When I see the Garde Royale
+     Coming to arrest my sweet heart,
+     I fall down at the feet of the Garde Royale,&mdash;
+     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.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0024" id="linkimage-0024">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%">
+      <img src="images/22-Playing_the_Ka.jpg" alt="Manner of Playing the Ka "
+      width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      The stars were all out when I bid my host good-bye;&mdash;he sent his lack
+      servant along with me to carry a lantern and keep a sharp watch for snakes
+      along the mountain road.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      IX.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... Assuredly the city of St. Pierre never could have seemed more quaintly
+      beautiful than as I saw it on the evening of my return, while the shadows
+      were reaching their longest, and sea and sky were turning lilac.
+      Palm-heads were trembling and masts swaying slowly against an enormous
+      orange sunset,&mdash;yet the beauty of the sight did not touch me! The
+      deep level and luminous flood of the bay seemed to me for the first time a
+      dead water;&mdash;I found myself wondering whether it could form a part of
+      that living tide by which I had been dwelling, full of foam-lightnings and
+      perpetual thunder. I wondered whether the air about me&mdash;heavy and hot
+      and full of faint leafy smells&mdash;could ever have been touched by the
+      vast pure sweet breath of the wind from the sunrising. And I became
+      conscious of a profound, unreasoning, absurd regret for the somnolent
+      little black village of that bare east coast,&mdash;where there are no
+      woods, no ships, no sunsets,...only the ocean roaring forever over its
+      beach of black sand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0003" id="link2HCH0003">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER III. &mdash; UN REVENANT
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He who first gave to Martinique its poetical name, <i>Le Pays des
+      Revenants</i>, thought of his wonderful island only as "The Country of
+      Comers-back," where Nature's unspeakable spell bewitches wandering souls
+      like the caress of a Circe,&mdash;never as the Land of Ghosts. Yet either
+      translation of the name holds equal truth: a land of ghosts it is, this
+      marvellous Martinique! Almost every plantation has its familiar spirits,&mdash;its
+      phantoms: some may be unknown beyond the particular district in which
+      fancy first gave them being;&mdash;but some belong to popular song and
+      story,&mdash;to the imaginative life of the whole people. Almost every
+      promontory and peak, every village and valley along the coast, has its
+      special folk-lore, its particular tradition. The legend of Thomasseau of
+      Perinnelle, whose body was taken out of the coffin and carried away by the
+      devil through a certain window of the plantation-house, which cannot be
+      closed up by human power;&mdash;the Demarche legend of the spectral
+      horseman who rides up the hill on bright hot days to seek a friend buried
+      more than a hundred years ago;&mdash;the legend of the <i>Habitation
+      Dillon</i>, whose proprietor was one night mysteriously summoned from a
+      banquet to disappear forever;&mdash;the legend of l'Abbé Piot, who cursed
+      the sea with the curse of perpetual unrest;&mdash;the legend of 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 <i>anse</i> before the vessel's
+      approach, recalls them to a creole companion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And new legends are even now being made; for in this remote colony, to
+      which white immigration has long ceased,&mdash;a country so mountainous
+      that people are born (and buried) in the same valley without ever seeing
+      towns but a few hours' journey beyond their native hills, and that
+      distinct racial types are forming within three leagues of each other,&mdash;the
+      memory of an event or of a name which has had influence enough to send one
+      echo through all the forty-nine miles of peaks and craters is apt to
+      create legend within a single generation. Nowhere in the world, perhaps,
+      is popular imagination more oddly 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was first incited to make an effort in this direction by hearing the
+      remarkable story of "Missié Bon." No legendary expression is more
+      wide-spread throughout the country than <i>temps coudvent Missié Bon</i>
+      (in the time of the big wind of Monsieur Bon). Whenever a hurricane
+      threatens, you will hear colored folks expressing the hope that it may not
+      be like the <i>coudvent Missié Bon</i>. And some years ago, in all the
+      creole police-courts, old colored witnesses who could not tell their age
+      would invariably try to give the magistrate some idea of it by referring
+      to the never-to-be-forgotten <i>temps coudvent Missié Bon</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... "<i>Temps coudvent Missié Bon, moin té ka tété encò</i>" (I was a
+      child at the breast in the time of the big wind of Missié Bon); or "<i>Temps
+      coudvent Missié Bon, moin té toutt piti manmaill,&mdash;moin ka souvini y
+      pouend caiie manman moin pòté allé.</i>" (I was a very, very little child
+      in the time of the big wind of Missié Bon,&mdash;but I remember it blew
+      mamma's cabin away.) The magistrates of those days knew the exact date of
+      the <i>coudvent</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But all could learn about Missié Bon among the country-folk was this:
+      Missié Bon used to be a great slave-owner and a cruel master. He was a
+      very wicked man. And he treated his slaves so terribly that at last the
+      Good-God (<i>Bon-Dié</i>) one day sent a great wind which blew away Missié
+      Bon and Missié Bon's house and everybody in it, so that nothing was ever
+      heard of them again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And now" he continued "I can tell you the real history of 'Missié Bon'&mdash;for
+      he was an old friend of my grandfather; and my grandfather related it to
+      me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It may have been in 1809&mdash;I can give you the exact date by reference
+      to some old papers if necessary&mdash;Monsieur Bon was Collector of
+      Customs at St. Pierre: and my grandfather was doing business in the Grande
+      Rue. A certain captain, whose vessel had been consigned to my grandfather,
+      invited him and the collector to breakfast in his cabin. My grandfather
+      was so busy he could not accept the invitation;&mdash;but Monsieur Bon
+      went with the captain on board the bark."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... "It was a morning like this; the sea was just as blue and the sky as
+      clear. All of a sudden, while they were at breakfast, the sea began to
+      break heavily without a wind, and clouds came up, with every sign of a
+      hurricane. The captain was obliged to sacrifice his anchor; there was no
+      time to land his guest: he hoisted a little jib and top-gallant, and made
+      for open water, taking Monsieur Bon with him. Then the hurricane came; and
+      from that day to this nothing has ever been heard of the bark nor of the
+      captain nor of Monsieur Bon." <a href="#linknote-6" name="linknoteref-6"
+      id="linknoteref-6">[6]</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But did Monsieur Bon ever do anything to deserve the reputation he has
+      left among the people?" I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "<i>Ah! le pauvre vieux corps</i>!... A kind old soul who never uttered a
+      harsh word to human being;&mdash;timid,&mdash;good-natured,&mdash;old-fashioned
+      even for those old-fashioned days.... Never had a slave in his life!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      II.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The legend of "Missié Bon" had prepared me to hear without surprise the
+      details of a still more singular tradition,&mdash;that of Father Labat....
+      I was returning from a mountain ramble with my guide, by way of the
+      Ajoupa-Bouillon road;&mdash;the sun had gone down; there remained only a
+      blood-red glow in the west, against which the silhouettes of the hills
+      took a velvety blackness indescribably soft; the stars were beginning to
+      twinkle out everywhere through the violet. Suddenly I noticed on the flank
+      of a neighboring morne&mdash;which I remembered by day as an apparently
+      uninhabitable wilderness of bamboos, tree-ferns, and balisiers&mdash;a
+      swiftly moving point of yellow light. My guide had observed it
+      simultaneously;&mdash;he crossed himself, and exclaimed:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "<i>Moin ka couè c'est fanal Pè Labatt!</i>" (I believe it is the lantern
+      of Perè Labat.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Does he live there?" I innocently inquired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Live there?&mdash;why he has been dead hundreds of years!... <i>Ouill!</i>
+      you never heard of Pè Labatt?"...
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not the same who wrote a book about Martinique?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes,&mdash;himself.... They say he comes back at night. Ask mother about
+      him;&mdash;she knows."...
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ...I questioned old Théréza as soon as we reached home; and she told me
+      all she knew about "Pè Labatt." I found that the father had left a
+      reputation far more wide-spread than the recollection of "Missié Bon,"&mdash;that
+      his memory had created, in fact, the most impressive legend in all
+      Martinique folk-lore.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Whether you really saw Pè Labatt's lantern," said old Thereza, "I do not
+      know;&mdash;there are a great many queer lights to be seen after nightfall
+      among these mornes. Some are zombi-fires; and some are lanterns carried by
+      living men; and some are lights burning in ajoupas so high up that you can
+      only see a gleam coming through the trees now and then. It is not
+      everybody who sees the lantern of Pè Labatt; and it is not good-luck to
+      see it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Pè Labatt was a priest who lived here hundreds of years ago; and he wrote
+      a book about what he saw. He was the first person to introduce slavery
+      into Martinique; and it is thought that is why he comes back at night. It
+      is his penance for having established slavery here.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "They used to say, before 1848, that when slavery should be abolished, Pè
+      Labatt's light would not be seen any more. But I can remember very well
+      when slavery was abolished; and I saw the light many a time after. It used
+      to move up the Morne d'Orange every clear night;&mdash;I could see it very
+      well from my window when I lived in St. Pierre. You knew it was Pè Labatt,
+      because the light passed up places where no man could walk. But since the
+      statue of Notre Dame de la Garde was placed on the Morne d'Orange, people
+      tell me that the light is not seen there any more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But it is seen elsewhere; and it is not good-luck to see it. Everybody is
+      afraid of seeing it.... And mothers tell their children, when the little
+      ones are naughty: '<i>Mi! moin ké fai Pè Labatt vini pouend ou,&mdash;oui!</i>'
+      (I will make Pè Labatt come and take you away.)"....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What old Théréza stated regarding the establishment of slavery in
+      Martinique by Père Labat, I knew required no investigation,&mdash;inasmuch
+      as slavery was a flourishing institution in the time of Père Dutertre,
+      another Dominican missionary and historian, who wrote his book,&mdash;a
+      queer book in old French, <a href="#linknote-7" name="linknoteref-7"
+      id="linknoteref-7">[7]</a> &mdash;before Labat was born.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But it did not take me long to find out that such was the general belief
+      about Père Labat's sin and penance, and to ascertain that his name is
+      indeed used to frighten naughty children. <i>Eh! ti manmaille-là, moin ké
+      fai Pè Labatt vini pouend ou!</i>&mdash;is an exclamation often heard in
+      the vicinity of ajoupas just about the hour when all found a good little
+      children ought to be in bed and asleep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... The first variation of the legend I heard was on a plantation in the
+      neighborhood of Ajoupa-Bouillon. There I was informed that Père Labat had
+      come to his death by the bite of a snake,&mdash;the hugest snake that ever
+      was seen in Martinique. 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, "<i>C'est pè toutt
+      sépent qui té ka mòdé moin</i>" (It is the Father of all Snakes that has
+      bitten me); and he vowed that he would come back to destroy the brood, and
+      would haunt the island until there should be not one snake left. And the
+      light that moves about the peaks at night is the lantern of Père Labat
+      still hunting for snakes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "<i>Ou pa pè suive ti limié-là piess!</i>" continued my informant. "You
+      cannot follow that little light at all;&mdash;when you first see it, it is
+      perhaps only a kilometre away; the next moment it is two, three, or four
+      kilometres away."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was also told that the light is frequently seen near Grande Anse, on the
+      other side of the island,&mdash;and on the heights of La Caravelle, the
+      long fantastic promontory that reaches three leagues into the sea south of
+      the harbor of La Trinité. <a href="#linknote-8" name="linknoteref-8"
+      id="linknoteref-8">[8]</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And on my return to St. Pierre I found a totally different version of the
+      legend;&mdash;my informant being one Manm-Robert, a kind old soul who kept
+      a little <i>boutique-lapacotte</i> (a little booth where cooked food is
+      sold) near the precipitous Street of the Friendships.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... "<i>Ah! Pè Labatt, oui!</i>" she exclaimed, at my first question,&mdash;"Pè
+      Labatt was a good priest who lived here very long ago. And they did him a
+      great wrong here;&mdash;they gave him a wicked <i>coup d'langue</i>
+      (tongue wound); and the hurt given by an evil tongue is worse than a
+      serpent's bite. They lied about him; they slandered him until they got him
+      sent away from the country. But before the Government 'embarked' him, when
+      he got to that quay, he took off his shoe and he shook the dust of his
+      shoe upon that quay, and he said: 'I curse you, 0 Martinique!&mdash;I
+      curse you! There will be food for nothing, and your people will not even
+      be able to buy it! There will be clothing material for nothing, and your
+      people will not be able to get so much as one dress! And the children will
+      beat their mothers!... You banish me;&mdash;but I will come back again.'"
+      <a href="#linknote-9" name="linknoteref-9" id="linknoteref-9">[9]</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And then what happened, Manm-Robert?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "<i>Eh! fouinq! chè</i>, all that Pè Labatt said has come true. There is
+      food for almost nothing, and people are starving here in St. Pierre; there
+      is clothing for almost nothing, and poor girls cannot earn enough to buy a
+      dress. The pretty printed calicoes (<i>indiennes</i>) that used to be two
+      francs and a half the metre, now sell at twelve sous the metre; but nobody
+      has any money. And if you read our papers,&mdash;<i>Les Colonies, La
+      Defense Coloniale</i>,&mdash;you will find that there are sons wicked
+      enough to beat their mothers: <i>oui! yche ka batt manman!</i> It is the
+      malediction of Pè Labatt."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was all that Manm-Robert could tell me. Who had related the story to
+      her? Her mother. Whence had her mother obtained it? From her
+      grandmother.... Subsequently I found many persons to confirm the tradition
+      of the curse,&mdash;precisely as Manm-Robert had related it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Only a brief while after this little interview I was invited to pass an
+      afternoon at the home of a gentleman residing upon the Morne d' Orange,&mdash;the
+      locality supposed to be especially haunted by Père Labat. The house of
+      Monsieur M&mdash; stands on the side of the hill, fully five hundred feet
+      up, and in a grove of trees: an antiquated dwelling, with foundations
+      massive as the walls of a fortress, and huge broad balconies of stone.
+      From one of these balconies there is a view of the city, the harbor and
+      Pelée, which I believe even those who have seen Naples would confess to be
+      one of the fairest sights in the world.... Towards evening I obtained a
+      chance to ask my kind host some questions about the legend of his
+      neighborhood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... "Ever since I was a child," observed Monsieur M&mdash;, "I heard it
+      said that Père Labat haunted this mountain, and I often saw what was
+      alleged to be his light. It looked very much like a lantern swinging in
+      the hand of some one climbing the hill. A queer fact was that it used to
+      come from the direction of Carbet, skirt the Morne d'Orange a few hundred
+      feet above the road, and then move up the face of what seemed a sheer
+      precipice. Of course somebody carried that light,&mdash;probably a negro;
+      and perhaps the cliff is not so inaccessible as it looks: still, we could
+      never discover who the individual was, nor could we imagine what his
+      purpose might have been.... But the light has not been seen here now for
+      years."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      III.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And who was Père Labat,&mdash;this strange priest whose memory, weirdly
+      disguised by legend, thus lingers in the oral literature of the colored
+      people? Various encyclopedias answer the question, but far less fully and
+      less interestingly than Dr. Rufz, the Martinique historian, whose article
+      upon him in the <i>Etudes Statistiques et Historiques</i> has that charm
+      of sympathetic comprehension by which a master-biographer sometimes
+      reveals himself a sort of necromancer,&mdash;making us feel a vanished
+      personality with the power of a living presence. Yet even the colorless
+      data given by dictionaries of biography should suffice to convince most
+      readers that Jean-Baptiste Labat must be ranked among the extraordinary
+      men of his century.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nearly two hundred years ago&mdash;24th August, 1693&mdash;a traveller
+      wearing the white habit of the Dominican order, partly covered by a black
+      camlet overcoat, entered the city of Rochelle. He was very tall and
+      robust, with one of those faces, at once grave and keen, which bespeak
+      great energy and quick discernment. This was the Père Labat, a native of
+      Paris, then in his thirtieth year. Half priest, half layman, one might
+      have been tempted to surmise from his attire; and such a judgement would
+      not have been unjust. Labat's character was too large for his calling,&mdash;expanded
+      naturally beyond the fixed limits of the ecclesiastical life; and
+      throughout the whole active part of his strange career we find in him this
+      dual character of layman and monk. He had come to Rochelle to take passage
+      for Martinique. Previously he had been professor of philosophy and
+      mathematics at Nancy. While watching a sunset one evening from the window
+      of his study, some one placed in his hands a circular issued by the
+      Dominicans of the French West Indies, calling for volunteers. Death had
+      made many wide gaps in their ranks; and various misfortunes had reduced
+      their finances to such an extent that ruin threatened all their West
+      Indian establishments. Labat, with the quick decision of a mind suffering
+      from the restraints of a life too narrow for it, had at once resigned his
+      professorship, and engaged himself for the missions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... In those days, communication with the West Indies was slow, irregular,
+      and difficult. Labat had to wait at Rochelle six whole months for a ship.
+      In the convent at Rochelle, where he stayed, there were others waiting for
+      the same chance,&mdash;including several Jesuits and Capuchins as well as
+      Dominicans. These unanimously elected him their leader,&mdash;a
+      significant fact considering the mutual jealousy of the various religious
+      orders of that period, There was something in the energy and frankness of
+      Labat's character which seems to have naturally gained him the confidence
+      and ready submission of others.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... They sailed in November; and Labat still found himself in the position
+      of a chief on board. His account of the voyage is amusing;&mdash;in almost
+      everything except practical navigation, he would appear to have regulated
+      the life of passengers and crew. He taught the captain mathematics; and
+      invented amusements of all kinds to relieve the monotony of a two months'
+      voyage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... As the ship approached Martinique from the north, Labat first beheld
+      the very grimmest part of the lofty coast,&mdash;the region of Macouba;
+      and the impression it made upon him was not pleasing. "The island," he
+      writes, "appeared to me all one frightful mountain, broken everywhere by
+      precipices: nothing about it pleased me except the verdure which
+      everywhere met the eye, and which seemed to me both novel and agreeable,
+      considering the time of the year."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Almost immediately after his arrival he was sent by the Superior of the
+      convent to Macouba, for acclimation; Macouba then being considered the
+      healthiest part of the island. Whoever makes the journey on horseback
+      thither from St. Pierre to-day can testify to the exactitude of Labat's
+      delightful narrative of the trip. So little has that part of the island
+      changed since two centuries that scarcely a line of the father's
+      description would need correction to adopt it bodily for an account of a
+      ride to Macouba in 1889.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At Macouba everybody welcomes him, pets him,&mdash;finally becomes
+      enthusiastic about him. He fascinates and dominates the little community
+      almost at first sight. "There is an inexpressible charm," says Rufz,&mdash;commenting
+      upon this portion of Labat's narrative,&mdash;"in the novelty of relations
+      between men: no one has yet been offended, no envy has yet been excited;&mdash;it
+      is scarcely possible even to guess whence that ill-will you must sooner or
+      later provoke is going to come from;&mdash;there are no rivals;&mdash;there
+      are no enemies. You are everybody's friend; and many are hoping you will
+      continue to be only theirs."... Labat knew how to take legitimate
+      advantage of this good-will;&mdash;he persuaded his admirers to rebuild
+      the church at Macouba, according to designs made by himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At Macouba, however, he was not permitted to sojourn as long as the good
+      people of the little burgh would have deemed even reasonable: he had shown
+      certain aptitudes which made his presence more than desirable at
+      Saint-Jacques, the great plantation of the order on the Capesterre, or
+      Windward coast. It was in debt for 700,000 pounds of sugar,&mdash;an
+      appalling condition in those days,&mdash;and seemed doomed to get more
+      heavily in debt every successive season. Labat inspected everything, and
+      set to work for the plantation, not merely as general director, but as
+      engineer, architect, machinist, inventor. He did really wonderful things.
+      You can see them for yourself if you ever go to Martinique; for the old
+      Dominican plantation-now Government property, and leased at an annual rent
+      of 50,000 francs&mdash;remains one of the most valuable in the colonies
+      because of Labat's work upon it. The watercourses directed by him still
+      excite the admiration of modern professors of hydraulics; the mills he
+      built or invented are still good;&mdash;the treatise he wrote on
+      sugar-making remained for a hundred and fifty years the best of its kind,
+      and the manual of French planters. In less than two years Labat had not
+      only rescued the plantation from bankruptcy, but had made it rich; and if
+      the monks deemed him veritably inspired, the test of time throws no
+      ridicule on their astonishment at the capacities of the man.... Even now
+      the advice he formulated as far back as 1720&mdash;about secondary
+      cultures,&mdash;about manufactories to establish,&mdash;about imports,
+      exports, and special commercial methods&mdash;has lost little of its
+      value.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such talents could not fail to excite wide-spread admiration,&mdash;nor to
+      win for him a reputation in the colonies beyond precedent. He was wanted
+      everywhere.... Auger, the Governor of Guadeloupe, sent for him to help the
+      colonists in fortifying and defending the island against the English; and
+      we find the missionary quite as much at home in this new role-building
+      bastions, scarps, counterterscarps, ravelins, etc.&mdash;as he seemed to
+      be upon the plantation of Saint-Jacques. We find him even taking part in
+      an engagement;&mdash;himself conducting an artillery duel,&mdash;loading,
+      pointing, and firing no less than twelve times after the other French
+      gunners had been killed or driven from their posts. After a tremendous
+      English volley, one of the enemy cries out to him in French: "White
+      Father, have they told?" (<i>Père Blanc, ont-ils porté?</i>) He replies
+      only after returning the fire with, a better-directed aim, and then
+      repeats the mocking question: "Have they told?" "Yes, they have,"
+      confesses the Englishman, in surprised dismay; "but we will pay you back
+      for that!"...
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... Returning to Martinique with new titles to distinction, Labat was made
+      Superior of the order in that island, and likewise Vicar-Apostolic. After
+      building the Convent of the Mouillage, at St. Pierre, and many other
+      edifices, he undertook that series of voyages in the interests of the
+      Dominicans whereof the narration fills six ample volumes. As a traveller
+      Père Labat has had few rivals in his own field;&mdash;no one, indeed,
+      seems to have been able to repeat some of his feats. All the French and
+      several of the English colonies were not merely visited by him, but were
+      studied in their every geographical detail. Travel in the West Indies is
+      difficult to a degree of which strangers have little idea; but in the time
+      of Père Labat there were few roads,&mdash;and a far greater variety of
+      obstacles. I do not believe there are half a dozen whites in Martinique
+      who thoroughly know their own island,&mdash;who have even travelled upon
+      all its roads; but Labat knew it as he knew the palm of his hand, and
+      travelled where roads had never been made. Equally well he knew Guadeloupe
+      and other islands; and he learned all that it was possible to learn in
+      those years about the productions and resources of the other colonies. He
+      travelled with the fearlessness and examined with the thoroughness of a
+      Humboldt,&mdash;so far as his limited science permitted: had he possessed
+      the knowledge of modern naturalists and geologists he would probably have
+      left little for others to discover after him. Even at the present time
+      West Indian travellers are glad to consult him for information.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These duties involved prodigious physical and mental exertion, in a
+      climate deadly to Europeans. They also involved much voyaging in waters
+      haunted by filibusters and buccaneers. But nothing appears to daunt Labat.
+      As for the filibusters, he becomes their comrade and personal friend;&mdash;he
+      even becomes their chaplain, and does not scruple to make excursions with
+      them. He figures in several sea-fights;&mdash;on one occasion he aids in
+      the capture of two English vessels,&mdash;and then occupies himself in
+      making the prisoners, among whom are several ladies, enjoy the event like
+      a holiday. On another voyage Labat's vessel is captured by a Spanish ship.
+      At one moment sabres are raised above his head, and loaded muskets
+      levelled at his breast;&mdash;the next, every Spaniard is on his knees,
+      appalled by a cross that Labat holds before the eyes of the captors,&mdash;the
+      cross worn by officers of the Inquisition,&mdash;the terrible symbol of
+      the Holy Office. "It did not belong to me," he says, "but to one of our
+      brethren who had left it by accident among my effects." He seems always
+      prepared in some way to meet any possible emergency. No humble and timid
+      monk this: he has the frame and temper of those 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For other dangers he exhibits absolute unconcern. He studies the phenomena
+      of hurricanes with almost pleasurable interest, while his comrades on the
+      ship abandon hope. When seized with yellow-fever, then known as the
+      Siamese Sickness (<i>mal de Siam</i>), he refuses to stay in bed the
+      prescribed time, and rises to say his mass. He faints at the altar; yet a
+      few days later we hear of him on horseback again, travelling over the
+      mountains in the worst and hottest season of the year....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... Labat was thirty years old when he went to the Antilles;&mdash;he was
+      only forty-two when his work was done. In less than twelve years he made
+      his order the most powerful and wealthy of any in the West Indies,&mdash;lifted
+      their property out of bankruptcy to rebuild it upon a foundation of
+      extraordinary prosperity. As Rufz observes without exaggeration, the
+      career of Père Labat in the Antilles seems to more than realize the
+      antique legend of the labors of Hercules. Whithersoever he went,&mdash;except
+      in the English colonies,&mdash;his passage was memorialized by the rising
+      of churches, convents, and schools,&mdash;as well as mills, forts, and
+      refineries. Even cities claim him as their founder. The solidity of his
+      architectural creations is no less remarkable than their excellence of
+      design;&mdash;much of what he erected still remains; what has vanished was
+      removed by human agency, and not by decay; and when the old Dominican
+      church at St. Pierre had to be pulled down to make room for a larger
+      edifice, the workmen complained that the stones could not be separated,&mdash;that
+      the walls seemed single masses of rock. There can be no doubt, moreover,
+      that he largely influenced the life of the colonies during those years,
+      and expanded their industrial and commercial capacities.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was sent on a mission to Rome after these things had been done, and
+      never returned from Europe. There he travelled more or less in
+      after-years; but finally settled at Paris, where he prepared and published
+      the voluminous narrative of his own voyages, and other curious books;&mdash;manifesting
+      as a writer the same tireless energy he had shown in so many other
+      capacities. He does not, however, appear to have been happy. Again and
+      again he prayed to be sent back to his beloved Antilles, and for some
+      unknown cause the prayer was always refused. To such a character, the
+      restraint of the cloister must have proved a slow agony; but he had to
+      endure it for many long years. He died at Paris in 1738, aged
+      seventy-five.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... It was inevitable that such a man should make bitter enemies: his
+      preferences, his position, his activity, his business shrewdness, his
+      necessary self-assertion, 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&mdash;irrational, perhaps, but extremely
+      violent,&mdash;caused by the father's cynical frankness as a writer. He
+      spoke freely about the family origin and personal failings of various
+      colonists considered high personages in their own small world; and to this
+      day his book has an evil reputation undeserved in those old creole
+      communities, 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,&mdash;whatever
+      ingenious writers may have alleged to the contrary. We only know that M.
+      Adrien Dessalles,&mdash;the trustworthy historian of Martinique,&mdash;while
+      searching among the old <i>Archives de la Marine</i>, found there a
+      ministerial letter to the Intendant de Vaucresson in which this statement
+      occurs;&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... "Le Père Labat shall never be suffered to return to the colonies,
+      whatever efforts he may make to obtain permission."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      IV.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;full of quaint drawings, plans, and odd
+      attempts at topographical maps&mdash;reveal a prolix writer, Père Labat is
+      always able to interest. He reminds you of one of those slow, precise,
+      old-fashioned conversationalists who measure the weight of every word and
+      never leave anything to the imagination of the audience, yet who
+      invariably reward the patience of their listeners sooner or later by
+      reflections of surprising profundity or theories of a totally novel
+      description. But what particularly impresses the reader of these volumes
+      is not so much the recital of singular incidents and facts as the
+      revelation of the author's personality. Reading him, you divine a
+      character of enormous force,&mdash;gifted but unevenly balanced;
+      singularly shrewd in worldly affairs, and surprisingly credulous in other
+      respects; superstitious and yet cynical; unsympathetic by his positivism,
+      but agreeable through natural desire to give pleasure; just by nature, yet
+      capable of merciless severity; profoundly devout, but withal tolerant for
+      his calling and his time. He is sufficiently free from petty bigotry to
+      make fun of the scruples of his brethren in the matter of employing
+      heretics; and his account of the manner in which he secured the services
+      of a first-class refiner for the Martinique plantation at the Fond
+      Saint-Jacques is not the least amusing page in the book. He writes: "The
+      religious who had been appointed Superior in Guadeloupe wrote me that he
+      would find it difficult to employ this refiner because the man was a
+      Lutheran. This scruple gave me pleasure, as I had long wanted to have have
+      him upon our plantation in the Fond Saint-Jacques, but did not know how I
+      would be able to manage it! I wrote to the Superior at once that all he
+      had to do was to send the man to me, because it was a matter of
+      indifference to me whether the sugar he might make were Catholic or
+      Lutheran sugar, provided it were very white." <a href="#linknote-10"
+      name="linknoteref-10" id="linknoteref-10">[10]</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He displays equal frankness in confessing an error or a discomfiture. He
+      acknowledges that while Professor of Mathematics and Philosophy, he used
+      to teach that there were no tides in the tropics; and in a discussion as
+      to whether the <i>diablotin</i> (a now almost extinct species of West
+      Indian nocturnal bird) were fish flesh, and might or might not be eaten in
+      Lent, he tells us that he was fairly worsted,&mdash;(although he could
+      cite the celebrated myth of the "barnacle-geese" as a "fact" in
+      justification of one's right to doubt the nature of diablotins).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One has reason to suspect that Père Labat, notwithstanding his references
+      to the decision of the Church that diablotins were not birds, felt quite
+      well assured within himself that they were. There is a sly humor in his
+      story of these controversies, which would appear to imply that while well
+      pleased at the decision referred to, he knew all about diablotins.
+      Moreover, the father betrays certain tendencies to gormandize not
+      altogether in harmony with the profession of an ascetic.... There were
+      parrots in nearly all of the French Antilles in those days <a
+      href="#linknote-11" name="linknoteref-11" id="linknoteref-11">[11]</a> 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 <i>Bois d'Inde</i> they have an odor of nutmeg and cloves
+      which is delightful (<i>une odeur de muscade et de girofle qui fait
+      plaisir</i>)." He recommends four superior ways of preparing them, as well
+      as other fowls, for the table, of which the first and the best way is "to
+      pluck them alive, then to make them swallow vinegar, and then to strangle
+      them while they have the vinegar still in their throats by twisting their
+      necks"; and the fourth way is "to skin them alive" (<i>de les écorcher
+      tout en vie</i>).... "It is certain," he continues, "that these ways are
+      excellent, and that fowls that have to be cooked in a hurry thereby obtain
+      an admirable tenderness (<i>une tendreté admirable</i>)." Then he makes a
+      brief apology to his readers, not for the inhumanity of his recipes, but
+      for a display of culinary knowledge scarcely becoming a monk, and acquired
+      only through those peculiar necessities which colonial life in the tropics
+      imposed upon all alike. The touch of cruelty here revealed produces an
+      impression which there is little in the entire work capable of modifying.
+      Labat seems to have possessed but a very small quantity of altruism; his
+      cynicism on the subject of animal suffering is not offset by any visible
+      sympathy with human pain;&mdash;he never compassionates: you may seek in
+      vain through all his pages for one gleam of the goodness of gentle Père Du
+      Tertre, who, filled with intense pity for the condition of the blacks,
+      prays masters to be merciful and just to their slaves for the love of God.
+      Labat suggests, on the other hand, that slavery is a good means of
+      redeeming negroes from superstition and saving their souls from hell: he
+      selects and purchases them himself for the Saint-Jacques plantation, never
+      makes a mistake or a bad bargain, and never appears to feel a particle of
+      commiseration for their lot. In fact, the emotional feeling displayed by
+      Père Du Tertre (whom he mocks slyly betimes) must have seemed to him
+      rather condemnable than praiseworthy; for Labat regarded the negro as a
+      natural child of the devil,&mdash;a born sorcerer,&mdash;an evil being
+      wielding occult power.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Perhaps the chapters on negro sorcery are the most astonishing in the
+      book, displaying on the part of this otherwise hard and practical nature a
+      credulity almost without limit. After having related how he had a certain
+      negro sent out of the country "who predicted the arrival of vessels and
+      other things to come,&mdash;in so far, at least, as the devil himself was
+      able to know and reveal these matters to him," he plainly states his own
+      belief in magic as follows:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "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."...
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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;&mdash;after which he took one of
+      the branches, stood up, and watched the horizon. A small cloud appeared,
+      and he pointed the branch at it. It approached swiftly, rested above the
+      garden, and sent down a copious shower of rain. Then the boy made a hole
+      in the ground, and buried the oranges and the branches. The fathers were
+      amazed to find that not a single drop of rain had fallen outside their
+      garden. They asked the boy who had taught him this sorcery, and he
+      answered them that among the blacks on board the slave-ship which had
+      brought him over there were some Rain-makers who had taught him. Père
+      Labat declares there is no question as to the truth of the occurrence: he
+      cites the names of Père Fraise, Père Rosié, Père Temple, and Père Bournot,&mdash;all
+      members of his own order,&mdash;as trust-worthy witnesses of this
+      incident.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Père Labat displays equal credulity in his recital of a still more
+      extravagant story told him by Madame la Comtesse du Gênes. M. le Comte du
+      Gênes, husband of the lady in question, and commander of a French
+      squadron, captured the English fort of Gorea in 1696, and made prisoners
+      of all the English slaves in the service of the factory there established.
+      But the vessel on which these were embarked was unable to leave the coast,
+      in spite of a good breeze: she seemed bewitched. Some of the the slaves
+      finally told the captain there was a negress on board who had enchanted
+      the ship, and who had the power to "dry up the hearts" of all who refused
+      to obey her. A number of deaths taking place among the blacks, the captain
+      ordered autopsies made, and it was found that the hearts of the dead
+      negroes were desiccated. The negress was taken on deck, tied to a gun and
+      whipped, but uttered no cry;&mdash;the ship's surgeon, angered at her
+      stoicism, took a hand in the punishment, and flogged her "with all his
+      force." Thereupon she told him that inasmuch as he had abused her without
+      reason, his heart also should be "dried up." He died next day; and his
+      heart was found in the condition predicted. All this time the ship could
+      not be made to move in any direction; and the negress told the captain
+      that until he should put her and her companions on shore he would never be
+      able to sail. To convince him of her power she further asked him to place
+      three fresh melons in a chest, to lock the chest and put a guard over it;
+      when she should tell him to unlock it, there would be no melons there. The
+      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,&mdash;like the
+      surgeon's heart. Thereupon the captain put the witch and her friends all
+      ashore, and sailed away without further trouble.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Another story of African sorcery for the truth of which Père Labat
+      earnestly vouches is the following:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A negro was sentenced to be burned alive for witchcraft at St. Thomas in
+      1701;&mdash;his principal crime was "having made a little figure of baked
+      clay to speak." A certain creole, meeting the negro on his way to the
+      place of execution, jeeringly observed, "Well, you cannot make your little
+      figure talk any more now;&mdash;it has been broken." "If the gentleman
+      allow me," replied the prisoner," I will make the cane he carries in his
+      hand speak." The creole's curiosity was strongly aroused: he prevailed
+      upon the guards to halt a few minutes, and permit the prisoner to make the
+      experiment. The negro then took the cane, stuck it into the ground in the
+      middle of the road, whispered something to it, and asked the gentleman
+      what he wished to know. "I, would like to know," answered the latter,
+      "whether the ship has yet sailed from Europe, and when she will arrive."
+      "Put your ear to the head of the cane," said the negro. On doing so the
+      creole distinctly heard a thin voice which informed him that the vessel in
+      question had left a certain French port on such a date; that she would
+      reach St. Thomas within three days; that she had been delayed on her
+      voyage by a storm which had carried away her foretop and her mizzen sail;
+      that she had such and such passengers on board (mentioning the names), all
+      in good health.... After this incident the negro was burned alive; but
+      within three days the vessel arrived in port, and the prediction or
+      divination was found to have been absolutely correct in every particular.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... Père Labat in no way disapproves the atrocious sentence inflicted upon
+      the wretched negro: in his opinion such predictions were made by the power
+      and with the personal aid of the devil; and for those who knowingly
+      maintained relations with the devil, he could not have regarded any
+      punishment too severe. That he could be harsh enough himself is amply
+      shown in various accounts of his own personal experience with alleged
+      sorcerers, and especially in the narration of his dealings with one&mdash;apparently
+      a sort of African doctor&mdash;who was a slave on a neighboring
+      plantation, but used to visit the Saint-Jacques quarters by stealth to
+      practise his art. One of the slaves of the order, a negress, falling very
+      sick, the wizard was sent for; and he came with all his paraphernalia&mdash;little
+      earthen pots and fetiches, etc.&mdash;during the night. He began to
+      practise his incantations, without the least suspicion that Père Labat was
+      watching him through a chink; and, after having consulted his fetiches, he
+      told the woman she would die within four days. At this juncture the priest
+      suddenly burst in the door and entered, followed by several powerful
+      slaves. He dashed to pieces the soothsayer's articles, and attempted to
+      reassure the frightened negress, by declaring the prediction a lie
+      inspired by the devil. Then he had the sorcerer stripped and flogged in
+      his presence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I had him given," he calmly observes, "about (<i>environ</i>) three
+      hundred lashes, which flayed him (<i>l'écorchait</i>) from his shoulders
+      to his knees. He screamed like a madman. All the negroes trembled, and
+      assured me that the devil would cause my death.... Then I had the wizard
+      put in irons, after having had him well washed with a <i>pimentade</i>,&mdash;that
+      is to say, with brine in which pimentos and small lemons have been
+      crushed. This causes a horrible pain to those skinned by the whip; but it
+      is a certain remedy against gangrene."...
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then he sent the poor wretch back to his master with a note requesting
+      the latter to repeat the punishment,&mdash;a demand that seems to have
+      been approved, as the owner of the negro was "a man who feared God." Yet
+      Père Labat is obliged to confess that in spite of all his efforts, the
+      sick negress died on the fourth day,&mdash;as the sorcerer had predicted.
+      This fact must have strongly confirmed his belief that the devil was at
+      the bottom of the whole affair, and caused him to doubt whether even a
+      flogging of 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Père Labat also avers that in his time the negroes were in the habit of
+      carrying sticks which had the power of imparting to any portion of the
+      human body touched by them a most severe chronic pain. He at first
+      believed, he says, that these pains were merely rheumatic; but after all
+      known remedies for rheumatism had been fruitlessly applied, he became
+      convinced there was something occult and diabolical in the manner of using
+      and preparing these sticks.... A fact worthy of note is that this belief
+      is still prevalent in Martinique!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One hardly ever meets in the country a negro who does not carry either a
+      stick or a cutlass, or both. The cutlass is indispensable to those who
+      work in the woods or upon plantations; the stick is carried both as a
+      protection against snakes and as a weapon of offence and defence in
+      village quarrels, for unless a negro be extraordinarily drunk he will not
+      strike his fellow with a cutlass. The sticks are usually made of a strong
+      dense wood: those most sought after of a material termed <i>moudongue</i>,
+      <a href="#linknote-12" name="linknoteref-12" id="linknoteref-12">[12]</a>
+      almost as tough, but much lighter than, our hickory.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On inquiring whether any of the sticks thus carried were held to possess
+      magic powers, I was assured by many country people that there were men who
+      knew a peculiar method of "arranging" sticks so that to touch any person
+      with them even lightly, <i>and through any thickness of clothing</i>,
+      would produce terrible and continuous pain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Believing in these things, and withal unable to decide whether the sun
+      revolved about the earth, or the earth about the sun, <a
+      href="#linknote-13" name="linknoteref-13" id="linknoteref-13">[13]</a>
+      Père Labat was, nevertheless, no more credulous and no more ignorant than
+      the average missionary of his time: it is only by contrast with his
+      practical perspicacity in other matters, his worldly rationalism and
+      executive shrewdness, that this superstitious naïveté impresses one as
+      odd. And how singular sometimes is the irony of Time! All the wonderful
+      work the Dominican accomplished has been forgotten by the people; while
+      all the witchcrafts that he warred against survive and flourish openly;
+      and his very name is seldom uttered but in connection with superstitions,&mdash;has
+      been, in fact, preserved among the blacks by the power of superstition
+      alone, by the belief in zombis and goblins.... "<i>Mi! ti manmaille-là,
+      moin ké fai Pè Labatt vini pouend ou!</i>"...
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      V.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Few habitants of St. Pierre now remember that the beautiful park behind
+      the cathedral used to be called the Savanna of the White Fathers,&mdash;and
+      the long shadowed meadow beside the Roxelane, the Savanna of the Black
+      Fathers: the Jesuits. All the great religious orders have long since
+      disappeared from the colony: their edifices have been either converted to
+      other uses or demolished; their estates have passed into other hands....
+      Were their labors, then, productive of merely ephemeral results?&mdash;was
+      the colossal work of a Père Labat all in vain, so far as the future is
+      concerned? The question is not easily answered; but it is worth
+      considering.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of course the material prosperity which such men toiled to obtain for
+      their order represented nothing more, even to their eyes, than the means
+      of self-maintenance, and the accumulation of force necessary for the
+      future missionary labors of the monastic community. The real ultimate
+      purpose was, not the acquisition of power for the order, but for the
+      Church, of which the orders represented only a portion of the force
+      militant; and this purpose did not fail of accomplishment. The orders
+      passed away only when their labors had been completed,&mdash;when
+      Martinique had become (exteriorly, at least) more Catholic than Rome
+      itself,&mdash;after the missionaries had done all that religious zeal
+      could do in moulding and remoulding the human material under their
+      control. These men could scarcely have anticipated those social and
+      political changes which the future reserved for the colonies, and which no
+      ecclesiastical sagacity could, in any event, have provided against. It is
+      in the existing religious condition of these communities that one may
+      observe and estimate the character and the probable duration of the real
+      work accomplished by the missions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... Even after a prolonged residence in Martinique, its visible religious
+      condition continues to impress one as 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;&mdash;he will perceive them
+      waiting for him, looming through the mists of the heights; and passing
+      through the loveliest ravines, he will see niches hollowed out in the
+      volcanic rocks, above and below him, or contrived in the trunks of trees
+      bending over precipices, often in places so difficult of access that he
+      wonders how the work could have been accomplished. All this has been done
+      by the various property-owners throughout the country: it is the
+      traditional custom to do it&mdash;brings good-luck! After a longer stay in
+      the island, one discovers also that in almost every room of every dwelling&mdash;stone
+      residence, wooden cottage, or palm-thatched ajoupa&mdash;there is a <i>chapelle</i>:
+      that is, a sort of large bracket fastened to the wall, on which crosses or
+      images are placed, with vases of flowers, and lamps or wax-tapers to be
+      burned at night. Sometimes, moreover, statues are placed in windows, or
+      above door-ways;&mdash;and all passers-by take off their hats to these.
+      Over the porch of the cottage in a mountain village, where I lived for
+      some weeks, there was an absurd little window contrived,&mdash;a sort of
+      purely ornamental dormer,&mdash;and in this a Virgin about five inches
+      high had been placed. At a little distance it looked like a toy,&mdash;a
+      child's doll forgotten there; and a doll I always supposed it to be, until
+      one day that I saw a long procession of black laborers passing before the
+      house, every, one of whom took off his hat to it.... My bedchamber in the
+      same cottage resembled a religious museum. On the chapelle there were no
+      less than eight Virgins, varying in height from one to sixteen inches,&mdash;a
+      St. Joseph,&mdash;a St. John,&mdash;a crucifix,&mdash;and a host of little
+      objects in the shape of hearts or crosses, each having some special
+      religious significance;&mdash;while the walls were covered with framed
+      certificates of baptism, "first-communion," confirmation, and other
+      documents commemorating the whole church life of the family for two
+      generations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0025" id="linkimage-0025">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%">
+      <img src="images/23-Wayside_Shrine.jpg"
+      alt="A Wayside Shrine, Or Chapelle. " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      ... Certainly the first impression created by this perpetual display of
+      crosses, statues, and miniature chapels is not pleasing,&mdash;particularly
+      as the work is often inartistic to a degree bordering upon the grotesque,
+      and nothing resembling art is anywhere visible. Millions of francs must
+      have been consumed in these creations, which have the rudeness of
+      mediaevalism without its emotional sincerity, and which&mdash;amid the
+      loveliness of tropic nature, the grace of palms, the many-colored fire of
+      liana blossoms&mdash;jar on the 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,&mdash;something strangely distorted and
+      transformed, it is true, but recognizably conserved by the Latin race from
+      those antique years when every home had its beloved ghosts, when every
+      wood or hill or spring had its gracious divinity, and the boundaries of
+      all fields were marked and guarded by statues of gods.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Instances of iconoclasm are of course highly rare in a country of which no
+      native&mdash;rich or poor, white or half-breed&mdash;fails to doff his hat
+      before every shrine, cross, or image he may happen to pass. Those
+      merchants of St. Pierre or of Fort-de-France living only a few miles out
+      of the city must certainly perform a vast number of reverences on their
+      way to or from business;&mdash;I saw one old gentleman uncover his white
+      head about twenty times in the course of a fifteen minutes' walk. I never
+      heard of but one image-breaker in Martinique; and his act was the result
+      of superstition, not of any hostility to popular faith or custom: it was
+      prompted by the same childish feeling which moves Italian fishermen
+      sometimes to curse St. Antony or to give his image a ducking in bad
+      weather. This Martinique iconoclast was a negro cattle-driver who one day,
+      feeling badly in need of a glass of tafia, perhaps, left the animals
+      intrusted to him in care of a plaster image of the Virgin, with this
+      menace (the phrase is on record):&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "<i>Moin ka quitté bef-la ba ou pou gàdé ba moin. Quand moin vini, si moin
+      pa trouvé compte-moin, moin ké fouté ou vingt-nèf coudfouètt!</i>" (I
+      leave these cattle with you to take care of for me. When I come back, if I
+      don't find them all here, I'll give you twenty-nine lashes.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Returning about half an hour later, he was greatly enraged to find his
+      animals scattered in every direction;&mdash;and, rushing at the statue, he
+      broke it from the pedestal, 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;&mdash;the judges were all <i>békés</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Rather a severe sentence," I remarked to my informant, a planter who
+      conducted me to the scene of the alleged sacrilege.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Severe, yes," he answered;&mdash;"and I suppose the act would seem to you
+      more idiotic than criminal. But here, in Martinique, there were large
+      questions involved by such an offence. Relying, as we have always done to
+      some extent, upon religious influence as a factor in the maintenance of
+      social order, the negro's act seemed a dangerous example."...
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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;&mdash;by
+      the removal of crucifixes and images from public buildings, French
+      Radicalism did not inflict any great blow upon Church interests. So far as
+      the white, and, one may say, the wealthy, population is concerned, the
+      Church triumphs in her hostility to the Government schools; and to the
+      same extent she holds an educational monopoly. No white creole would dream
+      of sending his children to a lay school or a lycée&mdash;notwithstanding
+      the unquestionable superiority of the educational system in the latter
+      institutions;&mdash;and, although obliged, as the chief tax-paying class,
+      to bear the burden of maintaining these establishments, the whites hold
+      them in such horror that the Government professors are socially
+      ostracized. No doubt the prejudice or pride which abhors mixed schools
+      aids the Church in this respect; she herself recognizes race-feeling,
+      keeps her schools unmixed, and even in her convents, it is said, obliges
+      the colored nuns to serve the white! For more than two centuries every
+      white generation has been religiously moulded in the seminaries and
+      convents; and among the native whites one never hears an overt declaration
+      of free-thought opinion. Except among the colored men educated in the
+      Government schools, or their foreign professors, there are no avowed
+      free-thinkers;&mdash;and this, not because the creole whites, many of whom
+      have been educated in Paris, are naturally narrow-minded, or incapable of
+      sympathy with the mental expansion of the age, but because the religious
+      question at Martinique has become so intimately complicated with the
+      social and political one, concerning which there can be no compromise
+      whatever, that to divorce the former from the latter is impossible. Roman
+      Catholicism is an element of the cement which holds creole society
+      together; and it is noteworthy that other creeds are not represented. I
+      knew only of one Episcopalian and one Methodist in the island,&mdash;and
+      heard a sort of legend about a solitary Jew whose whereabouts I never
+      could discover;&mdash;but these were strangers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was only through the establishment of universal suffrage, which placed
+      the white population at the mercy of its former slaves, that the Roman
+      Church sustained any serious injury. All local positions are filled by
+      blacks or men of color; no white creole can obtain a public office or take
+      part in legislation; and the whole power of the black vote is ungenerously
+      used against the interests of the class thus politically disinherited. The
+      Church suffers in consequence: her power depended upon her intimate union
+      with the wealthy and dominant class; and she will never be forgiven by
+      those now in power for her sympathetic support of that class in other
+      years. Politics yearly intensify this hostility; and as the only hope for
+      the restoration of the whites to power, and of the Church to its old
+      position, lies in the possibility of another empire or a revival of the
+      monarchy, the white creoles and their Church are forced into hostility
+      against republicanism and the republic. And political newspapers
+      continually attack Roman Catholicism,&mdash;mock its tenets and teachings,&mdash;ridicule
+      its dogmas and ceremonies,&mdash;satirize its priests.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the cities and towns the Church indeed appears to retain a large place
+      in the affection of the poorer classes;&mdash;her ceremonies are always
+      well attended; money pours into her coffers; and one can still wittness
+      the curious annual procession of the "converted,"&mdash;aged women of
+      color and negresses going to communion for the first time, all wearing
+      snow-white turbans in honor of the event. But among the country people,
+      where the dangerous forces of revolution exist, Christian feeling is
+      almost stifled by ghastly beliefs of African origin;&mdash;the images and
+      crucifixes still command respect, but this respect is inspired by a
+      feeling purely fetichistic. With the political dispossession of the
+      whites, certain dark powers, previously concealed or repressed, have
+      obtained, formidable development. The old enemy of Père Labat, the wizard
+      (the <i>quimboiseur</i>), already wields more authority than the priest,
+      exercises more terror than the magistrate, commands more confidence than
+      the physician. The educated mulatto class may affect to despise him;&mdash;but
+      he is preparing their overthrow in the dark. Astonishing is the
+      persistence with which the African has clung to these beliefs and
+      practices, so zealously warred upon by the Church and so mercilessly
+      punished by the courts for centuries. He still goes to mass, and sends his
+      children to the priest; but he goes more often to the quimboiseur and the
+      "<i>magnetise</i>." He finds use for both beliefs, but gives large
+      preference to the savage one,&mdash;just as he prefers the pattering of
+      his tam tam to the music of the military band at the <i>Savane du Fort</i>....
+      And should it come to pass that Martinique be ever totally abandoned by
+      its white population,&mdash;an event by no means improbable in the present
+      order of things,&mdash;the fate of the ecclesiastical fabric so toilsomely
+      reared by the monastic orders is not difficult to surmise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      VI.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From my window in the old Rue du Bois-Morin,&mdash;which climbs the foot
+      of Morne Labelle by successions of high stone steps,&mdash;all the
+      southern end of the city is visible as in a bird's-eye view. Under me is a
+      long peaking of red-scaled roofs,&mdash;gables and dormer-windows,&mdash;with
+      clouds of bright green here and there,&mdash;foliage of tamarind and
+      corossolier;&mdash;westward purples and flames the great circle of the
+      Caribbean Sea;&mdash;east and south, towering to the violet sky, curve the
+      volcanic hills, green-clad from base to summit;&mdash;and right before me
+      the beautiful Morne d'Orange, all palm-plumed and wood-wrapped, trends
+      seaward and southward. And every night, after the stars come out, I see
+      moving lights there,&mdash;lantern fires guiding the mountain-dwellers
+      home; but I look in vain for the light of Père Labat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And nevertheless,&mdash;although no believer in ghosts,&mdash;I see thee
+      very plainly sometimes, thou quaint White Father, moving through
+      winter-mists in the narrower Paris of another century; musing upon the
+      churches that arose at thy bidding under tropic skies; dreaming of the
+      primeval valleys changed by thy will to green-gold seas of cane,&mdash;and
+      the strong mill that will bear thy name for two hundred years (it stands
+      solid unto this day),&mdash;and the habitations made for thy brethren in
+      pleasant palmy places,&mdash;and the luminous peace of thy Martinique
+      convent,&mdash;and odor of roasting parrots fattened upon <i>grains de
+      bois d'Inde</i> and guavas,&mdash;"<i>l'odeur de muscade et de girofle qui
+      fait plaisir</i>."...
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Eh, <i>Père Labat</i>!&mdash;what changes there have been since thy day!
+      The White Fathers have no place here now; and the Black Fathers, too, have
+      been driven from the land, leaving only as a memory of them the perfect
+      and ponderous architecture of the Perinnelle plantation-buildings, and the
+      appellation of the river still known as the Rivière des Pères. Also the
+      Ursulines are gone, leaving only their name on the corner of a crumbling
+      street. And there are no more slaves; and there are new races 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" (<i>yon diabe</i>),&mdash;cric-crac!&mdash;cric-crac!&mdash;all
+      chanting together;&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "<i>Soh-soh!&mdash;yaïe-yah!
+     Rhâlé bois-canot!</i>"
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      And all that ephemeral man has had power to change has been changed,&mdash;ideas,
+      morals, beliefs, the whole social fabric. But the eternal summer remains,&mdash;and
+      the Hesperian magnificence of azure sky and violet sea,&mdash;and the
+      jewel-colors of the perpetual hills;&mdash;the same tepid winds that
+      rippled thy cane-fields two hundred years ago still blow over
+      Sainte-Marie;&mdash;the same purple shadows lengthen and dwindle and turn
+      with the wheeling of the sun. God's witchery still fills this land; and
+      the heart of the stranger is even yet snared by the beauty of it; and the
+      dreams of him that forsakes it will surely be haunted&mdash;even as were
+      thine own, Père Labat&mdash;by memories of its Eden-summer: the sudden
+      leap of the light over a thousand peaks in the glory of tropic dawn,&mdash;the
+      perfumed peace of enormous azure noons,&mdash;and shapes of palm
+      wind-rocked in the burning of colossal sunsets,&mdash;and the silent
+      flickering of the great fire-flies through the lukewarm darkness, when
+      mothers call their children home... "<i>Mi fanal Pè Labatt!&mdash;mi Pè
+      Labatt ka vini pouend ou!</i>"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0004" id="link2HCH0004">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER IV. &mdash; LA GUIABLESSE.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Night in all countries brings with it vaguenesses and illusions which
+      terrify certain imaginations;&mdash;but in the tropics it produces effects
+      peculiarly impressive and peculiarly sinister. Shapes of vegetation that
+      startle even while the sun shines upon them assume, after his setting, a
+      grimness,&mdash;a grotesquery,&mdash;a suggestiveness for which there is
+      no name.... In the North a tree is simply a tree;&mdash;here it is a
+      personality that makes itself felt; it has a vague physiognomy, an
+      indefinable <i>Me</i>: it is an Individual (with a capital I); it is a
+      Being (with a capital B).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From the high woods, as the moon mounts, fantastic darknesses descend into
+      the roads,&mdash;black distortions, mockeries, bad dreams,&mdash;an
+      endless procession of goblins. Least startling are the shadows flung down
+      by the various forms of palm, because instantly recognizable;&mdash;yet
+      these take the semblance of giant fingers opening and closing over the
+      way, or a black crawling of unutterable spiders....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nevertheless, these phasma seldom alarm the solitary and belated Bitaco:
+      the darknesses that creep stealthily along the path have no frightful
+      signification for him,&mdash;do not appeal to his imagination;&mdash;if he
+      suddenly starts and stops and stares, it is not because of such shapes,
+      but because he has perceived two specks of orange light, and is not yet
+      sure whether they are only fire-flies, or the eyes of a trigonocephalus.
+      The spectres of his fancy have nothing in common with those indistinct and
+      monstrous umbrages: what he most fears, next to the deadly serpent, are
+      human witchcrafts. A white rag, an old bone lying in the path, might be a
+      <i>malefice</i> which, if trodden upon, would cause his leg to blacken and
+      swell up to the size of the limb of an elephant;&mdash;an unopened bundle
+      of plantain leaves or of bamboo strippings, dropped by the way-side, might
+      contain the skin of a <i>Soucouyan.</i> But the ghastly being who doffs or
+      dons his skin at will&mdash;and the Zombi&mdash;and the <i>Moun-Mò</i>&mdash;may
+      be quelled or exorcised by prayer; and the lights of shrines, the white
+      gleaming of crosses, continually remind the traveller of his duty to the
+      Powers that save. All along the way there are shrines at intervals, not
+      very far apart: while standing in the radiance of one niche-lamp, you may
+      perhaps discern the glow of the next, if the road be level and straight.
+      They are almost everywhere,&mdash;shining along the skirts of the woods,
+      at the entrance of ravines, by the verges of precipices;&mdash;there is a
+      cross even upon the summit of the loftiest peak in the island. And the
+      night-walker removes his hat each time his bare feet touch the soft stream
+      of yellow light outpoured from the illuminated shrine of a white Virgin or
+      a white Christ. These are good ghostly company for him;&mdash;he salutes
+      them, talks to them, tells them his pains or fears: their blanched faces
+      seem to him full of sympathy;&mdash;they appear to cheer him voicelessly
+      as he strides from gloom to gloom, under the goblinry of those woods which
+      tower black as ebony under the stars.... And he has other companionship.
+      One of the greatest terrors of darkness in other lands does not exist here
+      after the setting of the sun,&mdash;the terror of <i>Silence</i>....
+      Tropical night is full of voices;&mdash;extraordinary populations of
+      crickets are trilling; nations of tree-frogs are chanting; the <i>Cabri-des-bois</i>,
+      <a href="#linknote-14" name="linknoteref-14" id="linknoteref-14">[14]</a>
+      or <i>cra-cra</i>, almost deafens you with the wheezy bleating sound by
+      which it earned its creole name; birds pipe: everything that bells,
+      ululates, drones, clacks, guggles, joins the enormous chorus; and you
+      fancy you see all the shadows vibrating to the force of this vocal storm.
+      The true life of Nature in the tropics begins with the darkness, ends with
+      the light.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And it is partly, perhaps, because of these conditions that the coming of
+      the dawn does not dissipate all fears of the supernatural. <i>I ni pè
+      zombi mênm gran'-jou</i> (he is afraid of ghosts even in broad daylight)
+      is a phrase which does not sound exaggerated in these latitudes,&mdash;not,
+      at least, to 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,&mdash;something
+      that seems to weigh upon the world like a measureless haunting. So still
+      all Nature's chambers are that a loud utterance jars upon the ear
+      brutally, like a burst of laughter in a sanctuary. With all its luxuriance
+      of color, with all its violence of light, this tropical day has its
+      ghostliness and its ghosts. Among the people of color there are many who
+      believe that even at noon&mdash;when the boulevards behind the city are
+      most deserted&mdash;the zombis will show themselves to solitary loiterers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      II.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... Here a doubt occurs to me,&mdash;a doubt regarding the precise nature
+      of a word, which I call upon Adou to explain. Adou is the daughter of the
+      kind old capresse from whom I rent my room in this little mountain
+      cottage. The mother is almost precisely the color of cinnamon; the
+      daughter's complexion is brighter,&mdash;the ripe tint of an orange....
+      Adou tells me creole stories and <i>tim-tim</i>. Adou knows all about
+      ghosts, and believes in them. So does Adou's extraordinarily tall brother,
+      Yébé,&mdash;my guide among the mountains.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"Adou," I ask, "what is a zombi?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The smile that showed Adou's beautiful white teeth has instantly
+      disappeared; and she answers, very seriously, that she has never seen a
+      zombi, and does not want to see one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"<i>Moin pa té janmain ouè zombi,&mdash;pa 'lè ouè ça, moin!</i>"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"But, Adou, child, I did not ask you whether you ever saw It;&mdash;I
+      asked you only to tell me what It is like?"...
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Adou hesitates a little, and answers:
+     &mdash;"<i>Zombi? Mais ça fai désòde lanuitt, zombi!</i>"
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Ah! it is Something which "makes disorder at night." Still, that is not a
+      satisfactory explanation. "Is it the spectre of a dead person, Adou? Is it
+      <i>one who comes back?</i>"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"<i>Non, Missié,&mdash;non; çé pa ca.</i>"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"Not that?... Then what was it you said the other night when you
+      were afraid to pass the cemetery on an errand,&mdash;<i>ça ou té ka di</i>,
+      Adou?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"Moin té ka di: 'Moin pa lé k'allé bò cimétiè-là pa ouappò moun-mò;&mdash;moun-mò
+      ké barré moin: moin pa sé pè vini enco.'" (<i>I said, "I do not want to go
+      by that cemetery because of the dead folk,&mdash;the dead folk will bar
+      the way, and I cannot get back again.</i>")
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"And you believe that, Adou?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"Yes, that is what they say... And if you go into the cemetery at
+      night you cannot come out again: the dead folk will stop you&mdash;<i>moun-mò
+      ké barré ou.</i>"...
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"But are the dead folk zombis, Adou?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"No; the moun-mò are not zombis. The zombis go everywhere: the dead
+      folk remain in the graveyard.... Except on the Night of All Souls: then
+      they go to the houses of their people everywhere."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"Adou, if after the doors and windows were locked and barred you
+      were to see entering your room in the middle of the night, a Woman
+      fourteen feet high?"...
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"<i>Ah! pa pàlé ça!!</i>"...
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"No! tell me, Adou?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"Why, yes: that would be a zombi. It is the zombis who make all
+      those noises at night one cannot understand.... Or, again, if I were to
+      see a dog that high [she holds her hand about five feet above the floor]
+      coming into our house at night, I would scream: '<i>Mi Zombi!</i>'"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... Then it suddenly occurs to Adou that her mother knows something about
+      zombis.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"<i>Ou Manman!</i>"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"<i>Eti!</i>" answers old Théréza's voice from the little
+      out-building where the evening meal is being prepared over a charcoal
+      furnace, in an earthen canari.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"<i>Missié-là ka mandé save ça ça yé yonne zombi;&mdash;vini ti
+      bouin!</i>"... The mother laughs, abandons her canari, and comes in to
+      tell me all she knows about the weird word.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "<i>I ni pè zombi</i>"&mdash;I find from old Thereza's explanations&mdash;is
+      a phrase indefinite as our own vague expressions, "afraid of ghosts,"
+      "afraid of the dark." But the word "Zombi" also has special strange
+      meanings.... "Ou passé nans grand chimin lanuitt, épi ou ka ouè gouôs
+      difé, épi plis ou ka vini assou difé-à pli ou ka ouè difé-à ka màché: çé
+      zombi ka fai ça.... Encò, chouval ka passé,&mdash;chouval ka ni anni toua
+      patt: ça zombi." (You pass along the high-road at night, and you see a
+      great fire, and the more you walk to get to it the more it moves away: it
+      is the zombi makes that.... Or a horse <i>with only three legs</i> passes
+      you: that is a zombi.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"How big is the fire that the zombi makes?" I ask.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"It fills the whole road," answers Théréza: "<i>li ka rempli toutt
+      chimin-là</i>. Folk call those fires the Evil Fires,&mdash;<i>mauvai difé</i>;&mdash;and
+      if you follow them they will lead you into chasms,&mdash;<i>ou ké tombé
+      adans labîme</i>."...
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then she tells me this:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"Baidaux was a mad man of color who used to live at St. Pierre, in
+      the Street of the Precipice. He was not dangerous,&mdash;never did any
+      harm;&mdash;his sister used to take care of him. And what I am going to
+      relate is true,&mdash;<i>çe zhistouè veritabe!</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "One day Baidaux said to his sister: 'Moin ni yonne yche, va!&mdash;ou pa
+      connaitt li!' [I have a child, ah!&mdash;you never saw it!] His sister
+      paid no attention to what he said that day; but the next day he said it
+      again, and the next, and the next, and every day after,&mdash;so that his
+      sister at last became much annoyed by it, and used to cry out: 'Ah! mais
+      pé guiole ou, Baidaux! ou fou pou embeté moin conm ça!&mdash;ou bien
+      fou!'... But he tormented her that way for months and for years.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "One evening he went out, and only came home at midnight leading a child
+      by the hand,&mdash;a black child he had found in the street; and he said
+      to his sister:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'Mi yche-là moin mené ba ou! Tou léjou moin té ka di ou moin tini yonne
+      yche: ou pa té 'lè couè,&mdash;eh, ben! MI Y!' [Look at the child I have
+      brought you! Every day I have been telling you I had a child: you would
+      not believe me,&mdash;very well, LOOK AT HIM!]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The sister gave one look, and cried out: 'Baidaux, oti ou pouend
+      yche-là?'... For the child was growing taller and taller every moment....
+      And Baidaux,&mdash;because he was mad,&mdash;kept saying: 'Çé yche-moin!
+      çé yche moin!' [It is my child!]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And the sister threw open the shutters and screamed to all the neighbors,&mdash;'<i>Sécou,
+      sécou, sécou! Vini oué ça Baidaux mené ba moin!</i>' [Help! help! Come see
+      what Baidaux has brought in here!] And the child said to Baidaux: '<i>Ou
+      ni bonhè ou fou!</i>' [You are lucky that you are mad!]... Then all the
+      neighbors came running in; but they could not see anything: the Zombi was
+      gone."...
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      III.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... As I was saying, the hours of vastest light have their weirdness here;&mdash;and
+      it is of a Something which walketh abroad under the eye of the sun, even
+      at high noontide, that I desire to speak, while the impressions of a
+      morning journey to the scene of Its last alleged apparition yet remains
+      vivid in my recollection.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      You follow the mountain road leading from Calebasse over long meadowed
+      levels two thousand feet above the ocean, into the woods of La Couresse,
+      where it begins to descend slowly, through deep green shadowing, by great
+      zigzags. Then, at a turn, you find yourself unexpectedly looking down upon
+      a planted valley, through plumy fronds of arborescent fern. The surface
+      below seems almost like a lake of gold-green water,&mdash;especially when
+      long breaths of mountain-wind set the miles of ripening cane a-ripple from
+      verge to verge: the illusion is marred only by the road, fringed with
+      young cocoa-palms, which serpentines across the luminous plain. East,
+      west, and north the horizon is almost wholly hidden by surging of hills:
+      those nearest are softly shaped and exquisitely green; above them loftier
+      undulations take hazier verdancy and darker shadows; farther yet rise
+      silhouettes of blue or violet tone, with one beautiful breast-shaped peak
+      thrusting up in the midst;&mdash;while, westward, over all, topping even
+      the Piton, is a vapory huddling of prodigious shapes&mdash;wrinkled,
+      fissured, horned, fantastically tall.... Such at least are the tints of
+      the morning.... Here and there, between gaps in the volcanic chain, the
+      land hollows into gorges, slopes down into ravines;&mdash;and the sea's
+      vast disk of turquoise flames up through the interval. Southwardly those
+      deep woods, through which the way winds down, shut in the view.... You do
+      not see the plantation buildings till you have advanced some distance into
+      the valley;&mdash;they are hidden by a fold of the land, and stand in a
+      little hollow where the road turns: a great quadrangle of low gray
+      antiquated edifices, heavily walled and buttressed, and roofed with red
+      tiles. The court they form opens upon the main route by an immense
+      archway. Farther along ajoupas begin to line the way,&mdash;the dwellings
+      of the field hands,&mdash;tiny cottages built with trunks of the
+      arborescent fern or with stems of bamboo, and thatched with cane-straw:
+      each in a little garden planted with bananas, yams, couscous, camanioc,
+      choux-caraibes, or other things,&mdash;and hedged about with roseaux
+      d'Inde and various flowering shrubs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thereafter, only the high whispering wildernesses of cane on either hand,&mdash;the
+      white silent road winding between its swaying cocoa-trees,&mdash;and the
+      tips of hills that seem to glide on before you as you walk, and that take,
+      with the deepening of the afternoon light, such amethystine color as if
+      they were going to become transparent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      IV.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... It is a breezeless and cloudless noon. Under the dazzling downpour of
+      light the hills seem to smoke blue: something like a thin yellow fog
+      haloes the leagues of ripening cane,&mdash;a vast reflection. There is no
+      stir in all the green mysterious front of the vine-veiled woods. The palms
+      of the roads keep their heads quite still, as if listening. The canes do
+      not utter a single susurration. Rarely is there such absolute stillness
+      among them: on the calmest days there are usually rustlings audible, thin
+      cracklings, faint creepings: sounds that betray the passing of some little
+      animal or reptile&mdash;a rat or a wa manicou, or a zanoli or couresse,&mdash;more
+      often, however, no harmless lizard or snake, but the deadly <i>fer-de-lance</i>.
+      To-day, all these seem to sleep; and there are no workers among the cane
+      to clear away the weeds,&mdash;to uproot the pié-treffe, pié-poule,
+      pié-balai, zhèbe-en-mè: it is the hour of rest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A woman is coming along the road,&mdash;young, very swarthy, very tall,
+      and barefooted, and black-robed: she wears a high white turban with dark
+      stripes, and a white foulard is thrown about her fine shoulders; she bears
+      no burden, and walks very swiftly and noiselessly.... Soundless as shadow
+      the motion of all these naked-footed people is. On any quiet mountain-way,
+      full of curves, where you fancy yourself alone, you may often be startled
+      by something you <i>feel</i>, rather than hear, behind you,&mdash;surd
+      steps, the springy movement of a long lithe body, dumb oscillations of
+      raiment;&mdash;and ere you can turn to look, the haunter swiftly passes
+      with creole greeting of "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,&mdash;like an animal,&mdash;and
+      to become conscious of a look directed upon him from any distance or from
+      behind any covert;&mdash;to pass within the range of his keen vision
+      unnoticed is almost impossible.... And the approach of this woman has been
+      already observed by the habitants of the ajoupas;&mdash;dark faces peer
+      out from windows and door-ways;&mdash;one half-nude laborer even strolls
+      out to the road-side under the sun to her coming. He looks a moment, turns
+      to the hut and calls:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"Ou-ou! Fafa!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"Étí! Gabou!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"Vini ti bouin!&mdash;mi bel negresse!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Out rushes Fafa, with his huge straw hat in his hand: "Oti, Gabou?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"Mi!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"'Ah! quimbé moin!" cries black Fafa, enthusiastically; "fouinq! li
+      bel!&mdash;Jésis-Maïa! li doux!"...Neither ever saw that woman before; and
+      both feel as if they could watch her forever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is something superb in the port of a tall young mountain-griffone,
+      or negress, who is comely and knows that she is comely: it is a black poem
+      of artless dignity, primitive grace, savage exultation of movement.... "Ou
+      marché tête enlai conm couresse qui ka passélariviè" (<i>You walk with
+      your head in the air, like the couresse-serpent swimming a river</i>) is a
+      creole comparison which pictures perfectly the poise of her neck and chin.
+      And in her walk there is also a serpentine elegance, a sinuous charm: the
+      shoulders do not swing; the cambered torso seems immobile;&mdash;but
+      alternately from waist to heel, and from heel to waist, with each long
+      full stride, an indescribable undulation seems to pass; while the folds of
+      her loose robe oscillate to right and left behind her, in perfect
+      libration, with the free swaying of the hips. With us, only a finely
+      trained dancer could attempt such a walk;&mdash;with the Martinique woman
+      of color it is natural as the tint of her skin; and this allurement of
+      motion unrestrained is most marked in those who have never worn shoes, and
+      are clad lightly as the women of antiquity,&mdash;in two very thin and
+      simple garments;&mdash;chemise and <i>robe&mdash;d'indienne</i>.... But
+      whence is she?&mdash;of what canton? Not from Vauclin, nor from Lamentin,
+      nor from Marigot,&mdash;from Case-Pilote or from Case-Navire: Fafa knows
+      all the people there. Never of Sainte-Anne, nor of Sainte-Luce, nor of
+      Sainte-Marie, nor of Diamant, nor of Gros-Morne, nor of Carbet,&mdash;the
+      birthplace of Gabou. Neither is she of the village of the Abysms, which is
+      in the Parish of the Preacher,&mdash;nor yet of Ducos nor of François,
+      which are in the Commune of the Holy Ghost....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      V.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... She approaches the ajoupa: both men remove their big straw hats; and
+      both salute her with a simultaneous "Bonjou', Manzell."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"Bonjou', Missié," she responds, in a sonorous alto, without
+      appearing to notice Gabou,&mdash;but smiling upon Fafa as she passes, with
+      her great eyes turned full upon his face.... All the libertine blood of
+      the man flames under that look;&mdash;he feels as if momentarily wrapped
+      in a blaze of black lightning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"Ça ka fai moin pè," exclaims Gabou, turning his face towards the
+      ajoupa. Something indefinable in the gaze of the stranger has terrified
+      him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"<i>Pa ka fai moin pè&mdash;fouinq!</i>" (She does not make me
+      afraid) laughs Fafa, boldly following her with a smiling swagger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"Fafa!" cries Gabou, in alarm. "<i>Fafa, pa fai ça!</i>" But Fafa
+      does not heed. The strange woman has slackened her pace, as if inviting
+      pursuit;&mdash;another moment and he is at her side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"Oti ou ka rêté, che?" he demands, with the boldness of one who
+      knows himself a fine specimen of his race.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"Zaffai cabritt pa zaffai lapin," she answers, mockingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"Mais pouki au rhabillé toutt nouè conm ça."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"Moin pòté deil pou name main mò."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"Aïe ya yaïe!... Non, vouè!&mdash;ça ou kallé atouèlement?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"Lanmou pàti: moin pàti deïé lanmou."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"Ho!&mdash;on ni guêpe, anh?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"Zanoli bail yon bal; épi maboya rentré ladans."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"Di moin oti ou kallé, doudoux?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"Jouq lariviè Lezà."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"Fouinq!&mdash;ni plis passé trente kilomett!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"Eh ben?&mdash;ess ou 'lè vini épi moin?" <a href="#linknote-15"
+      name="linknoteref-15" id="linknoteref-15">[15]</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And as she puts the question she stands still and gazes at him;&mdash;her
+      voice is no longer mocking: it has taken another tone,&mdash;a tone soft
+      as the long golden note of the little brown bird they call the <i>siffleur-de-montagne</i>,
+      the mountain-whistler.... Yet Fafa hesitates. He hears the clear clang of
+      the plantation bell recalling him to duty;&mdash;he sees far down the road&mdash;(<i>Ouill!</i>
+      how fast they have been walking!)&mdash;a white and black speck in the
+      sun: Gabou, uttering through his joined hollowed hands, as through a horn,
+      the <i>ouklé</i>, the rally call. For an instant he thinks of the
+      overseer's anger,&mdash;of the distance,&mdash;of the white road glaring
+      in the dead heat: then he looks again into the black eyes of the strange
+      woman, and answers:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"Oui;&mdash;moin ké vini épi ou."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With a burst of mischievous laughter, in which Fafa joins, she walks on,&mdash;Fafa
+      striding at her side.... And Gabou, far off, watches them go,&mdash;and
+      wonders that, for the first time since ever they worked together, his
+      comrade failed to answer his <i>ouklé</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"Coument yo ka crié ou, chè" asks Fafa, curious to know her name.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"Châché nom moin ou-menm, duviné."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Fafa never was a good guesser,&mdash;never could guess the simplest of
+      tim-tim.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"Ess Cendrine?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"Non, çe pa ça."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"Ess Vitaline?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"Non çé pa ça."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"Ess Aza?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"Non, çé pa ça."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"Ess Nini?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"Châché encò."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"Ess Tité"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"Ou pa save,&mdash;tant pis pou ou!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"Ess Youma?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"Pouki ou 'lè save nom moin?&mdash;ça ou ké épi y?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"Ess Yaiya?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"Non, çé pa y."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"Ess Maiyotte?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"Non! ou pa ké janmain trouvé y!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"Ess Sounoune?&mdash;ess Loulouze?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She does not answer, but quickens her pace and begins to sing,&mdash;not
+      as the half-breed, but as the African sings,&mdash;commencing with a low
+      long weird intonation that suddenly breaks into fractions of notes
+      inexpressible, then rising all at once to a liquid purling bird-tone, and
+      descending as abruptly again to the first deep quavering strain:&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "À te&mdash;moin ka dòmi toute longue;
+     Yon paillasse sé fai main bien, Doudoux!
+     À te&mdash;moin ka dòmi toute longue;
+     Yon robe biésé sé fai moin bien,
+     Doudoux!
+
+     À te&mdash;moin ka dòmi toute longue;
+     Dè jolis foulà sé fai moin bien,
+     Doudoux!
+
+     À te&mdash;moin ka dòmi toute longue;
+     Yon joli madras sé fai moin bien,
+     Doudoux!
+
+     À te&mdash;moin ka dòmi toute longue: Çe à tè..."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      ... Obliged from the first to lengthen his stride in order to keep up with
+      her, Fafa has found his utmost powers of walking overtaxed, and has been
+      left behind. Already his thin attire is saturated with sweat; his
+      breathing is almost a panting;&mdash;yet the black bronze of his
+      companion's skin shows no moisture; her rhythmic her silent respiration,
+      reveal no effort: she laughs at his desperate straining to remain by her
+      side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"Marché toujou' deïé moin,&mdash;anh, chè?&mdash;marché toujou'
+      deïé!"...
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the involuntary laggard&mdash;utterly bewitched by supple allurement
+      of her motion, by the black flame of her gaze, by the savage melody of her
+      chant&mdash;wonders more and more who she may be, while she waits for him
+      with her mocking smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Gabou&mdash;who has been following and watching from afar off, and
+      sounding his fruitless ouklé betimes&mdash;suddenly starts, halts, turns,
+      and hurries back, fearfully crossing himself at every step.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He has seen the sign by which She is known...
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      VI.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... None ever saw her by night. Her hour is the fulness of the sun's
+      flood-tide: she comes in the dead hush and white flame of windless noons,&mdash;when
+      colors appear to take a very unearthliness of intensity,&mdash;when even
+      the flash of some colibri, bosomed with living fire, shooting hither and
+      thither among the grenadilla blossoms, seemeth a spectral happening
+      because of the great green trance of the land....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mostly she haunts the mountain roads, winding from plantation to
+      plantation, from hamlet to hamlet,&mdash;sometimes dominating huge sweeps
+      of azure sea, sometimes shadowed by mornes deep-wooded to the sky. But
+      close to the great towns she sometimes walks: she has been seen at mid-day
+      upon the highway which overlooks the Cemetery of the Anchorage, behind the
+      cathedral of St. Pierre.... A black Woman, simply clad, of lofty stature
+      and strange beauty, silently standing in the light, <i>keeping her eyes
+      fixed upon the Sun!</i>...
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      VII.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Day wanes. The further western altitudes shift their pearline gray to deep
+      blue where the sky is yellowing up behind them; and in the darkening
+      hollows of nearer mornes strange shadows gather with the changing of the
+      light&mdash;dead indigoes, fuliginous purples, rubifications as of
+      scoriae,&mdash;ancient volcanic colors momentarily resurrected by the
+      illusive haze of evening. And the fallow of the canes takes a faint warm
+      ruddy tinge. On certain far high slopes, as the sun lowers, they look like
+      thin golden hairs against the glow,&mdash;blond down upon the skin of the
+      living hills.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Still the Woman and her follower walk together,&mdash;chatting loudly,
+      laughing&mdash;chanting snatches of song betimes. And now the valley is
+      well behind them;&mdash;they climb the steep road crossing the eastern
+      peaks,&mdash;through woods that seem to stifle under burdening of
+      creepers. The shadow of the Woman and the shadow of the man,&mdash;broadening
+      from their feet,&mdash;lengthening prodigiously,&mdash;sometimes, mixing,
+      fill all the way; sometimes, at a turn, rise up to climb the trees. Huge
+      masses of frondage, catching the failing light, take strange fiery color;&mdash;the
+      sun's rim almost touches one violet hump in the western procession of
+      volcanic silhouettes....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sunset, in the tropics, is vaster than sunrise.... The dawn, upflaming
+      swiftly from the sea, has no heralding erubescence, no awful blossoming&mdash;as
+      in the North: its fairest hues are fawn-colors, dove-tints, and yellows,&mdash;pale
+      yellows as of old dead gold, in horizon and flood. But after the mighty
+      heat of day has charged all the blue air with translucent vapor, colors
+      become strangely changed, magnified, transcendentalized when the sun falls
+      once more below the verge of visibility. Nearly an hour before his death,
+      his light begins to turn tint; and all the horizon yellows to the color of
+      a lemon. Then this hue deepens, through tones of magnificence unspeakable,
+      into orange; and the sea becomes lilac. Orange is the light of the world
+      for a little space; and as the orb sinks, the indigo darkness comes&mdash;not
+      descending, but rising, as if from the ground&mdash;all within a few
+      minutes. And during those brief minutes peaks and mornes, purpling into
+      richest velvety blackness, appear outlined against passions of fire that
+      rise half-way to the zenith,&mdash;enormous furies of vermilion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... The Woman all at once leaves the main road,&mdash;begins to mount a
+      steep narrow path leading up from it through the woods upon the left. But
+      Fafa hesitates,&mdash;halts a moment to look back. He sees the sun's huge
+      orange face sink down,&mdash;sees the weird procession of the peaks
+      vesture themselves in blackness funereal,&mdash;sees the burning behind
+      them crimson into awfulness; and a vague fear comes upon him as he looks
+      again up the darkling path to the left. Whither is she now going?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"Oti ou kallé la?" he cries.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"Mais conm ça!&mdash;chimin tala plis cou't,&mdash;coument?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It may be the shortest route, indeed;&mdash;but then, the fer-de-lance!...
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"Ni sèpent ciya,&mdash;en pile."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No: there is not a single one, she avers; she has taken that path too
+      often not to know:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"Pa ni sèpent piess! Moin ni coutime passé là;&mdash;pa ni piess!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... She leads the way.... Behind them the tremendous glow deepens;&mdash;before
+      them the gloom. Enormous gnarled forms of ceiba, balata, acoma, stand
+      dimly revealed as they pass; masses of viny drooping things take, by the
+      failing light, a sanguine tone. For a little while Fafa can plainly
+      discern the figure of the Woman before him;&mdash;then, as the path
+      zigzags into shadow, he can descry only the white turban and the white
+      foulard;&mdash;and then the boughs meet overhead: he can see her no more,
+      and calls to her in alarm:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"Oti ou?&mdash;moin pa pè ouè arien!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Forked pending ends of creepers trail cold across his face. Huge
+      fire-flies sparkle by,&mdash;like atoms of kindled charcoal thinkling,
+      blown by a wind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"Içitt!&mdash;quimbé lanmain-moin!"...
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      How cold the hand that guides him!...She walks swiftly, surely, as one
+      knowing the path by heart. It zigzags once more; and the incandescent
+      color flames again between the trees;&mdash;the high vaulting of foliage
+      fissures overhead, revealing the first stars. A <i>cabritt-bois</i> begins
+      its chant. They reach the summit of the morne under the clear sky.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The wood is below their feet now; the path curves on eastward between a
+      long swaying of ferns sable in the gloom,&mdash;as between a waving of
+      prodigious black feathers. Through the further purpling, loftier altitudes
+      dimly loom; and from some viewless depth, a dull vast rushing sound rises
+      into the night.... Is it the speech of hurrying waters, or only some
+      tempest of insect voices from those ravines in which the night begins?...
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her face is in the darkness as she stands;&mdash;Fafa's eyes turned to the
+      iron-crimson of the western sky. He still holds her hand, fondles it,&mdash;murmurs
+      something to her in undertones.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"Ess ou ainmein moin conm ça?" she asks, almost in a whisper,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Oh! yes, yes, yes!... more than any living being he loves her!... How
+      much? Ever so much,&mdash;<i>gouôs conm caze!</i>... Yet she seems to
+      doubt him,&mdash;repeating her questionn over and over:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"Ess ou ainmein moin?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And all the while,&mdash;gently, caressingly, imperceptibly&mdash;she
+      draws him a little nearer to the side of the nearer to the black waving of
+      the ferns, nearer to the great dull rushing sound that rises from beyond
+      them:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"Ess ou ainmein moin?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"Oui, oui!" he responds,&mdash;"ou save ça!&mdash;oui, chè doudoux,
+      ou save ça!"...
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And she, suddenly,&mdash;turning at once to him and to the last red light,
+      the goblin horror of her face transformed,&mdash;shrieks with a burst of
+      hideous laughter:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"<i>Atò, bô!</i>" <a href="#linknote-16" name="linknoteref-16"
+      id="linknoteref-16">[16]</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For the fraction of a moment he knows her name:&mdash;then, smitten to the
+      brain with the sight of her, reels, recoils, and, backward falling,
+      crashes two thousand feet down to his death upon the rocks of a mountain
+      torrent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0005" id="link2HCH0005">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER V. &mdash; LA VÉRETTE.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      I. &mdash;ST. PIERRE, <i>1887</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One returning from the country to the city in the Carnival season is lucky
+      to find any comfortable rooms for rent. I have been happy to secure one
+      even in a rather retired street,&mdash;so steep that it is really
+      dangerous to sneeze while descending it, lest one lose one's balance and
+      tumble right across the town. It is not a fashionable street, the Rue du
+      Morne 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One consolation is that I have Manm-Robert for a next-door neighbor, who
+      keeps the best bouts in town (those long thin Martinique cigars of which a
+      stranger soon becomes fond), and who can relate more queer stories and
+      legends of old times in the island than anybody else I know of.
+      Manm-Robert is <i>yon màchanne lapacotte</i>, a dealer in such cheap
+      articles of food as the poor live upon: fruits and tropical vegetables,
+      manioc-flour, "macadam" (a singular dish of rice stewed with salt fish&mdash;<i>diri
+      épi coubouyon lamori</i>), akras, etc.; but her bouts probably bring her
+      the largest profit&mdash;they are all bought up by the békés. Manm-Robert
+      is also a sort of doctor: whenever anyone in the neighborhood falls sick
+      she is sent for, and always comes, and very often cures,&mdash;as she is
+      skilled in the knowledge and use of 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 (<i>quimboisé</i>) Manm-Robert can
+      furnish him or her with something that will keep the bewitchment away....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      II. <i>February 15th.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... Ash-Wednesday. The last masquerade will appear this afternoon,
+      notwithstanding; for the Carnival is in Martinique a day longer than
+      elsewhere.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All through the country districts since the first week of January there
+      have been wild festivities every Sunday&mdash;dancing on the public
+      highways to the pattering of tamtams,&mdash;African dancing, too, such as
+      is never seen in St. Pierre. In the city, however, there has been less
+      merriment than in previous years;&mdash;the natural gaiety of the
+      population has been visibly affected by the advent of a terrible and
+      unfamiliar visitor to the island,&mdash;<i>La Vérette</i>: she came by
+      steamer from Colon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... It was in September. Only two cases had been reported when every
+      neighboring British colony quarantined against Martinique. Then other West
+      Indian colonies did likewise. Only two cases of small-pox. "But there may
+      be two thousand in another month," answered the governors and the consuls
+      to many indignant protests. Among West Indian populations the malady has a
+      signification unknown in Europe or the United States: it means an
+      exterminating plague.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Two months later the little capital of Fort-de-France was swept by the
+      pestilence as by a wind of death. Then the evil began to spread. It
+      entered St. Pierre in December, about Christmas time. Last week 173 cases
+      were reported; and a serious epidemic is almost certain. There were only
+      8500 inhabitants in Fort-de-France; there are 28,000 in the three quarters
+      of St. Pierre proper, not including her suburbs; and there is no saying
+      what ravages the disease may make here.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      III.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... Three o'clock, hot and clear.... In the distance there is a heavy
+      sound of drums, always drawing nearer: <i>tam!&mdash;tam!&mdash;tamtamtam!</i>
+      The Grande Rue is lined with expectant multitudes; and its tiny square,&mdash;the
+      Batterie d'Esnotz,&mdash;thronged with békés. <i>Tam!&mdash;tam!&mdash;tamtamtam!</i>...
+      In our own street the people are beginning to gather at door-ways, and
+      peer out of windows,&mdash;prepared to descend to the main thoroughfare at
+      the first glimpse of the procession.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"<i>Oti masque-à?</i>" Where are the maskers?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is little Mimi's voice: she is speaking for two besides herself, both
+      quite as anxious as she to know where the maskers are,&mdash;Maurice, her
+      little fair-haired and blue-eyed brother, three years old; and Gabrielle,
+      her child-sister, aged four,&mdash;two years her junior.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Every day I have been observing the three, playing in the door-way of the
+      house across the street. Mimi, with her brilliant white skin, black hair,
+      and laughing black eyes, is the prettiest,&mdash;though all are unusually
+      pretty children. Were it not for the fact that their mother's beautiful
+      brown hair is usually covered with a violet foulard, you would certainly
+      believe them white as any children in the world. Now there are children
+      whom 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 <i>fleur-d'amour</i> blossom resembles another;&mdash;there
+      is actually another Mimi (though she is not so called at home) so like
+      this Mimi that you could not possibly tell one from the other,&mdash;except
+      by their dress. And yet the most unhappy experience of the Mimi who wears
+      white satin slippers was certainly that punishment given her for having
+      been once caught playing in the street with this Mimi, who wears no shoes
+      at all. What mischance could have brought them thus together?&mdash;and
+      the worst of it was they had fallen in love with each other at first
+      sight!... It was not because the other Mimi must not talk to nice little
+      colored girls, or that this one may not play with white children of her
+      own age: it was because there are cases.... It was not because the other
+      children I speak of are prettier or sweeter or more intelligent than these
+      now playing before me;&mdash;or because the finest microscopist in the
+      world could or could not detect any imaginable race difference between
+      those delicate satin skins. It was only because human nature has little
+      changed since the day that Hagar knew the hate of Sarah, and the thing was
+      grievous in Abraham's sight because of his son.....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... The father of these children loved them very much: he had provided a
+      home for them,&mdash;a house in the Quarter of the Fort, with an allowance
+      of two hundred francs monthly; and he died in the belief their future was
+      secured. But relatives fought the will with large means and shrewd
+      lawyers, and won!... Yzore, the mother, found herself homeless and
+      penniless, with three children to care for. But she was brave;&mdash;she
+      abandoned the costume of the upper class forever, put on the douillette
+      and the foulard,&mdash;the attire that is a confession of race,&mdash;and
+      went to work. She is still comely, and so white that she seems only to be
+      masquerading in that violet head-dress and long loose robe....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"<i>Vini ouè!&mdash;vini ouè!</i>" cry the children to one another,&mdash;"come
+      and see!" The drums are drawing near;&mdash;everybody is running to the
+      Grande Rue....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      IV.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Tam!&mdash;tam!&mdash;tamtamtam!</i>... The spectacle is interesting
+      from the Batterie d'Esnotz. High up the Rue Peysette,&mdash;up all the
+      precipitous streets that ascend the mornes,&mdash;a far gathering of showy
+      color appears: the massing of maskers in rose and blue and sulphur-yellow
+      attire.... Then what a <i>degringolade</i> begins!&mdash;what a tumbling,
+      leaping, cascading of color as the troupes descend. Simultaneously from
+      north and south, from the Mouillage and the Fort, two immense bands enter
+      the Grande Rue;&mdash;the great dancing societies these,&mdash;the <i>Sans-souci</i>
+      and the <i>Intrépides</i>. They are rivals; they are the composers and
+      singers of those Carnival songs,&mdash;cruel satires most often, of which
+      the local meaning is unintelligible to those unacquainted with the
+      incident inspiring the improvisation,&mdash;of which the words are too
+      often coarse or obscene,&mdash;whose burdens will be caught up and
+      re-echoed through all the burghs of the island. Vile as may be the motive,
+      the satire, the malice, these chants are preserved for generations by the
+      singular beauty of the airs; and the victim of a Carnival song need never
+      hope that his failing or his wrong will be forgotten: it will be sung of
+      long after he is in his grave.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0026" id="linkimage-0026">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%">
+      <img src="images/24-Victor_Hugo.jpg"
+      alt="Rue Victor Hugo (formerly Grande Rue), St. Pierre " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      ... Ten minutes more, and the entire length of the street is thronged with
+      a shouting, shrieking, laughing, gesticulating host of maskers. Thicker
+      and thicker the press becomes;&mdash;the drums are silent: all are waiting
+      for the signal of the general dance. Jests and practical jokes are being
+      everywhere perpetrated; there is a vast hubbub, made up of screams, cries,
+      chattering, laughter. Here and there snatches of Carnival song are being
+      sung:&mdash;"<i>Cambronne, Cambronne</i>;" or "<i>Ti fenm-là doux, li
+      doux, li doux!</i> "... "Sweeter than sirup the little woman is";&mdash;this
+      burden will be remembered when the rest of the song passes out of fashion.
+      Brown hands reach out from the crowd of masks, pulling the beards and
+      patting the faces of white spectators.... "<i>Moin connaitt ou, chè!&mdash;moin
+      connaitt ou, doudoux! ba moin ti d'mi franc!</i>" It is well to refuse the
+      half-franc,&mdash;though you do not know what these maskers might take a
+      notion to do to-day.... Then all the great drums suddenly boom together;
+      all the bands strike up; the mad medley kaleidoscopes into some sort of
+      order; and the immense processional dance begins. 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;&mdash;and all this passes with a huge swing,&mdash;a regular swaying
+      to right and left.... It will take at least an hour for all to pass; and
+      it is an hour well worth passing. Band after band whirls by; the musicians
+      all garbed as women or as monks in canary-colored habits;&mdash;before
+      them the dancers are dancing backward, with a motion as of skaters; behind
+      them all leap and wave hands as in pursuit. Most of the bands are playing
+      creole airs,&mdash;but that of the <i>Sans-souci</i> strikes up the melody
+      of the latest French song in vogue,&mdash;<i>Petits amoureux aux plumes</i>
+      ("Little feathered lovers"). <a href="#linknote-17" name="linknoteref-17"
+      id="linknoteref-17">[17]</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Everybody now seems to know this song by heart; you hear children only
+      five or six years old singing it: there are pretty lines in it, although
+      two out of its four stanzas are commonplace enough, and it is certainly
+      the air rather than the words which accounts for its sudden popularity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      V.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... Extraordinary things are happening in the streets through which the
+      procession passes. Pest-smitten women rise from their beds to costume
+      themselves,&mdash;to mask face already made unrecognizable by the hideous
+      malady,&mdash;and stagger out to join the dancers.... They do this in the
+      Rue Longchamps, in the Rue St. Jean-de-Dieu, in the Rue Peysette, in the
+      Rue de Petit Versailles. And in the Rue Ste.-Marthe there are three young
+      girls sick with the disease, who hear the blowing of the horns and the
+      pattering of feet and clapping of hands in chorus;&mdash;they get up to
+      look through the slats of their windows on the masquerade,&mdash;and the
+      creole passion of the dance comes upon them. "<i>Ah!</i>" cries one,&mdash;"<i>nou
+      ké bien amieusé nou!&mdash;c'est zaffai si nou mò!</i>" [We will have our
+      fill of fun: what matter if we die after!] And all mask, and join the
+      rout, and dance down to the Savane, and over the river-bridge into the
+      high streets of the Fort, carrying contagion with them!... No
+      extraordinary example, this: the ranks of the dancers hold many and many a
+      <i>verrettier</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      VI.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... The costumes are rather disappointing,-though the mummery has some
+      general characteristics that are not unpicturesquel&mdash;for example, the
+      predominance of crimson and canary-yellow in choice of color, and a marked
+      predilection for pointed hoods and high-peaked head-dresses, Mock
+      religious costumes also form a striking element in the general tone of the
+      display,&mdash;Franciscan, Dominican, or Penitent habits,&mdash;usually
+      crimson or yellow, rarely sky-blue. There are no historical costumes, few
+      eccentricities or monsters: only a few "vampire-bat" head-dresses abruptly
+      break the effect of the peaked caps and the hoods.... Still there are some
+      decidedly local ideas in dress which deserve notice,&mdash;the <i>congo</i>,
+      the <i>bébé</i> (or <i>ti-manmaille</i>), the <i>ti nègue gouos-sirop</i>
+      ("little molasses-negro"); and the <i>diablesse</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The congo is merely the exact reproduction of the dress worn by workers on
+      the plantations. For the women, a gray calico shirt and coarse petticoat
+      of percaline with two coarse handkerchiefs (<i>mouchoirs fatas</i>), one
+      for her neck, and one for the head, over which is worn a monstrous straw
+      hat;&mdash;she walks either barefoot or shod with rude native sandals, and
+      she carries a hoe. For the man the costume consists of a gray shirt of
+      Iuugh material, blue canvas pantaloons, a large mouchoir fatas to tie
+      around his waist, and a <i>chapeau Bacoué</i>,&mdash;an enormous hat of
+      Martinique palm-straw. He walks barefooted and carries a cutlass.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sight of a troupe of young girls <i>en bébé</i>, 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The "molasses-negro" wears nothing but a cloth around his loins;&mdash;his
+      whole body and face being smeared with an atrocious mixture of soot and
+      molasses. He is supposed to represent the original African ancestor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The <i>devilesses</i> (<i>diablesses</i>) are few in number; for it
+      requires a very tall woman to play deviless. These are robed all in black,
+      with a white turban and white foulard;&mdash;they wear black masks. They
+      also carry <i>boms</i> (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, "<i>guiablesse</i>") represents a singular
+      Martinique superstition. It is said that sometimes at noonday, a beautiful
+      negress passes silently through some isolated plantation,&mdash;smiling at
+      the workers in the cane-fields,&mdash;tempting men to follow her. But he
+      who follows her never comes back again; and when a field hand mysteriously
+      disappears, his fellows say, "<i>Y té ka ouè la Guiablesse!</i>"... The
+      tallest among the devilesses always walks first, chanting the question, "<i>Fou
+      ouvè?</i>" (Is it yet daybreak?) And all the others reply in chorus, "<i>Jou
+      pa'ncò ouvè</i>." (It is not yet day.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;The masks worn by the multitude include very few grotesques: as a
+      rule, they are simply white wire masks, having the form of an oval and
+      regular human face;&mdash;and 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,&mdash;expressionless, void,&mdash;it
+      lies on the face like a vapor, like a cloud,&mdash;creating the idea of a
+      spectral vacuity behind it....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      VII.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... Now comes the band of the <i>Intrépides</i>, playing the <i>bouèné</i>.
+      It is a dance melody,&mdash;also the name of a <i>mode</i> of dancing,
+      peculiar and unrestrained;&mdash;the dancers advance and retreat face to
+      face; they hug each other, press together, and separate to embrace again.
+      A very old dance, this,&mdash;of African origin; perhaps the same of which
+      Père Labat wrote in 1722:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"It is not modest. Nevertheless, it has not failed to become so
+      popular with the Spanish Creoles of America, 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."... <a
+      href="#linknote-18" name="linknoteref-18" id="linknoteref-18">[18]</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      VIII.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... Every year, on the last day of the Carnival, a droll ceremony used to
+      take place called the "Burial of the Bois-bois,"&mdash;the bois-bois being
+      a dummy, a guy, caricaturing the most unpopular thing in city life or in
+      politics. This bois-bois, after having been paraded with mock solemnity
+      through all the ways of St. Pierre, was either interred or "drowned,"&mdash;flung
+      into the sea.... And yesterday the dancing societies had announced their
+      intention to bury a <i>bois-bois laverette</i>,&mdash;a manikin that was
+      to represent the plague. But this bois-bois does not make its appearance.
+      <i>La Verette</i> is too terrible a visitor to be made fun of, my friends;&mdash;you
+      will not laugh at her, because you dare not....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No: there is one who has the courage,&mdash;a yellow goblin crying from
+      behind his wire mask, in imitation of the màchannes: "<i>Ça qui lè quatòze
+      graines laverette pou yon sou?</i>" (Who wants to buy fourteen
+      verette-spots for a sou?)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Not a single laugh follows that jest.... And just one week from to-day,
+      poor mocking goblin, you will have a great many more than <i>quatorze
+      graines</i>, which will not cost you even a sou, and which will disguise
+      you infinitely better than the mask you now wear;&mdash;and they will pour
+      quick-lime over you, ere ever they let you pass through this street again&mdash;in
+      a seven franc coffin!...
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      IX.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the multicolored clamoring stream rushes by,&mdash;swerves off at last
+      through the Rue des Ursulines to the Savane,&mdash;rolls over the new
+      bridge of the Roxelane to the ancient quarter of the Fort.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All of a sudden there is a hush, a halt;&mdash;the drums stop beating, the
+      songs cease. Then I see a sudden scattering of goblins and demons and
+      devilesses in all directions: they run into houses, up alleys,&mdash;hide
+      behind door-ways. And the crowd parts; and straight through it, walking
+      very quickly, comes a priest in his vestments, preceded by an acolyte who
+      rings a little bell. <i>C'est Bon-Dié ka passé!</i> ("It is the Good-God
+      who goes by!") The father is bearing the "viaticum" to some victim of the
+      pestilence: one must not appear masked as a devil or a deviless in the
+      presence of the Bon-Die.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He goes by. The flood of maskers recloses behind the ominous passage;&mdash;the
+      drums boom again; the dance recommences; and all the fantastic mummery
+      ebbs swiftly out of sight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      X.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Night falls;&mdash;the maskers crowd to the ball-rooms to dance strange
+      tropical measures that will become wilder and wilder as the hours pass.
+      And through the black streets, the Devil makes his last Carnival-round.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By the gleam of the old-fashioned oil lamps hung across the thoroughfares
+      I can make out a few details of his costume. He is clad in red, wears a
+      hideous blood-colored mask, and a cap of which the four sides are formed
+      by four looking-glasses;&mdash;the whole head-dress being surmounted by a
+      red lantern. He has a white wig made of horse-hair, to make him look weird
+      and old,&mdash;since the Devil is older than the world! Down the street he
+      comes, leaping nearly his own height,&mdash;chanting words without human
+      signification,&mdash;and followed by some three hundred boys, who form the
+      chorus to his chant&mdash;all clapping hands together and giving tongue
+      with a simultaneity that testifies how strongly the sense of rhythm enters
+      into the natural musical feeling of the African,&mdash;a feeling powerful
+      enough to impose itself upon all Spanish-America, and there create the
+      unmistakable characteristics of all that is called "creole music."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"Bimbolo!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"Zimabolo!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"Bimbolo!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"Zimabolo!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"Et zimbolo!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"Et bolo-po!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;sing the Devil and his chorus. His chant is cavernous, abysmal,&mdash;booms
+      from his chest like the sound of a drum beaten in the bottom of a well....
+      <i>Ti manmaille-là, baill moin lavoix!</i> ("Give me voice, little folk,&mdash;give
+      me voice!") And all chant after him, in a chanting like the rushing of
+      many waters, and with triple clapping of hands:&mdash;"<i>Ti manmaille-là,
+      baill moin lavoix!</i>"... Then he halts before a dwelling in the Rue
+      Peysette, and thunders:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"<i>Eh! Marie-sans-dent!&mdash;Mi! diabe-là derhò!</i>"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That is evidently a piece of spite-work: there is somebody living there
+      against whom he has a grudge....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "<i>Hey! Marie-without-teeth! look! the Devil is outside!</i>"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the chorus catch the clue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      DEVIL.&mdash;"<i>Eh! Marie-sans-dent!</i>"...
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CHORUS.&mdash;"<i>Marie-sans-dent! mi!&mdash;diabe-là derhò!</i>"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      D.&mdash;"<i>Eh! Marie-sans-dent!</i>"'...
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      C.&mdash;"<i>Marie-sans-dent! mi!&mdash;diabe-à derhò!</i>"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      D.&mdash;"<i>Eh! Marie-sans-dent!</i>"... etc.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0027" id="linkimage-0027">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%">
+      <img src="images/25-Fort_St_Pierrre.jpg"
+      alt="Quarter of the Fort, St. Pierre (overlooking The Rivière Roxelane). "
+      width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      The Devil at last descends to the main street, always singing the same
+      song;&mdash;follow the chorus to the Savanna, where the rout makes for the
+      new bridge over the Roxelane, to mount the high streets of the old quarter
+      of the Fort; and the chant changes as they cross over:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      DEVIL.&mdash;"<i>Oti ouè diabe-là passé lariviè?</i>" (Where did you see
+      the Devil going over the river?) And all the boys repeat the words,
+      falling into another rhythm with perfect regularity and ease:&mdash;"<i>Oti
+      ouè diabe-là passé lariviè?</i>"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      DEVIL.&mdash;"<i>Oti ouè diabe?</i>"...
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CHORUS.&mdash;"<i>Oti ouè diabe-là passé lariviè?</i>"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      D.&mdash;"<i>Oti ouè diabe?</i>"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      C,&mdash;"<i>Oti ouè diabe-làp passé lariviè?</i>"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      D,-"<i>Oti ouè diabe?</i>...etc.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      About midnight the return of the Devil and his following arouses me from
+      sleep:&mdash;all are chanting a new refrain, "The Devil and the zombis
+      sleep anywhere and everywhere!" (<i>Diabe épi zombi ka dòmi tout-pàtout</i>.)
+      The voices of the boys are still clear, shrill, fresh,&mdash;clear as a
+      chant of frogs;&mdash;they still clap hanwith a precision of rhythm that
+      is simply wonderful,&mdash;making each time a sound almost exactly like
+      the bursting of a heavy wave:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      DEVIL.&mdash;"<i>Diable épi zombi</i>."...
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CHORUS.&mdash;"<i>Diable épi zombi ka d'omi tout-pàtout!</i>"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      D.&mdash;"<i>Diable épi zombi</i>."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      C.&mdash;"<i>Diable épi zombi ka dòmi tout-pàtout!</i>"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      D.&mdash;"<i>Diable épi zombi</i>."...etc.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... What is this after all but the old African method of chanting at
+      labor, The practice of carrying the burden upon the head left the hands
+      free for the rhythmic accompaniment of clapping. And you may still hear
+      the women who load the transatlantic steamers with coal at Fort-de-France
+      thus chanting and clapping....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Evidently the Devil is moving very fast; for all the boys are running;&mdash;the
+      pattering of bare feet upon the pavement sounds like a heavy shower....
+      Then the chanting grows fainter in distance; the Devil's immense basso
+      becomes inaudible;&mdash;one only distinguishes at regular intervals the
+      <i>crescendo</i> of the burden,&mdash;a wild swelling of many hundred
+      boy-voices all rising together,&mdash;a retreating storm of rhythmic song,
+      wafted to the ear in gusts, in <i>raifales</i> of contralto....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      XI. <i>February 17th.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... Yzore is a <i>calendeuse</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The calendeuses are the women who make up the beautiful Madras turbans and
+      color them; for the amazingly brilliant yellow of these head-dresses is
+      not the result of any dyeing process: they are all painted by hand. When
+      purchased the Madras is simply a great oblong handkerchief, having a pale
+      green or pale pink ground, and checkered or plaided by intersecting bands
+      of dark blue, purple, crimson, or maroon. The calendeuse lays the Madras
+      upon a broad board placed across her knees,&mdash;then, taking a
+      camel's-hair brush, she begins to fill in the spaces between the bands
+      with a sulphur-yellow paint, which is always mixed with gum-arabic. It
+      requires a sure eye, very steady fingers, and long experience to do this
+      well.... After the Madras has been "calendered" (<i>calendé</i>) and has
+      become quite stiff and dry, it is folded about the head of the purchaser
+      after the comely Martinique fashion,&mdash;which varies considerably from
+      the modes popular in Guadeloupe or Cayenne,&mdash;is fixed into the form
+      thus obtained; and can thereafter be taken off or put on without
+      arrangement or disarrangement, like a cap. The price for calendering a
+      Madras is now two francs and fifteen sous;&mdash;and for making-up the
+      turban, six sous additional, except in Carnival-time, or upon holiday
+      occasions, when the price rises to twenty-five sous.... The making-up of
+      the Madras into a turban is called "tying a head" (<i>marré yon tête</i>);
+      and a prettily folded turban is spoken of as "a head well tied" (<i>yon
+      tête bien marré</i>).... However, the profession of calendeuse is far from
+      being a lucrative one: it is two or three days' work to calender a single
+      Madras well....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Yzore does not depend upon calendering alone for a living: she earns
+      much more by the manufacture of <i>moresques</i> and of <i>chinoises</i>
+      than by painting Madras turbans.... Everybody in Martinique who can afford
+      it wears moresques and chinoises. The moresques are large loose
+      comfortable pantaloons of thin printed calico (<i>indienne</i>),&mdash;having
+      colored designs representing birds, frogs, leaves, lizards, flowers,
+      butterflies, or kittens,&mdash;or perhaps representing nothing in
+      particular, being simply arabesques. The chinoise is a loose body-garment,
+      very much like the real Chinese blouse, but always of brightly colored
+      calico with fantastic designs. These things are worn at home during
+      siestas, after office-hours, and at night. To take a nap during the day
+      with one's ordinary clothing on means always a terrible drenching from
+      perspiration, and an after-feeling of exhaustion almost indescribable&mdash;best
+      expressed, perhaps, by the local term: <i>corps écrasé</i>. Therefore, on
+      entering one's room for the siesta, one strips, puts on the light
+      moresques and the chinoise, and dozes in comfort. A suit of this sort is
+      very neat, often quite pretty, and very cheap (costing only about six
+      francs);&mdash;the colors do not fade out in washing, and two good suits
+      will last a year.... Yzore can make two pair of moresques and two
+      chinoises in a single day upon her machine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... I have observed there is a prejudice here against treadle machines;&mdash;the
+      creole girls are persuaded they injure the health. Most of the
+      sewing-machines I have seen among this people are operated by hand,&mdash;with
+      a sort of little crank....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      XII. <i>February 22d.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... Old physicians indeed predicted it; but who believed them?...
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is as though something sluggish and viewless, dormant and deadly, had
+      been suddenly upstirred to furious life by the wind of robes and tread of
+      myriad dancing feet,&mdash;by the crash of cymbals and heavy vibration of
+      drums! Within a few days there has been a frightful increase of the
+      visitation, an almost incredible expansion of the invisible poison: the
+      number of new cases and of deaths has successively doubled, tripled,
+      quadrupled....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... Great caldrons of tar are kindled now at night in the more thickly
+      peopled streets,&mdash;about one hundred paces apart, each being tended by
+      an Indian laborer in the pay of the city: this is done with the idea of
+      purifying the air. These sinister fires are never lighted but in times of
+      pestilence and of tempest: on hurricane nights, when enormous waves roll
+      in from the fathomless sea upon one of the most fearful coasts in the
+      world, and great vessels are being driven ashore, such is the illumination
+      by which the brave men of the coast make desperate efforts to save the
+      lives of shipwrecked men, often at the cost of their own. <a
+      href="#linknote-19" name="linknoteref-19" id="linknoteref-19">[19]</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      XIII. <i>February 23d.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A Coffin passes, balanced on the heads of black men. It holds the body of
+      Pascaline Z&mdash;&mdash;, covered with quick-lime.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was the prettiest, assuredly, among the pretty shopgirls of the Grande
+      Rue,&mdash;a rare type of <i>sang-mêlée</i>. So oddly pleasing, the young
+      face, that once seen, you could never again dissociate the recollection of
+      it from the memory of the street. But one who saw it last night before
+      they poured quick-lime upon it could discern no features,&mdash;only a
+      dark brown mass, like a fungus, too frightful to think about.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... And they are all going thus, the beautiful women of color. In the
+      opinion of physicians, the whole generation is doomed.... Yet a curious
+      fact is that the young children of octoroons are suffering least: these
+      women have their children vaccinated,&mdash;though they will not be
+      vaccinated themselves. I see many brightly colored children, too,
+      recovering from the disorder: the skin is not pitted, like that of the
+      darker classes; and the rose-colored patches finally disappear altogether,
+      leaving no trace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... Here the sick are wrapped in banana leaves, after having been smeared
+      with a certain unguent.... There is an immense demand for banana leaves.
+      In ordinary times these leaves&mdash;especially the younger ones, still
+      unrolled, and tender and soft beyond any fabric possible for man to make&mdash;are
+      used for poultices of all kinds, and sell from one to two sous each,
+      according to size and quality.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      XIV. <i>February 29th.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... The whites remain exempt from the malady.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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;&mdash;St. Pierre is losing its handsomest
+      octoroons. Where the proportion of white to black blood is 116 to 8, as in
+      the type called <i>mamelouc</i>;&mdash;or 122 to 4, as in the <i>quarteronné</i>
+      (not to be confounded with the <i>quarteron</i> or quadroon);&mdash;or
+      even 127 to 1, as in the <i>sang-mêlé</i>, the liability to attack remains
+      the same, while the chances of recovery are considerably less than in the
+      case of the black. Some few striking instances of immunity appear to offer
+      a different basis for argument; but these might be due to the social
+      position of the individual rather than to any constitutional temper:
+      wealth and comfort, it must be remembered, have no small prophylactic
+      value in such times. Still,&mdash;although there is reason to doubt
+      whether mixed races have a constitutional vigor comparable to that of the
+      original parent-races,&mdash;the liability to diseases of this class is
+      decided less, perhaps, by race characteristics than by ancestral
+      experience. The white peoples of the world have been practically
+      inoculated, vaccinated, by experience of centuries;&mdash;while among
+      these visibly mixed or black populations the seeds of the pest find
+      absolutely fresh soil in which to germinate, and its ravages are therefore
+      scarcely less terrible than those it made among the American-Indian or the
+      Polynesian races in other times. Moreover, there is an unfortunate
+      prejudice against vaccination here. People even now declare that those
+      vaccinated die just as speedily of the plague as those who have never
+      been;&mdash;and they can cite cases in proof. It is useless to talk to
+      them about averages of immunity, percentage of liability, etc.;&mdash;they
+      have seen with their own eyes persons who had been well vaccinated die of
+      the verette, and that is enough to destroy their faith in the system....
+      Even the priests, who pray their congregations to adopt the only known
+      safeguard against the disease, can do little against this scepticism.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      XV. <i>March 5th.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... The streets are so narrow in this old-fashioned quarter that even a
+      whisper is audible across them; and after dark I hear a great many things,&mdash;sometimes
+      sounds of pain, sobbing, despairing cries as Death makes his round,&mdash;sometimes,
+      again, angry words, and laughter, and even song,&mdash;always one
+      melancholy chant: the voice has that peculiar metallic timbre that reveals
+      the young negress:&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "<i>Pauv' ti Lélé,
+     Pauv' ti Lélé!
+     Li gagnin doulè, doulè, doulè,&mdash;
+     Li gagnin doulè Tout-pàtout!</i>"
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      I want to know who little Lélé was, and why she had pains "all over";&mdash;for
+      however artless and childish these creole songs seem, they are invariably
+      originated by some real incident. And at last somebody tells me that "poor
+      little Lélé" had the reputation in other years of being the most unlucky
+      girl in St. Pierre; whatever she tried to do resulted only in misfortune;&mdash;when
+      it was morning she wished it were evening, that she might sleep and
+      forget; but when the night came she could not sleep for thinking of the
+      trouble she had had during the day, so that she wished it were morning....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      More pleasant it is to hear the chatting of Yzore's childlren across the
+      way, after the sun has set, and the stars come out.... Gabrielle always
+      wants to know what the stars are:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"<i>Ça qui ka clairé conm ça, manman?</i>" (What is it shines like
+      that?)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And Yzore answers:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"<i>Ça, mafi,&mdash;c'est ti limiè Bon-Dié.</i>" (Those are the
+      little lights of the Good-God.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"It is so pretty,&mdash;eh, mamma? I want to count them."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"You cannot count them, child."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"One-two-three-four-five-six-seven." Gabrielle can only count up to
+      seven. "<i>Moin peide!</i>&mdash;I am lost, mamma!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The moon comes up;&mdash;she cries:&mdash;"<i>Mi! manman!&mdash;gàdé gouôs
+      difé qui adans ciel-à!</i> Look at the great fire in the sky."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"It is the Moon, child!... Don't you see St. Joseph in it, carrying
+      a bundle of wood?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"Yes, mamma! I see him!... A great big bundle of wood!"...
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Mimi is wiser in moon-lore: she borrows half a franc from her mother
+      "to show to the Moon." And holding it up before the silver light, she
+      sings:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Pretty Moon, I show you my little money;&mdash;now let me always have
+      money so long as you shine!" <a href="#linknote-20" name="linknoteref-20"
+      id="linknoteref-20">[20]</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the mother takes them up to bed;&mdash;and in a little while there
+      floats to me, through the open window, the murmur of the children's
+      evening prayer:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ange-gardien Veillez sur moi; * * * * Ayez pitié de ma faiblesse;
+      Couchez-vous sur mon petit lit; Suivez-moi sans cesse."... <a
+      href="#linknote-21" name="linknoteref-21" id="linknoteref-21">[21]</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I can only catch a line here and there.... They do not sleep immediately;&mdash;they
+      continue to chat in bed. Gabrielle wants to know what a guardian-angel is
+      like. And I hear Mimi's voice replying in creole:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"<i>Zange-gàdien, c'est yon jeine fi, toutt bel</i>." (The
+      guardian-angel is a young girl, all beautiful.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A little while, and there is silence; and I see Yzore come out,
+      barefooted, upon the moonlit balcony of her little room,&mdash;looking up
+      and down the hushed street, looking at the sea, looking up betimes at the
+      high flickering of stars,&mdash;moving her lips as in prayer.... And,
+      standing there white-robed, with her rich dark hair loose-falling, there
+      is a weird grace about her that recalls those long slim figures of
+      guardian-angels in French religious prints....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      XVI. <i>March 6th</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This morning Manm-Robert brings me something queer,&mdash;something hard
+      tied up in a tiny piece of black cloth, with a string attached to hang it
+      round my neck. I must wear it, she says,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"<i>Ça ça ye, Manm-Robert?</i>"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"<i>Pou empêché ou pouend laverette</i>," she answers. It to keep
+      me from catching the <i>verette</i>!... And what is inside it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"<i>Toua graines maïs, épi dicamfre</i>." (Three grains of corn,
+      with a bit of camphor!)...
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      XVII. <i>March 8th</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... Rich households throughout the city are almost helpless for the want
+      of servants. One can scarcely obtain help at any price: it is true that
+      young country-girls keep coming into town to fill the places of the dead;
+      but these new-comers fall a prey to the disease much more readily than
+      those who preceded them, And such deaths en represent more than a mere
+      derangement in the mechanism of domestic life. The creole <i>bonne</i>
+      bears a relation to the family of an absolutely peculiar sort,&mdash;a
+      relation of which the term "house-servant" does not convey the faintest
+      idea. She is really a member of the household: her association with its
+      life usually begins in childhood, when she is barely strong enough to
+      carry a dobanne of water up-stairs;&mdash;and in many cases she has the
+      additional claim of having been born in the house. As a child, she plays
+      with the white children,&mdash;shares their pleasures and presents. She is
+      very seldom harshly spoken to, or reminded of the fact that she is a
+      servitor: she has a pet name;&mdash;she is allowed much familiarity,&mdash;is
+      often permitted to join in conversation when there is no company present,
+      and to express her opinion about domestic affairs. She costs very little
+      to keep; four or five dollars a year will supply her with all necessary
+      clothing;&mdash;she rarely wears shoes;&mdash;she sleeps on a little straw
+      mattress (<i>paillasse</i>) on the floor, or perhaps upon a paillasse
+      supported upon an "elephant" (<i>lèfan</i>)&mdash;two thick square pieces
+      of hard mattress placed together so as to form an oblong. She is only a
+      nominal expense to the family; and she is the confidential messenger, the
+      nurse, the chamber-maid, the water-carrier,&mdash;everything, in short,
+      except cook and washer-woman. Families possessing a really good bonne
+      would not part with her on any consideration. If she has been brought up
+      in the 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&mdash;to the early period of slavery. Among the Latin
+      races,&mdash;especially the French,&mdash;slavery preserved in modern
+      times many of the least harsh features of slavery in the antique world,&mdash;where
+      the domestic slave, entering the <i>familia</i>, actually became a member
+      of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      XVIII. <i>March 10th.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... Yzore and her little ones are all in Manm-Robert's shop;&mdash;she is
+      recounting her troubles,&mdash;fresh troubles: forty-seven francs' worth
+      of work delivered on time, and no money received.... So much I hear as I
+      enter the little boutique myself, to buy a package of "<i>bouts</i>."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"<i>Assise!</i>" says Manm-Robert, handing me her own hair;&mdash;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:&mdash;"<i>Alle di bonjou' Missié-a!</i>"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One after another, each holds up a velvety cheek to kiss. And Mimi, who
+      has been asking her mother the same question over and over again for at
+      least five minutes without being able to obtain an answer, ventures to
+      demand of me on the strength of this introduction:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"<i>Missié, oti masque-à?</i>"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"<i>Y ben fou, pouloss!</i>" the mother cries out;&mdash;"Why, the
+      child must be going out of her senses!... <i>Mimi pa 'mbêté moune conm ça!&mdash;pa
+      ni piess masque: c'est la-vérette qui ni</i>." (Don't annoy people like
+      that!&mdash;there are no maskers now; there is nothing but the verette!)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      [You are not annoying me at all, little Mimi; but I would not like to
+      answer your question truthfully. I know where the maskers are,&mdash;most
+      of them, child; and I do not think it would be well for you to know. They
+      wear no masks now; but if you were to see them for even one moment, by
+      some extraordinary accident, pretty Mimi, I think you would feel more
+      frightened than you ever felt before.]...
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"<i>Toutt lanuite y k'anni rêvé masque-à</i>," continues Yzore....
+      I am curious to know what Mimi's dreams are like;&mdash;wonder if I can
+      coax her to tell me....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      XIX.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... I have written Mimi's last dream from the child's dictation:&mdash; <a
+      href="#linknote-22" name="linknoteref-22" id="linknoteref-22">[22]</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"I saw a ball," she says, "I was dreaming: I saw everybody dancing
+      with masks on;&mdash;I was looking at them, And all at once I saw that the
+      folks who were dancing were all made of pasteboard. And I saw a
+      commandeur: he asked me what I was doing there, I answered him: 'Why, I
+      saw a ball, and I came to look&mdash;what of it?' He answered me:&mdash;'Since
+      you are so curious to come and look at other folks' business, you will
+      have to stop here and dance too!' I said to him:&mdash;'No! I won't dance
+      with people made of pasteboard;&mdash;I am afraid of them!'...And I ran
+      and ran and ran,&mdash;I was so much afraid. And I ran into a big garden,
+      where I saw a big cherry-tree that had only leaves upon it; and I saw a
+      man sitting under the cherry-tree, He asked me:&mdash;'What are you doing
+      here?' I said to him:&mdash;'I am trying to find my way out,' He said:&mdash;'You
+      must stay here.' I said:&mdash;'No, no!'&mdash;and I said, in order to be
+      able to get away:&mdash;'Go up there!&mdash;you will see a fine ball: all
+      pasteboard people dancing there, and a pasteboard commandeur commanding
+      them!'... And then I got so frightened that I awoke."...
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... "And why were you so afraid of them, Mimi?" I ask.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"<i>Pace yo té toutt vide endedans!</i>" answers Mimi. (<i>Because
+      they were all hollow inside</i>!)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      XX. <i>March 19th.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... The death-rate in St. Pierre is now between three hundred and fifty
+      and four hundred a month. Our street is being depopulated. Every day men
+      come with immense stretchers,&mdash;covered with a sort of canvas awning,&mdash;to
+      take somebody away to the <i>lazaretto</i>. At brief intervals, also,
+      coffins are carried into houses empty, and carried out again followed by
+      women who cry so loud that their sobbing can be heard a great way off.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... Before the visitation few quarters were so densely peopled: there were
+      living often in one small house as many as fifty. The poorer classes had
+      been accustomed from birth to live as simply as animals,&mdash;wearing
+      scarcely any clothing, sleeping on bare floors, exposing themselves to all
+      changes of weather, eating the cheapest and coarsest food. Yet, though
+      living under such adverse conditions, no healthier people could be found,
+      perhaps, in the world,&mdash;nor a more cleanly. Every yard having its
+      fountain, almost everybody could bathe daily,&mdash;and with hundreds it
+      was the custom to enter the river every morning at daybreak, or to take a
+      swim in the bay (the young women here swim as well as the men)....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the pestilence, entering among so dense and unprotected a life, made
+      extraordinarily rapid havoc; and bodily cleanliness availed little against
+      the contagion. Now all the bathing resorts are deserted,&mdash;because the
+      lazarettos infect the bay with refuse, and because the clothing of the
+      sick is washed in the Roxelane.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... Guadeloupe, the sister colony, now sends aid;&mdash;the sum total is
+      less than a single American merchant might give to a charitable
+      undertaking: but it is a great deal for Guadeloupe to give. And far
+      Cayenne sends money too; and the mother-country will send one hundred
+      thousand francs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      XXI. <i>March 20th.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... The infinite goodness of this colored population to one another is
+      something which impresses with astonishment those accustomed to the
+      selfishness of the world's great cities. No one is suffered to go to the
+      pest-house who has a bed to lie upon, and a single relative or tried
+      friend to administer remedies;&mdash;the multitude who pass through the
+      lazarettos are strangers,&mdash;persons from the country who have no home
+      of their own, or servants who are not permitted to remain sick in houses
+      of employers.... There are, however, many cases where a mistress will not
+      suffer her bonne to take the risks of the pest-house,&mdash;especially in
+      families where there are no children: the domestic is carefully nursed; a
+      physician hired for her, remedies purchased for her....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But among the colored people themselves the heroism displayed is
+      beautiful, is touching,&mdash;something which makes one doubt all accepted
+      theories about the natural egotism of mankind, and would compel the most
+      hardened pessimist to conceive a higher idea of humanity. There is never a
+      moment's hesitation in visiting a stricken individual: every relative, and
+      even the most intimate friends of every relative, may be seen hurrying to
+      the bedside. They take turns at nursing, sitting up all night, securing
+      medical attendance and medicines, without ever thought of the danger,&mdash;nay,
+      of the almost absolute certainty of contagion. If the patient have no
+      means, all contribute: what the sister or brother has not, the uncle or
+      the aunt, the godfather or godmother, the cousin, brother-in-law or
+      sister-in-law, may be able to give. No one dreams of refusing money or
+      linen or wine or anything possible to give, lend, or procure on credit.
+      Women seem to forget that they are beautiful, that they are young, that
+      they are loved,&mdash;forget everything but sense of that which they hold
+      to be duty. You see young girls of remarkably elegant presence,&mdash;young
+      colored girls well educated and <i>élevées-en-chapeau</i> <a
+      href="#linknote-23" name="linknoteref-23" id="linknoteref-23">[23]</a>
+      (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;&mdash;they feel bound to do it in person. I heard such a
+      one say, in reply to some earnest protest about thus exposing herself (she
+      had never been vaccinated);&mdash;"<i>Ah! quand il s'agit du devoir, la
+      vie ou la mort c'est pour moi la même chose</i>."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... But without any sanitary law to check this self-immolation, and with
+      the conviction that in the presence of duty, or what is believed to be
+      duty, "life or death is same thing," or ought to be so considered,&mdash;you
+      can readily imagine how soon the city must become one vast hospital.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      XXII.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... 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....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is certainly singular that while the howling of a dog at night has no
+      ghastly signification here (nobody ever pays the least attention to the
+      sound, however hideous), the moaning and screaming of cats is believed to
+      bode death; and in these times folks never appear to feel too sleepy to
+      rise at any hour and drive them away when they begin their cries....
+      To-night&mdash;a night so oppressive that all but the sick are sitting up&mdash;almost
+      a panic is created in our street by a screaming of cats;&mdash;and long
+      after the creatures have been hunted out of sight and hearing, everybody
+      who has a relative ill with the prevailing malady continues to discuss the
+      omen with terror.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... Then I observe a colored child standing 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:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"<i>Ti manmaille-là!&mdash;tiré lanmain-ou assous tête-ou, foute!
+      pisse moin encò là!... Espéré moin allé lazarett avant metté lanmain conm
+      ça!</i>" (Child, take down your hands from your head... because I am here
+      yet! Wait till I go to the lazaretto before you put up your hands like
+      that!)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For it was the savage, natural, primitive gesture of mourning,&mdash;of
+      great despair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... Then all begin to compare their misfortunes, to relate their miseries;&mdash;they
+      say grotesque things,&mdash;even make jests about their troubles. One
+      declares:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"<i>Si moin té ka venne chapeau, à fòce moin ni malhè, toutt manman
+      sé fai yche yo sans tête.</i>" (I have that ill-luck, that if I were
+      selling hats all the mothers would have children without heads!)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;Those who sit at their doors, I observe, do not sit, a rule, upon
+      the steps, even when these are of wood. There is a superstition which
+      checks such a practice. "<i>Si ou assise assous pas-lapòte, ou ké pouend
+      doulè toutt moune</i>." (If you sit upon the door-step, you will take the
+      pain of all who pass by.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      XXIII. <i>March 30th.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Good Friday....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The bells have ceased to ring,&mdash;even the bells for the dead; the
+      hours are marked by cannon-shots. The ships in the harbor form crosses
+      with their spars, turn their flags upside down. And the entire colored
+      population put on mourning:&mdash;it is a custom among them centuries old.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      You will not perceive a single gaudy robe to-day, a single calendered
+      Madras: not a speck of showy color visible through all the ways of St.
+      Pierre. The costumes donned are all similar to those worn for the death
+      relatives: either full mourning,&mdash;a black robe with violet foulard,
+      and dark violet-banded headkerchief; or half-mourning,&mdash;a dark violet
+      robe with black foulard and turban;&mdash;the half-mourning being worn
+      only by those who cannot afford the more sombre costume. From my 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... Three o'clock. Three cannon-shots shake the hill: it is the supposed
+      hour of the Saviour's death. All believers&mdash;whether in the churches,
+      on the highways, or in their homes&mdash;bow down and kiss the cross
+      thrice, or, if there be no cross, press their lips three times to the
+      ground or the pavement, and utter those three wishes which if expressed
+      precisely at this traditional moment will surely, it is held, be
+      fulfilled. Immense crowds are assembled before the crosses on the heights,
+      and about the statue of Notre Dame de la Garde.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... There is no hubbub in the streets; there is not even the customary
+      loud weeping to be heard as the coffins go by. One must not complain
+      to-day, nor become angry, nor utter unkind words,&mdash;any fault
+      committed on Good Friday is thought to obtain a special and awful
+      magnitude in the sight of Heaven.... There is a curious saying in vogue
+      here. If a son or daughter grow up vicious,&mdash;become a shame to the
+      family and a curse to the parents,&mdash;it is observed of such:&mdash;"<i>Ça,
+      c'est yon péché Vendredi-Saint!</i>" (Must be a <i>Good-Friday sin!</i>)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There are two other strange beliefs connected with Good Friday. One is
+      that it always rains on that day,&mdash;that the sky weeps for the death
+      of the Saviour; and that this rain, if caught in a vessel, will never
+      evaporate or spoil, and will cure all diseases.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The other is that only Jesus Christ died precisely at three o'clock.
+      Nobody else ever died exactly at that hour;&mdash;they may die a second
+      before or a second after three, but never exactly at three.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      XXIV. <i>March 31st.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... Holy Saturday morning;&mdash;nine o'clock. All the bells suddenly ring
+      out; the humming of the bourdon blends with the thunder of a hundred guns:
+      this is the <i>Gloria!</i>... At this signal it is a religious custom for
+      the whole coast-population to enter the sea, and for those living too far
+      from the beach to bathe in the rivers. But rivers and sea are now alike
+      infected;&mdash;all the linen of the lazarettos has been washed therein;
+      and to-day there are fewer bathers than usual.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But there are twenty-seven burials. Now they are ring the dead two
+      together: the cemeteries are over-burdened....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      XXV.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... In most of the old stone houses you will occasionally see spiders of
+      terrifying size,&mdash;measuring across perhaps as much as six inches from
+      the tip of one 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:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"<i>Fesis-Maïa!</i>&mdash;ou 'lè malhè encò pou fai ça, chè?" (You
+      want to have still more bad luck, that you do such a thing?)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And Yzore answers:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"<i>Toutt moune içitt pa ni yon sou!&mdash;gouôs conm ça fil
+      zagrignin, et moin pa menm mangé! Epi laverette encò.... Moin couè toutt
+      ça ka pòté malhè!</i>" (No one here has a sou!&mdash;heaps of cobwebs like
+      that, and nothing to eat yet; and the verette into the bargain... I think
+      those things bring bad luck.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"Ah! you have not eaten yet!" cries Manm-Robert. "<i>Vini épi moin!</i>"
+      (Come with me!)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And Yzore&mdash;already feeling a little remorse for her treatment of the
+      spiders&mdash;murmurs apologetically as she crosses over to Manm-Robert's
+      little shop:&mdash;"<i>Moin pa tchoué yo; moin chassé yo&mdash;ké vini
+      encò</i>." (I did not kill them; I only put them out;&mdash;they will come
+      back again.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But long afterwards, Manm-Robert remarked to me that they never went
+      back....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      XXVI. <i>April 5th.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"<i>Toutt bel bois ka allé</i>," says Manm-Robert. (All the
+      beautiful trees are going.)... I do not understand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"<i>Toutt bel bois&mdash;toutt bel moune ka alle</i>," she adds,
+      interpretatively. (All the "beautiful trees,"&mdash;all the handsome
+      people,&mdash;are passing away.)... As in the speech of the world's
+      primitive poets, so in the creole patois is a beautiful woman compared
+      with a comely tree: nay, more than this, the name of the object is
+      actually substituted for that of the living being. <i>Yon bel bois</i> may
+      mean a fine tree: it more generally signifies a graceful woman: this is
+      the very comparison made by Ulysses looking upon Nausicaa, though more
+      naively expressed. ... And now there comes to me the recollection of a
+      creole ballad illustrating the use of the phrase,&mdash;a ballad about a
+      youth of Fort-de-France sent to St. Pierre by his father to purchase a
+      stock of dobannes, <a href="#linknote-24" name="linknoteref-24"
+      id="linknoteref-24">[24]</a> who, falling in love with a handsome colored
+      girl, spent all his father's money in buying her presents and a wedding
+      outfit:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Moin descenne Saint-Piè Acheté dobannes Auliè ces dobannes C'est yon <i>bel-bois</i>
+      moin mennein monté!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ("I went down to Saint-Pierre to buy dobannes: instead of the dobannes,
+      'tis a pretty tree&mdash;a charming girl&mdash;that I bring back with me")
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"Why, who is dead now, Manm-Robert?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"It is little Marie, the porteuse, who has got the verette. She is
+      gone to the lazaretto."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      XXVII. <i>April 7th.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;<i>Toutt bel bois ka allé</i>.... News has just come that Ti Marie
+      died last night at the lazaretto of the Fort: she was attacked by what
+      they call the <i>lavérette-pouff</i>,&mdash;a form of the disease which
+      strangles its victim within a few hours.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ti Marie was certainly the neatest little màchanne I ever knew. Without
+      being actually pretty, her face had a childish charm which made it a
+      pleasure to look at her;&mdash;and she had a clear chocolate-red skin, a
+      light compact little figure, and a remarkably symmetrical pair of little
+      feet which had never felt the pressure of a shoe. Every morning I used to
+      hear her passing cry, just about daybreak:&mdash;"<i>Qui 'lè café?&mdash;qui
+      'lè sirop?</i>" (Who wants coffee?&mdash;who wants syrup?) She looked
+      about sixteen, but was a mother. "Where is her husband?" I ask. "<i>Nhomme-y
+      mò laverette 'tou</i>." (Her man died of the verette also.) "And the
+      little one, her <i>yche</i>?" "Y lazarett." (At the lazaretto.)... But
+      only those without friends or relatives in the city are suffered to go to
+      the lazaretto;&mdash;Ti Marie cannot have been of St. Pierre?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"No: she was from Vauclin," answers Manrn-Robert. "You do not often
+      see pretty red girls who are natives of St. Pierre. St. Pierre has pretty
+      <i>sang-mêlées</i>. The pretty red girls mostly come from Vauclin. The
+      yellow ones, who are really <i>bel-bois</i>, are from Grande Anse: they
+      are banana-colored people there. At Gros-Morne they are generally
+      black."...
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      XXVIII.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... It appears that the red race here, the <i>race capresse</i>, is
+      particularly liable to the disease. Every family employing capresses for
+      house-servants loses them;&mdash;one family living at the next corner has
+      lost four in succession....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The tint is a cinnamon or chocolate color;&mdash;the skin is naturally
+      clear, smooth, glossy: it is of the capresse especially that the term
+      "sapota-skin" (<i>peau-chapoti</i>) is used,&mdash;coupled with all
+      curious creole adjectives to express what is comely,&mdash;<i>jojoll,
+      beaujoll</i>, etc. <a href="#linknote-25" name="linknoteref-25"
+      id="linknoteref-25">[25]</a> The hair is long, but bushy; the limbs light
+      and strong, and admirably shaped.... I am told that when transported to a
+      colder climate, the capre or capresse partly loses this ruddy tint. Here,
+      under the tropic sun, it has a beauty only possible to imitate in
+      metal.... And because photography cannot convey any idea of this singular
+      color, the capresse hates a photograph.&mdash;"<i>Moin pas nouè</i>," she
+      says;&mdash;"<i>moin ouôuge: ou fai moin nouè nans pòtrait-à</i>." (I am
+      not black: I am red:&mdash;you make me black in that portrait.) It is
+      difficult to make her pose before the camera: she is red, as she avers,
+      beautifully red; but the malicious instrument makes her gray or black&mdash;<i>nouè
+      conm poule-zo-nouè</i> ("black as a black-boned hen!")
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... And this red race is disappearing from St. Pierre&mdash;doubtless also
+      from other plague-stricken centres.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      XXIX. <i>April 10th.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Manm-Robert is much annoyed and puzzled because the American steamer&mdash;the
+      <i>bom-mangé</i>, as she calls does not come. It used to bring regularly
+      so many barrels of potatoes and beans, so much lard and cheese garlic and
+      dried pease&mdash;everything, almost, of which she keeps a stock. It is
+      now nearly eight weeks since the cannon of a New York steamer aroused the
+      echoes the harbor. Every morning Manm-Robert has been sending out her
+      little servant Louis to see if there is any sign of the American packet:&mdash;"<i>Allé
+      ouè Batterie d' Esnotz si bom-mangé-à pas vini</i>." But Louis always
+      returns with same rueful answer:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"<i>Manm-Robert, pa ni piess bom-mangé</i>" (there is not so much
+      as a bit of a <i>bom-mangé</i>).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... "No more American steamers for Martinique:" that is the news received
+      by telegraph! The disease has broken out among the shipping; the harbors
+      have been 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 <i>canotiers</i>, the <i>caboteurs</i>, all those
+      who live by stowing or unloading cargo;&mdash;great warehouses are being
+      closed up, and strong men discharged, because there will be nothing for
+      them to do.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... They are burying twenty-five <i>verettiers</i> per day in city.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But never was this tropic sky more beautiful;&mdash;never was this
+      circling sea more marvellously blue;&mdash;never were the mornes more
+      richly robed in luminous green, under a more golden day.... And it seems
+      strange that Nature should remain so lovely....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... Suddenly it occurs to me that I have not seen Yzore nor her children
+      for some days; and I wonder if they have moved away.... Towards evening,
+      passing by Manm-Robert's, I ask about them. The old woman answers me very
+      gravely:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"<i>Atò, mon chè, c'est Yzore qui ni laverette!</i>"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The mother has been seized by the plague at last. But Manm-Robert will
+      look after her; and Manm-Robert has taken charge of the three little ones,
+      who are not now allowed to leave the house, for fear some one should tell
+      them what it were best they should not know.... <i>Pauv ti manmaille!</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      XXX. <i>April 13th.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... Still the vérette does not attack the native whites. But the whole air
+      has become poisoned; the sanitary condition of the city becomes
+      unprecedentedly bad; and a new epidemic makes its appearance,&mdash;typhoid
+      fever. And now the békés begin to go, especially the young and strong; and
+      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&mdash;the coffin of acajou,
+      and the triple ringing, and the Cross of Gold to be carried before them as
+      they pass to their long sleep under the palms,&mdash;saluted for the last
+      time by all the population of St. Pierre, standing bareheaded in the
+      sun....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... Is it in times like these, when all the conditions are febrile, that
+      one is most apt to have queer dreams?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Last night it seemed to me that I saw that Carnival dance again,&mdash;the
+      hooded musicians, the fantastic torrent of peaked caps, and the spectral
+      masks, and the swaying of bodies and waving of arms,&mdash;but soundless
+      as a passing of smoke. There were figures I thought I knew;&mdash;hands I
+      had somewhere seen reached out and touched me in silence;&mdash;and then,
+      all suddenly, a Viewless Something seemed to scatter the shapes as leaves
+      are blown by a wind.... And waking, I thought I heard again,&mdash;plainly
+      as on that last Carnival afternoon,&mdash;the strange cry of fear:&mdash;"<i>C'est
+      Bon-Dié ka passé!</i>"...
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      XXXI. <i>April 20th.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Very early yesterday morning Yzore was carried away under a covering of
+      quick-lime: the children do not know; Manm-Robert took heed they should
+      not see. They have been told their mother has been taken to the country to
+      get well,&mdash;that the doctor will bring her back.... All the furniture
+      is to be sold at auction to debts;&mdash;the landlord was patient, he
+      waited four months; the doctor was kindly: but now these must have their
+      due. Everything will be bidden off, except the chapelle, with its Virgin
+      and angels of porcelain: <i>yo pa ka pè venne Bon-Dié</i> (the things of
+      the Good-God must not be sold). And Manm-Robert will take care little
+      ones.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The bed&mdash;a relic of former good-fortune,&mdash;a great Martinique bed
+      of carved heavy native wood,&mdash;a <i>lit-à-bateau</i> (boat-bed), so
+      called because shaped almost like a barge, perhaps&mdash;will surely bring
+      three hundred francs;&mdash;the armoire, with its mirror doors, not less
+      than two hundred and fifty. There is little else of value: the whole will
+      not fetch enough to pay all the dead owes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      XXXII. <i>April 28th.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>&mdash;Tam-tam-tam!&mdash;tam-tam-tam!</i>... It is the booming of the
+      auction-drum from the Place: Yzore's furniture is about to change hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The children start at the sound, so vividly associated in their minds with
+      the sights of Carnival days, with the fantastic mirth of the great
+      processional dance: they run to the sunny street, calling to each other.&mdash;<i>Vini
+      ouè!</i>&mdash;they look up and down. But there is a great quiet in the
+      Rue du Morne Mirail;&mdash;the street is empty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... Manm-Robert enters very weary: she has been at the sale, trying to
+      save something for the children, but the prices were too high. In silence
+      she takes her accustomed seat at the worn counter of her little shop; the
+      young ones gather about her, caress her;&mdash;Mimi looks up laughing into
+      the kind brown face, and wonders why Manm-Robert will not smile. Then Mimi
+      becomes afraid to ask where the maskers are,&mdash;why they do not come,
+      But little Maurice, bolder and less sensitive, cries out:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"<i>Manm-Robert, oti masque-à?</i>"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Manm-Robert does not answer;&mdash;she does not hear. She is gazing
+      directly into the young faces clustered about her knee,&mdash;yet she does
+      not see them: she sees far, far beyond them,&mdash;into the hidden years.
+      And, suddenly, with a savage tenderness in her voice, she utters all the
+      dark thought of her heart for them:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"<i>Toua ti blancs sans lesou!&mdash;qutitté moin châché papaou qui
+      adans cimétiè pou vini pouend ou tou!</i>" (Ye three little penniless
+      white ones!&mdash;let me go call your father, who is in the cemetery, to
+      come and take you also away!)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0006" id="link2HCH0006">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VI. &mdash; LES BLANCHISSEUSES.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Whoever stops for a few months in St. Pierre is certain, sooner or later,
+      to pass an idle half-hour in that charming place of Martinique idlers,&mdash;the
+      beautiful Savane du Fort,&mdash;and, once there, is equally certain to
+      lean a little while over the mossy parapet of the river-wall to watch the
+      <i>blanchisseuses</i> at work. It has a curious interest, this spectacle
+      of primitive toil: the deep channel of the Roxelane winding under the
+      palm-crowned heights of the Fort; the blinding whiteness of linen laid out
+      to bleach for miles upon the huge bowlders of porphyry and prismatic
+      basalt; and the dark bronze-limbed women, with faces hidden under immense
+      straw hats, and knees in the rushing torrent,&mdash;all form a scene that
+      makes one think of the earliest civilizations. Even here, in this modern
+      colony, it is nearly three centuries old; and it will probably continue
+      thus at the Rivière des Blanchisseuses for fully another three hundred
+      years. Quaint as certain weird Breton legends whereof it reminds you,&mdash;especially
+      if you watch it before daybreak while the city still sleeps,&mdash;this
+      fashion of washing is not likely to change. There is a local prejudice
+      against new methods, new inventions, new ideas;&mdash;several efforts at
+      introducing a less savage style of washing proved unsuccessful; and an
+      attempt to establish a steam-laundry resulted in failure. The public were
+      quite contented with the old ways of laundrying, and saw no benefits to be
+      gained by forsaking them;&mdash;while the washers and ironers engaged by
+      the laundry proprietor at higher rates than they had ever obtained before
+      soon wearied of in-door work, abandoned their situations, and returned
+      with a sense of relief to their ancient way of working out in the blue air
+      and the wind of the hills, with their feet in the mountain-water and their
+      heads in the awful sun.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... It is one of the sights of St. Pierre,&mdash;this daily scene at the
+      River of the Washerwomen: everybody likes to watch it;&mdash;the men,
+      because among the blanchisseuses there are not a few decidedly handsome
+      girls; the 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,&mdash;such an intercrossing of cries from the bridge to the
+      river, and the river to the bridge.... "Ouill! Noémi!"... "Coument ou yé,
+      chè?"... "Eh! Pascaline!",..."Bonjou', Youtte!&mdash;Dede!-Fifi!&mdash;Henrillia!"...
+      "Coument ou kallé, Cyrillia?"... "Toutt douce, chè!&mdash;et Ti Mémé?"...
+      "Y bien;&mdash;oti Ninotte?"... "Bo ti manmaille pou moin, chè&mdash;ou
+      tanne?"... But the bridge leading to the market of the Fort is the poorest
+      point of view; for the better classes of blanchisseuses are not there:
+      only the lazy, the weak, or non-professionals&mdash;house-servants, who do
+      washing at the river two or three times a month as part of their
+      family-service&mdash;are apt to get so far down. The experienced
+      professionals and early risers secure the best places and choice of rocks;
+      and among the hundreds at work you can discern something like a physical
+      gradation. At the next bridge the women look better, stronger; more young
+      faces appear; and the further you follow the river-course towards the
+      Jardin des Plantes, the more the appearance of the blanchisseuses
+      improves,&mdash;so that within the space of a mile you can see well
+      exemplified one natural law of life's struggle,&mdash;the best chances to
+      the best constitutions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0028" id="linkimage-0028">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%">
+      <img src="images/26-Riviere.jpg" alt="Rivière Des Blanchisseuses. "
+      width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      You might also observe, if you watch long enough, that among the
+      blanchisseuses there are few sufficiently light of color to be classed as
+      bright mulatresses;&mdash;the majority are black or of that dark
+      copper-red race which is perhaps superior to the black creole in strength
+      and bulk; for it requires a skin insensible to sun as well as the toughest
+      of constitutions to be a blanchisseuse. A porteuse can begin to make long
+      trips at nine or ten years; but no girl is strong enough to learn the
+      washing-trade until she is past twelve. The blanchisseuse is the hardest
+      worker among the whole population;&mdash;her daily labor is rarely less
+      than thirteen hours; and during the greater part of that time she is
+      working in the sun, and standing up to her knees in water that descends
+      quite cold from the mountain peaks. Her labor makes her perspire profusely
+      and she can never venture to cool herself by further immersion without
+      serious danger of pleurisy. The trade is said to kill all who continue at
+      it beyond a certain number of years:&mdash;"<i>Nou ka mò toutt dleau</i>"
+      (we all die of the water), one told me, replying to a question. No feeble
+      or light-skinned person can attempt to do a single day's work of this kind
+      without danger; and a weak girl, driven by necessity to do her own
+      washing, seldom ventures to go to the river. Yet I saw an instance of such
+      rashness one day. A pretty sang-mêlée, perhaps about eighteen or nineteen
+      years old,&mdash;whom I afterwards learned had just lost her mother and
+      found herself thus absolutely destitute,&mdash;began to descend one of the
+      flights of stone steps leading to the river, with a small bundle upon her
+      head; and two or three of the blanchisseuses stopped their work to look at
+      her. A tall capresse inquired mischievously:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"<i>Ou vini pou pouend yon bain?</i>" (Coming to take a bath?) For
+      the river is a great bathing-place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"<i>Non; moin vini lavé</i>." (No; I am coming to wash.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"<i>Aïe! aïe! aïe!&mdash;y vini lavé!</i>"... And all within
+      hearing laughed together. "Are you crazy, girl?&mdash;<i>ess ou fou?</i>"
+      The tall capresse snatched the bundle from her, opened it, threw a garment
+      to her nearest neighbor, another to the next one, dividing the work among
+      a little circle of friends, and said to the stranger, "<i>Non ké lavé
+      toutt ça ba ou bien vite, chè,&mdash;va, amisé ou!</i>" (We'll wash this
+      for you very quickly, dear&mdash;go and amuse yourself!) These kind women
+      even did more for the poor girl;&mdash;they subscribed to buy her a good
+      breakfast, when the food-seller&mdash;the màchanne-mangé&mdash;made her
+      regular round among them, with fried fish and eggs and manioc flour and
+      bananas.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      II.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All of the multitude who wash clothing at the river are not professional
+      blanchisseuses. Hundreds of women, too poor to pay for laundrying, do
+      their own work at the Roxelane;&mdash;and numerous bonnes there wash the
+      linen of their mistresses as a regular part of their domestic duty. But
+      even if the professionals did not always occupy a certain well-known
+      portion of the channel, they could easily be distinguished from others by
+      their rapid and methodical manner of work, by the ease with which immense
+      masses of linen are handled by them, and, above all, by their way of
+      whipping it against the rocks. Furthermore, the greater number of
+      professionals are likewise teachers, mistresses (<i>bou'geoises</i>), and
+      have their apprentices beside them,&mdash;young girls from twelve to
+      sixteen years of age. Among these <i>apprenti</i>, as they are called in
+      the patois, there are many attractive types, such as idlers upon the
+      bridges like to look at.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If, after one year of instruction, the apprentice fails to prove a good
+      washer, it is not likely she will ever become one; and there are some
+      branches of the trade requiring a longer period of teaching and of
+      practice. The young girl first learns simply to soap and wash the linen in
+      the river, which operation is called "rubbing" (<i>frotté</i> in creole);&mdash;after
+      she can do this pretty well, she is taught the curious art of whipping it
+      (<i>fessé</i>). You can hear the sound of the 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After this, all the pieces are spread out upon the rocks, in the sun, for
+      the "first bleaching" (<i>pouèmiè lablanie</i>). In the evening they are
+      gathered into large wooden trays or baskets, and carried to what is called
+      the "lye-house" (<i>lacaïe lessive</i>)&mdash;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,&mdash;according
+      to the quantity of work done,&mdash;at two, three, or ten sous, and leaves
+      her washing to steep in lye (<i>coulé</i> is the creole word used) during
+      the night. There are watchmen to guard it. Before daybreak it is rinsed in
+      warm water; then it is taken back to the river,&mdash;is rinsed again,
+      bleached again, blued and starched. Then it is ready for ironing. To press
+      and iron well is the most difficult part of the trade. When an apprentice
+      is able to iron a gentleman's shirt nicely, and a pair of white
+      pantaloons, she is considered to have finished her time;&mdash;she becomes
+      a journey-woman (<i>ouvouïyé</i>).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Even in a country where wages are almost incredibly low, the blanchisseuse
+      earns considerable money. There is no fixed scale of prices: it is even
+      customary to bargain with these women beforehand. Shirts and white
+      pantaloons figure at six and eight cents in laundry bills; but other
+      washing is much cheaper. I saw a lot of thirty-three pieces&mdash;including
+      such large ones as sheets, bed-covers, and several douillettes (the long
+      Martinique trailing robes of one piece from neck to feet)&mdash;for which
+      only three francs was charged. Articles are frequently stolen or lost by
+      house-servants sent to do washing at the river; but very seldom indeed by
+      the regular blanchisseuses. Few of them can read or write or understand
+      owners' marks on wearing apparel; and when you see at the river the
+      wilderness of scattered linen, the seemingly enormous confusion, you
+      cannot understand how these women manage to separate and classify it all.
+      Yet they do this admirably,&mdash;and for that reason perhaps more than
+      any other, are able to charge fair rates;&mdash;it is false economy to
+      have your washing done by the house-servant;&mdash;with the professionals
+      your property is safe. And cheap as her rates are, a good professional can
+      make from twenty-five to thirty francs a week; averaging fully a hundred
+      francs a month,&mdash;as much as many a white clerk can earn in the stores
+      of St. Pierre, and quite as much (considering local differences in the
+      purchasing power of money) as $60 per month would represent in the United
+      States.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Probably the ability to earn large wages often tempts the blanchisseuse to
+      continue at her trade until it kills her. The "water-disease," as she
+      calls it (<i>maladie-dleau</i>), makes its appearance after middle-life:
+      the feet, lower limbs, and abdomen swell enormously, while the face
+      becomes almost fleshless;&mdash;then, gradually tissues give way, muscles
+      yield, and the whole physical structure crumbles. Nevertheless, the
+      blanchisseuse is essentially a sober liver,&mdash;never a drunkard. In
+      fact, she is sober from rigid necessity: she would not dare to swallow one
+      mouthful of spirits while at work with her feet in the cold water;&mdash;everybody
+      else in Martinique, even the little children, can drink rum; the
+      blanchisseuse cannot, unless she wishes to die of a congestion. Her
+      strongest refreshment is <i>mabi</i>,&mdash;a mild, effervescent, and, I
+      think, rather disagreeable, beer made from molasses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      III.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Always before daybreak they rise to work, while the vapors of the mornes
+      fill the air with scent of mouldering vegetation,&mdash;clayey odors,&mdash;grassy
+      smells: there is only a faint gray light, and the water of the river is
+      very chill. One by one they arrive, barefooted, under their burdens built
+      up tower-shape on their trays;&mdash;silently as ghosts they descend the
+      steps to the river-bed, and begin to unfold and immerse their washing.
+      They greet each other as they come, then become silent again; there is
+      scarcely any talking: the hearts of all are heavy with the heaviness of
+      the hour. But the gray light turns yellow; the sun climbs over the peaks:
+      light changes the dark water to living crystal; and all begin to chatter a
+      little. Then the city awakens; the currents of its daily life circulate
+      again,&mdash;thinly and slowly at first, then swiftly and strongly,&mdash;up
+      and down every yellow street, and through the Savane, and over the bridges
+      of the river. Passers-by pause to look down, and cry "<i>bonjou', che!</i>"
+      Idle men stare at some pretty washer, till she points at them and cries:&mdash;"<i>Gadé
+      Missie-à ka guetté nou!&mdash;anh!&mdash;anh!&mdash;anh!</i>" And all the
+      others look up and repeat the groan&mdash;"<i>anh!&mdash;anh!&mdash;anh!</i>"
+      till the starers beat a retreat. The air grows warmer; the sky blue takes
+      fire: the great light makes joy for the washers; they shout to each other
+      from distance to distance, jest, laugh, sing. Gusty of speech these women
+      are: long habit of calling to one another through the roar of the torrent
+      has given their voices a singular sonority and force: it is well worth
+      while to hear them sing. One starts the song,&mdash;the next joins her;
+      then another and another, till all the channel rings with the melody from
+      the bridge of the Jardin des Plantes to the Pont-bois:- "C'est main qui té
+      ka lavé, Passé, raccommodé: Y té néf hè disouè Ou metté moin derhò,&mdash;Yche
+      main assous bouas moin;&mdash;Laplie té ka tombé&mdash;Léfan moin assous
+      tête moin! Doudoux, ou m'abandonne! Moin pa ni pèsonne pou soigné moin."
+      <a href="#linknote-26" name="linknoteref-26" id="linknoteref-26">[26]</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... A melancholy chant&mdash;originally a Carnival improvisation made to
+      bring public shame upon the perpetrator of a cruel act;&mdash;but it
+      contains the story of many of these lives&mdash;the story of industrious
+      affectionate women temporarily united to brutal and worthless men in a
+      country where legal marriages are rare. Half of the creole songs which I
+      was able to collect during a residence of nearly two years in the island
+      touch upon the same sad theme. Of these, "Chè Manman Moin," a great
+      favorite still with the older blanchisseuses, has a simple pathos
+      unrivalled, I believe, in the oral literature of this people. Here is an
+      attempt to translate its three rhymeless stanzas into prose; but the
+      childish sweetness of the patois original is lost:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CHÈ MANMAN MOIN.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... "Dear mamma, once you were young like I;&mdash;dear papa, you also
+      have been young;&mdash;dear great elder brother, you too have been young.
+      Ah! let me cherish this sweet friendship!&mdash;so sick my heart is&mdash;yes,
+      'tis very, very ill, this heart of mine: love, only love can make it well
+      again."...
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      II.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "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."...
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      III.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Doudoux, you swore to me by heaven!&mdash;doudoux, you swore to me by
+      your faith!... And now you cannot come to me?... Oh! my heart is withering
+      with pain!... I was passing by the cemetery;&mdash;I saw my name upon a
+      stone&mdash;all by itself. I saw two white roses; and in a moment one
+      faded and fell before me.... So my forgotten heart will be!"...
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The air is not so charming, however, as that of a little song which every
+      creole knows, and which may be often heard still at the river: I think it
+      is the prettiest of all creole melodies. "To-to-to" (patois for the French
+      <i>toc</i>) is an onomatope for the sound of knocking at a door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "<i>To, to, to!</i>&mdash;Ça qui là?'&mdash; 'C'est moin-mênme, lanmou;&mdash;Ouvé
+      lapott ba moin!'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "<i>To, to, to!</i>&mdash;Ça qui là?'&mdash; 'C'est moin-mênme lanmou, Qui
+      ka ba ou khè moin!'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "<i>To, to, to!</i>&mdash;Ça qui là?'&mdash; 'C'est moin-mênme lanmou,
+      Laplie ka mouillé moin!'"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      [<i>To-to-to</i>... "Who taps there?"&mdash;"'Tis mine own self Love: open
+      the door for me." <i>To-to-to</i>... "Who taps there?"&mdash;"'Tis mine
+      own self Love, who give my heart to thee." <i>To-to-to</i>... "Who taps
+      there?"&mdash;" "'Tis mine own self Love: open thy door to me;&mdash;the
+      rain is wetting me!"]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... But it is more common to hear the blanchisseuses singing merry,
+      jaunty, sarcastic ditties,&mdash;Carnival compositions,&mdash;in which the
+      African sense of rhythmic melody is more marked:&mdash;"Marie-Clémence
+      maudi," "Loéma tombé," "Quand ou ni ti mari jojoll."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;At mid-day the màchanne-mangé comes, with her girls,&mdash;carrying
+      trays of fried fish, and <i>akras</i>, and cooked beans, and bottles of
+      mabi. The blanchisseuses buy, and eat with their feet in the water, using
+      rocks for tables. Each has her little tin cup to drink her mabi in... Then
+      the washing and the chanting and the booming of the fessé begin again.
+      Afternoon wanes;&mdash;school-hours close; and children of many beautiful
+      colors come to the river, and leap down the steps crying, "<i>Eti!
+      manman!"&mdash;"Sésé!"&mdash;"Nenneine!</i>" calling their elder sisters,
+      mothers, and godmothers: the little boys strip naked to play in the water
+      a while.... Towards sunset the more rapid and active workers begin to
+      gather in their linen, and pile it on trays. Large patches of bald rock
+      appear again.... By six o'clock almost the whole bed of the river is bare;&mdash;the
+      women are nearly all gone. A few linger a while on the Savane, to watch
+      the last-comer. There is always a great laugh at the last to leave the
+      channel: they ask her if she has not forgotten "to lock up the river."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"<i>Ou fèmé lapòte lariviè, chè-anh?</i>"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"<i>Ah! oui, chè!&mdash;moin fèmé y, ou tanne?&mdash;moin ni
+      laclé-à!</i>" (Oh yes, dear. I locked it up,&mdash;you hear?&mdash;I've
+      got the key!)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But there are days and weeks when they do not sing,&mdash;times of want or
+      of plague, when the silence of the valley is broken only by the sound of
+      linen beaten upon the rocks, and the great voice of the Roxelane, which
+      will sing on when the city itself shall have ceased to be, just as it sang
+      one hundred thousand years ago....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why do they not sing to-day?" I once asked during the summer of 1887,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;a year of pestilence. "<i>Yo ka pensé toutt lanmizè yo,&mdash;toutt
+      lapeine yo</i>," I was answered. (They are thinking of all their trouble,
+      all their misery.) Yet in all seasons, while youth and strength stay with
+      them, they work on in wind and sun, mist and rain, washing the linen of
+      the living and the dead,&mdash;white wraps for the newly born, white robes
+      for the bride, white shrouds for them that pass into the Great Silence.
+      And the torrent that wears away the ribs of the perpetual hills wears away
+      their lives,&mdash;sometimes slowly, slowly as black basalt is worn,&mdash;sometimes
+      suddenly,&mdash;in the twinkling of an eye.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a strange danger ever menaces the blanchisseuse,&mdash;the treachery
+      of the stream!... Watch them working, and observe how often they turn
+      their eyes to the high north-east, to look at Pelée. Pelée gives them
+      warning betimes. When all is sunny in St. Pierre, and the harbor lies blue
+      as lapis-lazuli, there may be mighty rains in the region of the great
+      woods and the valleys of the higher peaks; and thin streams swell to
+      raging floods which burst suddenly from the altitudes, rolling down rocks
+      and trees and wreck of forests, uplifting crags, devastating slopes. And
+      sometimes, down the ravine of the Roxelane, there comes a roar as of
+      eruption, with a rush of foaming water like a moving mountain-wall; and
+      bridges and buildings vanish with its passing. In 1865 the Savane, high as
+      it lies above the river-bed, was flooded;&mdash;and all the bridges were
+      swept into the sea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So the older and wiser blanchisseuses keep watch upon Pelée; and if a
+      blackness gather over it, with lightnings breaking through, then&mdash;however
+      fair the sun shine on St. Pierre&mdash;the alarm is given, the miles of
+      bleaching linen vanish from the rocks in a few minutes, and every one
+      leaves the channel. But it has occasionally happened that Pelée gave no
+      such friendly signal before the river rose: thus lives have been lost.
+      Most of the blanchisseuses are swimmers, and good ones,&mdash;I have seen
+      one of these girls swim almost out of sight in the harbor, during an idle
+      hour;&mdash;but no swimmer has any chances in a rising of the Roxelane:
+      all overtaken by it are stricken by rocks and drift;&mdash;<i>yo crazé</i>,
+      as a creole term expresses it,&mdash;a term signifying to crush, to bray,
+      to dash to pieces.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... Sometimes it happens that one who has been absent at home for a brief
+      while returns to the river only to meet her comrades fleeing from it,&mdash;many
+      leaving their linen behind them. But she will not abandon the linen
+      intrusted to her: she makes a run for it,&mdash;in spite of warning
+      screams,&mdash;in spite of the vain clutching of kind rough fingers. She
+      gains the river-bed;&mdash;the flood has already reached her waist, but
+      she is strong; she reaches her linen,&mdash;snatches it up, piece by
+      piece, scattered as it is&mdash;"one!&mdash;two!&mdash;five!&mdash;seven!"&mdash;there
+      is a roaring in her ears&mdash;"eleven!&mdash;thirteen!" she has it all...
+      but now the rocks are moving! For one instant she strives to reach the
+      steps, only a few yards off;&mdash;another, and the thunder of the deluge
+      is upon her,&mdash;and the crushing crags,&mdash;and the spinning
+      trees....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Perhaps before sundown some canotier may find her floating far in the bay,&mdash;drifting
+      upon her face in a thousand feet of water,&mdash;with faithful dead hands
+      still holding fast the property of her employer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0007" id="link2HCH0007">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VII. &mdash; LA PELÉE.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The first attempt made to colonize Martinique was abandoned almost as soon
+      as begun, because the leaders of the expedition found the country "too
+      rugged and too mountainous," and were "terrified by the prodigious number
+      of serpents which covered its soil." Landing on June 25, 1635, Olive and
+      Duplessis left the island after a few hours' exploration, or, rather,
+      observation, and made sail for Guadeloupe,&mdash;according to the quaint
+      and most veracious history of Père Dutertre, of the Order of
+      Friars-Preachers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A single glance at the topographical map of Martinique would suffice to
+      confirm the father's assertion that the country was found to be <i>trop
+      haché et trop montueux</i>: more than two-thirds of it is peak and
+      mountain;&mdash;even to-day only 42,445 of its supposed 98,782 hectares
+      have been cultivated; and on page 426 of the last "Annuaire" (1887) I find
+      the statement that in the interior there are extensive Government lands of
+      which the area is "not exactly known." Yet mountainous as a country must
+      be which&mdash;although scarcely forty-nine miles long and twenty miles in
+      average breadth&mdash;remains partly unfamiliar to its own inhabitants
+      after nearly three centuries of civilization (there are not half a dozen
+      creoles who have travelled all over it), only two elevations in Martinique
+      bear the name <i>montagne</i>. These are La Montagne Pelée, in the north,
+      and La Montagne du Vauclin, in the south. The term <i>morne</i>, used
+      throughout the French West Indian colonies to designate certain altitudes
+      of volcanic origin, a term rather unsatisfactorily translated in certain
+      dictionaries as "a small mountain," is justly applied to the majority of
+      Martinique hills, and unjustly sometimes even to its mightiest elevation,&mdash;called
+      Morne Pelé, or Montagne Pelée, or simply "La Montagne," according,
+      perhaps, to the varying degree of respect it inspires in different minds.
+      But even in the popular nomenclature one finds the orography of
+      Martinique, as well as of other West Indian islands, regularly classified
+      by <i>pitons</i>, <i>mornes</i>, and <i>monts</i> or <i>montagnes</i>.
+      Mornes usually have those beautiful and curious forms which bespeak
+      volcanic origin even to the unscientific observer: they are most often
+      pyramidal or conoid up to a certain height; but have summits either
+      rounded or truncated;&mdash;their sides, green with the richest
+      vegetation, rise from valley-levels and 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;&mdash;volcanic
+      cones, or volcanic upheavals of splintered strata almost at right angles,&mdash;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,&mdash;particularly when they occur in pairs. Only a
+      very important mass is dignified by the name <i>montagne</i>... there are,
+      as I have already observed, but two thus called in all Martinique,&mdash;Pelée,
+      the head and summit of the island; and La Montagne du Vauclin, in the
+      south-east. Vauclin is inferior in height and bulk to several mornes and
+      pitons of the north and north-west,&mdash;and owes its distinction
+      probably to its position as centre of a system of ranges: but in altitude
+      and mass and majesty, Pelée far outranks everything in the island, and
+      well deserves its special appellation, "La Montagne."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No description could give the reader a just idea of what Martinique is,
+      configuratively, so well as the simple statement that, although less than
+      fifty miles in extreme length, and less than twenty in average breadth,
+      there are upwards of <i>four hundred mountains</i> in this little island,
+      or of what at least might be termed mountains elsewhere. These again are
+      divided and interpeaked, and bear hillocks on their slopes;&mdash;and the
+      lowest hillock in Martinique is fifty metres high. Some of the peaks are
+      said to be totally inaccessible: many mornes are so on one or two or even
+      three sides. Ninety-one only of the principal mountains have been named;
+      and among these several bear similar appellations: for example, there are
+      two Mornes-Rouges, one in the north and one in the south; and there are
+      four or five Gros-Mornes. All the elevations belong to six great groups,
+      clustering about or radiating from six ancient volcanic centres,&mdash;1.
+      La Pelée; 2. Pitons du Carbet; 3. Roches Carrées; <a href="#linknote-27"
+      name="linknoteref-27" id="linknoteref-27">[27]</a> 4. Vauclin; 5. Marin;
+      6. Morne de la Plaine. Forty-two distinct mountain-masses belong to the
+      Carbet system alone,&mdash;that of Pelée including but thirteen; and the
+      whole Carbet area has a circumference of 120,000 metres,&mdash;much more
+      considerable than that of Pelée. But its centre is not one enormous
+      pyramidal mass like that of "La Montagne": it is marked only by a group of
+      five remarkable porphyritic cones,&mdash;the Pitons of Carbet;&mdash;while
+      Pelée, dominating everything, and filling the north, presents an aspect
+      and occupies an area scarcely inferior to those of AEtna.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;Sometimes, while looking at La Pelée, I have wondered if the
+      enterprise of the great Japanese painter who made the Hundred Views of
+      Fusiyama could not be imitated by some creole artist equally proud of his
+      native hills, and fearless of the heat of the plains or the snakes of the
+      slopes. A hundred views of Pelée might certainly be made: for the enormous
+      mass is omnipresent to dwellers in the northern part of the island, and
+      can be seen from the heights of the most southern mornes. It is visible
+      from almost any part of St. Pierre,&mdash;which nestles in a fold of its
+      rocky skirts. It overlooks all the island ranges, and overtops the mighty
+      Pitons of Carbet by a thousand feet;&mdash;you can only lose sight of it
+      by entering gorges, or journeying into the valleys of the south.... But
+      the peaked character of the whole country, and the hot moist climate,
+      oppose any artistic undertaking of the sort suggested: even photographers
+      never dream of taking views in the further interior; nor on the east
+      coast. Travel, moreover, is no less costly than difficult: there are no
+      inns or places of rest for tourists; there are, almost daily, sudden and
+      violent rains, which are much dreaded (since a thorough wetting, with the
+      pores all distended by heat, may produce pleurisy); and there are
+      serpents! The artist willing to devote a few weeks of travel and study to
+      Pelée, in spite of these annoyances and risks, has not yet made his
+      appearance in Martinique. <a href="#linknote-28" name="linknoteref-28"
+      id="linknoteref-28">[28]</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0029" id="linkimage-0029">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%">
+      <img src="images/27-La_Pelee.jpg"
+      alt="Foot of PelÉe, Behind the Quarter Of The Fort. " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;perhaps 5200. <a href="#linknote-29"
+      name="linknoteref-29" id="linknoteref-29">[29]</a> The clouds of the
+      summit afford no indication to eyes accustomed to mountain scenery in
+      northern countries; for in these hot moist latitudes clouds hang very low,
+      even in fair weather. But in bulk Pelée is grandiose: it spurs out across
+      the island from the Caribbean to the Atlantic: the great chains of mornes
+      about it are merely counter-forts; the Piton Pierreux and the Piton
+      Pain-à-Sucre (<i>Sugar-loaf Peak</i>), and other elevations varying from
+      800 to 2100 feet, are its volcanic children. Nearly thirty rivers have
+      their birth in its flanks,&mdash;besides many thermal springs, variously
+      mineralized. As the culminant point of the island, Pelée is also the ruler
+      of its meteorologic life,&mdash;cloud-herder, lightning-forger, and
+      rain-maker. During clear weather you can see it drawing to itself all the
+      white vapors of the land,&mdash;robbing lesser eminences of their
+      shoulder-wraps and head-coverings;&mdash;though the Pitons of Carbet (3700
+      feet) usually manage to retain about their middle a cloud-clout,&mdash;a
+      <i>lantchô</i>. You will also see that the clouds run in a circle about
+      Pelée,&mdash;gathering bulk as they turn by continual accessions from
+      other points. If the crater be totally bare in the morning, and shows the
+      broken edges very sharply against the blue, it is a sign of foul rather
+      than of fair weather to come. <a href="#linknote-30" name="linknoteref-30"
+      id="linknoteref-30">[30]</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Even in bulk, perhaps, Pelée might not impress those who know the
+      stupendous scenery of the American ranges; but none could deny it special
+      attractions appealing to the senses of form and color. There is an
+      imposing fantasticality in its configuraion worth months of artistic
+      study: one does not easily tire of watching its slopes undulating against
+      the north sky,&mdash;and the strange jagging of its ridges,&mdash;and the
+      succession of its terraces crumbling down to other terraces, which again
+      break into ravines here and there bridged by enormous buttresses of
+      basalt: an extravaganza of lava-shapes overpitching and cascading into sea
+      and plain. All this is verdant wherever surfaces catch the sun: you can
+      divine what the frame is only by examining the dark and ponderous rocks of
+      the torrents. And the hundred tints of this verdure do not form the only
+      colorific charms of the landscape. Lovely as the long upreaching slopes of
+      cane are,&mdash;and the loftier bands of forest-growths, so far off that
+      they look like belts of moss,&mdash;and the more tender-colored masses
+      above, wrinkling and folding together up to the frost-white clouds of the
+      summit,&mdash;you will be still more delighted by the shadow-colors,&mdash;opulent,
+      diaphanous. The umbrages lining the wrinkles, collecting in the hollows,
+      slanting from sudden projections, may become before your eyes almost as
+      unreally beautiful as the landscape colors of a Japanese fan;&mdash;they
+      shift most generally during the day from indigo-blue through violets and
+      paler blues to final lilacs and purples; and even the shadows of passing
+      clouds have a faint blue tinge when they fall on Pelée.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... Is the great volcano dead?... Nobody knows. Less than forty years ago
+      it rained ashes over all the roofs of St. Pierre;&mdash;within twenty
+      years it has uttered mutterings. For the moment, it appears to sleep; and
+      the clouds have dripped into the cup of its highest crater till it has
+      become a lake, several hundred yards in circumference. The crater occupied
+      by this lake&mdash;called L'Étang, or "The Pool"&mdash;has never been
+      active within human memory. There are others,&mdash;difficult and
+      dangerous to visit because opening on the side of a tremendous gorge; and
+      it was one of these, no doubt, which has always been called <i>La
+      Souffrière</i>, that rained ashes over the city in 1851.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The explosion was almost concomitant with the last of a series of
+      earthquake shocks, which began in the middle of May and ended in the first
+      week of August,&mdash;all much more severe in Guadeloupe than in
+      Martinique. In the village Au Prêcheur, lying at the foot of the western
+      slope of Pelée, the people had been for some time complaining of an
+      oppressive stench of sulphur,&mdash;or, as chemists declared it,
+      sulphuretted hydrogen,&mdash;when, on the 4th of August, much trepidation
+      was caused by a long and appalling noise from the mountain,&mdash;a noise
+      compared by planters on the neighboring slopes to the hollow roaring made
+      by a packet blowing off steam, but infinitely louder. These sounds
+      continued through intervals until the following night, sometimes deepening
+      into a rumble like thunder. The mountain guides declared: "<i>C'est la
+      Souffrière qui bout!</i>" (the Souffrière is boiling); and a panic seized
+      the negroes of the neighboring plantations. At 11 P.M. the noise was
+      terrible enough to fill all St. Pierre with alarm; and on the morning of
+      the 6th the city presented an unwonted aspect, compared by creoles who had
+      lived abroad to the effect of a great hoar-frost. All the roofs, trees,
+      balconies, awnings, pavements, were covered with a white layer of ashes.
+      The same shower blanched the roofs of Morne Rouge, and all the villages
+      about the chief city,&mdash;Carbet, Fond-Corré, and Au Prêcheur; also
+      whitening the neighboring country: the mountain was sending up columns of
+      smoke or vapor; and it was noticed that the Rivière Blanche, usually of a
+      glaucous color, ran black into the sea like an outpouring of ink, staining
+      its azure for a mile. A committee appointed to make an investigation, and
+      prepare an official report, found that a number of rents had either been
+      newly formed, or suddenly become active, in the flank of the mountain:
+      these were all situated in the immense gorge sloping westward from that
+      point now known as the Morne de la Croix. Several were visited with much
+      difficulty,&mdash;members of the commission being obliged to lower
+      themselves down a succession of precipices with cords of lianas; and it is
+      noteworthy that their researches were prosecuted in spite of the momentary
+      panic created by another outburst. It was satisfactorily ascertained that
+      the main force of the explosion had been exerted within a perimeter of
+      about one thousand yards; that various hot springs had suddenly gushed
+      out,&mdash;the temperature of the least warm being about 37° Réaumur (116°
+      F.);&mdash;that there was no change in the configuration of the mountain;&mdash;and
+      that the terrific sounds had been produced only by the violent outrush of
+      vapor and ashes from some of the rents. In hope of allaying the general
+      alarm, a creole priest climbed the summit of the volcano, and there
+      planted the great cross which gives the height its name and still remains
+      to commemorate the event.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was an extraordinary emigration of serpents from the high woods, and
+      from the higher to the lower plantations,&mdash;where they were killed by
+      thousands. For a long time Pelée continued to send up an immense column of
+      white vapor; but there were no more showers of ashes; and the mountain
+      gradually settled down to its present state of quiescence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      II.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From St. Pierre, trips to Pelée can be made by several routes;&mdash;the
+      most popular is that by way of Morne Rouge and the Calebasse; but the
+      summit can be reached in much less time by making the ascent from
+      different points along the coast-road to Au Prêcheur,&mdash;such as the
+      Morne St. Martin, or a well-known path further north, passing near the
+      celebrated hot springs (<i>Fontaines Chaudes</i>). You drive towards Au
+      Prêcheur, and begin the ascent on foot, through cane-plantations.... The
+      road by which you follow the north-west coast round the skirts of Pelée is
+      very picturesque:&mdash;you cross the Roxelane, the Rivière des Pères, the
+      Rivière Sèche (whose bed is now occupied only by a motionless torrent of
+      rocks);&mdash;passing first by the suburb of Fond-Corré, with its cocoa
+      groves, and broad beach of iron-gray sand,&mdash;a bathing resort;&mdash;then
+      Pointe Prince, and the Fond de Canonville, somnolent villages that occupy
+      wrinkles in the hem of Pelée's lava robe. The drive ultimately rises and
+      lowers over the undulations of the cliff, and is well shadowed along the
+      greater part of its course: you will admire many huge <i>fromagers</i>, or
+      silk-cotton trees, various heavy lines of tamarinds, and groups of <i>flamboyants</i>
+      with thick dark feathery foliage, and cassia-trees with long pods pending
+      and blackening from every branch, and hedges of <i>campêche</i>, or
+      logwood, and calabash-trees, and multitudes of the pretty shrubs bearing
+      the fruit called in creole <i>raisins-bò-lanmè</i>, or "sea-side grapes."
+      Then you reach Au Prêcheur: a very antiquated village, which boasts a
+      stone church and a little public square with a fountain in it. If you have
+      time to cross the Rivière du Prêcheur, a little further on, you can obtain
+      a fine view of the coast, which, rising suddenly to a grand altitude,
+      sweeps round in a semicircle over the Village of the Abysses (<i>Aux
+      Abymes</i>),&mdash;whose name was doubtless suggested by the immense depth
+      of the sea at that point.... It was under the shadow of those cliffs that
+      the Confederate cruiser <i>Alabama</i> once hid herself, as a fish hides
+      in the shadow of a rock, and escaped from her pursuer, the <i>Iroquois</i>.
+      She had long been blockaded in the harbor of St. Pierre by the Northern
+      man-of-war,&mdash;anxiously awaiting a chance to pounce upon her the
+      instant she should leave French waters;&mdash;and various Yankee vessels
+      in port were to send up rocket-signals should the <i>Alabama</i> attempt
+      to escape under cover of darkness. But one night the privateer took a
+      creole pilot on board, and steamed out southward, with all her lights
+      masked, and her chimneys so arranged that neither smoke nor sparks could
+      betray her to the enemy in the offing. However, some Yankee vessels near
+      enough to discern her movements through the darkness at once shot rockets
+      south; and the <i>Iroquois</i> gave chase. The <i>Alabama</i> hugged the
+      high shore as far as Carbet, remaining quite invisible in the shadow of
+      it: then she suddenly turned and recrossed the harbor. Again Yankee
+      rockets betrayed her manreuvre to the <i>Iroquois;</i> but she gained Aux
+      Abymes, laid herself close to the enormous black cliff, and there remained
+      indistinguishable; the <i>Iroquois</i> steamed by north without seeing
+      her. Once the Confederate cruiser found her enemy well out of sight, she
+      put her pilot ashore and escaped into the Dominica channel. The pilot was
+      a poor mulatto, who thought himself well paid with five hundred francs!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... The more popular route to Pelée by way of Morne Rouge is otherwise
+      interesting... Anybody not too much afraid of the tropic sun must find it
+      a delightful experience to follow the mountain roads leading to the
+      interior from the city, as all the mornes traversed by them command
+      landscapes of extraordinary beauty. According to the zigzags of the way,
+      the scenery shifts panoramically. At one moment you are looking down into
+      valleys a thousand feet below, at another, over luminous leagues of meadow
+      or cane-field, you see some far crowding of cones and cratered shapes;&mdash;sharp
+      as the teeth of a saw, and blue as sapphire,&mdash;with further eminences
+      ranging away through pearline color to high-peaked remotenesses of vapory
+      gold. As you follow the windings of such a way as the road of the Morne
+      Labelle, or the Morne d'Orange, the city disappears and reappears many
+      times,&mdash;always diminishing, till at last it looks no bigger than a
+      chess-board. Simultaneously distant mountain shapes appear to unfold and
+      lengthen;&mdash;and always, always the sea rises with your rising. Viewed
+      at first from the bulwark (<i>boulevard</i>) commanding the roofs of the
+      town, its horizon-line seemed straight and keen as a knife-edge;&mdash;but
+      as you mount higher, it elongates, begins to curve; and gradually the
+      whole azure expanse of water broadens out roundly like a disk. From
+      certain very lofty summits further inland you behold the immense blue
+      circle touching the sky all round you,&mdash;except where a still greater
+      altitude, like that of Pelée or the Pitons, breaks the ring; and this high
+      vision of the sea has a phantasmal effect hard to describe, and due to
+      vapory conditions of the atmosphere. There are bright cloudless days when,
+      even as seen from the city, the ocean-verge has a spectral vagueness; but
+      on any day, in any season, that you ascend to a point dominating the sea
+      by a thousand feet, the rim of the visible world takes a ghostliness that
+      startles,&mdash;because the prodigious light gives to all near shapes such
+      intense sharpness of outline and vividness of color.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet wonderful as are the perspective beauties of those mountain routes
+      from which one can keep St. Pierre in view, the road to Morne Rouge
+      surpasses them, notwithstanding that it almost immediately leaves the city
+      behind, and out of sight. Excepting only <i>La Trace</i>,&mdash;the long
+      route winding over mountain ridges and between primitive forests south to
+      Fort-de-France,&mdash;there is probably no section of national highway in
+      the island more remarkable than the Morne Rouge road. Leaving the Grande
+      Rue by the public conveyance, you drive out through the Savane du Fort,
+      with its immense mango and tamarind trees, skirting the Roxelane. Then
+      reaching the boulevard, you pass high Morne Labelle,&mdash;and then the
+      Jardin des Plantes on the right, where white-stemmed palms are lifting
+      their heads two hundred feet,&mdash;and beautiful Parnasse, heavily
+      timbered to the top;&mdash;while on your left the valley of the Roxelane
+      shallows up, and Pelée shows less and less of its tremendous base. Then
+      you pass through the sleepy, palmy, pretty Village of the Three Bridges (<i>Trois
+      Ponts</i>),&mdash;where a Fahrenheit thermometer shows already three
+      degrees of temperature lower than at St. Pierre;&mdash;and the national
+      road, making a sharp turn to the right, becomes all at once very steep&mdash;so
+      steep that the horses can mount only at a walk. Around and between the
+      wooded hills it ascends by zigzags,&mdash;occasionally overlooking the
+      sea,&mdash;sometimes following the verges of ravines. Now and then you
+      catch glimpses of the road over which you passed half an hour before
+      undulating far below, looking narrow as a tape-line,&mdash;and of the
+      gorge of the Roxelane,&mdash;and of Pelée, always higher, now thrusting
+      out long spurs of green and purple land into the sea. You drive under cool
+      shadowing of mountain woods&mdash;under waving bamboos like enormous
+      ostrich feathers dyed green,&mdash;and exquisite tree-ferns thirty to
+      forty feet high,&mdash;and imposing ceibas, with strangely buttressed
+      trunks,&mdash;and all sorts of 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;&mdash;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;&mdash;you are approaching the
+      volcano over the ridge of a colossal spur. The way turns in a semicircle,&mdash;zigzags,&mdash;once
+      more touches the edge of a valley,&mdash;where the clear fall might be
+      nearly fifteen hundred feet. But narrowing more and more, the valley
+      becomes an ascending gorge; and across its chasm, upon the brow of the
+      opposite cliff, you catch sight of houses and a spire seemingly perched on
+      the verge, like so many birds'-nests,&mdash;the village of Morne Rouge. It
+      is two thousand feet above the sea; and Pelée, although looming high over
+      it, looks a trifle less lofty now.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One's first impression of Morne Rouge is that of a single straggling
+      street of gray-painted cottages and shops (or rather booths), dominated by
+      a plain church, with four pursy-bodied palmistes facing the main porch.
+      Nevertheless, Morne Rouge is not a small place, considering its situation;&mdash;there
+      are nearly five thousand inhabitants; but in order to find out where they
+      live, you must leave the public road, which is on a ridge, and explore the
+      high-hedged lanes leading down from it on either side. Then you will find
+      a veritable city of little wooden cottages,&mdash;each screened about with
+      banana-trees, Indian-reeds, and <i>pommiers-roses</i>. You will also see a
+      number of handsome private residences&mdash;country-houses of wealthy
+      merchants; and you will find that the church, though uninteresting
+      exteriorly, is rich and impressive within: it is a famous shrine, where
+      miracles are alleged to have been wrought. Immense processions
+      periodically wend their way to it from St. Pierre,&mdash;starting at three
+      or four o'clock in the morning, so as to arrive before the sun is well
+      up.... But there are no woods here,&mdash;only fields. An odd tone is
+      given to the lanes by a local custom of planting hedges of what are termed
+      <i>roseaux d' Inde</i>, having a dark-red foliage; and there is a visible
+      fondness for ornamental plants with crimson leaves. Otherwise the mountain
+      summit is somewhat bare; trees have a scrubby aspect. You must have
+      noticed while ascending that the palmistes became smaller as they were
+      situated higher: at Morne Rouge they are dwarfed,&mdash;having a short
+      stature, and very thick trunks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In spite of the fine views of the sea, the mountain-heights, and the
+      valley-reaches, obtainable from Morne Rouge, the place has a somewhat
+      bleak look. Perhaps this is largely owing to the universal slate-gray tint
+      of the buildings,&mdash;very melancholy by comparison with the apricot and
+      banana yellows tinting the walls of St. Pierre. But this cheerless gray is
+      the only color which can resist the climate of Morne Rouge, where people
+      are literally dwelling in the clouds. Rolling down like white smoke from
+      Pelée, these often create a dismal fog; and Morne Rouge is certainly one
+      of the rainiest places in the world. When it is dry everywhere else, it
+      rains at Morne Rouge. It rains at least three hundred and sixty days and
+      three hundred and sixty nights of the year. It rains almost invariably
+      once in every twenty-four hours; but oftener five or six times. The
+      dampness is phenomenal. All mirrors become patchy; linen moulds in one
+      day; leather turns 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;&mdash;and it is hard to understand how, with all this
+      dampness and coolness and mouldiness, Morne Rouge can be a healthy place.
+      But it is so, beyond any question: it is the great Martinique resort for
+      invalids; strangers debilitated by the climate of Trinidad or Cayenne come
+      to it for recuperation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0030" id="linkimage-0030">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%">
+      <img src="images/28-Morne_Rouge.jpg"
+      alt="Village of Morne Rouge, Martinique " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      Leaving the village by the still uprising road, you will be surprised,
+      after a walk of twenty minutes northward, by a magnificent view,&mdash;the
+      vast valley of the Champ-Flore, watered by many torrents, and bounded
+      south and west by double, triple, and quadruple surging of mountains,&mdash;mountains
+      broken, peaked, tormented-looking, and tinted (<i>irisées</i>, as the
+      creoles say) with all those gem-tones distance gives in a West Indian
+      atmosphere. Particularly impressive is the beauty of one purple cone in
+      the midst of this many-colored chain: the Piton Gélé. All the
+      valley-expanse of rich land is checkered with alternations of meadow and
+      cane and cacao,&mdash;except northwestwardly, where woods billow out of
+      sight beyond a curve. Facing this landscape, on your left, are mornes of
+      various heights,&mdash;among which you will notice La Calebasse,
+      overtopping everything but Pelée shadowing behind it;&mdash;and a
+      grass-grown road leads up westward from the national highway towards the
+      volcano. This is the Calebasse route to Pelée.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      III.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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,&mdash;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,&mdash;found
+      themselves obliged to return without having seen anything but a thick
+      white cold fog. The sky may remain perfectly blue for weeks in every other
+      direction, and Pelée's head remain always hidden. In order to make a
+      successful ascent, one must not wait for a period of dry weather,&mdash;one
+      might thus wait for years! What one must look for is a certain periodicity
+      in the diurnal rains,&mdash;a regular alternation of sun and cloud; such
+      as characterizes a certain portion of the <i>hivernage</i>, or rainy
+      summer season, when mornings and evenings are perfectly limpid, with very
+      heavy sudden rains in the middle of the day. It is of no use to rely on
+      the prospect of a dry spell. There is no really dry weather,
+      notwithstanding there recurs&mdash;in books&mdash;a <i>Saison de la
+      Sécheresse</i>. In fact, there are no distinctly marked seasons in
+      Martinique:&mdash;a little less heat and rain from October to July, a
+      little more rain and heat from July to October: that is about all the
+      notable difference! Perhaps the official notification by cannon-shot that
+      the hivernage, the season of heavy rains and hurricanes, begins on July
+      15th, is no more trustworthy than the contradictory declarations of
+      Martinique authors who have attempted to define the vague and illusive
+      limits of the tropic seasons. Still, the Government report on the subject
+      is more satisfactory than any: according to the "Annuaire," there are
+      these seasons:&mdash;1. <i>Saison fraîche</i>. December to March.
+      Rainfall, about 475 millimetres. 2. <i>Saison chaude et sèche</i>. April
+      to July. Rainfall, about 140 millimetres. 3. <i>Saison chaude et pluvieuse</i>.
+      July to November. Rainfall average, 121 millimetres.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Other authorities divide the <i>saison chaude et sèche</i> into two
+      periods, of which the latter, beginning about May, is called the <i>Renouveau</i>;
+      and it is at least true that at the time indicated there is a great burst
+      of vegetal luxuriance. But there is always rain, there are almost always
+      clouds, there is no possibility of marking and dating the beginnings and
+      the endings of weather in this country where the barometer is almost
+      useless, and the thermometer mounts in the sun to twice the figure it
+      reaches in the shade. Long and patient observation has, however,
+      established the fact that during the hivernage, if the heavy showers have
+      a certain fixed periodicity,&mdash;falling at midday or in the heated part
+      of the afternoon,&mdash;Pelée is likely to be clear early in the morning;
+      and by starting before daylight one can then have good chances of a fine
+      view from the summit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      IV.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At five o'clock of a September morning, warm and starry, I leave St.
+      Pierre in a carriage with several friends, to make the ascent by the
+      shortest route of all,&mdash;that of the Morne St. Martin, one of Pelée's
+      western counterforts. We drive north along the shore for about half an
+      hour; then, leaving the coast behind, pursue a winding mountain road,
+      leading to the upper plantations, between leagues of cane. The sky begins
+      to brighten as we ascend, and a steely glow announces that day has begun
+      on the other side of the island. Miles up, the crest of the volcano cuts
+      sharp as a saw-edge against the growing light: there is not a cloud
+      visible. Then the light slowly yellows behind the vast cone; and one of
+      the most beautiful dawns I ever saw reveals on our right an immense valley
+      through which three rivers flow. This deepens very quickly as we drive;
+      the mornes about St. Pierre, beginning to catch the light, sink below us
+      in distance; and above them, southwardly, an amazing silouette begins to
+      rise,&mdash;all blue,&mdash;a mountain wall capped with cusps and cones,
+      seeming high as Pelée itself in the middle, but sinking down to the
+      sea-level westward. There are a number of extraordinary acuminations; but
+      the most impressive shape is the nearest,&mdash;a tremendous conoidal mass
+      crowned with a group of peaks, of which two, taller than the rest, tell
+      their name at once by the beauty of their forms,&mdash;the Pitons of
+      Carbet. They wear their girdles of cloud, though Pelée is naked to-day.
+      All this is blue: the growing light only deepens the color, does not
+      dissipate it;&mdash;but in the nearer valleys gleams of tender yellowish
+      green begin to appear. Still the sun has not been able to show himself;&mdash;it
+      will take him some time yet to climb Pelée.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Reaching the last plantation, we draw rein in a village of small wooden
+      cottages,&mdash;the quarters of the field hands,&mdash;and receive from
+      the proprietor, a personal friend of my friends, the kindest welcome. At
+      his house we change clothing and prepare for the journey;&mdash;he
+      provides for our horses, and secures experienced guides for us,&mdash;two
+      young colored men belonging to the plantation. Then we begin the ascent.
+      The guides walk before, barefoot, each carrying a cutlass in his hand and
+      a package on his head&mdash;our provisions, photographic instruments, etc.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The mountain is cultivated in spots up to twenty-five hundred feet; and
+      for three-quarters of an hour after leaving the planter's residence we
+      still traverse fields of cane and of manioc. The light is now strong in
+      the valley; but we are in the shadow of Pelée. Cultivated fields end at
+      last; the ascending path is through wild cane, wild guavas, guinea-grass
+      run mad, and other tough growths, some bearing pretty pink blossoms. The
+      forest is before us. Startled by our approach, a tiny fer-de-lance glides
+      out from a bunch of dead wild-cane, almost under the bare feet of our
+      foremost guide, who as instantly decapitates it with a touch of his
+      cutlass. It is not quite fifteen inches long, and almost the color of the
+      yellowish leaves under which it had been hiding.... The conversation turns
+      on snakes as we make our first halt at the verge of the woods.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hundreds may be hiding around us; but a snake never shows himself by
+      daylight except under the pressure of sudden alarm. We are not likely, in
+      the opinion of all present, to meet 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;&mdash;about
+      M. A&mdash;, a former director of the Jardin des Plantes, who used to
+      boldly thrust his arm into holes where he knew snakes were, and pull them
+      out,&mdash;catching them just behind the head and wrapping the tail round
+      his arm,&mdash;and place them alive in a cage without ever getting bitten;&mdash;about
+      M. B&mdash;, who, while hunting one day, tripped in the coils of an
+      immense trigonocephalus, and ran so fast in his fright that the serpent,
+      entangled round his leg, could not bite him;&mdash;about M. C&mdash;, who
+      could catch a fer-de-lance by the tail, and "crack it like a whip" until
+      the head would fly off;&mdash;about an old white man living in the
+      Champ-Flore, whose diet was snake-meat, and who always kept in his ajoupa
+      "a keg of salted serpents" (<i>yon ka sèpent-salé</i>);&mdash;about a
+      monster eight feet long which killed, near Morne Rouge, M. Charles Fabre's
+      white cat, but was also killed by the cat after she had been caught in the
+      folds of the reptile;&mdash;about the value of snakes as protectors of the
+      sugar-cane and cocoa-shrub against rats;&mdash;about an unsuccessful
+      effort made, during a plague of rats in Guadeloupe, to introduce the
+      fer-de-lance there;&mdash;about the alleged power of a monstrous toad, the
+      <i>crapaud-ladre</i>, to cause the death of the snake that swallows it;&mdash;and,
+      finally, about the total absence of the idyllic and pastoral elements in
+      Martinique literature, as due to the presence of reptiles everywhere.
+      "Even the flora and fauna of the country remain to a large extent
+      unknown,"&mdash;adds the last speaker, an amiable old physician of St.
+      Pierre,&mdash;"because the existence of the fer-de-lance renders all
+      serious research dangerous in the extreme."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My own experiences do not justify my taking part in such a conversation;&mdash;I
+      never saw alive but two very small specimens of the trigonocephalus.
+      People who have passed even a considerable time in Martinique may have
+      never seen a fer-de-lance except in a jar of alcohol, or as exhibited by
+      negro snake-catchers, tied fast to a bamboo, But this is only because
+      strangers rarely travel much in the interior of the country, or find
+      themselves on country roads after sundown. It is not correct to suppose
+      that snakes are uncommon even in the neighborhood of St. Pierre: they are
+      often killed on the bulwarks behind the city and on the verge of the
+      Savane; they have been often washed into the streets by heavy rains; and
+      many washer-women at the Roxelane have been bitten by them. It is
+      considered very dangerous to walk about the bulwarks after dark;&mdash;for
+      the snakes, which travel only at night, then descend from the mornes
+      towards the river, The Jardin des Plantes shelters great numbers of the
+      reptiles; and only a few days prior to the writing of these lines a
+      colored laborer in the garden was stricken and killed by a fer-de-lance
+      measuring one metre and sixty-seven centimetres in length. In the interior
+      much larger reptiles are sometimes seen: I saw one freshly killed
+      measuring six feet five inches, and thick as a man's leg in the middle.
+      There are few planters in the island who have not some of their hands
+      bitten during the cane-cutting and cocoa-gathering seasons;&mdash;the
+      average annual mortality among the class of <i>travailleurs</i> from
+      serpent bite alone is probably fifty, <a href="#linknote-31"
+      name="linknoteref-31" id="linknoteref-31">[31]</a>&mdash;always fine young
+      men or women in the prime of life. Even among the wealthy whites deaths
+      from this cause are less rare than might be supposed: I know one
+      gentleman, a rich citizen of St, Pierre, who in ten years lost three
+      relatives by the trigonocephalus,&mdash;the wound having in each case been
+      received in the neighborhood of a vein. When the vein has been pierced,
+      cure is impossible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      V.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... We look back over the upreaching yellow fan-spread of cane-fields, and
+      winding of tortuous valleys, and the sea expanding beyond an opening in
+      the west. It has already broadened surprisingly, the sea appears to have
+      risen up, not as a horizontal plane, but like an immeasurable azure
+      precipice: what will it look like when we shall have reached the top? Far
+      down we can distinguish a line of field-hands&mdash;the whole <i>atelier</i>,
+      as it is called, of a plantation slowly descending a slope, hewing the
+      canes as they go. There is a woman to every two men, a binder (<i>amarreuse</i>):
+      she gathers the canes as they are cut down; binds them with their own
+      tough long leaves into a sort of sheaf, and carries them away on her head;&mdash;the
+      men wield their cutlasses so beautifully that it is a delight to watch
+      them. One cannot often enjoy such a spectacle nowadays; for the
+      introduction of the piece-work system has destroyed the picturesqueness of
+      plantation labor throughout the island, with rare exceptions. Formerly the
+      work of cane-cutting resembled the march of an army;&mdash;first advanced
+      the cutlassers in line, naked to the waist; then the amareuses, the women
+      who tied and carried; and behind these the ka, the drum,&mdash;with a paid
+      <i>crieur</i> or <i>crieuse</i> to lead the song;&mdash;and lastly the
+      black Commandeur, for general. And in the old days, too, it was not
+      unfrequent that the sudden descent of an English corsair on the coast
+      converted this soldiery of labor into veritable military: more than one
+      attack was repelled by the cutlasses of a plantation atelier.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At this height the chatting and chanting can be heard, though not
+      distinctly enough to catch the words. Suddenly a voice, powerful as a
+      bugle, rings out,&mdash;the voice of the Commandeur: he walks along the
+      line, looking, with his cutlass under his arm. I ask one of our guides
+      what the cry is:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"<i>Y ka coumandé yo pouend gàde pou sèpent</i>," he replies. (He
+      is telling them to keep watch for serpents.) The nearer the cutlassers
+      approach the end of their task, the greater the danger: for the reptiles,
+      retreating before them to the last clump of cane, become massed there, and
+      will fight desperately. Regularly as the ripening-time, Death gathers his
+      toll of human lives from among the workers. But when one falls, another
+      steps into the vacant place,&mdash;perhaps the Commandeur himself: these
+      dark swordsmen never retreat; all the blades swing swiftly as before;
+      there is hardly any emotion; the travailleur is a fatalist.... <a
+      href="#linknote-32" name="linknoteref-32" id="linknoteref-32">[32]</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      VI.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... We enter the grands-bois,&mdash;the primitive forest,&mdash;the "high
+      woods."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As seen with a field-glass from St. Pierre, these woods present only the
+      appearance of a band of moss belting the volcano, and following all its
+      corrugations,&mdash;so densely do the leafy crests intermingle. But on
+      actually entering them, you find yourself at once in green twilight, among
+      lofty trunks uprising everywhere like huge pillars wrapped with vines;&mdash;and
+      the interspaces between these bulks are all occupied by lianas and
+      parasitic creepers,&mdash;some monstrous,&mdash;veritable parasite-trees,&mdash;ascending
+      at all angles, or dropping straight down from the tallest crests to take
+      root again. The effect in the dim light is that of innumerable black ropes
+      and cables of varying thicknesses stretched taut from the soil to the
+      tree-tops, and also from branch to branch, like rigging. There are rare
+      and remarkable trees here,&mdash;acomats, courbarils, balatas, ceibas or
+      fromagers, acajous, gommiers;&mdash;hundreds have been cut down by
+      charcoal-makers; but the forest is still grand. It is to be regretted that
+      the Government has placed no restriction upon the barbarous destruction of
+      trees by the <i>charbonniers</i>, which is going on throughout the island.
+      Many valuable woods are rapidly disappearing. The courbaril, yielding a
+      fine-grained, heavy, chocolate-colored timber; the balata, giving a wood
+      even heavier, denser, and darker; the acajou, producing a rich red wood,
+      with a strong scent of cedar; the bois-de-fer; the bois d'Inde; the superb
+      acomat,&mdash;all used to flourish by tens of thousands upon these
+      volcanic slopes, whose productiveness is eighteen times greater than that
+      of the richest European soil. All Martinique furniture used to be made of
+      native woods; and the colored cabinet-makers still produce work which
+      would probably astonish New York or London manufacturers. But to-day the
+      island exports no more hard woods: it has even been found necessary to
+      import much from neighboring islands;&mdash;and yet the destruction of
+      forests still goes on. The domestic fabrication of charcoal from
+      forest-trees has been estimated at 1,400,000 hectolitres per annum.
+      Primitive forest still covers the island to the extent of 21.37 per cent;
+      but to find precious woods now, one must climb heights like those of Pelée
+      and Carbet, or penetrate into the mountains of the interior.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0031" id="linkimage-0031">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%">
+      <img src="images/29-Montagen_Pelee.jpg"
+      alt="La Montagne PelÉe, As Seen from Grande Anse. " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      Most common formerly on these slopes were the gommiers, from which canoes
+      of a single piece, forty-five feet long by seven wide, used to be made.
+      There are plenty of gommiers still; but the difficulty of transporting
+      them to the shore has latterly caused a demand for the gommiers of
+      Dominica. The dimensions of canoes now made from these trees rarely exceed
+      fifteen feet in length by eighteen inches in width: the art of making them
+      is an inheritance from the ancient Caribs. First the trunk is shaped to
+      the form of the canoe, and pointed at both ends; it is then hollowed out.
+      The width of the hollow does not exceed six inches at the widest part; but
+      the cavity is then filled with wet sand, which in the course of some weeks
+      widens the excavation by its weight, and gives the boat perfect form.
+      Finally gunwales of plank are fastened on; seats are put in&mdash;generally
+      four;&mdash;and no boat is more durable nor more swift.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... We climb. There is a trace rather than a foot-path;&mdash;no visible
+      soil, only vegetable detritus, with roots woven over it in every
+      direction. The foot never rests on a flat surface,&mdash;only upon
+      surfaces of roots; and these are covered, like every protruding branch
+      along the route, with a slimy green moss, slippery as ice. Unless
+      accustomed to walking in tropical woods, one will fall at every step. In a
+      little while I find it impossible to advance. Our nearest guide, observing
+      my predicament, turns, and without moving the bundle upon his head, cuts
+      and trims me an excellent staff with a few strokes of his cutlass. This
+      staff not only saves 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 <i>chasseurs-de-choux</i> (cabbage-hunters),&mdash;the
+      negro mountaineers who live by furnishing heads of young cabbage-palm to
+      the city markets; and these men also keep it open,&mdash;otherwise the
+      woods would grow over it in a month. Two chasseurs-de-choux stride past 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... Walking becomes more difficult;&mdash;there seems no termination to
+      the grands-bois: always the same faint green light, the same rude natural
+      stair-way of slippery roots,&mdash;half the time hidden by fern leaves and
+      vines. Sharp ammoniacal scents are in the air; a dew, cold as ice-water,
+      drenches our clothing. Unfamiliar insects make trilling noises in dark
+      places; and now and then a series of soft clear notes ring out, almost
+      like a thrush's whistle: the chant of a little tree-frog. The path becomes
+      more and more overgrown; and but for the constant excursions of the
+      cabbage-hunters, we should certainly have to cutlass every foot of the way
+      through creepers and brambles. More and more amazing also is the
+      interminable interweaving of roots: the whole forest is thus spun together&mdash;not
+      underground so much as overground. These tropical trees do not strike
+      deep, although able to climb steep slopes of porphyry and basalt: they
+      send out great far-reaching webs of roots,&mdash;each such web
+      interknotting with others all round it, and these in turn with further
+      ones;&mdash;while between their reticulations lianas ascend and descend:
+      and a nameless multitude of shrubs as tough as india-rubber push up,
+      together with mosses, grasses, and ferns. Square miles upon square miles
+      of woods are thus interlocked and interbound into one mass solid enough to
+      resist the pressure of a hurricane; and where there is no path already
+      made, entrance into them can only be effected by the most dexterous
+      cutlassing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      An inexperienced stranger might be puzzled to understand how this
+      cutlassing is done. It is no easy feat to sever with one blow a liana
+      thick as a man's arm; the trained cutlasser does it without apparent
+      difficulty: moreover, he cuts horizontally, so as to prevent the severed
+      top presenting a sharp angle and proving afterwards dangerous. He never
+      appears to strike hard,&mdash;only 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... At last we are rejoiced to observe that the trees are becoming
+      smaller;&mdash;there are no more colossal trunks;&mdash;there are frequent
+      glimpses of sky: the sun has risen well above the peaks, and sends
+      occasional beams down through the leaves. Ten minutes, and we reach a
+      clear space,&mdash;a wild savane, very steep, above which looms a higher
+      belt of woods. Here we take another short rest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Northward the view is cut off by a ridge covered with herbaceous
+      vegetation;&mdash;but to the south-west it is open, over a gorge of which
+      both sides are shrouded in sombre green-crests of trees forming a solid
+      curtain against the sun. Beyond the outer and lower cliff valley-surfaces
+      appear miles away, flinging up broad gleams of cane-gold; further off
+      greens disappear into blues, and the fantastic masses of Carbet loom up
+      far higher than before. St. Pierre, in a curve of the coast, is a little
+      red-and-yellow semicircular streak, less than two inches long. The
+      interspaces between far mountain chains,&mdash;masses of pyramids, cones,
+      single and double humps, queer blue angles as of raised knees under
+      coverings,&mdash;resemble misty lakes: they are filled with brume;&mdash;the
+      sea-line has vanished altogether. Only the horizon, enormously heightened,
+      can be discerned as a circling band of faint yellowish light,&mdash;auroral,
+      ghostly,&mdash;almost on a level with the tips of the Pitons. Between this
+      vague horizon and the shore, the sea no longer looks like sea, but like a
+      second hollow sky reversed. All the landscape has unreal beauty:&mdash;there
+      are no keen lines; there are no definite beginnings or endings; the tints
+      are half-colors only;&mdash;peaks rise suddenly from mysteries of bluish
+      fog as from a flood; land melts into sea the same hue. It gives one the
+      idea of some great aquarelle unfinished,&mdash;abandoned before tones were
+      deepened and details brought out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      VII.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We are overlooking from this height the birthplaces of several rivers; and
+      the rivers of Pelée are the clearest and the coolest of the island.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From whatever direction the trip be undertaken, the ascent of the volcano
+      must be made over some one of those many immense ridges sloping from the
+      summit to the sea west, north, and east,&mdash;like buttresses eight to
+      ten miles long,&mdash;formed by ancient lava-torrents. Down the deep
+      gorges between them the cloud-fed rivers run,&mdash;receiving as they
+      descend the waters of countless smaller streams gushing from either side
+      of the ridge. There are also cold springs,&mdash;one of which furnishes
+      St. Pierre with her <i>Eau-de-Gouyave</i> (guava-water), which is always
+      sweet, clear, and cool in the very hottest weather. But the water of
+      almost 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;&mdash;many
+      are cataracts;&mdash;the Rivière de Case-Navire has a fall of nearly 150
+      feet to every fifty yards of its upper course. Naturally these streams cut
+      for themselves channels of immense depth. Where they flow through forests
+      and between mornes, their banks vary from 1200 to 1600 feet high,&mdash;so
+      as to render their beds inaccessible; and many enter the sea through a
+      channel of rock with perpendicular walls from 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,&mdash;while
+      the annual fall at Paris was only eighteen inches. The character of such
+      rain is totally different from that of rain in the temperate zone: the
+      drops are enormous, heavy, like hailstones,&mdash;one will spatter over
+      the circumference of a saucer;&mdash;and the shower roars so that people
+      cannot hear each other speak without shouting. When there is a true storm,
+      no roofing seems able to shut out the cataract; the best-built houses leak
+      in all directions; and objects but a short distance off become invisible
+      behind the heavy curtain of water. The ravages of such rain may be
+      imagined! Roads are cut away in an hour; trees are overthrown as if blown
+      down;&mdash;for there are few West Indian trees which plunge their roots
+      even as low as two feet; they merely extend them over a large diameter;
+      and isolated trees will actually slide under rain. The swelling of rivers
+      is so sudden that washer-women at work in the Roxelane and other streams
+      have been swept away and drowned without the least warning of their
+      danger; the shower occurring seven or eight miles off.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Most of these rivers are well stocked with fish, of which the <i>tétart</i>,
+      <i>banane</i>, <i>loche</i>, and <i>dormeur</i> are the principal
+      varieties. The tétart (best of all) and the loche climb the torrents to
+      the height of 2500 and even 3000 feet: they have a kind of pneumatic
+      sucker, which enables them to cling to rocks. Under stones in the lower
+      basins crawfish of the most extraordinary size are taken; some will
+      measure thirty-six inches from claw to tail. And at all the river-mouths,
+      during July and August, are caught vast numbers of "<i>titiri</i>" <a
+      href="#linknote-33" name="linknoteref-33" id="linknoteref-33">[33]</a>
+      &mdash;tiny white fish, of which a thousand might be put into one teacup.
+      They are delicious when served in oil,&mdash;infinitely more delicate than
+      the sardine. Some regard them as a particular species: others believe them
+      to be only the fry of larger fish,&mdash;as their periodical appearance
+      and disappearance would seem to indicate. They are often swept by millions
+      into the city of St. Pierre, with the flow of mountain-water which
+      purifies the streets: then you will see them swarming in the gutters,
+      fountains, and bathing-basins;&mdash;and on Saturdays, when the water is
+      temporarily shut off to allow of the pipes being cleansed, the titiri may
+      die in the gutters in such numbers as to make the air offensive.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0032" id="linkimage-0032">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%">
+      <img src="images/30-Ferns.jpg" alt="Arborescent Ferns on a Mountain Road. "
+      width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      The mountain-crab, celebrated for its periodical migrations, is also found
+      at considerable heights. Its numbers appear to have been diminished
+      extraordinarily by its consumption as an article of negro diet; but in
+      certain islands those armies of crabs described by the old writers are
+      still occasionally to be seen. The Père 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."...
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      VIII.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... We enter the upper belt of woods&mdash;green twilight again. There are
+      as many lianas as ever: but they are less massive in stem;&mdash;the
+      trees, which are stunted, stand closer together; and the web-work of roots
+      is finer and more thickly spun. These are called the <i>petits-bois</i>
+      (little woods), in contradistinction to the grands-bois, or high woods.
+      Multitudes of balisiers, dwarf-palms, arborescent ferns, wild guavas,
+      mingle with the lower growths on either side of the path, which has
+      narrowed to the breadth of a wheel-rut, and is nearly concealed by
+      protruding grasses and fern leaves. Never does the sole of the foot press
+      upon a surface large as itself,&mdash;always the slippery backs of roots
+      crossing at all angles, like loop-traps, over sharp fragments of volcanic
+      rock or pumice-stone. There are abrupt descents, sudden acclivities,
+      mud-holes, and fissures;&mdash;one grasps at the ferns on both sides to
+      keep from falling; and some ferns are spiked sometimes on the under
+      surface, and tear the hands. But the barefooted guides stride on rapidly,
+      erect as ever under their loads,&mdash;chopping off with their cutlasses
+      any branches that hang too low. There are beautiful flowers here,&mdash;various
+      unfamiliar species of lobelia;&mdash;pretty red and yellow blossoms
+      belonging to plants which the creole physician calls <i>Bromeliacoe</i>;
+      and a plant like the <i>Guy Lussacia</i> of Brazil, with violet-red
+      petals. There is an indescribable multitude of ferns,&mdash;a very museum
+      of ferns! The doctor, who is a great woodsman, says that he never makes a
+      trip to the hills without finding some new kind of fern; and he had
+      already a collection of several hundred.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The route is continually growing steeper, and makes a number of turns and
+      windings: we reach another bit of savane, where we have to walk over
+      black-pointed stones that resemble slag;&mdash;then more petits-bois,
+      still more dwarfed, then another opening. The naked crest of the volcano
+      appears like a peaked precipice, dark-red, with streaks of green, over a
+      narrow but terrific chasm on the left: we are almost on a level with the
+      crater, but must make a long circuit to reach it, through a wilderness of
+      stunted timber and bush. The creoles call this undergrowth <i>razié</i>:
+      it is really only a prolongation of the low jungle which carpets the high
+      forests below, with this difference, that there are fewer creepers and
+      much more fern.... Suddenly we reach a black gap in the path about thirty
+      inches wide&mdash;half hidden by the tangle of leaves,&mdash;<i>La Fente</i>.
+      It is a volcanic fissure which divides the whole ridge, and is said to
+      have no bottom: for fear of a possible slip, the guides insist upon
+      holding our hands while we cross it. Happily there are no more such
+      clefts; but there are mud-holes, snags, roots, and loose rocks beyond
+      counting. Least disagreeable are the <i>bourbiers</i>, in which you sink
+      to your knees in black or gray slime. Then the path descends into open
+      light again;&mdash;and we find ourselves at the Étang,&mdash;in the dead
+      Crater of the Three Palmistes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      An immense pool, completely encircled by high green walls of rock, which
+      shut out all further view, and shoot up, here and there, into cones, or
+      rise into queer lofty humps and knobs. One of these elevations at the
+      opposite side has almost the shape of a blunt horn: it is the Morne de la
+      Croix. The scenery is at once imposing and sinister: the shapes towering
+      above the lake and reflected in its still surface have the weirdness of
+      things seen in photographs of the moon. Clouds are circling above them and
+      between them;&mdash;one descends to the water, haunts us a moment,
+      blurring everything; then rises again. We have travelled too slow; the
+      clouds have had time to gather.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I look in vain for the Three Palmistes which gave the crater a name: they
+      were destroyed long ago. But there are numbers of young ones scattered
+      through the dense ferny covering of the lake-slopes,&mdash;just showing
+      their heads like bunches of great dark-green feathers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;The estimate of Dr. Rufz, made in 1851, and the estimate of the
+      last "Annuaire" regarding the circumference of the lake, are evidently
+      both at fault. That of the "Annuaire," 150 metres, is a gross error: the
+      writer must have meant the diameter,&mdash;following Rufz, who estimated
+      the circumference at something over 300 paces. As we find it, the Étang,
+      which is nearly circular, must measure 200 yards across;&mdash;perhaps it
+      has been greatly swollen by the extraordinary rains of this summer. Our
+      guides say that the little iron cross projecting from the water about two
+      yards off was high and dry on the shore last season. At present there is
+      only one narrow patch of grassy bank on which we can rest, between the
+      water and the walls of the crater.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The lake is perfectly clear, with a bottom of yellowish shallow mud, which
+      rests&mdash;according to investigations made in 1851&mdash;upon a mass of
+      pumice-stone mixed in places with ferruginous sand; and the yellow mud
+      itself is a detritus of pumice-stone. We strip for a swim.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Though at an elevation of nearly 5000 feet, this water is not so cold as
+      that of the Roxelane, nor of other rivers of the north-west and north-east
+      coasts. It has an agreeable fresh taste, like dew. Looking down into it, I
+      see many larvae of the <i>maringouin</i>, or large mosquito: no fish. The
+      maringouins themselves are troublesome,&mdash;whirring around us and
+      stinging. On striking out for the middle, one is surprised to feel the
+      water growing slightly warmer. The committee of investigation in 1851
+      found the temperature of the lake, in spite of a north wind, 20.5
+      Centigrade, while that of the air was but 19 (about 69 F. for the water,
+      and 66.2 for the air). The depth in the centre is over six feet; the
+      average is scarcely four.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Regaining the bank, we prepare to ascend the Morne de la Croix. The
+      circular path by which it is commonly reached is now under water; and we
+      have to wade up to our waists. All the while clouds keep passing over us
+      in great slow whirls. Some are white and half-transparent; others opaque
+      and dark gray;&mdash;a dark cloud passing through; a white one looks like
+      a goblin. Gaining the opposite shore, we find a very rough path over
+      splintered stone, ascending between the thickest fern-growths possible to
+      imagine. The general tone of this fern is dark green; but there are paler
+      cloudings of yellow and pink,&mdash;due to the varying age of the leaves,
+      which are pressed into a cushion three or four feet high, and almost solid
+      enough to sit upon. About two hundred and fifty yards from the crater
+      edge, the path rises above this tangle, and zigzags up the morne, which
+      now appears twice as lofty as from the lake, where we had a curiously
+      foreshortened view of it. It then looked scarcely a hundred feet high; it
+      is more than double that. The cone is green to the top with moss, low
+      grasses, small fern, and creeping pretty plants, like violets, with big
+      carmine flowers. The path is a black line: the rock laid bare by it looks
+      as if burned to the core. We have now to use our hands in climbing; but
+      the low thick ferns give a good hold. Out of breath, and drenched in
+      perspiration, we reach the apex,&mdash;the highest point of the island.
+      But we are curtained about with clouds,&mdash;moving in dense white and
+      gray masses: we cannot see fifty feet away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The top of the peak has a slightly slanting surface of perhaps twenty
+      square yards, very irregular in outline;&mdash;southwardly the morne
+      pitches sheer into a frightful chasm, between the converging of two of
+      those long corrugated ridges already described as buttressing the volcano
+      on all sides. Through a cloud-rift we can see another crater-lake twelve
+      hundred feet below&mdash;said to be five times larger than the Étang we
+      have just left: it is also of more irregular outline. This is called the
+      <i>Étang Sec</i>, or "Dry Pool," because dry in less rainy seasons. It
+      occupies a more ancient crater, and is very rarely visited: the path
+      leading to it is difficult and dangerous,&mdash;a natural ladder of roots
+      and lianas over a series of precipices. Behind us the Crater of the Three
+      Palmistes now looks no larger than the surface on which we stand;&mdash;over
+      its further boundary we can see the wall of another gorge, in which there
+      is a third crater-lake. West and north are green peakings, ridges, and
+      high lava walls steep as fortifications. All this we can only note in the
+      intervals between passing of clouds. As yet there is no landscape visible
+      southward;&mdash;we sit down and wait.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      IX.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... Two crosses are planted nearly at the verge of the precipice; a small
+      one of iron; and a large one of wood&mdash;probably the same put up by the
+      Abbé Lespinasse during the panic of 1851, after the eruption. This has
+      been splintered to pieces by a flash of lightning; and the fragments are
+      clumsily united with cord. There is also a little tin plate let into a
+      slit in a black post: it bears a date,&mdash;<i>8 Avril, 1867</i>.... The
+      volcanic vents, which were active in 1851, are not visible from the peak:
+      they are in the gorge descending from it, at a point nearly on a level
+      with the Étang Sec.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The ground gives out a peculiar hollow sound when tapped, and is covered
+      with a singular lichen,&mdash;all composed of round overlapping leaves
+      about one-eighth of an inch in diameter, pale green, and tough as
+      fish-scales. Here and there one sees a beautiful branching growth, like a
+      mass of green coral: it is a gigantic moss. <i>Cabane-Jésus</i> ("bed
+      of-Jesus") the patois name is: at Christmas-time, in all the churches,
+      those decorated cribs in which the image of the Child-Saviour is laid are
+      filled with it. The creeping crimson violet is also here. Fire-flies with
+      bronze-green bodies are crawling about;-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&mdash;three times;-a
+      <i>siffleur-de-montagne</i> 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,&mdash;now spanned by the rocket-leap of a perfect
+      rainbow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... Valleys and mornes, peaks and ravines,&mdash;succeeding each other
+      swiftly as surge succeeds surge in a storm,&mdash;a weirdly tossed world,
+      but beautiful as it is weird: all green the foreground, with all tints of
+      green, shadowing off to billowy distances of purest blue. The sea-line
+      remains invisible as ever: you know where it is only by the zone of pale
+      light ringing the double sphericity of sky and ocean. And in this double
+      blue void the island seems to hang suspended: far peaks seem to come up
+      from nowhere, to rest on nothing&mdash;like forms of mirage. Useless to
+      attempt photography;&mdash;distances take the same color as the sea.
+      Vauclin's truncated mass is recognizable only by the shape of its indigo
+      shadows. All is vague, vertiginous;&mdash;the land still seems to quiver
+      with the prodigious forces that up-heaved it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      High over all this billowing and peaking tower the Pitons of Carbet,
+      gem-violet through the vapored miles,&mdash;the tallest one filleted with
+      a single soft white band of cloud. Through all the wonderful chain of the
+      Antilles you might seek in vain for other peaks exquisite of form as
+      these. Their beauty no less surprises the traveller today than it did
+      Columbus three hundred and eighty-six years ago, when&mdash;on the
+      thirteenth day of June, 1502&mdash;his caravel first sailed into sight of
+      them, and he asked his Indian guide the name of the unknown land, and the
+      names of those marvellous shapes. Then, according to Pedro Martyr de
+      Anghiera, the Indian answered that the name of the island was Madiana;
+      that those peaks had been venerated from immemorial time by the ancient
+      peoples of the archipelago as the birthplace of the human race; and that
+      the first brown habitants of Madiana, having been driven from their
+      natural heritage by the man-eating pirates of the south&mdash;the cannibal
+      Caribs,&mdash;remembered and mourned for their sacred mountains, and gave
+      the names of them, for a memory, to the loftiest summits of their new
+      home,&mdash;Hayti.... Surely never was fairer spot hallowed by the legend
+      of man's nursing-place than the valley blue-shadowed by those peaks,&mdash;worthy,
+      for their gracious femininity of shape, to seem the visible breasts of the
+      All-nourishing Mother,&mdash;dreaming under this tropic sun.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Touching the zone of pale light north-east, appears a beautiful peaked
+      silhouette,&mdash;Dominica. We had hoped to perceive Saint Lucia; but the
+      atmosphere is too heavily charged with vapor to-day. How magnificent must
+      be the view on certain extraordinary days, when it reaches from Antigua to
+      the Grenadines&mdash;over a range of three hundred miles! But the
+      atmospheric conditions which allow of such a spectacle are rare indeed. As
+      a general rule, even in the most unclouded West Indian weather, the
+      loftiest peaks fade into the light at a distance of one hundred miles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A sharp ridge covered with fern cuts off the view of the northern slopes:
+      one must climb it to look down upon Macouba. Macouba occupies the steepest
+      slope of Pelée, and the grimmest part of the coast: its little <i>chef-lieu</i>
+      is industrially famous for the manufacture of native tobacco, and
+      historically for the ministrations of Père Labat, who rebuilt its church.
+      Little change has taken place in the parish since his time. "Do you know
+      Macouba?" asks a native writer;&mdash;"it is not Pelion upon Ossa, but ten
+      or twelve Pelions side by side with ten or twelve Ossae, interseparated by
+      prodigious ravines. Men can speak to each other from places whence, by
+      rapid walking, it would require hours to meet;&mdash;to travel there is to
+      experience on dry land the sensation of the sea."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With the diminution of the warmth provoked by the exertion of climbing,
+      you begin to notice how cool it feels;&mdash;you could almost doubt the
+      testimony of your latitude. Directly east is Senegambia: we are well south
+      of Timbuctoo and the Sahara,&mdash;on a line with southern India. The
+      ocean has cooled the winds; at this altitude the rarity of the air is
+      northern; but in the valleys below the vegetation is African. The best
+      alimentary plants, the best forage, the flowers of the gardens, are of
+      Guinea;&mdash;the graceful date-palms are from the Atlas region: those
+      tamarinds, whose thick shade stifles all other vegetal life beneath it,
+      are from Senegal. Only, in the touch of the air, the vapory colors of
+      distance, the shapes of the hills, there is a something not of Africa:
+      that strange fascination which has given to the island its poetic creole
+      name,&mdash;<i>le Pays de Revenants</i>. And the charm is as puissant in
+      our own day as it was more than two hundred years ago, when Père Dutertre
+      wrote:&mdash;"I have never met one single man, nor one single woman, of
+      all those who came back therefrom, in whom I have not remarked a most
+      passionate desire to return thereunto."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Time and familiarity do not weaken the charm, either for those born among
+      these scenes who never voyaged beyond their native island, or for those to
+      whom the streets of Paris and the streets of St. Pierre are equally well
+      known. Even at a time when Martinique had been forsaken by hundreds of her
+      ruined planters, and the paradise-life of the old days had become only a
+      memory to embitter exile,&mdash;a Creole writes:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Let there suddenly open before you one of those vistas, or <i>anses</i>,
+      with colonnades of cocoa-palm&mdash;at the end of which you see smoking
+      the chimney of a sugar-mill, and catch a glimpse of the hamlet of negro
+      cabins (<i>cases</i>);&mdash;or merely picture to yourself one of the most
+      ordinary, most trivial scenes: nets being hauled by two ranks of
+      fishermen; a <i>canot</i> waiting for the <i>embellie</i> to make a dash
+      for the beach; even a negro bending under the weight of a basket of
+      fruits, and running along the shore to get to market;&mdash;and illuminate
+      that with the light of our sun! What landscapes!&mdash;O Salvator Rosa! 0
+      Claude Lorrain,&mdash;if I had your pencil!... Well do I remember the day
+      on which, after twenty years of absence, I found myself again in presence
+      of these wonders;&mdash;I feel once more the thrill of delight that made
+      all my body tremble, the tears that came to my eyes. It was my land, my
+      own land, that appeared so beautiful."... <a href="#linknote-34"
+      name="linknoteref-34" id="linknoteref-34">[34]</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      X.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the beginning, while gazing south, east, west, to the rim of the world,
+      all laughed, shouted, interchanged the quick delight of new impressions:
+      every face was radiant.... Now all look serious;&mdash;none speak. The
+      first physical joy of finding oneself on this point in violet air, exalted
+      above the hills, soon yields to other emotions inspired by the mighty
+      vision and the colossal peace of the heights. Dominating all, I think, is
+      the consciousness of the awful antiquity of what one is looking upon,&mdash;such
+      a sensation, perhaps, as of old found utterance in that tremendous
+      question of the Book of Job:&mdash;"<i>Wast thou brought forth before the
+      hills?</i>"... And the blue multitude of the peaks, the perpetual
+      congregation of the mornes, seem to chorus in the vast resplendence,&mdash;telling
+      of Nature's eternal youth, and the passionless permanence of that about us
+      and beyond us and beneath,&mdash;until something like the fulness of a
+      great grief begins to weigh at the heart.... For all this astonishment of
+      beauty, all this majesty of light and form and color, will surely endure,&mdash;marvellous
+      as now,&mdash;after we shall have lain down to sleep where no dreams come,
+      and may never arise from the dust of our rest to look upon it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0008" id="link2HCH0008">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VIII. &mdash; 'TI CANOTIÉ
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One might almost say that commercial time in St. Pierre is measured by
+      cannon-shots,&mdash;by the signal-guns of steamers. Every such report
+      announces an event of extreme importance to the whole population. To the
+      merchant it is a notification that mails, money, and goods have arrived;&mdash;to
+      consuls and Government officials it gives notice of fees and dues to be
+      collected;&mdash;for the host of lightermen, longshoremen, port laborers
+      of all classes, it promises work and pay;&mdash;for all it signifies the
+      arrival of food. The island does not feed itself: cattle, salt meats,
+      hams, lard, flour, cheese, dried fish, all come from abroad,&mdash;particularly
+      from America. And in the minds of the colored population the American
+      steamer is so intimately associated with the idea of those great tin cans
+      in which food-stuffs are brought from the United States, that the
+      onomatope applied to the can, because of the sound outgiven by it when
+      tapped,&mdash;<i>bom!</i>&mdash;is also applied to the ship itself. The
+      English or French or Belgian steamer, however large, is only known as <i>packett-à</i>,
+      <i>batiment-là</i>; but the American steamer is always the "bom-ship"&mdash;<i>batiment-bom-à</i>,
+      or, the "food-ship"&mdash;<i>batiment-mangé-à</i>.... You hear women and
+      men asking each other, as the shock of the gun flaps through all the town,
+      "<i>Mi! gadé ça qui là, chè?</i>" And if the answer be, "<i>Mais c'est
+      bom-là, chè,&mdash;bom-mangé-à ka rivé</i>" (Why, it is the bom, dear,&mdash;the
+      food-bom that has come), great is the exultation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Again, because of the sound of her whistle, we find a steamer called in
+      this same picturesque idiom, <i>batiment-cône</i>,&mdash;"the horn-ship."
+      There is even a song, of which the refrain is:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Bom-là rivé, chè.-Batiment-cône-là rivé."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... But of all the various classes of citizens, those most joyously
+      excited by the coming of a great steamer, whether she be a "bom" or not,&mdash;are
+      the <i>'ti canotié</i>, who swarm out immediately in little canoes of
+      their own manufacture to dive for coins which passengers gladly throw into
+      the water for the pleasure of witnessing the graceful spectacle. No sooner
+      does a steamer drop anchor&mdash;unless the water be very rough indeed&mdash;than
+      she is surrounded by a fleet of the funniest little boats imaginable, full
+      of naked urchins screaming creole.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These <i>'ti canotié</i>&mdash;these little canoe-boys and professional
+      divers&mdash;are, for the most part, sons of boatmen of color, the real <i>canotiers</i>.
+      I cannot find who first invented the <i>'ti canot</i>: the shape and
+      dimensions of the little canoe are fixed according to a tradition several
+      generations old; and no improvements upon the original model seem to have
+      ever been attempted, with the sole exception of a tiny water-tight box
+      contrived sometimes at one end, in which the <i>palettes</i>, or miniature
+      paddles, and various other trifles may be stowed away. The actual cost of
+      material for a canoe of this kind seldom exceeds twenty-five or thirty
+      cents; and, nevertheless, the number of canoes is not very large&mdash;I
+      doubt if there be more than fifteen in the harbor;&mdash;as the families
+      of Martinique boatmen are all so poor that twenty-five sous are difficult
+      to spare, in spite of the certainty that the little son can earn fifty
+      times the amount within a month after owning a canoe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For the manufacture of a Canoe an American lard-box or kerosene-oil box is
+      preferred by reason of its shape; but any well-constructed shipping-case
+      of small size would serve the purpose. The top is removed; the sides and
+      the corners of the bottom are sawn out at certain angles; and the pieces
+      removed are utilized for the sides of the bow and stern,&mdash;sometimes
+      also in making the little box for the paddles, or palettes, which are
+      simply thin pieces of tough wood about the form and size of a cigar-box
+      lid. Then the little boat is tarred and varnished: it cannot sink,&mdash;though
+      it is quite easily upset. There are no seats. The boys (there are usually
+      two to each canot) simply squat down in the bottom,&mdash;facing each
+      other, they can paddle with surprising swiftness over a smooth sea; and it
+      is a very pretty sight to witness one of their prize contests in racing,&mdash;which
+      take place every 14th of July....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0033" id="linkimage-0033">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%">
+      <img src="images/Ti_Canot.jpg" alt="'ti Canot. " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      ... It was five o'clock in the afternoon: the horizon beyond the harbor
+      was turning lemon-color;&mdash;and a thin warm wind began to come in weak
+      puffs from the south-west,&mdash;the first breaths to break the immobility
+      of the tropical air. Sails of vessels becalmed at the entrance of the bay
+      commenced to flap lazily: they might belly after sundown.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The <i>La Guayra</i> was in port, lying well out: her mountainous iron
+      mass rising high above the modest sailing craft moored in her vicinity,&mdash;barks
+      and brigantines and brigs and schooners and barkentines. She had lain
+      before the town the whole afternoon, surrounded by the entire squadron of
+      <i>'ti canots</i>; and the boys were still circling about her flanks,
+      although she had got up steam and was lifting her anchor. They had been
+      very lucky, indeed, that afternoon,&mdash;all the little canotiers;&mdash;and
+      even many yellow lads, not fortunate enough to own canoes, had swum out to
+      her in hope of sharing the silver shower falling from her saloon-deck.
+      Some of these, tired out, were resting themselves by sitting on the
+      slanting cables of neighboring ships. Perched naked thus,&mdash;balancing
+      in the sun, against the blue of sky or water, their slender bodies took
+      such orange from the mellowing light as to seem made of some self-luminous
+      substance,&mdash;flesh of sea-fairies....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly the <i>La Guayra</i> opened her steam-throat and uttered such a
+      moo that all the mornes cried out for at least a minute after;&mdash;and
+      the little fellows perched on the cables of the sailing craft tumbled into
+      the sea at the sound and struck out for shore. Then the water all at once
+      burst backward in immense frothing swirls from beneath the stern of the
+      steamer; and there arose such a heaving as made all the little canoes
+      dance. The <i>La Guayra</i> was moving. She moved slowly at first, making
+      a great fuss as she turned round: then she began to settle down to her
+      journey very majestically,&mdash;just making the water pitch a little
+      behind her, as the hem of a woman's robe tosses lightly at her heels while
+      she walks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And, contrary to custom, some of the canoes followed after her. A dark
+      handsome man, wearing an immense Panama hat, and jewelled rings upon his
+      hands, was still throwing money; and still the boys dived for it. But only
+      one of each crew now plunged; for, though the <i>La Guayra</i> was yet
+      moving slowly, it was a severe strain to follow her, and there was no time
+      to be lost.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The captain of the little band&mdash;black Maximilien, ten years old, and
+      his comrade Stéphane&mdash;nicknamed <i>Ti Chabin</i>, because of his
+      bright hair,&mdash;a slim little yellow boy of eleven&mdash;led the
+      pursuit, crying always, "<i>Encò, Missié,&mdash;encò!</i>"...
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The <i>La Guayra</i> had gained fully two hundred yards when the handsome
+      passenger made his final largess,&mdash;proving himself quite an expert in
+      flinging coin. The piece fell far short of the boys, but near enough to
+      distinctly betray a yellow shimmer as it twirled to the water. That was
+      gold!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In another minute the leading canoe had reached the spot, the other
+      canotiers voluntarily abandoning the quest,&mdash;for it was little use to
+      contend against Maximilien and Stéphane, who had won all the canoe
+      contests last 14th of July. Stéphane, who was the better diver, plunged.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was much longer below than usual, came up at quite a distance, panted
+      as he regained the canoe, and rested his arms upon it. The water was so
+      deep there, he could not reach the coin the first time, though he could
+      see it: he was going to try again,&mdash;it was gold, sure enough.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"<i>Fouinq! ça fond içitt!</i>" he gasped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Maximilien felt all at once uneasy. Very deep water, and perhaps sharks.
+      And sunset not far off! The <i>La Guayra</i> was diminishing in the
+      offing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"<i>Boug-là 'lé fai nou néyé!&mdash;laissé y, Stéphane!</i>" he
+      cried. (The fellow wants to drown us. <i>Laissé</i>&mdash;leave it alone.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Stéphane had recovered breath, and was evidently resolved to try
+      again. It was gold!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"<i>Mais ça c'est lò!</i>"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"<i>Assez, non!</i>" screamed Maximilien. "<i>Pa plongé 'ncò, moin
+      ka di ou! Ah! foute!</i>"...
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Stéphane had dived again!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... And where were the others? "<i>Bon-Dié, gadé oti yo yé!</i>" They were
+      almost out of sight,&mdash;tiny specks moving shoreward.... The <i>La
+      Guayra</i> now seemed no bigger than the little packet running between St.
+      Pierre and Fort-de-France.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Up came Stéphane again, at a still greater distance than before,&mdash;holding
+      high the yellow coin in one hand. He made for the canoe, and Maximilien
+      paddled towards him and helped him in. Blood was streaming from the little
+      diver's nostrils, and blood colored the water he spat from his mouth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"<i>Ah! moin té ka di ou laissé y!</i>" cried Maximilien, in anger
+      and alarm.... "<i>Gàdé, gàdé sang-à ka coulé nans nez ou,-nans bouche
+      ou!...Mi oti Iézautt!</i>"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Lèzautt</i>, the rest, were no longer visible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"<i>Et mi oti nou yé!</i>" cried Maximilien again. They had never
+      ventured so far from shore.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Stéphane answered only, "<i>C'est lò!</i>" For the first time in his
+      life he held a piece of gold in his fingers. He tied it up in a little rag
+      attached to the string fastened about his waist,&mdash;a purse of his own
+      invention,&mdash;and took up his paddles, coughing the while and spitting
+      crimson.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"<i>Mi! mi!&mdash;mi oti nou yé!</i>" reiterated Maximilien. "<i>Bon-Dié!</i>
+      look where we are!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Place had become indistinct;&mdash;the light-house, directly behind
+      half an hour earlier, now lay well south: the red light had just been
+      kindled. Seaward, in advance of the sinking orange disk of the sun, was
+      the <i>La Guayra</i>, passing to the horizon. There was no sound from the
+      shore: about them a great silence had gathered,&mdash;the Silence of seas,
+      which is a fear. Panic seized them: they began to paddle furiously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But St. Pierre did not appear to draw any nearer. Was it only an effect of
+      the dying light, or were they actually moving towards the semicircular
+      cliffs of Fond Corré?... Maximilien began to cry. The little chabin
+      paddled on,&mdash;though the blood was still trickling over his breast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Maximilien screamed out to him:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"<i>Ou pa ka pagayé,&mdash;anh?&mdash;ou ni bousoin dòmi?</i>"
+      (Thou dost not paddle, eh?&mdash;thou wouldst go to sleep?)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"<i>Si! moin ka pagayé,&mdash;epi fò!</i>" (I am paddling, and
+      hard, too!) responded Stéphane....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"<i>Ou ka pagayé!&mdash;ou ka menti!</i>" (Thou art paddling!&mdash;thou
+      liest!) vociferated Maximilien.... "And the fault is all thine. I cannot,
+      all by myself, make the canoe to go in water like this! The fault is all
+      thine: I told thee not to dive, thou stupid!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"<i>Ou fou!</i>" cried Stéphane, becoming angry. "<i>Moin ka
+      pagayé!</i>" (I am paddling.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"Beast! never may we get home so! Paddle, thou lazy!&mdash;paddle,
+      thou nasty!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"<i>Macaque</i> thou!&mdash;monkey!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"<i>Chabin!</i>&mdash;must be chabin, for to be stupid so!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"Thou black monkey!&mdash;thou species of <i>ouistiti!</i>"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"Thou tortoise-of-the-land!&mdash;thou slothful more than <i>molocoye!</i>"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"Why, thou cursed monkey, if thou sayest I do not paddle, thou dost
+      not know how to paddle!"...
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... But Maximilien's whole expression changed: he suddenly stopped
+      paddling, and stared before him and behind him at a great violet band
+      broadening across the sea northward out of sight; and his eyes were big
+      with terror as he cried out:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"<i>Mais ni qui chose qui douôle içitt!</i>... There is something
+      queer, Stéphane; there is something queer."...
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"Ah! you begin to see now, Maximilien!-it is the current!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"A devil-current, Stéphane.... We are drifting: we will go to the
+      horizon!"...
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To the horizon&mdash;"<i>nou kallé lhorizon!</i>"&mdash;a phrase of
+      terrible picturesqueness.... In the creole tongue, "to the horizon"
+      signifies to the Great Open&mdash;into the measureless sea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"<i>C'est pa lapeine pagayé atouèlement</i>" (It is no use to
+      paddle now), sobbed Maximilien, laying down his palettes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"<i>Si! si!</i>" said Stéphane, reversing the motion: "paddle with
+      the current."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"With the current! It runs to La Dominique!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"<i>Pouloss</i>," phlegmatically returned Stéphane,&mdash;"<i>ennou!</i>&mdash;let
+      us make for La Dominique!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"Thou fool!&mdash;it is more than past forty kilometres.... <i>Stéphane,
+      mi! gadé!&mdash;mi quz" gouôs requ'em!</i>"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A long black fin cut the water almost beside them, passed, and vanished,&mdash;a
+      <i>requin</i> 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"Do not paddle, Stéphane!&mdash;do not put thy hand in the water
+      again!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      III.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... The <i>La Guayra</i> was a point on the sky-verge;&mdash;the sun's
+      face had vanished. The silence and the darkness were deepening together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"<i>Si lanmè ka vini plis fò, ça nou ké fai?</i>" (If the sea
+      roughens, what are we to do?) asked Maximilien.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"Maybe we will meet a steamer," answered Stéphane: "the <i>Orinoco</i>
+      was due to-day."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"And if she pass in the night?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"They can see us."...
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"No, they will not be able to see us at all. There is no moon."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"They have lights ahead."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"I tell thee, they will not see us at all,&mdash;pièss! pièss!
+      pièss!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"Then they will hear us cry out."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"NO,&mdash;we cannot cry so loud. One can hear nothing but a
+      steam-whistle or a cannon, with the noise of the wind and the water and
+      the machine.... Even on the Fort-de-France packet one cannot hear for the
+      machine. And the machine of the <i>Orinoco</i> is more big than the church
+      of the 'Centre.'"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"Then we must try to get to La Dominique."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... They could now feel the sweep of the mighty current;&mdash;it even
+      seemed to them that they could hear it,&mdash;a deep low whispering. At
+      long intervals they saw lights,&mdash;the lights of houses in
+      Pointe-Prince, in Fond-Canonville,&mdash;in Au Prêcheur. Under them the
+      depth was unfathomed:&mdash;hydrographic charts mark it <i>sans-fond</i>.
+      And they passed the great cliffs of Aux Abymes, under which lies the
+      Village of the Abysms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The red glare in the west disappeared suddenly as if blown out;&mdash;the
+      rim of the sea vanished into the void of the gloom;&mdash;the night
+      narrowed about them, thickening like a black fog. And the invisible,
+      irresistible power of the sea was now bearing them away from the tall
+      coast,&mdash;over profundities unknown,&mdash;over the <i>sans-fond</i>,&mdash;out
+      to the horizon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      IV.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... Behind the canoe a long thread of pale light quivered and twisted:
+      bright points from time to time mounted up, glowered like eyes, and
+      vanished again;&mdash;glimmerings of faint flame wormed away on either
+      side as they floated on. And the little craft no longer rocked as before;&mdash;they
+      felt another and a larger motion,&mdash;long slow ascents and descents
+      enduring for minutes at a time;&mdash;they were riding the great swells,&mdash;<i>riding
+      the horizon!</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Twice they were capsized. But happily the heaving was a smooth one, and
+      their little canoe could not sink: they groped for it, found it, righted
+      it, and climbed in, and baled out the water with their hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From time to time they both cried out together, as loud as they could,&mdash;"<i>Sucou!&mdash;sucou!&mdash;sucou!</i>"&mdash;hoping
+      that some one might be looking for them.... The alarm had indeed been
+      given; and one of the little steam-packets had been sent out to look for
+      them,&mdash;with torch-fires blazing at her bows; but she had taken the
+      wrong direction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"Maximilien," said Stéphane, while the great heaving seemed to grow
+      vaster,&mdash;"<i>fau nou ka prié Bon-Dié</i>."...
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Maximilien answered nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"<i>Fau prié Bon-Dié</i>" (We must pray to the Bon-Dié), repeated
+      Stéphane.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"<i>Pa lapeine, li pas pè ouè nou atò!</i>" (It is not worth while:
+      He cannot see us now) answered the little black.... In the immense
+      darkness even the loom of the island was no longer visible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"O Maximilien!&mdash;<i>Bon-Dié ka ouè toutt, ka connaitt toutt</i>"
+      (He sees all; He knows all), cried Stéphane.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"<i>Y pa pè ouè non pièss atouèelement, moin ben sur!</i>" (He
+      cannot see us at all now,&mdash;I am quite sure) irreverently responded
+      Maximilien....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"Thou thinkest the Bon-Dié like thyself!&mdash;He has not eyes like
+      thou," protested Stéphane. "<i>Li pas ka tini coulè; li pas ka tini zié</i>"
+      (He has not color; He has not eyes), continued the boy, repeating the text
+      of his catechism,&mdash;the curious creole catechism of old Perè Goux, of
+      Carbet. [Quaint priest and quaint catechism have both passed away.]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"<i>Moin pa save si li pa ka tini coulè</i>" (I know not if He has
+      not color), answered Maximilien. "But what I well know is that if He has
+      not eyes, He cannot see.... <i>Fouinq!</i>&mdash;how idiot!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"Why, it is in the Catechism," cried Stéphane.... "<i>'Bon-Dié, li
+      conm vent: vent tout-patout, et nou pa save ouè li;-li ka touché nou,&mdash;li
+      ka boulvésé lanmè.'</i>" (The Good-God is like the Wind: the Wind is
+      everywhere, and we cannot see It;&mdash;It touches us,&mdash;It tosses the
+      sea.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"If the Bon-Dié is the Wind," responded Maximilien, "then pray thou
+      the Wind to stay quiet."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"The Bon-Dié is not the Wind," cried Stéphane: "He is like the
+      Wind, but He is not the Wind."...
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"<i>Ah! soc-soc&mdash;fouinq!</i>... More better past praying to
+      care we be not upset again and eaten by sharks."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      * * * * * * *
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... Whether the little chabin prayed either to the Wind or to the Bon-Dié,
+      I do not know. But the Wind remained very quiet all that night,&mdash;seemed
+      to hold its breath for fear of ruffling the sea. And in the Mouillage of
+      St. Pierre furious American captains swore at the Wind because it would
+      not fill their sails.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      V.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Perhaps, if there had been a breeze, neither Stéphane nor Maximilien would
+      have seen the sun again. But they saw him rise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Light pearled in the east, over the edge of the ocean, ran around the rim
+      of the sky and yellowed: then the sun's brow appeared;&mdash;a current of
+      gold gushed rippling across the sea before him;&mdash;and all the heaven
+      at once caught blue fire from horizon to zenith. Violet from flood to
+      cloud the vast recumbent form of Pelée loomed far behind,&mdash;with long
+      reaches of mountaining: pale grays o'ertopping misty blues. And in the
+      north another lofty shape was towering,&mdash;strangely jagged and peaked
+      and beautiful,&mdash;the silhouette of Dominica: a sapphire Sea!... No
+      wandering clouds:&mdash;over far Pelée only a shadowy piling of nimbi....
+      Under them the sea swayed dark as purple ink&mdash;a token of tremendous
+      depth.... Still a dead calm, and no sail in sight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"<i>Ça c'est la Dominique</i>," said Maximilien,&mdash;"<i>Ennou
+      pou ouivage-à!</i>"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They had lost their little palettes during the night;&mdash;they used
+      their naked hands, and moved swiftly. But Dominica was many and many a
+      mile away. Which was the nearer island, it was yet difficult to say;&mdash;in
+      the morning sea-haze, both were vapory,&mdash;difference of color was
+      largely due to position....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Sough!&mdash;sough!&mdash;sough!</i>&mdash;A bird with a white breast
+      passed overhead; and they stopped paddling to look at it,-a gull. Sign of
+      fair weather!&mdash;it was making for Dominica.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"<i>Moin ni ben faim</i>," murmured Maximilien. Neither had eaten
+      since the morning of the previous day,&mdash;most of which they had passed
+      sitting in their canoe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"<i>Moin ni anni soif</i>," said Stéphane. And besides his thirst
+      he complained of a burning pain in his head, always growing worse. He
+      still coughed, and spat out pink threads after each burst of coughing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The heightening sun flamed whiter and whiter: the flashing of waters
+      before his face began to dazzle like a play of lightning.... Now the
+      islands began to show sharper lines, stronger colors; and Dominica was
+      evidently the nearer;&mdash;for bright streaks of green were breaking at
+      various angles through its vapor-colored silhouette, and Martinique still
+      remained all blue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... Hotter and hotter the sun burned; more and more blinding became his
+      reverberation. Maximilien's black skin suffered least; but both lads,
+      accustomed as they were to remaining naked in the sun, found the heat
+      difficult to bear. They would gladly have plunged into the deep water to
+      cool themselves, but for fear of sharks;&mdash;all they could do was to
+      moisten their heads, and rinse their mouths with sea-water.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Each from his end of the canoe continually watched the horizon. Neither
+      hoped for a sail, there was no wind; but they looked for the coming of
+      steamers,&mdash;the <i>Orinoco</i> might pass, or the English packet, or
+      some one of the small Martinique steamboats might be sent out to find
+      them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet hours went by; and there still appeared no smoke in the ring of the
+      sky,&mdash;never a sign in all the round of the sea, broken only by the
+      two huge silhouettes.... But Dominica was certainly nearing;&mdash;the
+      green lights were spreading through the luminous blue of her hills.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... Their long immobility in the squatting posture began to tell upon the
+      endurance of both boys,&mdash;producing dull throbbing aches in thighs,
+      hips, and loins.... Then, about mid-day, Stéphane declared he could not
+      paddle any more;&mdash;it seemed to him as if his head must soon burst
+      open with the pain which filled it: even the sound of his own voice hurt
+      him,&mdash;he did not want to talk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      VI.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... And another oppression came upon them,&mdash;in spite of all the
+      pains, and the blinding dazzle of waters, and the biting of the sun: the
+      oppression of drowsiness. They began to doze at intervals,&mdash;keeping
+      their canoe balanced in some automatic way,&mdash;as cavalry soldiers,
+      overweary, ride asleep in the saddle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But at last, Stéphane, awaking suddenly with a paroxysm of coughing, so
+      swayed himself to one side as to overturn the canoe; and both found
+      themselves in the sea. Maximilien righted the craft, and got in again; but
+      the little chabin twice fell back in trying to raise himself upon his
+      arms. He had become almost helplessly feeble. Maximilien, attempting to
+      aid him, again overturned the unsteady little boat; and this time it
+      required all his skill and his utmost strength to get Stéphane out of the
+      water. Evidently Stéphane could be of no more assistance;&mdash;the boy
+      was so weak he could not even sit up straight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"<i>Aïe! ou ké jété nou encò</i>," panted Maximilien,&mdash;"<i>metté
+      ou toutt longue</i>."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Stéphane slowly let himself down, so as to lie nearly all his length in
+      the canoe,&mdash;one foot on either side of Maximilien's hips. Then he lay
+      very still for a long time,&mdash;so still that Maximilien became uneasy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"<i>Ou ben malade?</i>" he asked.... Stéphane did not seem to hear:
+      his eyes remained closed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"Stéphane!" cried Maximilien, in alarm,&mdash;"Stéphane!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"<i>C'est lò, papoute</i>," murmured Stéphane, without lifting his
+      eyelids,&mdash;"<i>ça c'est lò!&mdash;ou pa janmain ouè yon bel pièce conm
+      ça?</i>" (It is gold, little father.... Didst thou ever see a pretty piece
+      like that?... No, thou wilt not beat me, little father?&mdash;no, <i>papoute!</i>)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"<i>Ou ka dòmi, Stéphane?</i>"&mdash;queried Maximilien, wondering,&mdash;"art
+      asleep?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Stéphane opened his eyes and looked at him so strangely! Never had he
+      seen Stéphane look that way before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"<i>C'a ou ni, Stéphane?&mdash;what ails thee?&mdash;aïe, Bon-Dié,
+      Bon-Dié!</i>"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"<i>Bon-Dié!</i>"&mdash;muttered Stéphane, closing his eyes again
+      at the sound of the great Name,&mdash;"He has no color!&mdash;He is like
+      the Wind."...
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"Stéphane!"...
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"He feels in the dark&mdash;He has not eyes."...
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"<i>Stéphane, pa pàlé ça!!</i>"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"He tosses the sea.... He has no face;&mdash;He lifts up the
+      dead... and the leaves."...
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"<i>Ou fou</i>" cried Maximilien, bursting into a wild fit of
+      sobbing,&mdash;"Stéphane, thou art mad!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And all at once he became afraid of Stéphane,&mdash;afraid of all he said,&mdash;afraid
+      of his touch,&mdash;afraid of his eyes... he was growing like a <i>zombi!</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Stéphane's eyes remained closed!&mdash;he ceased to speak.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... About them deepened the enormous silence of the sea;&mdash;low swung
+      the sun again. The horizon was yellowing: day had begun to fade. Tall
+      Dominica was now half green; but there yet appeared no smoke, no sail, no
+      sign of life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the tints of the two vast Shapes that shattered the rim of the light
+      shifted as if evanescing,&mdash;shifted like tones of West Indian fishes,&mdash;of
+      <i>pisquette</i> and <i>congre</i>,&mdash;of <i>caringue</i> and <i>gouôs-zié</i>
+      and <i>balaou</i>. Lower sank the sun;&mdash;cloud-fleeces of orange
+      pushed up over the edge of the west;&mdash;a thin warm breath caressed the
+      sea,&mdash;sent long lilac shudderings over the flanks of the swells. Then
+      colors changed again: violet richened to purple;&mdash;greens blackened
+      softlY;&mdash;grays smouldered into smoky gold.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the sun went down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      VII.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And they floated into the fear of the night together. Again the ghostly
+      fires began to wimple about them: naught else was visible but the high
+      stars. Black hours passed. From minute to minute Maximilien cried out:&mdash;"<i>Sucou!
+      sucou!</i>" Stéphane lay motionless and dumb: his feet, touching
+      Maximilien's naked hips, felt singularly cold.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... Something knocked suddenly against the bottom of the canoe,&mdash;knocked
+      heavily&mdash;making a hollow loud sound. It was not Stéphane;&mdash;Stéphane
+      lay still as a stone: it was from the depth below. Perhaps a great fish
+      passing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It came again,&mdash;twice,&mdash;shaking the canoe like a great blow.
+      Then Stéphane suddenly moved,&mdash;drew up his feet a little,&mdash;made
+      as if to speak:&mdash;"<i>Ou...</i>"; but the speech failed at his lips,&mdash;ending
+      in a sound like the moan of one trying to call out in sleep;&mdash;and
+      Maximilien's heart almost stopped beating.... Then Stéphane's limbs
+      straightened again; he made no more movement;&mdash;Maximilien could not
+      even hear him breathe.... All the sea had begun to whisper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A breeze was rising;&mdash;Maximilien felt it blowing upon him. All at
+      once it seemed to him that he had ceased to be afraid,&mdash;that he did
+      not care what might happen. He thought about a cricket he had one day
+      watched in the harbor,&mdash;drifting out with the tide, on an atom of
+      dead bark.&mdash;and he wondered what had become of it Then he understood
+      that he himself was the cricket,&mdash;still alive. But some boy had found
+      him and pulled off his legs. There they were,&mdash;his own legs, pressing
+      against him: he could still feel the aching where they had been pulled
+      off; and they had been dead so long they were now quite cold.... It was
+      certainly Stéphane who had pulled them off....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The water was talking to him. It was saying the same thing over and over
+      again,&mdash;louder each time, as if it thought he could not hear. But he
+      heard it very well:&mdash;"<i>Bon-Dié, li conm vent... li ka touché nou...
+      nou pa save ouè li</i>." (But why had the Bon-Dié shaken the wind?) "<i>Li
+      pa ka tini zié</i>," answered the water.... <i>Ouille!</i>&mdash;He might
+      all the same care not to upset folks in the sea!... <i>Mi!</i>...
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But even as he thought these things, Maximilien became aware that a white,
+      strange, bearded face was looking at him: the Bon-Dié was there,&mdash;bending
+      over him with a lantern,&mdash;talking to him in a language he did not
+      understand. And the Bon-Dié certainly had eyes,&mdash;great gray eyes that
+      did not look wicked at all. He tried to tell the Bon-Dié how sorry he was
+      for what he had been saying about him;&mdash;but found he could not utter
+      a word, He felt great hands lift him up to the stars, and lay him down
+      very near them,&mdash;just under them. They burned blue-white, and hurt
+      his eyes like lightning:&mdash;he felt afraid of them.... About him he
+      heard voices,&mdash;always speaking the same language, which he could not
+      understand.... "<i>Poor little devils!&mdash;poor little devils!</i>" Then
+      he heard a bell ring; and the Bon-Dié made him swallow something nice and
+      warm;&mdash;and everything became black again. The stars went out!...
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... Maximilien was lying under an electric-light on board the great
+      steamer <i>Rio de Janeiro</i>, and dead Stéphane beside him.... It was
+      four o'clock in the morning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0009" id="link2HCH0009">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER IX. &mdash; LA FILLE DE COULEUR.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nothing else in the picturesque life of the French colonies of the
+      Occident impresses the traveller on his first arrival more than the
+      costumes of the women of color. They surprise the aesthetic sense
+      agreeably;&mdash;they are local and special: you will see nothing
+      resembling them among the populations of the British West Indies; they
+      belong to Martinique, Guadeloupe, Désirade, Marie-Galante, and Cayenne,&mdash;in
+      each place differing sufficiently to make the difference interesting,
+      especially in regard to the head-dress. That of Martinique is quite
+      Oriental;&mdash;more attractive, although less fantastic than the Cayenne
+      coiffure, or the pretty drooping mouchoir of Guadeloupe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These costumes are gradually disappearing, for various reasons,&mdash;the
+      chief reason being of course the changes in the social condition of the
+      colonies during the last forty years. Probably the question of health had
+      also something to do with the almost universal abandonment in Martinique
+      of the primitive slave dress,&mdash;<i>chemise</i> and <i>jupe</i>,&mdash;which
+      exposed its wearer to serious risks of pneumonia; for as far as economical
+      reasons are concerned, there was no fault to find with it: six francs
+      could purchase it when money was worth more than it is now. The
+      douillette, a long trailing dress, one piece from neck to feet, has taken
+      its place. <a href="#linknote-35" name="linknoteref-35" id="linknoteref-35">[35]</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0034" id="linkimage-0034">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%">
+      <img src="images/31-Martinique_Turban.jpg"
+      alt="The Martinique Turban, Or Madras Calende. " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      But there was a luxurious variety of the jupe costume which is
+      disappearing because of its cost; there is no money in the colonies now
+      for such display:&mdash;I refer to the celebrated attire of the pet slaves
+      and <i>belles affranchies</i> of the old colonial days. A full costume,&mdash;including
+      violet or crimson "petticoat" of silk or satin; chemise with half-sleeves,
+      and much embroidery and lace; "trembling-pins" of gold (<i>zépingue
+      tremblant</i>) to attach the folds of the brilliant Madras turban; the
+      great necklace of three or four strings of gold beads bigger than peas (<i>collier-choux</i>);
+      the ear-rings, immense but light as egg-shells (<i>zanneaux-à-clous</i> or
+      <i>zanneaux-chenilles</i>); the bracelets (<i>portes-bonheur</i>); the
+      studs (<i>boutons-à-clous</i>); the brooches, not only for the turban, but
+      for the chemise, below the folds of the showy silken foulard or
+      shoulder-scarf,&mdash;would sometimes represent over five thousand francs
+      expenditure. This gorgeous attire is becoming less visible every year: it
+      is now rarely worn except on very solemn occasions,&mdash;weddings,
+      baptisms, first communions, confirmations. The <i>da</i> (nurse) or
+      "porteuse-de-baptême" who bears the baby to church holds it at the
+      baptismal font, and afterwards carries it from house to house in order
+      that all the friends of the family may kiss it, is thus attired; but
+      nowadays, unless she be a professional (for there are professional <i>das</i>,
+      hired only for such occasions), she usually borrows the 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;&mdash;there was an
+      Oriental something in her appearance difficult to describe,&mdash;something
+      that made you think of the Queen of Sheba going to visit Solomon. She had
+      brought a merchant's baby, just christened, to receive the caresses of the
+      family at whose house I was visiting; and when it came to my turn to kiss
+      it, I confess I could not notice the child: I saw only the beautiful dark
+      face, coiffed with orange and purple, bending over it, in an illumination
+      of antique gold.... What a da!... She represented really the type of that
+      <i>belle affranchie</i> of other days, against whose fascination special
+      sumptuary laws were made; romantically she imaged for me the supernatural
+      god-mothers and Cinderellas of the creole fairy-tales. For these become
+      transformed in the West Indian folklore,&mdash;adapted to the environment,
+      and to local idealism:&mdash;Cinderella, for example, is changed to a
+      beautiful metisse, wearing a quadruple <i>collier-choux</i>, <i>zépingues
+      tremblants</i>, and all the ornaments of a da. <a href="#linknote-36"
+      name="linknoteref-36" id="linknoteref-36">[36]</a> Recalling the
+      impression of that dazzling <i>da</i>, I can even now feel the picturesque
+      justice of the fabulist's description of Cinderella's creole costume: <i>Ça
+      té ka baille ou mal zie!</i>&mdash;(it would have given you a pain in your
+      eyes to look at her!)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0035" id="linkimage-0035">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%">
+      <img src="images/32-Head-Dress.jpg" alt="The Guadeloupe Head-dress. "
+      width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      ... Even the every-day Martinique costume is slowly changing. Year by year
+      the "calendeuses"&mdash;the women who paint and fold the turbans&mdash;have
+      less work to do;&mdash;the colors of the <i>douiellette</i> are becoming
+      less vivid;&mdash;while more and more young colored girls are being <i>élevées
+      en chapeau</i> ("brought up in a hat")&mdash;i.e., dressed and educated
+      like the daughters of the whites. These, it must be confessed, look far
+      less attractive in the latest Paris fashion, unless white as the whites
+      themselves: on the other hand, few white girls could look well in <i>douillette</i>
+      and <i>mouchoir</i>,&mdash;not merely because of color contrast, but
+      because they have not that amplitude of limb and particular cambering of
+      the torso peculiar to the half-breed race, with its large bulk and
+      stature. Attractive as certain coolie women are, I observed that all who
+      have adopted the Martinique costume look badly in it: they are too slender
+      of body to wear it to advantage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Slavery introduced these costumes, even though it probably did not invent
+      them; and they were necessarily doomed to pass away with the peculiar
+      social conditions to which they belonged. If the population clings still
+      to its <i>douillettes</i>, <i>mouchoirs</i>, and <i>foulards</i>, the fact
+      is largely due to the cheapness of such attire. A girl can dress very
+      showily indeed for about twenty francs&mdash;shoes excepted;&mdash;and
+      thousands never wear shoes. But the fashion will no doubt have become
+      cheaper and uglier within another decade.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the present time, however, the stranger might be sufficiently impressed
+      by the oddity and brilliancy of these dresses to ask about their origin,&mdash;in
+      which case it is not likely that he will obtain any satisfactory answer.
+      After long research I found myself obliged to give up all hope of being
+      able to outline the history of Martinique costume,&mdash;partly because
+      books and histories are scanty or defective, and partly because such an
+      undertaking would require a knowledge possible only to a specialist. I
+      found good reason, nevertheless, to suppose that these costumes were in
+      the beginning adopted from certain fashions of provincial France,&mdash;that
+      the respective fashions of Guadeloupe, Martinique, and Cayenne were
+      patterned after modes still worn in parts of the mother-country. The
+      old-time garb of the <i>affranchie</i>&mdash;that still worn by the <i>da</i>&mdash;somewhat
+      recalls dresses worn by the women of Southern France, more particularly
+      about Montpellier. Perhaps a specialist might also trace back the
+      evolution of the various creole coiffures to old forms of head-dresses
+      which still survive among the French country-fashions of the south and
+      south-west provinces;&mdash;but local taste has so much modified the
+      original style as to leave it unrecognizable to those who have never
+      studied the subject. The Martinique fashion of folding and tying the
+      Madras, and of calendering it, are probably local; and I am assured that
+      the designs of the curious semi-barbaric jewellery were all invented in
+      the colony, where the <i>collier-choux</i> is still manufactured by local
+      goldsmiths. Purchasers buy one, two, or three <i>grains</i>, or beads, at
+      a time, and string them only on obtaining the requisite number.... This is
+      the sum of all that I was able to learn on the matter; but in the course
+      of searching various West Indian authors and historians for information, I
+      found something far more important than the origin of the <i>douillette</i>
+      or the <i>collier-choux</i>: the facts of that strange struggle between
+      nature and interest, between love and law, between prejudice and passion,
+      which forms the evolutional history of the mixed race.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      II.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Considering only the French peasant colonist and the West African slave as
+      the original factors of that physical evolution visible in the modern <i>fille-de-couleur</i>,
+      it would seem incredible;&mdash;for the intercrossing alone could not
+      adequately explain all the physical results. To understand them fully, it
+      will be necessary to bear in mind that both of the original races became
+      modified in their lineage to a surprising degree by conditions of climate
+      and environment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0036" id="linkimage-0036">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%">
+      <img src="images/33-Mulatress.jpg" alt="Young Mulattress. " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0037" id="linkimage-0037">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%">
+      <img src="images/34-Plantation_Coolie.jpg"
+      alt="Plantation Coolie Woman in Martinique Costume. " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      The precise time of the first introduction of slaves into Martinique is
+      not now possible to ascertain,&mdash;no record exists on the subject; but
+      it is probable that the establishment of slavery was coincident with the
+      settlement of the island. Most likely the first hundred colonists from St.
+      Christophe, who landed, in 1635, near the bay whereon the city of St.
+      Pierre is now situated, either brought slaves with them, or else were
+      furnished with negroes very soon after their arrival. In the time of Père
+      Dutertre (who visited the colonies in 1640, and printed his history of the
+      French Antilles at Paris in 1667) slavery was already a flourishing
+      institution,&mdash;the foundation of the whole social structure. According
+      to the Dominican missionary, the Africans then in the colony were
+      decidedly repulsive; he describes the women as "hideous" (<i>hideuses</i>).
+      There is no good reason to charge Dutertre with prejudice in his pictures
+      of them. No writer of the century was more keenly sensitive to natural
+      beauty than the author of that "Voyage aux Antilles" which inspired
+      Chateaubriand, and which still, after two hundred and fifty years,
+      delights even those perfectly familiar with the nature of the places and
+      things spoken of. No other writer and traveller of the period possessed to
+      a more marked degree that sense of generous pity which makes the
+      unfortunate appear to us in an illusive, almost ideal aspect.
+      Nevertheless, he asserts that the negresses were, as a general rule,
+      revoltingly ugly,&mdash;and, although he had seen many strange sides of
+      human nature (having been a soldier before becoming a monk), was
+      astonished to find that miscegenation had already begun. Doubtless the
+      first black women thus favored, or afflicted, as the case might be, were
+      of the finer types of negresses; for he notes remarkable differences among
+      the slaves procured from different coasts and various tribes. Still, these
+      were rather differences of ugliness than aught else: they were all
+      repulsive;&mdash;only some were more repulsive than others. <a
+      href="#linknote-37" name="linknoteref-37" id="linknoteref-37">[37]</a>
+      Granting that the first mothers of mulattoes in the colony were the
+      superior rather than the inferior physical types,&mdash;which would be a
+      perfectly natural supposition,&mdash;still we find their offspring worthy
+      in his eyes of no higher sentiment than pity. He writes in his chapter
+      entitled "<i>De la naissance honteuse des mulastres</i>":
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"They have something of their Father and something of their Mother,&mdash;in
+      the same wise that Mules partake of the qualities of the creatures that
+      engendered them: for they are neither all white, like the French; nor all
+      black, like the Negroes, but have a livid tint, which comes of both."...
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To-day, however, the traveller would look in vain for a <i>livid</i> tint
+      among the descendants of those thus described: in less than two centuries
+      and a half the physical characteristics of the race have been totally
+      changed. What most surprises is the rapidity of the transformation. After
+      the time of Père Labat, Europeans never could "have mistaken little negro
+      children for monkeys." Nature had begun to remodel the white, the black,
+      and half-breed according to environment and climate: the descendant of the
+      early colonists ceased to resemble his fathers; the creole negro improved
+      upon his progenitors; <a href="#linknote-38" name="linknoteref-38"
+      id="linknoteref-38">[38]</a> the mulatto began to give evidence of those
+      qualities of physical and mental power which were afterwards to render him
+      dangerous to the integrity of the colony itself. In a temperate climate
+      such a change would have been so gradual as to escape observation for a
+      long period;&mdash;in the tropics it was effected with a quickness that
+      astounds by its revelation of the natural forces at work.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0038" id="linkimage-0038">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%">
+      <img src="images/35-Half-Breed.jpg" alt="Coolie Half-breed " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"Under the sun of the tropics," writes Dr. Rufz, of Martinique,
+      "the African race, as well as the European, becomes greatly modified in
+      its reproduction. Either race gives birth to a totally new being. The
+      Creole African came into existence as did the Creole white."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And just as the offspring of Europeans who emigrated to the tropics from
+      different parts of France displayed characteristics so identical that it
+      was impossible to divine the original race-source,&mdash;so likewise the
+      Creole negro&mdash;whether brought into being by the heavy thick-set
+      Congo, or the long slender black of Senegambia, or the suppler and more
+      active Mandingo,&mdash;appeared so remodelled, homogeneous, and adapted in
+      such wise to his environment that it was utterly impossible to discern in
+      his features anything of his parentage, his original kindred, his original
+      source.... The transformation is absolute. All that In be asserted is:
+      "This is a white Creole; this is a black Creole";&mdash;or, "This is a
+      European white; this is an African black";&mdash;and furthermore, after a
+      certain number of years passed in the tropics, the enervated and
+      discolored aspect of the European may create uncertainty, as to his
+      origin. But with very few exceptions the primitive African, or, as he is
+      termed here, the "Coast Black" (<i>le noir de la Cote</i>), can be
+      recognized at once....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0039" id="linkimage-0039">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%">
+      <img src="images/36-Country_Girl.jpg" alt="Country-girl--pure Negro Race. "
+      width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      ... "The Creole negro is gracefully shaped, finely proportioned: his limbs
+      are lithe, his neck long;&mdash;his features are more delicate, his lips
+      less thick, his nose less flattened, than those of the African;&mdash;he
+      has the Carib's large and melancholy eye, better adapted to express the
+      emotions.... Rarely can you discover in him the sombre fury of the
+      African, rarely a surly and savage mien: he is brave, chatty, boastful.
+      His skin has not the same tint as his father's,&mdash;it has become more
+      satiny; his hair remains woolly, but it is a finer wool;... all his
+      outlines are more rounded;&mdash;one may perceive that the cellular tissue
+      predominates, as in cultivated plants, of which the ligneous and savage
+      fibre has become transformed."... <a href="#linknote-39"
+      name="linknoteref-39" id="linknoteref-39">[39]</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This new and comelier black race naturally won from its masters a more
+      sympathetic attention than could have been vouchsafed to its progenitors;
+      and the consequences in Martinique and elsewhere seemed to have evoked the
+      curinus Article 9 of the <i>Code Noir</i> of 1665,&mdash;enacting, first,
+      that free men who should have one or two children by slave women, as well
+      as the slave-owners permitting the same, should be each condemned to pay
+      two thousand pounds of sugar; secondly, that if the violator of the
+      ordinance should be himself the owner of the mother and father of her
+      children, the mother and the children should be confiscated for the profit
+      of the Hospital, and deprived for their lives of the right to
+      enfranchisement. An exception, however, was made to the effect that if the
+      father were unmarried at the period of his concubinage, he could escape
+      the provisions of the penalty by marrying, "according to the rites of the
+      Church," the female slave, who would thereby be enfranchised, and her
+      children "rendered free and legitimate." Probably the legislators did not
+      imagine that the first portion of the article could prove inefficacious,
+      or that any violator of the ordinance would seek to escape the penalty by
+      those means offered in the provision. The facts, however, proved the
+      reverse. Miscegenation continued; and Labat notices two cases of marriage
+      between whites and blacks,&mdash;describing the offspring of one union as
+      "very handsome little mulattoes." These legitimate unions were certainly
+      exceptional,&mdash;one of them was dissolved by the ridicule cast upon the
+      father;&mdash;but illegitimate unions would seem to have become common
+      within a very brief time after the passage of the law. At a later day they
+      were to become customary. The Article 9 was evidently at fault; and in
+      March, 1724, the Black Code was reinforced by a new ordinance, of which
+      the sixth provision prohibited marriage as well as concubinage between the
+      races.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It appears to have had no more effect than the previous law, even in
+      Martinique, where the state of public morals was better than in Santo
+      Domingo. The slave race had begun to exercise an influence never
+      anticipated by legislators. Scarcely a century had elapsed since the
+      colonization of the island; but in that time climate and civilization had
+      transfigured the black woman. "After one or two generations," writes the
+      historian Rufz, "the <i>Africaine</i>, reformed, refined, beautified in
+      her descendants, transformed into the creole negress, commenced to exert a
+      fascination irresistible, capable of winning anything (<i>capable de tout
+      obtenir</i>)." <a href="#linknote-40" name="linknoteref-40"
+      id="linknoteref-40">[40]</a> 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,&mdash;even friends. What successes she
+      achieved in this regard may be imagined from the serious statement of
+      creole historians that if human nature had been left untrammelled to
+      follow its better impulses, slavery would have ceased to exist a century
+      before the actual period of emancipation! By 1738, when the white
+      population had reached its maximum (15,000), <a href="#linknote-41"
+      name="linknoteref-41" id="linknoteref-41">[41]</a> and colonial luxury had
+      arrived at its greatest height, the question of voluntary enfranchisement
+      was becoming very grave. So omnipotent the charm of half-breed beauty that
+      masters were becoming the slaves of their slaves. It was not only the
+      creole <i>negress</i> who had appeared to play a part in this strange
+      drama which was the triumph of nature over interest and judgment: her
+      daughters, far more beautiful, had grown up to aid her, and to form a
+      special class. These women, whose tints of skin rivalled the colors of
+      ripe fruit, and whose gracefulness&mdash;peculiar, exotic, and
+      irresistible&mdash;made them formidable rivals to the daughters of the
+      dominant race, were no doubt physically superior to the modern <i>filles-de-couleur</i>.
+      They were results of a natural selection which could have taken place in
+      no community otherwise constituted;&mdash;the offspring of the union
+      between the finer types of both races. But that which only slavery could
+      have rendered possible began to endanger the integrity of slavery itself:
+      the institutions upon which the whole social structure rested were being
+      steadily sapped by the influence of half-breed girls. Some new, severe,
+      extreme policy was evidently necessary to avert the already visible peril.
+      Special laws were passed by the Home-Government to check enfranchisement,
+      to limit its reasons or motives; and the power of the slave woman was so
+      well comprehended by the Métropole that an extraordinary enactment was
+      made against it. It was decreed that whosoever should free a woman of
+      color would have to pay to the Government <i>three times her value as a
+      slave!</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus heavily weighted, emancipation advanced much more slowly than before,
+      but it still continued to a considerable extent. The poorer creole planter
+      or merchant might find it impossible to obey the impulse of his conscience
+      or of his affection, but among the richer classes pecuniary considerations
+      could scarcely affect enfranchisement. The country had grown wealthy; and
+      although the acquisition of wealth may not evoke generosity in particular
+      natures, the enrichment of a whole class develops pre-existing tendencies
+      to kindness, and opens new ways for its exercise. Later in the eighteenth
+      century, when hospitality had been cultivated as a gentleman's duty to
+      fantastical extremes,&mdash;when liberality was the rule throughout
+      society,&mdash;when a notary summoned to draw up a deed, or a priest
+      invited to celebrate a marriage, might receive for fee five thousand
+      francs in gold,&mdash;there were certainly many emancipations.... "Even
+      though interest and public opinion in the colonies," says a historian, <a
+      href="#linknote-42" name="linknoteref-42" id="linknoteref-42">[42]</a>
+      "were adverse to enfranchisement, the private feeling of each man combated
+      that opinion;&mdash;Nature resumed her sway in the secret places of
+      hearts;&mdash;and as local custom permitted a sort of polygamy, the rich
+      man naturally felt himself bound in honor to secure the freedom of his own
+      blood.... It was not a rare thing to see legitimate wives taking care of
+      the natural children of their husbands,&mdash;becoming their godmothers (<i>s'en
+      faire les marraines</i>)."... Nature seemed to laugh all these laws to
+      scorn, and the prejudices of race! In vain did the wisdom of legislators
+      attempt to render the condition of the enfranchised more humble,&mdash;enacting
+      extravagant penalties for the blow by which a mulatto might avenge the
+      insult of a white,&mdash;prohibiting the freed from wearing the same dress
+      as their former masters or mistresses wore;&mdash;"the <i>belles
+      affranchies</i> found, in a costume whereof the negligence seemed a very
+      inspiration of voluptuousness, means of evading that social inferiority
+      which the law sought to impose upon them:&mdash;they began to inspire the
+      most violent jealousies." <a href="#linknote-43" name="linknoteref-43"
+      id="linknoteref-43">[43]</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      III.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What the legislators of 1685 and 1724 endeavored to correct did not
+      greatly improve with the abolition of slavery, nor yet with those
+      political troubles which socially deranged colonial life. The <i>fille-de-couleur</i>,
+      inheriting the charm of the belle <i>affranchie</i>, continued to exert a
+      similar influence, and to fulfil an almost similar destiny. The latitude
+      of morals persisted,&mdash;though with less ostentation: it has latterly
+      contracted under the pressure of necessity rather than through any other
+      influences. Certain ethical principles thought essential to social
+      integrity elsewhere have always been largely relaxed in the tropics; and&mdash;excepting,
+      perhaps, Santo Domingo&mdash;the moral standard in Martinique was not
+      higher than in the other French 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 <i>belle affranchie</i>, had mocked at slave codes;&mdash;in the <i>fille-de-couleur</i>
+      she still laughed at race pretensions, and ridiculed the fable of physical
+      degradation. To-day, the situation has not greatly changed; and with such
+      examples on the part of the cultivated race, what could be expected from
+      the other? Marriages are rare;&mdash;it has been officially stated that
+      the illegitimate births are sixty per cent; but seventy-five to eighty per
+      cent would probably be nearer the truth. It is very common to see in the
+      local papers such announcements as: <i>Enfants légitimes</i>, 1 (one birth
+      announced); <i>enfants naturels</i>, 25.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In speaking of the <i>fille-de-couleur</i> it is necessary also to speak
+      of the extraordinary social stratification of the community to which she
+      belongs. The official statement of 20,000 "colored" to the total
+      population of between 173,000 and 174,000 (in which the number of pure
+      whites is said to have fallen as low as 5,000) does not at all indicate
+      the real proportion of mixed blood. Only a small element of unmixed
+      African descent really exists; yet when a white creole speaks of the <i>gens-de-couleur</i>
+      he certainly means nothing darker than a mulatto skin. Race
+      classifications have been locally made by sentiments of political origin:
+      at least four or five shades of visible color are classed as negro. There
+      is, however, some natural truth at the bottom of this classification:
+      where African blood predominates, the sympathies are likely to be African;
+      and the turning-point is reached only in the true mulatto, where, allowing
+      the proportions of mixed blood to be nearly equal, the white would have
+      the dominant influence in situations more natural than existing politics.
+      And in speaking of the <i>filles-de-couleur</i>, the local reference is
+      always to women in whom the predominant element is white: a white creole,
+      as a general rule, deigns only thus to distinguish those who are nearly
+      white,&mdash;more usually he refers to the whole class as mulattresses.
+      Those women whom wealth and education have placed in a social position
+      parallel with that of the daughters of creole whites are in some cases
+      allowed to pass for white,&mdash;or at the very worst, are only referred
+      to in a whisper as being <i>de couleur</i>. (Needless to say, these are
+      totally beyond the range of the present considerations: there is nothing
+      to be further said of them except that they can be classed with the most
+      attractive and refined women of the entire tropical world.) As there is an
+      almost infinite gradation from the true black up to the brightest <i>sang-mêlé</i>,
+      it is impossible to establish any color-classification recognizable by the
+      eye alone; and whatever lines of demarcation can be drawn between castes
+      must be social rather than ethnical. In this sense we may accept the local
+      Creole definition of <i>fille-de-couleur</i> as signifying, not so much a
+      daughter of the race of visible color, as the half-breed girl destined
+      from her birth to a career like that of the <i>belle affranchie</i> of the
+      old regime;&mdash;for the moral cruelties of slavery have survived
+      emancipation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Physically, the typical <i>fille-de-couleur</i> may certainly be classed,
+      as white creole writers have not hesitated to class her, with the "most
+      beautiful women of the human race." <a href="#linknote-44"
+      name="linknoteref-44" id="linknoteref-44">[44]</a> She has inherited not
+      only the finer bodily characteristics of either parent race, but a
+      something else belonging originally to neither, and created by special
+      climatic and physical conditions,&mdash;a grace, a suppleness of form, a
+      delicacy of extremities (so that all the lines described by the bending of
+      limbs or fingers are parts of clean curves), a satiny smoothness and
+      fruit-tint of skin,&mdash;solely West Indian.... Morally, of course, it is
+      much more difficult to describe her; and whatever may safely be said
+      refers rather to the fille-de-couleur of the past than of the present
+      half-century. The race is now in a period of transition: public education
+      and political changes are modifying the type, and it is impossible to
+      guess the ultimate consequence, because it is impossible to safely predict
+      what new influences may yet be brought to affect its social development.
+      Befare the present era of colonial decadence, the character of the
+      fille-de-couleur was not what it is now. Even when totally uneducated, she
+      had a peculiar charm,&mdash;that charm of childishness which has power to
+      win sympathy from the rudest natures. One could not but feel attracted
+      towards this naïf being, docile as an infant, and as easily pleased or as
+      easily pained,&mdash;artless in her goodnesses as in her faults, to all
+      outward appearance;&mdash;willing to give her youth, her beauty, her
+      caresses to some one in exchange for the promise to love her,&mdash;perhaps
+      also to care for a mother, or a younger brother. Her astonishing capacity
+      for being delighted with trifles, her pretty vanities and pretty follies,
+      her sudden veerings of mood from laughter to tears,&mdash;like the sudden
+      rainbursts and sunbursts of her own passionate climate: these touched,
+      drew, won, and tyrannized. Yet such easily created joys and pains did not
+      really indicate any deep reserve of feeling: rather a superficial
+      sensitiveness only,&mdash;like the <i>zhèbe-m'amisé</i>, or <i>zhèbe-manmzelle</i>,
+      whose leaves close at the touch of a hair. Such human manifestations,
+      nevertheless, are apt to attract more in proportion as they are more
+      visible,&mdash;in proportion as the soul-current, being less profound,
+      flows more audibly. But no hasty observation could have revealed the whole
+      character of the fille-de-couleur to the stranger, equally charmed and
+      surprised: the creole comprehended her better, and probably treated her
+      with even more real kindness. The truth was that centuries of deprivation
+      of natural rights and hopes had given to her race&mdash;itself fathered by
+      passion unrestrained and mothered by subjection unlimited&mdash;an
+      inherent scepticism in the duration of love, and a marvellous capacity for
+      accepting the destiny of abandonment as one accepts the natural and the
+      inevitable. And that desire to please&mdash;which in the fille-de-couleur
+      seemed to prevail above all other motives of action (maternal affection
+      excepted)&mdash;could have appeared absolutely natural only to those who
+      never reflected that even sentiment had been artificially cultivated by
+      slavery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She asked for so little,&mdash;accepted a gift with such childish
+      pleasure,&mdash;submitted so unresistingly to the will of the man who
+      promised to love her. She bore him children&mdash;such beautiful children!&mdash;whom
+      he rarely acknowledged, and was never asked to legitimatize;&mdash;and she
+      did not ask perpetual affection notwithstanding,&mdash;regarded the
+      relation as a necessarily temporary one, to be sooner or later dissolved
+      by the marriage of her children's father. If deceived in all things,&mdash;if
+      absolutely ill-treated and left destitute, she did not lose faith in human
+      nature: she seemed a born optimist, believing most men good;&mdash;she
+      would make a home for another and serve him better than any slave.... "<i>Née
+      de l'amour</i>," says a creole writer, "<i>la fille-de-couleur vit
+      d'amour, de rires, et d'oublis</i>."... <a href="#linknote-45"
+      name="linknoteref-45" id="linknoteref-45">[45]</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0040" id="linkimage-0040">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%">
+      <img src="images/37-Capresse.jpg" alt="Capresse. " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      Then came the general colonial crash!... You cannot see its results
+      without feeling touched by them. Everywhere the weird beauty, the immense
+      melancholy of tropic ruin. Magnificent terraces, once golden with cane,
+      now abandoned to weeds and serpents;&mdash;deserted plantation-homes, with
+      trees rooted in the apartments and pushing up through the place of the
+      roofs;&mdash;grass-grown alleys ravined by rains;&mdash;fruit-trees
+      strangled by lianas;&mdash;here and there the stem of some splendid
+      palmiste, brutally decapitated, naked as a mast;&mdash;petty frail growths
+      of banana-trees or of bamboo slowly taking the place of century-old forest
+      giants destroyed to make charcoal. But beauty enough remains to tell what
+      the sensual paradise of the old days must have been, when sugar was
+      selling at 52.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the fille-de-couleur has also changed. She is much less humble and
+      submissive,&mdash;somewhat more exacting: she comprehends better the moral
+      injustice of her position. The almost extreme physical refinement and
+      delicacy, bequeathed to her by the freedwomen of the old regime, are
+      passing away: like a conservatory plant deprived of its shelter, she is
+      returning to a more primitive condition,&mdash;hardening and growing
+      perhaps less comely as well as less helpless. She perceives also in a
+      vague way the peril of her race: the creole white, her lover and
+      protector, is emigrating;&mdash;the domination of the black becomes more
+      and more probable. Furthermore, with the continual increase of the
+      difficulty of living, and the growing pressure of population, social
+      cruelties and hatreds have been developed such as her ancestors never
+      knew. She is still loved; but it is alleged that she rarely loves the
+      white, no matter how large the sacrifices made for her sake, and she no
+      longer enjoys that reputation of fidelity accorded to her class in other
+      years. Probably the truth is that the fille-de-couleur never had at any
+      time capacity to bestow that quality of affection imagined or exacted as a
+      right. Her moral side is still half savage: her feelings are still those
+      of a child. If she does not love the white man according to his
+      unreasonable desire, it is certain at least that she loves him as well as
+      he deserves. Her alleged demoralization is more apparent than real;&mdash;she
+      is changing from an artificial to a very natural being, and revealing more
+      and more in her sufferings the true character of the luxurious social
+      condition that brought her into existence. As a general rule, even while
+      questioning her fidelity, the creole freely confesses her kindness of
+      heart, and grants her capable of extreme generosity and devotedness to
+      strangers or to children whom she has an opportunity to care for. Indeed,
+      her natural kindness is so strikingly in contrast with the harder and
+      subtler character of the men of color that one might almost feel tempted
+      to doubt if she belong to the same race. Said a creole once, in my
+      hearing:&mdash;"The gens-de-couleur are just like the <i>tourtouroux</i>:
+      <a href="#linknote-46" name="linknoteref-46" id="linknoteref-46">[46]</a>
+      one must pick out the females and leave the males alone." Although perhaps
+      capable of a double meaning, his words were not lightly uttered;&mdash;he
+      referred to the curious but indubitable fact that the character of the
+      colored woman appears in many respects far superior to that of the colored
+      man. In order to understand this, one must bear in mind the difference in
+      the colonial history of both sexes; and a citation from General Romanet,
+      <a href="#linknote-47" name="linknoteref-47" id="linknoteref-47">[47]</a>
+      who visited Martinique at the end of the last century, offers a clue to
+      the mystery. Speaking of the tax upon enfranchisement, he writes:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"The governor appointed by the sovereign delivers the certificates
+      of liberty,&mdash;on payment by the master of a sum usually equivalent to
+      the value of the subject. Public interest frequently justifies him in
+      making the price of the slave proportionate to the desire or the interest
+      manifested by the master. It can be readily understood that the tax upon
+      the liberty of the women ought to be higher than that of the men: the
+      latter unfortunates having no greater advantage than that of being useful;&mdash;the
+      former know how to please: they have those rights and privileges which the
+      whole world allows to their sex; they know how to make even the fetters of
+      slavery serve them for adornments. They may be seen placing upon their
+      proud tyrants the same chains worn by themselves, and making them kiss the
+      marks left thereby: the master becomes the slave, and purchases another's
+      liberty only to lose his own."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Long before the time of General Romanet, the colored male slave might win
+      liberty as the guerdon of bravery in fighting against foreign invasion, or
+      might purchase it by extraordinary economy, while working as a mechanic on
+      extra time for his own account (he always refused to labor with negroes);
+      but in either case his success depended upon the possession and exercise
+      of qualities the reverse of amiable. On the other hand, the bondwoman won
+      manumission chiefly through her power to excite affection. In the survival
+      and perpetuation of the fittest of both sexes these widely different
+      characteristics would obtain more and more definition with successive
+      generations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I find in the "Bulletin des Actes Administratifs de la Martinique" for
+      1831 (No. 41) a list of slaves to whom liberty was accorded <i>pour
+      services rendus à leurs maîtres</i>. Out of the sixty-nine
+      enfranchisements recorded under this head, there are only two names of
+      male adults to be found,&mdash;one an old man of sixty;&mdash;the other,
+      called Laurencin, the betrayer of a conspiracy. The rest are young girls,
+      or young mothers and children;&mdash;plenty of those singular and pretty
+      names in vogue among the creole population,&mdash;Acélie, Avrillette,
+      Mélie, Robertine, Célianne, Francillette, Adée, Catharinette, Sidollie,
+      Céline, Coraline;&mdash;and the ages given are from sixteen to twenty-one,
+      with few exceptions. Yet these liberties were asked for and granted at a
+      time when Louis Philippe had abolished the tax on manumissions.... The
+      same "Bulletin" contains a list of liberties granted to colored men, <i>pour
+      service accompli dans la milice</i>, only!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Most of the French West Indian writers whose works I was able to obtain
+      and examine speak severely of the <i>hommes-de-couleur</i> as a class,&mdash;in
+      some instances the historian writes with a very violence of hatred. As far
+      back as the commencement of the eighteenth century, Labat, who, with all
+      his personal oddities, was undoubtedly a fine judge of men, declared:&mdash;"The
+      mulattoes are as a general rule well made, of good stature, vigorous,
+      strong, adroit, industrious, and daring (<i>hardis</i>) beyond all
+      conception. They have much vivacity, but are given to their pleasures,
+      fickle, proud, deceitful (<i>cachés</i>), wicked, and capable of the
+      greatest crimes." A San Domingo historian, far more prejudiced than Père
+      Labat, speaks of them "as physically superior, though morally inferior to
+      the whites": he wrote at a time when the race had given to the world the
+      two best swordsmen it has yet perhaps seen,&mdash;Saint-Georges and
+      Jean-Louis.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Commenting on the judgment of Père Labat, the historian Borde observes:&mdash;"The
+      wickedness spoken of by Père Labat doubtless relates to their political
+      passions only; for the women of color are, beyond any question, the best
+      and sweetest persons in the world&mdash;<i>à coup sûr, les meilleures et
+      les plus douces personnes qu'il y ait au monde</i>."&mdash;("Histoire de
+      l'Ile de la Trinidad," par M. Pierre Gustave Louis Borde, vol. i., p.
+      222.) The same author, speaking of their goodness of heart, generosity to
+      strangers and the sick says "they are born Sisters of Charity";&mdash;and
+      he is not the only historian who has expressed such admiration of their
+      moral qualities. What I myself saw during the epidemic of 1887-88 at
+      Martinique convinced me that these eulogies of the women of color are not
+      extravagant. On the other hand, the existing creole opinion of the men of
+      color is much less favorable than even that expressed by Père Labat.
+      Political events and passions have, perhaps, rendered a just estimate of
+      their qualities difficult. The history of the <i>hommes-de-couleur</i> in
+      all the French colonies has been the same;&mdash;distrusted by the whites,
+      who feared their aspirations to social equality, distrusted even more by
+      the blacks (who still hate them secretly, although ruled by them), the
+      mulattoes became an Ishmaelitish clan, inimical to both races, and dreaded
+      of both. In Martinique it was attempted, with some success, to manage them
+      by according freedom to all who would serve in the militia for a certain
+      period with credit. At no time was it found possible to compel them to
+      work with blacks; and they formed the whole class of skilled city workmen
+      and mechanics for a century prior to emancipation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... To-day it cannot be truly said of the <i>fille-de-couleur</i> that her
+      existence is made up of "love, laughter, and forgettings." She has aims in
+      life,&mdash;the bettering of her condition, the higher education of her
+      children, whom she hopes to free from the curse of prejudice. She still
+      clings to the white, because through him she may hope to improve her
+      position. Under other conditions she might even hope to effect some sort
+      of reconciliation between the races. But the gulf has become so much
+      widened within the last forty years, that no rapprochement now appears
+      possible; and it is perhaps too late even to restore the lost prosperity
+      of the colony by any legislative or commercial reforms. The universal
+      creole belief is summed up in the daily-repeated cry: "<i>C'est un pays
+      perdu!</i>" Yearly the number of failures increase; and more whites
+      emigrate;&mdash;and with every bankruptcy or departure some
+      fille-de-couleur is left almost destitute, to begin life over again. Many
+      a one has been rich and poor several times in succession;&mdash;one day
+      her property is seized for debt;&mdash;perhaps on the morrow she finds
+      some one able and willing to give her a home again,... Whatever comes, she
+      does not die for grief, this daughter of the sun: she pours out her pain
+      in song, like a bird, Here is one of her little improvisations,&mdash;a
+      song very popular in both Martinique and Guadeloupe, though originally
+      composed in the latter colony:&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &mdash;"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.
+
+     &mdash;"Adiéu Madras!
+     Adiéu foulard!
+     Adiéu dézinde!
+     Adiéu collier-choux!
+     Batiment-là
+     Qui sou labouè-là,
+     Li ka mennein
+     Doudoux-à-moin allé.
+
+     &mdash;"Very good-day,&mdash;
+     Monsieur the Consignee.
+     I come
+     To make one little petition.
+     My doudoux
+     Is going away.
+     Alas! I pray you
+     Delay his going"
+
+     &mdash;"Bien le-bonjou',
+     Missié le Consignataire.
+     Moin ka vini
+     Fai yon ti pétition;
+     Doudoux-à-moin
+     Y ka pati,&mdash;T'enprie, hélas!
+     Rétàdé li."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      [He answers kindly in French: the <i>békés</i> are always kind to these
+      gentle children.]
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &mdash;"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."
+
+     &mdash;"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."
+
+     &mdash;"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&mdash;Is such a kind man!
+
+     &mdash;"Foulard rivé,
+     Moin té toujou tini;
+     Madras rivé,
+     Moin té toujou tini;
+     Dézindes rivé,
+     Moin té toujou tini.&mdash;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,&mdash;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&mdash;moin!"
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      ... On the eve of the <i>Fête Dieu</i>, or Corpus Christi festival, in all
+      these Catholic countries, the city streets are hung with banners and
+      decorated with festoons and with palm branches; and great altars are
+      erected at various points along the route of the procession, to serve as
+      resting-places for the Host. These are called <i>reposoirs</i>; in creole
+      patois, "<i>reposouè Bon-Dié</i>." Each wealthy man lends something to
+      help to make them attractive,&mdash;rich plate, dainty crystal, bronzes,
+      paintings, beautiful models of ships or steamers, curiosities from remote
+      parts of the world.... The procession over, the altar is stripped, the
+      valuables are returned to their owners: all the splendor disappears....
+      And the spectacle of that evanescent magnificence, repeated year by year,
+      suggested to this proverb-loving people a similitude for the unstable
+      fortune of the fille-de-couleur:&mdash;<i>Fortune milatresse c'est
+      reposouè Bon-Dié</i>. (The luck of the mulattress is the resting-place of
+      the Good-God).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0010" id="link2HCH0010">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER X. &mdash; BÊTE-NI-PIÉ.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      St. Pierre is in one respect fortunate beyond many tropical cities;&mdash;she
+      has scarcely any mosquitoes, although there are plenty of mosquitoes in
+      other parts of Martinique, even in the higher mountain villages. The flood
+      of bright water that pours perpetually through all her streets, renders
+      her comparatively free from the pest;&mdash;nobody sleeps under a mosquito
+      bar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nevertheless, St. Pierre is not exempt from other peculiar plagues of
+      tropical life; and you cannot be too careful about examining your bed
+      before venturing to lie down, and your clothing before you dress;&mdash;for
+      various disagreeable things might be hiding in them: a spider large as a
+      big crab, or a scorpion or a <i>mabouya</i> or a centipede,&mdash;or
+      certain large ants whose bite burns like the pricking of a red-hot needle.
+      No one who has lived in St. Pierre is likely to forget the ants.... There
+      are three or four kinds in every house;&mdash;the <i>fourmi fou</i> (mad
+      ant), a little speckled yellowish creature whose movements are so rapid as
+      to delude the vision; the great black ant which allows itself to be killed
+      before it lets go what it has bitten; the venomous little red ant, which
+      is almost too small to see; and the small black ant which does not bite at
+      all,&mdash;are usually omnipresent, and appear to dwell together in
+      harmony. They are pests in kitchens, cupboards, and safes; but they are
+      scavengers. It is marvellous to see them carrying away the body of a great
+      dead roach or centipede,&mdash;pulling and pushing together like trained
+      laborers, and guiding the corpse over obstacles or around them with
+      extraordinary skill.... There was a time when ants almost destroyed the
+      colony,&mdash;in 1751. The plantations, devastated by them are described
+      by historians as having looked as if desolated by fire. Underneath the
+      ground in certain places, layers of their eggs two inches deep were found
+      extending over acres. Infants left unwatched in the cradle for a few hours
+      were devoured alive by them. Immense balls of living ants were washed
+      ashore at the same time on various parts of the coast (a phenomenon
+      repeated within the memory of creoles now living in the north-east
+      parishes). The Government vainly offered rewards for the best means of
+      destroying the insects; but the plague gradually disappeared as it came.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      None of these creatures can be prevented from entering a dwelling;&mdash;you
+      may as well resign yourself to the certainty of meeting with them from
+      time to time. The great spiders (with the exception of those which are
+      hairy) need excite no alarm or disgust;&mdash;indeed they are suffered to
+      live unmolested in many houses, partly owing to a belief that they bring
+      good-luck, and partly because they destroy multitudes of those enormous
+      and noisome roaches which spoil whatever they cannot eat. The scorpion is
+      less common; but it has a detestable habit of lurking under beds; and its
+      bite communicates a burning fever. With far less reason, the mabouya is
+      almost equally feared. It is a little lizard about six inches long, and
+      ashen-colored;&mdash;it haunts only the interior of houses, while the
+      bright-green lizards dwell only upon the roofs. Like other reptiles of the
+      same order, the mabouya can run over or cling to polished surfaces; and
+      there is a popular belief that if frightened, it will leap at one's face
+      or hands and there fasten itself so tightly that it cannot be dislodged
+      except by cutting it to pieces. Moreover, it's feet are supposed to have
+      the power of leaving certain livid and ineffaceable marks upon the skin of
+      the person to whom it attaches itself:&mdash;<i>ça ka ba ou lota</i>, say
+      the colored people. Nevertheless, there is no creature more timid and
+      harmless than the mabouya.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the most dreaded and the most insolent invader of domestic peace is
+      the centipede. The water system of the city banished the mosquito; but it
+      introduced the centipede into almost every dwelling. St. Pierre has a
+      plague of centipedes. All the covered drains, the gutters, the crevices of
+      fountain-basins and bathing-basins, the spaces between floor and ground,
+      shelter centipedes. And the <i>bête à-mille-pattes</i> is the terror of
+      the barefooted population:&mdash;scarcely a day passes that some child or
+      bonne or workman is not bitten by the creature.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sight of a full-grown centipede is enough to affect a strong set of
+      nerves. Ten to eleven inches is the average length of adults; but
+      extraordinary individuals much exceeding this dimension may be sometimes
+      observed in the neighborhood of distilleries (<i>rhommeries</i>) and
+      sugar-refineries. According to age, the color of the creature varies from
+      yellowish to black;&mdash;the younger ones often have several different
+      tints; the old ones are uniformly jet-black, and have a carapace of
+      surprising toughness,&mdash;difficult to break. If you tread, by accident
+      or design, upon the tail, the poisonous head will instantly curl back and
+      bite the foot through any ordinary thickness of upper-leather.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As a general rule the centipede lurks about the court-yards, foundations,
+      and drains by preference; but in the season of heavy rains he does not
+      hesitate to move upstairs, and make himself at home in parlors and
+      bed-rooms. He has a provoking habit of nestling in your <i>moresques</i>
+      or your <i>chinoises</i>,&mdash;those wide light garments you put on
+      before taking your siesta or retiring for the night. He also likes to get
+      into your umbrella,&mdash;an article indispensable in the tropics; and you
+      had better never open it carelessly. He may even take a notion to curl
+      himself up in your hat, suspended on the wall. (I have known a
+      trigonocephalus to do the same thing in a country-house). He has also a
+      singular custom of mounting upon the long trailing dresses (douillettes)
+      worn by Martinique women,&mdash;and climbing up very swiftly and lightly
+      to the wearer's neck, where the prickling of his feet first betrays his
+      presence. Sometimes he will get into bed with you and bite you, because
+      you have not resolution enough to lie perfectly still while he is tickling
+      you.... It is well to remember before dressing that merely shaking a
+      garment may not dislodge him;&mdash;you must examine every part very
+      patiently,&mdash;particularly the sleeves of a coat and the legs of
+      pantaloons.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The vitality of the creature is amazing. I kept one in a bottle without
+      food or water for thirteen weeks, at the end of which time it remained
+      active and dangerous as ever. Then I fed it with living insects, which it
+      devoured ravenously;&mdash;beetles, roaches, earthworms, several <i>lepismaoe</i>,
+      even one of the dangerous-looking millepedes, which have a great
+      resemblance in outward structure to the centipede, but a thinner body, and
+      more numerous limbs,&mdash;all seemed equally palatable to the
+      prisoner.... I knew an instance of one, nearly a foot long, remaining in a
+      silk parasol for more than four months, and emerging unexpectedly one day,
+      with aggressiveness undiminished, to bite the hand that had involuntarily
+      given it deliverance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the city the centipede has but one natural enemy able to cope with him,&mdash;the
+      hen! The hen attacks him with delight, and often swallows him, head first,
+      without taking the trouble to kill him. The cat hunts him, but she is
+      careful never to put her head near him;&mdash;she has a trick of whirling
+      him round and round upon the floor so quickly as to stupefy him: then,
+      when she sees a good chance, she strikes him dead with her claws. But if
+      you are fond of your cat you will let her run no risks, as the bite of a
+      large centipede might have very bad results for your pet. Its quickness of
+      movement demands all the quickness of even the cat for self-defence.... I
+      know of men who have proved themselves able to seize a fer-de-lance by the
+      tail, whirl it round and round, and then flip it as you would crack a
+      whip,&mdash;whereupon the terrible head flies off; but I never heard of
+      anyone in Martinique daring to handle a living centipede.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There are superstitions concerning the creature which have a good effect
+      in diminishing his tribe. If you kill a centipede, you are sure to receive
+      money soon; and even if you dream of killing one it is good-luck.
+      Consequently, people are glad of any chance to kill centipedes,&mdash;usually
+      taking a heavy stone or some iron utensil for the work;&mdash;a wooden
+      stick is not a good weapon. There is always a little excitement when a <i>bête-ni-pié</i>
+      (as the centipede is termed in the patois) exposes itself to death; and
+      you may often hear those who kill it uttering a sort of litany of abuse
+      with every blow, as if addressing a human enemy:&mdash;"<i>Quitté moin
+      tchoué ou, maudi!&mdash;quitté moin tchoué ou, scelerat!&mdash;quitté moin
+      tchoué ou, Satan!&mdash;quitté moin tchoué ou, abonocio!</i>" etc. (Let me
+      kill you, accursed! scoundrel! Satan! abomination!)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The patois term for the centipede is not a mere corruption of the French
+      <i>bête-à-mille-pattes</i>. Among a population of slaves, unable to read
+      or write, <a href="#linknote-48" name="linknoteref-48" id="linknoteref-48">[48]</a>
+      there were only the vaguest conceptions of numerical values; and the
+      French term bête-à-mille-pattes was not one which could appeal to negro
+      imagination. The slaves themselves invented an equally vivid name, <i>bête-anni-pié</i>
+      (the Beast-which-is-all-feet); <i>anni</i> in creole signifying "only,"
+      and in such a sense "all." Abbreviated by subsequent usage to <i>bête-'ni-pié</i>,
+      the appellation has amphibology;&mdash;for there are two words <i>ni</i>
+      in the patois, one signifying "to have," and the other "naked." So that
+      the creole for a centipede might be translated in three ways,&mdash;"the
+      Beast-which-is-all-feet"; or, "the Naked-footed Beast"; or, with fine
+      irony of affirmation, "the Beast-which-has-feet."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      II.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What is the secret of that horror inspired by the centipede?... It is but
+      very faintly related to our knowledge that the creature is venomous;&mdash;the
+      results of the bite are only temporary swelling and a brief fever;&mdash;it
+      is less to be feared than the bite of other tropical insects and reptiles
+      which never inspire the same loathing by their aspect. And the shapes of
+      venomous creatures are not always shapes of ugliness. The serpent has
+      elegance of form as well as attractions of metallic tinting;&mdash;the
+      tarantula, or the <i>matoutou-falaise</i>, have geometrical beauty.
+      Lapidaries have in all ages expended rare skill upon imitations of serpent
+      grace in gold and gems;&mdash;a princess would not scorn to wear a diamond
+      spider. But what art could utilize successfully the form of the centipede?
+      It is a form of absolute repulsiveness,&mdash;a skeleton-shape half
+      defined:&mdash;the suggestion of some old reptile-spine astir, crawling
+      with its fragments of ribs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No other living thing excites exactly the same feeling produced by the
+      sight of the centipede,&mdash;the intense loathing and peculiar fear. The
+      instant you see a centipede you feel it is absolutely necessary to kill
+      it; you cannot find peace in your house while you know that such a life
+      exists in it: perhaps the intrusion of a serpent would annoy and disgust
+      you less. And it is not easy to explain the whole reason of this loathing.
+      The form alone has, of course, something to do with it,&mdash;a form that
+      seems almost a departure from natural laws. But the form alone does not
+      produce the full effect, which is only experienced when you see the
+      creature in motion. The true horror of the centipede, perhaps, must be due
+      to the monstrosity of its movement,&mdash;multiple and complex, as of a
+      chain of pursuing and inter-devouring lives: there is something about it
+      that makes you recoil, as from a sudden corrupt swarming-out. It is
+      confusing,&mdash;a series of contractings and lengthenings and,
+      undulations so rapid as to allow of being only half seen: it alarms also,
+      because the thing seems perpetually about to disappear, and because you
+      know that to lose sight of it for one moment involves the very unpleasant
+      chance of finding it upon you the next,&mdash;perhaps between skin and
+      clothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But this is not all:&mdash;the sensation produced by the centipede is
+      still more complex&mdash;complex, in fact, as the visible organization of
+      the creature. For, during pursuit,&mdash;whether retreating or attacking,
+      in hiding or fleeing,&mdash;it displays a something which seems more than
+      instinct: calculation and cunning,&mdash;a sort of malevolent
+      intelligence. It knows how to delude, how to terrify;&mdash;it has
+      marvellous skill in feinting;&mdash;it is an abominable juggler....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      III.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I am about to leave my room after breakfast, when little Victoire who
+      carries the meals up-stairs in a wooden tray, screams out:&mdash;"<i>Gadé,
+      Missié! ni bête-ni-pié assous dos ou!</i>" There is a thousand-footed
+      beast upon my back!.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Off goes my coat, which I throw upon the floor;&mdash;the little servant,
+      who has a nervous horror of centipedes, climbs upon a chair. I cannot see
+      anything under the coat, nevertheless;&mdash;I lift it by the collar, turn
+      it about very cautiously&mdash;nothing! Suddenly the child screams again;
+      and I perceive the head close to my hand;&mdash;the execrable thing had
+      been hiding in a perpendicular fold of the coat, which I drop only just in
+      time to escape getting bitten. Immediately the centipede becomes
+      invisible. Then I take the coat by one flap, and turn it over very
+      quickly: just as quickly does the centipede pass over it in the inverse
+      direction, and disappear under it again. I have had my first good look at
+      him: he seems nearly a foot long,&mdash;has a greenish-yellow hue against
+      the black cloth,&mdash;and pink legs, and a violet head;&mdash;he is
+      evidently young.... I turn the coat a second time: same disgusting
+      manreuvre. Undulations of livid color flow over him as he lengthens and
+      shortens;&mdash;while running his shape is but half apparent; it is only
+      as he makes a half pause in doubling round and under the coat that the
+      panic of his legs becomes discernible. When he is fully exposed they move
+      with invisible rapidity,&mdash;like a vibration;&mdash;you can see only a
+      sort of pink haze extending about him,&mdash;something to which you would
+      no more dare advance your finger than to the vapory halo edging a circular
+      saw in motion. Twice more I turn and re-turn the coat with the same
+      result;&mdash;I observe that the centipede always runs towards my hand,
+      until I withdraw it: he feints!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With a stick I uplift one portion of the coat after another; and suddenly
+      perceive him curved under a sleeve,&mdash;looking quite small!&mdash;how
+      could he have seemed so large a moment ago?... But before I can strike him
+      he has flickered over the cloth again, and vanished; and I discover that
+      he has the power of <i>magnifying himself</i>,&mdash;dilating the disgust
+      of his shape at will: he invariably amplifies himself to face attack....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It seems very difficult to dislodge him; he displays astonishing activity
+      and cunning at finding wrinkles and folds to hide in. Even at the risk of
+      damaging various things in the pockets, I stamp upon the coat;&mdash;then
+      lift it up with the expectation of finding the creature dead. But it
+      suddenly rushes out from some part or other, looking larger and more
+      wicked than ever,&mdash;drops to the floor, and charges at my feet: a
+      sortie! I strike at him unsuccessfully with the stick: he retreats to the
+      angle between wainscoting and floor, and runs along it fast as a railroad
+      train,&mdash;dodges two or three pokes,&mdash;gains the door-frame,&mdash;glides
+      behind a hinge, and commences to run over the wall of the stair-way. There
+      the hand of a black servant slaps him dead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"Always strike at the head," the servant tells me; "never tread on
+      the tail.... This is a small one: the big fellows can make you afraid if
+      you do not know how to kill them."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... I pick up the carcass with a pair of scissors. It does not look
+      formidable now that it is all contracted;&mdash;it is scarcely eight
+      inches long,&mdash;thin as card-board, and even less heavy. It has no
+      substantiality, no weight;&mdash;it is a mere appearance, a mask, a
+      delusion.... But remembering the spectral, cunning, juggling something
+      which magnified and moved it but a moment ago,&mdash;I feel almost tempted
+      to believe, with certain savages, that there are animal shapes inhabited
+      by goblins....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      IV.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"Is there anything still living and lurking in old black drains of
+      Thought,&mdash;any bigotry, any prejudice, anything in the moral world
+      whereunto the centipede may be likened?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"Really, I do not know," replied the friend to whom I had put the
+      question; "but you need only go as far as the vegetable world for a
+      likeness. Did you ever see anything like this?" he added, opening a drawer
+      and taking therefrom something revolting, which, as he pressed it in his
+      hand, looked like a long thick bundle of dried centipedes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"Touch them," he said, holding out to me the mass of articulated
+      flat bodies and bristling legs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"Not for anything!" I replied, in astonished disgust. He laughed,
+      and opened his hand. As he did so, the mass expanded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"Now look," he exclaimed!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then I saw that all the bodies were united at the tails&mdash;grew
+      together upon one thick flat annulated stalk... a plant!&mdash;"But here
+      is the fruit," he continued, taking from the same drawer a beautifully
+      embossed ovoid nut, large as a duck's egg, ruddy-colored, and so
+      exquisitely varnished by nature as to resemble a rosewood carving fresh
+      from the hands of the cabinet-maker. In its proper place among the leaves
+      and branches, it had the appearance of something delicious being devoured
+      by a multitude of centipedes. Inside was a kernel, hard and heavy as
+      iron-wood; but this in time, I was told, falls into dust: though the
+      beautiful shell remains always perfect.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Negroes call it the <i>coco-macaque</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0011" id="link2HCH0011">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XI. &mdash; MA BONNE.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I cannot teach Cyrillia the clock;&mdash;I have tried until both of us had
+      our patience strained to the breaking-point. Cyrillia still believes she
+      will learn how to tell the time some day or other;&mdash;I am certain that
+      she never will. "<i>Missié</i>," she says, "<i>lézhè pa aïen pou moin:
+      c'est minitt ka fouté moin yon travail!</i>"&mdash;the hours do not give
+      her any trouble; but the minutes are a frightful bore! And nevertheless,
+      Cyrillia is punctual as the sun;&mdash;she always brings my coffee and a
+      slice of corossol at five in the morning precisely. Her clock is the <i>cabritt-bois</i>.
+      The great cricket stops singing, she says, at half-past four: the
+      cessation of its chant awakens her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"<i>Bonjou', Missié. Coument ou passé lanuitt?</i>"&mdash;"Thanks,
+      my daughter, I slept well."&mdash;"The weather is beautiful: if Missié
+      would like to go to the beach, his bathing-towels are ready."&mdash;"Good!
+      Cyrillia; I will go."... Such is our regular morning conversation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nobody breakfasts before eleven o'clock or thereabout; but after an early
+      sea-bath, one is apt to feel a little hollow during the morning, unless
+      one take some sort of refreshment. Cyrillia always prepares something for
+      me on my return from the beach,&mdash;either a little pot of fresh
+      cocoa-water, or a <i>cocoyage</i>, or a <i>mabiyage</i>, or a <i>bavaroise</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The <i>cocoyage</i> I like the best of all. Cyrillia takes a green
+      cocoa-nut, slices off one side of it so as to open a hole, then pours the
+      opalescent water into a bowl, adds to it a fresh egg, a little Holland
+      gin, and some grated nutmeg and plenty of sugar. Then she whips up the
+      mixture into effervescence with her <i>baton-lélé</i>. The <i>baton-lélé</i>
+      is an indispensaple article in every creole home: it is a thin stick which
+      is cut from a young tree so as to leave at one end a whorl of
+      branch-stumps sticking out at right angles like spokes;&mdash;by twirling
+      the stem between the hands, the stumps whip up the drink in a moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The <i>mabiyage</i> is less agreeable, but is a popular morning drink
+      among the poorer classes. It is made with a little white rum and a bottle
+      of the bitter native root-beer called <i>mabi</i>. The taste of <i>mabi</i>
+      I can only describe as that of molasses and water flavored with a little
+      cinchona bark.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The <i>bavaroise</i> is fresh milk, sugar, and a little Holland gin or
+      rum,&mdash;mixed with the baton-lélé until a fine thick foam is formed.
+      After the <i>cocoyage</i>, I think it is the best drink one can take in
+      the morning; but very little spirit must be used for any of these
+      mixtures. It is not until just before the mid-day meal that one can
+      venture to take a serious stimulant,&mdash;<i>yon ti ponch</i>,&mdash;rum
+      and water, sweetened with plenty of sugar or sugar syrup.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The word <i>sucre</i> is rarely used in Martinique,&mdash;considering that
+      sugar is still the chief product;&mdash;the word <i>doux</i>, "sweet," is
+      commonly substituted for it. <i>Doux</i> has, however, a larger range of
+      meaning: it may signify syrup, or any sort of sweets,&mdash;duplicated
+      into <i>doudoux</i>, it means the corossole fruit as well as a sweetheart.
+      <i>Ça qui lè doudoux?</i> is the cry of the corossole-seller. If a negro
+      asks at a grocery store (<i>graisserie</i>) for <i>sique</i> instead of
+      for <i>doux</i>, it is only because he does not want it to be supposed
+      that he means syrup;&mdash;as a general rule, he will only use the word <i>sique</i>
+      when referring to quality of sugar wanted, or to sugar in hogsheads. <i>Doux</i>
+      enters into domestic consumption in quite remarkable ways. People put
+      sugar into fresh milk, English porter, beer, and cheap wine;&mdash;they
+      cook various vegetables with sugar, such as peas; they seem to be
+      particularly fond of sugar-and-water and of <i>d'leau-pain</i>,&mdash;bread-and-water
+      boiled, strained, mixed with sugar, and flavored with cinnamon. The
+      stranger gets accustomed to all this sweetness without evil results. In a
+      northern climate the consequence would probably be at least a bilious
+      attack; but in the tropics, where salt fish and fruits are popularly
+      preferred to meat, the prodigal use of sugar or sugar-syrups appears to be
+      decidedly beneficial.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... After Cyrillia has prepared my <i>cocoyage</i>, and rinsed the
+      bathing-towels in fresh-water, she is ready to go to market, and wants to
+      know what I would like to eat for breakfast. "Anything creole, Cyrillia;&mdash;I
+      want to know what people eat in this country." She always does her best to
+      please me in this respect,&mdash;almost daily introduces me to some
+      unfamiliar dishes, something odd in the way of fruit or fish.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      II.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cyrillia has given me a good idea of the range and character of <i>mangé-Créole</i>,
+      and I can venture to write something about it after a year's observation.
+      By <i>mangé-Créole</i> I refer only to the food of the people proper, the
+      colored population; for the <i>cuisine</i> of the small class of wealthy
+      whites is chiefly European, and devoid of local interest:&mdash;I might
+      observe, however, that the fashion of cooking is rather Provençal than
+      Parisian;&mdash;rather of southern than of northern France.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meat, whether fresh or salt, enters little into the nourishment of the
+      poorer classes. This is partly, no doubt, because of the cost of all
+      meats; but it is also due to natural preference for fruits and fish. When
+      fresh meat is purchased, it is usually to make a stew or <i>daube</i>;&mdash;probably
+      salt meats are more popular; and native vegetables and manioc flour are
+      preferred to bread. There are only two popular soups which are peculiar to
+      the creole cuisine,&mdash;<i>calalou</i>, a gombo soup, almost precisely
+      similar to that of Louisiana; and the <i>soupe-d'habitant</i>, or "country
+      soup." It is made of yams, carrots, bananas, turnips, <i>choux-caraïbes</i>,
+      pumpkins, salt pork, and pimento, all boiled together;&mdash;the salt meat
+      being left out of the composition on Fridays.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The great staple, the true meat of the population, is salt codfish, which
+      is prepared in a great number of ways. The most popular and the rudest
+      preparation of it is called "Ferocious" (<i>férocé</i>); and it is not at
+      all unpalatable. The codfish is simply fried, and served with vinegar,
+      oil, pimento;&mdash;manioc flour and avocados being considered
+      indispensable adjuncts. As manioc flour forms a part of almost every
+      creole meal, a word of information regarding it will not be out of place
+      here. Everybody who has heard the name probably knows that the manioc root
+      is naturally poisonous, and that the toxic elements must be removed by
+      pressure and desiccation before the flour can be made. Good manioc flour
+      has an appearance like very coarse oatmeal; and is probably quite as
+      nourishing. Even when dear as bread, it is preferred, and forms the flour
+      of the population, by whom the word <i>farine</i> is only used to signify
+      manioc flour: if wheat-flour be referred to it is always qualified as
+      "French flour" (<i>farine-Fouance</i>). Although certain flours are
+      regularly advertised as American in the local papers, they are still <i>farine-Fouance</i>
+      for the population, who call everything foreign French. American beer is
+      <i>biè-Fouance</i>; American canned peas, <i>ti-pois-Fouance</i>; any
+      white foreigner who can talk French is <i>yon béké-Fouance</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Usually the manioc flour is eaten uncooked: <a href="#linknote-49"
+      name="linknoteref-49" id="linknoteref-49">[49]</a> merely poured into a
+      plate, with a little water and stirred with a spoon into a thick paste or
+      mush,&mdash;the thicker the better;&mdash;<i>dleau passé farine</i> (more
+      water than manioc flour) is a saying which describes the condition of a
+      very destitute person. When not served with fish, the flour is
+      occasionally mixed with water and refined molasses (<i>sirop-battrie</i>):
+      this preparation, which is very nice, is called <i>cousscaye</i>. There is
+      also a way of boiling it with molasses and milk into a kind of pudding.
+      This is called <i>matêté</i>; children are very fond of it. Both of these
+      names, <i>cousscaye</i> and <i>matêté</i>, are alleged to be of Carib
+      origin: the art of preparing the flour itself from manioc root is
+      certainly an inheritance from the Caribs, who bequeathed many singular
+      words to the creole patois of the French West Indies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of all the preparations of codfish with which manioc flour is eaten, I
+      preferred the <i>lamori-bouilli</i>,&mdash;the fish boiled plain, after
+      having been steeped long enough to remove the excess of salt; and then
+      served with plenty of olive-oil and pimento. The people who have no home
+      of their own, or at least no place to cook, can buy their food already
+      prepared from the <i>màchannes lapacotte</i>, who seem to make a specialty
+      of <i>macadam</i> (codfish stewed with rice) and the other two dishes
+      already referred to. But in every colored family there are occasional
+      feasts of <i>lamori-au-laitt</i>, codfish stewed with milk and potatoes;
+      <i>lamori-au-grattin</i>, codfish boned, pounded with toast crumbs, and
+      boiled with butter, onions, and pepper into a mush;&mdash;<i>coubouyon-lamori</i>,
+      codfish stewed with butter and oil;&mdash;<i>bachamelle</i>, codfish boned
+      and stewed with potatoes, pimentos, oil, garlic, and butter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Pimento</i> is an essential accompaniment to all these dishes, whether
+      it be cooked or raw: everything is served with plenty of pimento,-<i>en
+      pile</i>, <i>en pile piment.</i> Among the various kinds I can mention
+      only the <i>piment-café</i>, or "coffee-pepper," larger but about the same
+      shape as a grain of Liberian coffee, violet-red at one end; the <i>piment-zouèseau</i>,
+      or bird-pepper, small and long and scarlet;&mdash;and the <i>piment-capresse</i>,
+      very large, pointed at one end, and bag-shaped at the other. It takes a
+      very deep red color when ripe, and is so strong that if you only break the
+      pod in a room, the sharp perfume instantly fills the apartment. Unless you
+      are as well-trained as any Mexican to eat pimento, you will probably
+      regret your first encounter with the <i>capresse</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cyrillia told me a story about this infernal vegetable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      II
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZHISTOUÈ PIMENT.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Té ni yon manman qui té ni en pile, en pile yche; et yon jou y pa té ni
+      aïen pou y té baill yche-là mangé. Y té ka lévé bon matin-là sans yon sou:
+      y pa sa ça y té douè fai,&mdash;là y té ké baill latête. Y allé lacaïe
+      macoumè-y, raconté lapeine-y. Macoumè baill y toua chopine farine-manioc.
+      Y allé lacaill liautt macoumè, qui baill y yon grand trai piment.
+      Macoumè-là di y venne trai-piment-à, épi y té pè acheté lamori,&mdash;pisse
+      y ja té ni farine. Madame-là di: "Mèçi, macoumè;"&mdash;y di y bonjou';
+      épi y allé lacaïe-y.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lhè y rivé àcaïe y limé difè: y metté canari épi dleau assous difé-a; épi
+      y cassé toutt piment-là et metté yo adans canari-à assous diré.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lhè y oue canari-à ka bouï, y pouend <i>baton-lélé</i>, epi y lélé
+      piment-à: aloss y ka fai yonne calalou-piment. Lhè calalou-piment-là té
+      tchouitt, y pouend chaque zassiett yche-li; y metté calalou yo fouète dans
+      zassiett-là; y metté ta-mari fouète, assou, épi ta-y. Épi lhè calalou-là
+      té bien fouète, y metté farine nans chaque zassiett-là. Épi y crié toutt
+      moune vini mangé. Toutt moune vini metté yo à-tabe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pouèmiè bouchée mari-à pouend, y rété,&mdash;y crié: "Aïe! ouaill!
+      mafenm!" Fenm-là réponne mari y: "Ouaill! monmari!" Cés ti manmaille-la
+      crie: "Ouaill! manman!" Manman-à. réponne:&mdash;"Ouaill! yches-moin!"...
+      Yo toutt pouend couri, quitté caïe-là sèle,&mdash;épi yo toutt tombé
+      larviè à touempé bouche yo. Cés ti manmaille-là bouè dleau sitellement
+      jusse temps yo toutt néyé: té ka rété anni manman-là épi papa-là. Yo té là
+      bò lariviè, qui té ka pleiré. Moin té ka passé à lhè-à;&mdash;moin ka
+      mandé yo: "Ça zautt ni?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nhomme-là lévé: y baill moin yon sèle coup d'piè, y voyé moin lautt bo
+      lariviè-ou ouè moin vini pou conté ça ba ou.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      II. PIMENTO STORY.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was once a mamma who had ever so many children; and one day she had
+      nothing to give those children to eat. She had got up very early that
+      morning, without a sou in the world: she did not know what to do: she was
+      so worried that her head was upset. She went to the house of a
+      woman-friend, and told her about her trouble. The friend gave her three <i>chopines</i>
+      [three pints] of manioc flour. Then she went to the house of another
+      female friend, who gave her a big trayful of pimentos. The friend told her
+      to sell that tray of pimentos: then she could buy some codfish,&mdash;since
+      she already had some manioc flour. The good-wife said: "Thank you, <i>macoumè</i>,"&mdash;she
+      bid her good-day, and then went to her own house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The moment she got home, she made a fire, and put her <i>canari</i>
+      [earthen pot] full of water on the fire to boil: then she broke up all the
+      pimentos and put them into the canari on the fire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As soon as she saw the canari boiling, she took her <i>baton-lélé</i>, and
+      beat up all those pimentos: then she made a <i>pimento-calalou</i>. When
+      the pimento-calalou was well cooked, she took each one of the children's
+      plates, and poured their calalou into the plates to cool it; she also put
+      her husband's out to cool, and her own. And when the calalou was quite
+      cool, she put some manioc flour into each of the plates. Then she called
+      to everybody to come and eat. They all came, and sat down to table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The first mouthful that husband took he stopped and screamed:&mdash;"<i>Aïe!
+      ouaill!</i> my wife!" The woman answered her husband: "<i>Ouaill</i>! my
+      husband!" The little children all screamed: "<i>Ouaill!</i> mamma!" Their
+      mamma answered: "<i>Ouaill!</i> my children!"... They all ran out, left
+      the house empty; and they tumbled into the river to steep their mouths.
+      Those little children just drank water and drank water till they were all
+      drowned: there was nobody left except the mamma and the papa, They stayed
+      there on the river-bank, and cried. I was passing that way just at that
+      time;&mdash;I asked them: "What ails you people?" That man got up and gave
+      me just one kick that sent me right across the river; I came here at once,
+      as you see, to tell you all about it....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      IV.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... It is no use for me to attempt anything like a detailed description of
+      the fish Cyrillia brings me day after day from the Place du Fort: the
+      variety seems to be infinite. I have learned, however, one curious fact
+      which is worth noting: that, as a general rule, the more beautifully
+      colored fish are the least palatable, and are sought after only by the
+      poor. The <i>perroquet</i>, black, with bright bands of red and yellow;
+      the <i>cirurgien</i>, blue and black; the <i>patate</i>, yellow and black;
+      the <i>moringue</i>, which looks like polished granite; the <i>souri</i>,
+      pink and yellow; the vermilion <i>Gouôs-zie</i>; the rosy <i>sade</i>; the
+      red <i>Bon-Dié-manié-moin</i> ("the-Good-God-handled-me")&mdash;it has two
+      queer marks as of great fingers; and the various kinds of all-blue fish,
+      <i>balaou</i>, <i>conliou</i>, etc. varying from steel-color to violet,&mdash;these
+      are seldom seen at the tables of the rich. There are exceptions, of
+      course, to this and all general rules: notably the <i>couronné</i>, pink
+      spotted beautifully with black,&mdash;a sort of Redfish, which never sells
+      less than fourteen cents a pound; and the <i>zorphie</i>, which has
+      exquisite changing lights of nacreous green and purple. It is said,
+      however, that the zorphi is sometimes poisonous, like the <i>bécunne</i>;
+      and there are many fish which, although not venomous by nature, have
+      always been considered dangerous. In the time of Père Dutertre it was
+      believed these fish ate the apples of the manchineel-tree, washed into the
+      sea by rains;&mdash;to-day it is popularly supposed that they are rendered
+      occasionally poisonous by eating the barnacles attached to copper-plating
+      of ships. The <i>tazard</i>, the <i>lune</i>, the <i>capitaine</i>, the <i>dorade</i>,
+      the <i>perroquet</i>, the <i>couliou</i>, the <i>congre</i>, various
+      crabs, and even the <i>tonne</i>,&mdash;all are dangerous unless perfectly
+      fresh: the least decomposition seems to develop a mysterious poison. A
+      singular phenomenon regarding the poisoning occasionally produced by the
+      bécunne and dorade is that the skin peels from the hands and feet of those
+      lucky enough to survive the terrible colics, burnings, itchings, and
+      delirium, which are early symptoms, Happily these accidents are very rare,
+      since the markets have been properly inspected: in the time of Dr. Rufz,
+      they would seem to have been very common,&mdash;so common that he tells us
+      he would not eat fresh fish without being perfectly certain where it was
+      caught and how long it had been out of the water.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The poor buy the brightly colored fish only when the finer qualities are
+      not obtainable at low rates; but often and often the catch is so enormous
+      that half of it has to be thrown back into the sea. In the hot moist air,
+      fish decomposes very rapidly; it is impossible to transport it to any
+      distance into the interior; and only the inhabitants of the coast can
+      indulge in fresh fish,&mdash;at least sea-fish.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Naturally, among the laboring class the question of quality is less
+      important than that of quantity and substance, unless the fish-market be
+      extraordinarily well stocked. Of all fresh fish, the most popular is the
+      <i>tonne</i>, a great blue-gray creature whose flesh is solid as beef;
+      next come in order of preferment the flying-fish (<i>volants</i>), which
+      often sell as low as four for a cent;&mdash;then the <i>lambi</i>, or
+      sea-snail, which has a very dense and nutritious flesh;&mdash;then the
+      small whitish fish classed as <i>sàdines</i>;&mdash;then the blue-colored
+      fishes according to price, <i>couliou</i>, <i>balaou</i>, etc.;&mdash;lastly,
+      the shark, which sells commonly at two cents a pound. Large sharks are not
+      edible; the flesh is too hard; but a young shark is very good eating
+      indeed. Cyrillia cooked me a slice one morning: it was quite delicate,
+      tasted almost like veal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0041" id="linkimage-0041">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%">
+      <img src="images/38-Old_Market_Place.jpg"
+      alt="Old Market-place of the Fort, St. Pierre.--(removed In 1888). "
+      width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      The quantity of very small fish sold is surprising. With ten sous the
+      family of a laborer can have a good fish-dinner: a pound of <i>sàdines</i>
+      is never dearer than two sous;&mdash;a pint of manioc flour can be had for
+      the same price; and a big avocado sells for a sou. This is more than
+      enough food for any one person; and by doubling the expense one obtains a
+      proportionately greater quantity&mdash;enough for four or five
+      individuals. The <i>sàdines</i> are roasted over a charcoal fire, and
+      flavored with a sauce of lemon, pimento, and garlic. When there are no <i>sàdines</i>,
+      there are sure to be <i>coulious</i> in plenty,&mdash;small <i>coulious</i>
+      about as long as your little finger: these are more delicate, and fetch
+      double the price. With four sous' worth of <i>coulious</i> a family can
+      have a superb <i>blaffe</i>. To make a <i>blaffe</i> the fish are cooked
+      in water, and served with pimento, lemon, spices, onions, and garlic; but
+      without oil or butter. Experience has demonstrated that <i>coulious</i>
+      make the best <i>blaffe</i>; and a <i>blaffe</i> is seldom prepared with
+      other fish.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      V.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There are four dishes which are the holiday luxuries of the poor:&mdash;<i>manicou</i>,
+      <i>ver-palmiste</i>, <i>zandouille</i>, and <i>poule-épi-diri</i>. <a
+      href="#linknote-50" name="linknoteref-50" id="linknoteref-50">[50]</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The <i>manitou</i> is a brave little marsupial, which might be called the
+      opossum of Martinique: it fights, although overmatched, with the serpent,
+      and is a great enemy to the field-rat. In the market a manicou sells for
+      two francs and a half at cheapest: it is generally salted before being
+      cooked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The great worm, or caterpillar, called <i>ver-palmiste</i> is found in the
+      heads of cabbage-palms,&mdash;especially after the cabbage has been cut
+      out, and the tree has begun to perish. It is the grub of a curious beetle,
+      which has a proboscis of such form as suggested the creole appellation, <i>léfant</i>:
+      the "elephant." These worms are sold in the Place du Fort at two sous
+      each: they are spitted and roasted alive, and are said to taste like
+      almonds. I have never tried to find out whether this be fact or fancy; and
+      I am glad to say that few white creoles confess a liking for this
+      barbarous food.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The <i>zandouilles</i> are delicious sausages made with pig-buff,&mdash;and
+      only seen in the market on Sundays. They cost a franc and a half each; and
+      there are several women who have an established reputation throughout
+      \Martinique for their skill in making them. I have tasted some not less
+      palatable than the famous London "pork-pies." Those of Lamentin are
+      reputed the best in the island.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But <i>poule-épi-diri</i> is certainly the most popular dish of all: it is
+      the dearest, as well, and poor people can rarely afford it. In Louisiana
+      an almost similar dish is called <i>jimbalaya</i>: chicken cooked with
+      rice. The Martiniquais think it such a delicacy that an over-exacting
+      person, or one difficult to satisfy, is reproved with the simple question:&mdash;"<i>Ça
+      ou lè 'nco-poule, épi-diri?</i>" (What more do you want, great heavens!&mdash;chicken-and-rice?)
+      Naughty children are bribed into absolute goodness by the promise of
+      poule-épi-diri:&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &mdash;"<i>Aïe! chè, bò doudoux!
+     Doudoux ba ou poule-épi-diri;
+     Aïe! chè, bò doudoux!</i>"...
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      (Aïe, dear! kiss <i>doudoux!&mdash;doudoux</i> has rice-and-chicken for
+      you!&mdash;<i>aïe</i>, dear! kiss <i>doudoux!</i>)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      How far rice enters into the success of the dish above mentioned I cannot
+      say; but rice ranks in favor generally above all cereals; it is at least
+      six times more in demand than maize. <i>Diri-doux</i>, rice boiled with
+      sugar, is sold in prodigious quantities daily,&mdash;especially at the
+      markets, where little heaps of it, rolled in pieces of banana or <i>cachibou</i>
+      leaves, are retailed at a cent each. <i>Diri-aulaitt</i>, a veritable
+      rice-pudding, is also very popular; but it would weary the reader to
+      mention one-tenth of the creole preparations into which rice enters.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      VI.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Everybody eats <i>akras</i>;&mdash;they sell at a cent apiece. The akra is
+      a small fritter or pancake, which may be made of fifty different things,&mdash;among
+      others codfish, titiri, beans, brains, <i>choux-caraïbes</i>, little black
+      peas (<i>poix-zié-nouè</i>, "black-eyed peas"), or of crawfish (<i>akra-cribîche</i>).
+      When made of carrots, bananas, chicken, palm-cabbage, etc. and sweetened,
+      they are called <i>marinades</i>. On first acquaintance they seem rather
+      greasy for so hot a climate; but one learns, on becoming accustomed to
+      tropical conditions, that a certain amount of oily or greasy food is both
+      healthy and needful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      First among popular vegetables are beans. Red beans are preferred; but
+      boiled white beans, served cold with vinegar and plenty of oil, form a
+      favorite salad. Next in order of preferment come the <i>choux-caraïbes</i>,
+      <i>patates</i>, <i>zignames</i>, <i>camanioc</i>, and <i>cousscouche</i>:
+      all immense roots,&mdash;the true potatoes of the tropics. The camanioc is
+      finer than the choux-caraïbe, boils whiter and softer: in appearance it
+      resembles the manioc root very closely, but has no toxic element. The
+      cousscouche is the best of all: the finest Irish potato boiled into
+      sparkling flour is not so good. Most of these roots can be cooked into a
+      sort of mush, called <i>migan</i>: such as <i>migan-choux</i>, made with
+      the choux-caraïbe; <i>migan-zignames</i>, made with yams; <i>migan-cousscouche</i>,
+      etc.,&mdash;in which case crabs or shrimps are usually served with the <i>migan</i>.
+      There is a particular fondness for the little rosy crab called <i>tourlouroux</i>,
+      in patois <i>touloulou</i>. <i>Migan</i> is also made with bread-fruit.
+      Very large bananas or plantains are boiled with codfish, with <i>daubes</i>,
+      or meat stews, and with eggs. The bread-fruit is a fair substitute for
+      vegetables. It must be cooked very thoroughly, and has a dry potato taste.
+      What is called the <i>fleu-fouitt-à-pain</i>, or "bread-fruit flower"&mdash;a
+      long pod-shaped solid growth, covered exteriorly with tiny seeds closely
+      set as pin-heads could be, and having an interior pith very elastic and
+      resistant,&mdash;is candied into a delicious sweetmeat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      VII.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The consumption of bananas is enormous: more bananas are eaten than
+      vegetables; and more banana-trees are yearly being cultivated. The negro
+      seems to recognize instinctively that economical value of the banana to
+      which attention was long since called by Humboldt, who estimated that
+      while an acre planted in wheat would barely support three persons, an acre
+      planted in banana-trees would nourish fifty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bananas and plantains hold the first place among fruits in popular esteem;&mdash;they
+      are cooked in every way, and served with almost every sort of meat or
+      fish. What we call bananas in the United States, however, are not called
+      bananas in Martinique, but figs (<i>figues</i>). Plantains seem to be
+      called <i>bananes</i>. One is often surprised at popular nomenclature: <i>choux</i>
+      may mean either a sort of root (<i>choux-caraïbe</i>), or the top of the
+      cabbage-palm; <i>Jacquot</i> may mean a fish; <i>cabane</i> never means a
+      cabin, but a bed; <i>crickett</i> means not a cricket, but a frog; and at
+      least fifty other words have equally deceptive uses. If one desires to
+      speak of real figs&mdash;dried figs&mdash;he must say <i>figues-Fouanc</i>
+      (French figs); otherwise nobody will understand him. There are many kinds
+      of bananas here called <i>figues</i>,&mdash;the four most popular are the
+      <i>figues-bananes</i>, which are plantains, I think; the <i>figues-makouenga</i>,
+      which grow wild, and have a red skin; the <i>figues-pommes</i>
+      (apple-bananas), which are large and yellow; and the <i>ti-figues-desse</i>
+      (little-dessert-bananas), which are to be seen on all tables in St.
+      Pierre. They are small, sweet, and always agreeable, even when one has no
+      appetite for other fruits.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It requires some little time to become accustomed to many tropical fruits,
+      or at least to find patience as well as inclination to eat them. A large
+      number, in spite of delicious flavor, are provokingly stony: such as the
+      ripe guavas, the cherries, the barbadines; even the corrossole and <i>pomme-cannelle</i>
+      are little more than huge masses of very hard seeds buried in pulp of
+      exquisite taste. The <i>sapota</i>, or <i>sapodtilla</i>, is less
+      characterized by stoniness, and one soon learns to like it. It has large
+      flat seeds, which can be split into two with the finger-nail; and a fine
+      white skin lies between these two halves. It requires some skill to remove
+      entire this little skin, or pellicle, without breaking it: to do so is
+      said to be a test of affection. Perhaps this bit of folk-lore was
+      suggested by the shape of the pellicle, which is that of a heart. The
+      pretty fille-de-couleur asks her doudoux:&mdash;"<i>Ess ou ainmein moin?&mdash;pouloss
+      tiré ti lapeau-là sans cassé-y</i>." Woe to him if he breaks it!... The
+      most disagreeable fruit is, I think, the <i>pomme-d'Haiti</i>, or Haytian
+      apple: it is very attractive exteriorly; but has a strong musky odor and
+      taste which nauseates. Few white creoles ever eat it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of the oranges, nothing except praise can be said; but there are fruits
+      that look like oranges, and are not oranges, that are far more noteworthy.
+      There is the <i>chadèque</i>, which grows here to fully three feet in
+      circumference, and has a sweet pink pulp; and there is the
+      "forbidden-fruit" (<i>fouitt-défendu</i>), a sort of cross between the
+      orange and the chadèque, and superior to both. The colored people declare
+      that this monster fruit is the same which grew in Eden upon the fatal
+      tree: <i>c'est ça mênm qui fai moune ka fai yche conm ça atouelement!</i>
+      The fouitt-défendu is wonderful, indeed, in its way; but the fruit which
+      most surprised me on my first acquaintance with it was the <i>zabricôt</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"<i>Ou lè yon zabricôt?</i>" (Would you like an apricot?) Cyrillia
+      asked me one day. I replied that I liked apricots very much,&mdash;wanted
+      more than one. Cyrillia looked astonished, but said nothing until she
+      returned from market, and put on the table <i>two</i> apricots, with the
+      observation:&mdash;"<i>Ça ke fai ou malade mangé toutt ça!</i>" (You will
+      get sick if you eat all that.) I could not eat even half of one of them.
+      Imagine a plum larger than the largest turnip, with a skin like a russet
+      apple, solid sweet flesh of a carrot-red color, and a nut in the middle
+      bigger than a duck's egg and hard as a rock. These fruits are aromatic as
+      well as sweet to the taste: the price varies from one to four cents each,
+      according to size. The tree is indigenous to the West Indies; the
+      aborigines of Hayti had a strange belief regarding it. They alleged that
+      its fruits formed the nourishment of the dead; and however pressed by
+      hunger, an Indian in the woods would rather remain without food than strip
+      one of these trees, lest he should deprive the ghosts of their
+      sustenance.... No trace of this belief seems to exist among the colored
+      people of Martinique.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0042" id="linkimage-0042">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%">
+      <img src="images/39-Bread_Fruit.jpg" alt="Bread-fruit Tree. " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      Among the poor such fruits are luxuries: they eat more mangoes than any
+      other fruits excepting bananas. It is rather slobbery work eating a common
+      mango, in which every particle of pulp is threaded fast to the kernel: one
+      prefers to gnaw it when alone. But there are cultivated mangoes with finer
+      and thicker flesh which can be sliced off, so that the greater part of the
+      fruit may be eaten without smearing and sucking. Among grafted varieties
+      the <i>mangue</i> is quite as delicious as the orange. Perhaps there are
+      nearly as many varieties of mangoes in Martinique as there are varieties
+      of peaches with us: I am acquainted, however, with only a few,&mdash;such
+      as the <i>mango-Bassignac</i>;&mdash;<i>mango-pêche</i> (or peach-mango);&mdash;<i>mango-vert</i>
+      (green mango), very large and oblong;&mdash;<i>mango-grêffé</i>;&mdash;<i>mangotine</i>,
+      quite round and small;&mdash;<i>mango-quinette</i>, very small also,
+      almost egg-shaped;&mdash;<i>mango-Zézé</i>, very sweet, rather small, and
+      of flattened form;&mdash;<i>mango-d'or</i> (golden mango), worth half a
+      franc each;&mdash;<i>mango-Lamentin</i>, a highly cultivated variety&mdash;and
+      the superb <i>Reine-Amélie</i> (or Queen Amelia), a great yellow fruit
+      which retails even in Martinique at five cents apiece.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      VIII.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... "<i>Ou c'est bonhomme caton?-ou c'est zimage, non?</i>" (Am I a
+      pasteboard man, or an image, that I do not eat?) Cyrillia wants to know.
+      The fact is that I am a little overfed; but the stranger in the tropics
+      cannot eat like a native, and my abstemiousness is a surprise. In the
+      North we eat a good deal for the sake of caloric; in the tropics, unless
+      one be in the habit of taking much physical exercise, which is a very
+      difficult thing to do, a generous appetite is out of the question.
+      Cyrillia will not suffer me to live upon <i>mangé-Creole</i> altogether;
+      she insists upon occasional beefsteaks and roasts, and tries to tempt me
+      with all kinds of queer delicious, desserts as well,&mdash;particularly
+      those cakes made of grated cocoanut and sugar-syrup (<i>tablett-coco-rapé</i>)
+      of which a stranger becomes very fond. But, nevertheless, I cannot eat
+      enough to quiet Cyrillia's fears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Not eating enough is not her only complaint against me. I am perpetually
+      doing something or other which shocks her. The Creoles are the most
+      cautious livers in the world, perhaps;&mdash;the stranger who walks in the
+      sun without an umbrella, or stands in currents of air, is for them an
+      object of wonder and compassion. Cyrillia's complaints about my
+      recklessness in the matter of hygiene always terminate with the refrain: "<i>Yo
+      pa fai ça içi</i>"&mdash;(People never do such things in Martinique.)
+      Among such rash acts are washing one's face or hands while perspiring,
+      taking off one's hat on coming in from a walk, going out immediately after
+      a bath, and washing my face with soap. "Oh, Cyrillia! what foolishness!&mdash;why
+      should I not wash my face with soap?" "Because it will blind you,"
+      Cyrillia answers: "<i>ça ké tchoué limiè zié ou</i>" (it will kill the
+      light in your eyes). There is no cleaner person than Cyrillia; and, indeed
+      among the city people, the daily bath is the rule in all weathers; but
+      soap is never used on the face by thousands, who, like Cyrillia, believe
+      it will "kill the light of the eyes."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One day I had been taking a long walk in the sun, and returned so thirsty
+      that all the old stories about travellers suffering in waterless deserts
+      returned to memory with new significance;&mdash;visions of simooms arose
+      before me. What a delight to see and to grasp the heavy, red, thick-lipped
+      <i>dobanne</i>, the water-jar, dewy and cool with the exudation of the <i>Eau-de-Gouyave</i>
+      which filled it to the brim,&mdash;<i>toutt vivant</i>, as Cyrillia says,
+      "all alive"! There was a sudden scream,&mdash;the water-pitcher was
+      snatched from my hands by Cyrillia with the question: "<i>Ess ou lè tchoué
+      cò-ou?&mdash;Saint Joseph!</i>" (Did I want to kill my body?)... The
+      Creoles use the word "body" in speaking of anything that can happen to
+      one,&mdash;"hurt one's body," "tire one's body," "marry one's body," "bury
+      one's body," etc.;&mdash;I wonder whether the expression originated in
+      zealous desire to prove a profound faith in the soul.... Then Cyrillia
+      made me a little punch with sugar and rum, and told me I must never drink
+      fresh-water after a walk unless I wanted to kill my body. In this matter
+      her advice was good. The immediate result of a cold drink while heated is
+      a profuse and icy perspiration, during which currents of air are really
+      dangerous. A cold is not dreaded here, and colds are rare; but pleurisy is
+      common, and may be the consequence of any imprudent exposure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I do not often have the opportunity at home of committing even an
+      unconscious imprudence; for Cyrillia is ubiquitous, and always on the
+      watch lest something dreadful should happen to me. She is wonderful as a
+      house-keeper as well as a cook: there is certainly much to do, and she has
+      only a child to help her, but she always seems to have time. Her kitchen
+      apparatus is of the simplest kind: a charcoal furnace constructed of
+      bricks, a few earthenware pots (<i>canar</i>), and some grid-irons;&mdash;yet
+      with these she can certainly prepare as many dishes as there are days in
+      the year. I have never known her to be busy with her <i>canari</i> for
+      more than an hour; yet everything is kept in perfect order. When she is
+      not working, she is quite happy in sitting at a window, and amusing
+      herself by watching the life of the street,&mdash;or playing with a
+      kitten, which she has trained so well that it seems to understand
+      everything she says.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      IX.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With darkness all the population of the island retire to their homes;&mdash;the
+      streets become silent, and the life of the day is done. By eight o'clock
+      nearly all the windows are closed, and the lights put out;&mdash;by nine
+      the people are asleep. There are no evening parties, no night amusements,
+      except during rare theatrical seasons and times of Carnival; there are no
+      evening visits: active existence is almost timed by the rising and setting
+      of the sun.... The only pleasure left for the stranger of evenings is a
+      quiet smoke on his balcony or before his door: reading is out of the
+      question, partly because books are rare, partly because lights are bad,
+      partly because insects throng about every lamp or candle. I am lucky
+      enough to have a balcony, broad enough for a rocking-chair; and sometimes
+      Cyrillia and the kitten come to keep me company before bedtime. The kitten
+      climbs on my knees; Cyrillia sits right down upon the balcony.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One bright evening, Cyrillia was amusing herself very much by watching the
+      clouds: they were floating high; the moonlight made them brilliant as
+      frost. As they changed shape under the pressure of the trade-wind,
+      Cyrillia seemed to discover wonderful things in them: sheep, ships with
+      sails, cows, faces, perhaps even <i>zombis</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"<i>Travaill Bon-Dié joli,&mdash;anh?</i>" (Is not the work of the
+      Good-God pretty?) she said at last.... "There was Madame Remy, who used to
+      sell the finest <i>foulards</i> and Madrases in St. Pierre;&mdash;she used
+      to study the clouds. She drew the patterns of the clouds for her <i>foulards</i>:
+      whenever she saw a beautiful cloud or a beautiful rainbow, she would make
+      a drawing of it in color at once; and then she would send that to France
+      to have <i>foulards</i> made just like it.... Since she is dead, you do
+      not see any more pretty <i>foulards</i> such as there used to be."...
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"Would you like to look at the moon with my telescope, Cyrillia?" I
+      asked. "Let me get it for you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"Oh no, no!" she answered, as if shocked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"Why?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"<i>Ah! faut pa gàdé baggaïe Bon-Dié conm ça!</i>" (It is not right
+      to look at the things of the Good-God that way.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I did not insist. After a little silence, Cyrillia resumed:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"But I saw the Sun and the Moon once fighting together: that was
+      what people call an <i>eclipse</i>,&mdash;is not that the word?... They
+      fought together a long time: I was looking at them. We put a <i>terrine</i>
+      full of water on the ground, and looked into the water to see them. And
+      the Moon is stronger than the Sun!&mdash;yes, the Sun was obliged to give
+      way to the Moon.... Why do they fight like that?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"They don't, Cyrillia."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"Oh yes, they do. I saw them!... And the Moon is much stronger than
+      the Sun!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I did not attempt to contradict this testimony of the eyes. Cyrillia
+      continued to watch the pretty clouds. Then she said:&mdash;"Would you not
+      like to have a ladder long enough to let you climb up to those clouds, and
+      see what they are made of?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"Why, Cyrillia, they are only vapor,&mdash;brume: I have been in
+      clouds."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked at me in surprise, and, after a moment's silence, asked, with
+      an irony of which I had not supposed her capable:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"Then you are the Good-God?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"Why, Cyrillia, it is not difficult to reach clouds. You see clouds
+      always upon the top of the Montagne Pelée;&mdash;people go there. I have
+      been there&mdash;in the clouds."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"Ah! those are not the same clouds: those are not the clouds of the
+      Good-God. You cannot touch the sky when you are on the Morne de la Croix."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"My dear Cyrillia, there is no sky to touch. The sky is only an
+      appearance."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"<i>Anh, anh, anh!</i> No sky!&mdash;you say there is no sky?...
+      Then, what is that up there?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"That is air, Cyrillia, beautiful blue air."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"And what are the stars fastened to?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"To nothing. They are suns, but so much further away than our sun
+      that they look small."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"No, they are not suns! They have not the same form as the sun...
+      You must not say there is no sky: it is wicked! But you are not a
+      Catholic!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"My dear Cyrillia, I don't see what that has to do with the sky."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"Where does the Good-God stay, if there be no sky? And where is
+      heaven?&mdash;and where is hell?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"Hell in the sky, Cyrillia?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"The Good-God made heaven in one part of the sky, and hell in
+      another part, for bad people.... Ah! you are a Protestant;&mdash;you do
+      not know the things of the Good-God! That is why you talk like that."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"What is a Protestant, Cyrillia?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"You are one. The Protestants do not believe in religion,&mdash;do
+      not love the Good-God."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"Well, I am neither a Protestant nor a Catholic, Cyrillia."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"Oh! you do not mean that; you cannot be a <i>maudi</i>, an
+      accursed. There are only the Protestants, the Catholics, and the accursed.
+      You are not a <i>maudi</i>, I am sure, But you must not say there is no
+      sky"...
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"But, Cyrillia"&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"No: I will not listen to you:&mdash;you are a Protestant. Where
+      does the rain come from, if there is no sky,"...
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"Why, Cyrillia,... the clouds"...
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"No, you are a Protestant.... How can you say such things? There
+      are the Three Kings and the Three Valets,&mdash;the beautiful stars that
+      come at Christmas-time,&mdash;there, over there&mdash;all beautiful, and
+      big, big, big!... And you say there is no sky!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"Cyrillia, perhaps I am a <i>maudi</i>."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"No, no! You are only a Protestant. But do not tell me there is no
+      sky: it is wicked to say that!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"I won't say it any more, Cyrillia&mdash;there! But I will say
+      there are no <i>zombis</i>."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"I know you are not a <i>maudi</i>;&mdash;you have been baptized."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"How do you know I have been baptized?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"Because, if you had not been baptized you would see <i>zombis</i>
+      all the time, even in broad day. All children who are not baptized see <i>zombis</i>."...
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      X.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cyrilla's solicitude for me extends beyond the commonplaces of hygiene and
+      diet into the uncertain domain of matters ghostly. She fears much that
+      something might happen to me through the agency of wizards, witches (<i>sociès</i>),
+      or <i>zombis</i>. Especially zombis. Cyrillia's belief in zombis has a
+      solidity that renders argument out of the question. This belief is part of
+      her inner nature,&mdash;something hereditary, racial, ancient as Africa,
+      as characteristic of her people as the love of rhythms and melodies
+      totally different from our own musical conceptions, but possessing, even
+      for the civilized, an inexplicable emotional charm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Zombi!</i>&mdash;the word is perhaps full of mystery even for those who
+      made it. The explanations of those who utter it most often are never quite
+      lucid: it seems to convey ideas darkly impossible to define,&mdash;fancies
+      belonging to the mind of another race and another era,&mdash;unspeakably
+      old. Perhaps the word in our own language which offers the best analogy is
+      "goblin": yet the one is not fully translated by the other. Both have,
+      however, one common ground on which they become indistinguishable,&mdash;that
+      region of the supernatural which is most primitive and most vague; and the
+      closest relation between the savage and the civilized fancy may be found
+      in the fears which we call childish,&mdash;of darkness, shadows, and
+      things dreamed. One form of the <i>zombi</i>-belief&mdash;akin to certain
+      ghostly superstitions held by various primitive races&mdash;would seem to
+      have been suggested by nightmare,&mdash;that form of nightmare in which
+      familiar persons become slowly and hideously transformed into malevolent
+      beings. The <i>zombi</i> deludes under the appearance of a travelling
+      companion, an old comrade&mdash;like the desert spirits of the Arabs&mdash;or
+      even under the form of an animal. Consequently the creole negro fears
+      everything living which he meets after dark upon a lonely road,&mdash;a
+      stray horse, a cow, even a dog; and mothers quell the naughtiness of their
+      children by the threat of summoning a zombi-cat or a zombi-creature of
+      some kind. "<i>Zombi ké nana ou</i>" (the zombi will gobble thee up) is
+      generally an effectual menace in the country parts, where it is believed
+      zombis may be met with any time after sunset. In the city it is thought
+      that their regular hours are between two and four o'clock in the morning.
+      At least so Cyrillia says:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"Dèezhè, toua-zhè-matin: c'est lhè zombi. Yo ka sòti dèzhè, toua
+      zhè: c'est lhè yo. A quattrhè yo ka rentré;&mdash;angelus ka sonné." (At
+      four o'clock they go back where they came from, before the <i>Angelus</i>
+      rings.) Why?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"<i>C'est pou moune pas joinne yo dans larue</i>." (So that people
+      may not meet with them in the street), Cyrillia answers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"Are they afraid of the people, Cyrillia?" I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"No, they are not afraid; but they do not want people to know their
+      business" (<i>pa lè moune ouè zaffai yo</i>).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cyrillia also says one must not look out of the window when a dog howls at
+      night. Such a dog may be a <i>mauvais vivant</i> (evil being): "If he sees
+      me looking at him he will say, '<i>Ou tropp quirièse quittée cabane ou pou
+      gàdé zaffai lezautt</i>.'" (You are too curious to leave your bed like
+      that to look at other folks' business.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"And what then, Cyrillia?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"Then he will put out your eyes,&mdash;<i>y ké coqui zié ou</i>,&mdash;make
+      you blind."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"But, Cyrillia," I asked one day, "did you ever see any zombis?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"How? I often see them!... They walk about the room at night;&mdash;they
+      walk like people. They sit in the rocking-chairs and rock themselves very
+      softly, and look at me. I say to them:&mdash;'What do you want here?&mdash;I
+      never did any harm to anybody. Go away!' Then they go away."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"What do they look like?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"Like people,&mdash;sometimes like beautiful people (<i>bel moune</i>).
+      I am afraid of them. I only see them when there is no light burning. While
+      the lamp bums before the Virgin they do not come. But sometimes the oil
+      fails, and the light dies."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In my own room there are dried palm leaves and some withered flowers
+      fastened to the wall. Cyrillia put them there. They were taken from the <i>reposoirs</i>
+      (temporary altars) erected for the last Corpus Christi procession:
+      consequently they are blessed, and ought to keep the zombis away. That is
+      why they are fastened to the wall, over my bed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nobody could be kinder to animals than Cyrillia usually shows herself to
+      be: all the domestic animals in the neighborhood impose upon her;&mdash;various
+      dogs and cats steal from her impudently, without the least fear of being
+      beaten. I was therefore very much surprised to see her one evening catch a
+      flying beetle that approached the light, and deliberately put its head in
+      the candle-flame. When I asked her how she could be so cruel, she replied:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"<i>Ah ou pa connaitt choïe pays-ci</i>." (You do not know Things
+      in this country.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Things thus referred to I found to be supernatural Things. It is
+      popularly believed that certain winged creatures which circle about
+      candles at night may be <i>engagés</i> or <i>envoyés</i>&mdash;wicked
+      people having the power of transformation, or even zombis "sent" by
+      witches or wizards to do harm. "There was a woman at Tricolore," Cyrillia
+      says, "who used to sew a great deal at night; and a big beetle used to
+      come into her room and fly about the candle, and and bother her very much.
+      One night she managed to get hold of it, and she singed its head in the
+      candle. Next day, a woman who was her neighbor came to the house with her
+      head all tied up. '<i>Ah! macoumè</i>,' asked the sewing-woman, '<i>ça ou
+      ni dans guiôle-ou?</i>' And the other answered, very angrily, '<i>Ou ni
+      toupet mandé moin ça moin ni dans guiôle moin!&mdash;et cété ou qui té
+      brilé guiôle moin nans chandelle-ou hiè-souè</i>.'" (You have the
+      impudence to ask what is the matter with my mouth! and you yourself burned
+      my mouth in your candle last night.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Early one morning, about five o'clock, Cyrillia, opening the front door,
+      saw a huge crab walking down the street. Probably it had escaped from some
+      barrel; for it is customary here to keep live crabs in barrels and fatten
+      them,&mdash;feeding them with maize, mangoes, and, above all, green
+      peppers: nobody likes to cook crabs as soon as caught; for they may have
+      been eating manchineel apples at the river-mouths. Cyrillia uttered a cry
+      of dismay on seeing that crab; then I heard her talking to herself:&mdash;"<i>I</i>
+      touch it?&mdash;never! it can go about its business. How do I know it is
+      not <i>an arranged crab</i> (<i>yon crabe rangé</i>), or an <i>envoyé</i>?&mdash;since
+      everybody knows I like crabs. For two sous I can buy a fine crab and know
+      where it comes from." The crab went on down the street: everywhere the
+      sight of it created consternation; nobody dared to touch it; women cried
+      out at it, "<i>Miserabe!&mdash;envoyé Satan!&mdash;allez, maudi!</i>"&mdash;some
+      threw holy water on the crab. Doubtless it reached the sea in safety. In
+      the evening Cyrillia said: "I think that crab was a little zombi;&mdash;I
+      am going to burn a light all night to keep it from coming back."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Another day, while I was out, a negro to whom I had lent two francs came
+      to the house, and paid his debt Cyrillia told me when I came back, and
+      showed me the money carefully enveloped in a piece of brown paper; but
+      said I must not touch it,&mdash;she would get rid of it for me at the
+      market. I laughed at her fears; and she observed: "You do not know
+      negroes, Missié!&mdash;negroes are wicked, negroes are jealous! I do not
+      want you to touch that money, because I have not a good opinion about this
+      affair."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After I began to learn more of the underside of Martinique life, I could
+      understand the source and justification of many similar superstitions in
+      simple and uneducated minds. The negro sorcerer is, at worst, only a
+      poisoner; but he possesses a very curious art which long defied serious
+      investigation, and in the beginning of the last century was attributed,
+      even by whites, to diabolical influence. In 1721, 1723, and 1725, several
+      negroes were burned alive at the stake as wizards in league with the
+      devil. It was an era of comparative ignorance; but even now things are
+      done which would astonish the most sceptical and practical physician. For
+      example, a laborer discharged from a plantation vows vengeance; and the
+      next morning the whole force of hands&mdash;the entire atelier&mdash;are
+      totally disabled from work. Every man and woman on the place is unable to
+      walk; everybody has one or both legs frightfully swollen. <i>Yo te ka pilé
+      malifice</i>: they have trodden on a "malifice." What is the "malifice"?
+      All that can be ascertained is that certain little prickly seeds have been
+      scattered all over the ground, where the barefooted workers are in the
+      habit of passing. Ordinarily, treading on these seeds is of no
+      consequence; but it is evident in such a case that they must have been
+      prepared in a special way,&mdash;soaked in some poison, perhaps
+      snake-venom. At all events, the physician deems it safest to treat the
+      inflammations after the manner of snake wounds; and after many days the
+      hands are perhaps able to resume duty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      XI.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While Cyrillia is busy with her <i>canari</i>, she talks to herself or
+      sings. She has a low rich voice,&mdash;sings strange things, things that
+      have been forgotten by this generation,&mdash;creole songs of the old
+      days, having a weird rhythm and fractions of tones that are surely
+      African. But more generally she talks to herself, as all the
+      Martiniquaises do: it is a continual murmur as of a stream. At first I
+      used to think she was talking to somebody else, and would call out:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"<i>Épi quiless moune ça ou ka pàlé-à?</i>"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But she would always answer:&mdash;"<i>Moin ka pàlé anni cò moin</i>" (I
+      am only talking to my own body), which is the creole expression for
+      talking to oneself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"And what are you talking so much to your own body about,
+      Cyrillia?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"I am talking about my own little affairs" (<i>ti zaffai-moin</i>)....
+      That is all that I could ever draw from her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But when not working, she will sit for hours looking out of the window. In
+      this she resembles the kitten: both seem to find the same silent pleasure
+      in watching the street, or the green heights that rise above its roofs,&mdash;the
+      Morne d'Orange. Occasionally at such times she will break the silence in
+      the strangest way, if she thinks I am not too busy with my papers to
+      answer a question:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"<i>Missié?</i>"&mdash;timidly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"Eh?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"<i>Di moin, chè, ti manmaille dans pays ou, toutt piti, piti,&mdash;ess
+      ça pàlé Anglais?</i>" (Do the little children in my country&mdash;the
+      very, very little children&mdash;talk English?)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"Why, certainly, Cyrillia."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"<i>Toutt piti, piti?</i>"&mdash;with growing surprise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"Why, of course!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"<i>C'est drôle, ça</i>" (It is queer, that!) She cannot understand
+      it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"And the little <i>manmaille</i> in Martinique, Cyrillia&mdash;<i>toutt
+      piti, piti</i>,&mdash;don't they talk creole?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"'<i>Oui; mais toutt moune ka pâlé nègue: ça facile</i>." (Yes; but
+      anybody can talk negro&mdash;that is easy to learn.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      XII.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cyrillia's room has no furniture in it: the Martinique bonne lives as
+      simply and as rudely as a domestic animal. One thin mattress covered with
+      a sheet, and elevated from the floor only by a léfant, forms her bed. The
+      <i>léfant</i>, or "elephant," is composed of two thick square pieces of
+      coarse hard mattress stuffed with shavings, and placed end to end.
+      Cyrillia has a good pillow, however,&mdash;<i>bourré épi flêches-canne</i>,&mdash;filled
+      with the plumes of the sugar-cane. A cheap trunk with broken hinges
+      contains her modest little wardrobe: a few <i>mouchoirs</i>, or kerchiefs,
+      used for head-dresses, a spare <i>douillette</i>, or long robe, and some
+      tattered linen. Still she is always clean, neat, fresh-looking. I see a
+      pair of sandals in the corner,&mdash;such as the women of the country
+      sometimes wear&mdash;wooden soles with a leather band for the instep, and
+      two little straps; but she never puts them on. Fastened to the wall are
+      two French prints&mdash;lithographs: one representing Victor Hugo's <i>Esmeralda</i>
+      in prison with her pet goat; the other, Lamartine's <i>Laurence</i> with
+      her fawn. Both are very old and stained and bitten by the <i>bête-à-ciseau</i>,
+      a species of <i>lepisma</i>, which destroys books and papers, and
+      everything it can find exposed. On a shelf are two bottles,&mdash;one
+      filled with holy water; another with <i>tafia camphrée</i> (camphor
+      dissolved in tafia), which is Cyrillia's sole remedy for colds, fevers,
+      headaches&mdash;all maladies not of a very fatal description. There are
+      also a little woollen monkey, about three inches high&mdash;the dusty
+      plaything of a long-dead child;&mdash;an image of the Virgin, even
+      smaller;&mdash;and a broken cup with fresh bright blossoms in it, the
+      Virgin's flower-offering;&mdash;and the Virgin's invariable lamp&mdash;a
+      night-light, a little wick floating on olive-oil in a tiny glass.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I know that Cyrillia must have bought these flowers&mdash;they are garden
+      flowers&mdash;at the Marchè du Fort. There are always old women sitting
+      there who sell nothing else but bouquets for the Virgin,&mdash;and who cry
+      out to passers-by:&mdash;"<i>Gagné ti bouquet pou Viège-ou, chè!</i>...
+      Buy a nosegay, dear, for your Virgin;&mdash;she is asking you for one;&mdash;give
+      her a little one, <i>chè cocott</i>."... Cyrillia says you must not smell
+      the flowers you give the Virgin: it would be stealing from her.... The
+      little lamp is always lighted at six o'clock. At six o'clock the Virgin is
+      supposed to pass through all the streets of St. Pierre, and wherever a
+      lamp burns before her image, she enters there and blesses that house. "<i>Faut
+      limé lampe ou pou fai la-Viège passé dans caïe-ou</i>," says Cyrillia.
+      (You must light the lamp to make the Virgin come into your house.)...
+      Cyrillia often talks to her little image, exactly as if it were a baby,&mdash;calls
+      it pet names,&mdash;asks if it is content with the flowers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This image of the Virgin is broken: it is only half a Virgin,&mdash;the
+      upper half. Cyrillia has arranged it so, nevertheless, that had I not been
+      very inquisitive I should never have divined its mishap. She found a small
+      broken powder-box without a lid,&mdash;probably thrown negligently out of
+      a boudoir window by some wealthy beauty: she filled this little box with
+      straw, and fixed the mutilated image upright within it, so that you could
+      never suspect the loss of its feet. The Virgin looks very funny, thus
+      peeping over the edge of her little box,&mdash;looks like a broken toy,
+      which a child has been trying to mend. But this Virgin has offerings too:
+      Cyrillia buys flowers for her, and sticks them all round her, between the
+      edge of the powder-box and the straw. After all, Cyrillia's Virgin is
+      quite as serious a fact as any image of silver or of ivory in the homes of
+      the rich: probably the prayers said to her are more simply beautiful, and
+      more direct from the heart, than many daily murmured before the <i>chapelles</i>
+      of luxurious homes. And the more one looks at it, the more one feels that
+      it were almost wicked to smile at this little broken toy of faith.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"Cyrillia, <i>mafi</i>," I asked her one day, after my discovery of
+      the little Virgin,&mdash;"would you not like me to buy a <i>chapelle</i>
+      for you?" The <i>chapelle</i> is the little bracket-altar, together with
+      images and ornaments, to be found in every creole bedroom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"<i>Mais non, Missié</i>," she answered, smiling, "<i>moin aimein
+      ti Viège moin, pa lè gagnin dautt</i>. I love my little Virgin: do not
+      want any other. I have seen much trouble: she was with me in my trouble;&mdash;she
+      heard my prayers. It would be wicked for me to throw her away. When I have
+      a sou to spare, I buy flowers for her;&mdash;when I have no money, I climb
+      the mornes, and pick pretty buds for her.... But why should Missié want to
+      buy me a <i>chapelle?</i>&mdash;Missié is a Protestant?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"I thought it might give you pleasure, Cyrillia."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"No, Missié, I thank you; it would not give me pleasure. But Missié
+      could give me something else which would make me very happy&mdash;I often
+      thought of asking Missié...but&mdash;"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"Tell me what it is, Cyrillia."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She remained silent a moment, then said:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"Missié makes photographs...."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"You want a photograph of yourself, Cyrillia?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"Oh! no, Missié, I am too ugly and too old. But I have a daughter.
+      She is beautiful&mdash;<i>yon bel bois</i>,&mdash;like a beautiful tree,
+      as we say here. I would like so much to have her picture taken."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A photographic instrument belonging to a clumsy amateur suggested this
+      request to Cyrillia. I could not attempt such work successfully; but I
+      gave her a note to a photographer of much skill; and a few days later the
+      portrait was sent to the house. Cyrillia's daughter was certainly a comely
+      girl,&mdash;tall and almost gold-colored, with pleasing features; and the
+      photograph looked very nice, though less nice than the original. Half the
+      beauty of these people is a beauty of tint,&mdash;a tint so exquisite
+      sometimes that I have even heard white creoles declare no white complexion
+      compares with it: the greater part of the charm remaining is grace,&mdash;the
+      grace of movement; and neither of these can be rendered by photography. I
+      had the portrait framed for Cyrillia, to hang up beside her little
+      pictures.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When it came, she was not in; I put it in her room, and waited to see the
+      effect. On returning, she entered there; and I did not see her for so long
+      a time that I stole to the door of the chamber to observe her. She was
+      standing before the portrait,&mdash;looking at it, talking to it as if it
+      were alive. "<i>Yche moin, yche moin!... Oui! ou toutt bel!&mdash;yche
+      moin bel</i>." (My child, my child!... Yes, thou art all beautiful: my
+      child is beautiful.) All at once she turned&mdash;perhaps she noticed my
+      shadow, or felt my presence in some way: her eyes were wet;&mdash;she
+      started, flushed, then laughed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"Ah! Missié, you watch me;&mdash;<i>ou guette moin</i>.... But she
+      is my child. Why should I not love her?... She looks so beautiful there."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"She is beautiful, Cyrillia;&mdash;I love to see you love her."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She gazed at the picture a little longer in silence;&mdash;then turned to
+      me again, and asked earnestly:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"<i>Pouki yo ja ka fai pòtrai palé&mdash;anh?... pisse yo ka tiré y
+      toutt samm ou: c'est ou-menm!... Yo douè fai y palé 'tou</i>."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      (Why do they not make a portrait talk,&mdash;tell me? For they draw it
+      just all like you!&mdash;it is yourself: they ought to make it talk.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"Perhaps they will be able to do something like that one of these
+      days, Cyrillia."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"Ah! that would be so nice. Then I could talk to her. <i>C'est yon
+      bel moune moin fai&mdash;y bel, joli moune!... Moin sé causé épi y</i>."...
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... And I, watching her beautiful childish emotion, thought:&mdash;Cursed
+      be the cruelty that would persuade itself that one soul may be like
+      another,&mdash;that one affection may be replaced by another,&mdash;that
+      individual goodness is not a thing apart, original, untwinned on earth,
+      but only the general characteristic of a class or type, to be sought and
+      found and utilized at will!...
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Self-curséd he who denies the divinity of love! Each heart, each brain in
+      the billions of humanity,&mdash;even so surely as sorrow lives,&mdash;feels
+      and thinks in some special way unlike any other; and goodness in each has
+      its unlikeness to all other goodness,&mdash;and thus its own infinite
+      preciousness; for however humble, however small, it is something all
+      alone, and God never repeats his work. No heart-beat is cheap, no
+      gentleness is despicable, no kindness is common; and Death, in removing a
+      life&mdash;the simplest life ignored,&mdash;removes what never will
+      reappear through the eternity of eternities,&mdash;since every being is
+      the sum of a chain of experiences infinitely varied from all others.... To
+      some Cyrillia's happy tears might bring a smile: to me that smile would
+      seem the unforgivable sin against the Giver of Life!...
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0012" id="link2HCH0012">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XII. &mdash; "PA COMBINÉ, CHÈ!"
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... More finely than any term in our tongue does the French word <i>frisson</i>
+      express that faint shiver&mdash;as of a ghostly touch thrilling from hair
+      to feet&mdash;which intense pleasure sometimes gives, and which is felt
+      most often and most strongly in childhood, when the imagination is still
+      so sensitive and so powerful that one's whole being trembles to the
+      vibration of a fancy. And this electric word best expresses, I think, that
+      long thrill of amazed delight inspired by the first knowledge of the
+      tropic world,&mdash;a sensation of weirdness in beauty, like the effect,
+      in child-days, of fairy tales and stories of phantom isles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For all unreal seems the vision of it. The transfiguration of all things
+      by the stupendous light and the strange vapors of the West Indian sea,&mdash;the
+      interorbing of flood and sky in blinding azure,&mdash;the sudden spirings
+      of gem-tinted coast from the ocean,&mdash;the iris-colors and astounding
+      shapes of the hills,&mdash;the unimaginable magnificence of palms,&mdash;the
+      high woods veiled and swathed in vines that blaze like emerald: all remind
+      you in some queer way of things half forgotten,&mdash;the fables of
+      enchantment. Enchantment it is indeed&mdash;but only the enchantment of
+      that Great Wizard, the Sun, whose power you are scarcely beginning to
+      know.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And into the life of the tropical city you enter as in dreams one enters
+      into the life of a dead century. In all the quaint streets&mdash;over
+      whose luminous yellow façades the beautiful burning violet of the sky
+      appears as if but a few feet away&mdash;you see youth good to look upon as
+      ripe fruit; and the speech of the people is soft as a coo; and eyes of
+      brown girls caress you with a passing look.... Love's world, you may have
+      heard, has few restraints here, where Nature ever seems to cry out, like
+      the swart seller of corossoles:&mdash;"<i>ça qui le doudoux?</i>"...
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      How often in some passing figure does one discern an ideal almost
+      realized, and forbear to follow it with untired gaze only when another,
+      another, and yet another, come to provoke the same aesthetic fancy,&mdash;to
+      win the same unspoken praise! How often does one long for artist's power
+      to fix the fleeting lines, to catch the color, to seize the whole exotic
+      charm of some special type!... One finds a strange charm even in the
+      timbre of these voices,&mdash;these half-breed voices, always with a
+      tendency to contralto, and vibrant as ringing silver. What is that
+      mysterious quality in a voice which has power to make the pulse beat
+      faster, even when the singer is unseen?... do only the birds know?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... It seems to you that you could never weary of watching this
+      picturesque life,&mdash;of studying the costumes, brilliant with butterfly
+      colors,&mdash;and the statuesque semi-nudity of laboring hundreds,&mdash;and
+      the untaught grace of attitudes,&mdash;and the simplicity of manners. Each
+      day brings some new pleasure of surprise;&mdash;even from the window of
+      your lodging you are ever noting something novel, something to delight the
+      sense of oddity or beauty.... Even in your room everything interests you,
+      because of its queerness or quaintness: you become fond of the objects
+      about you,&mdash;the great noiseless rocking-chairs that lull to sleep;&mdash;the
+      immense bed (<i>lit-à-bateau</i>) of heavy polished wood, with its richly
+      carven sides reaching down to the very floor;&mdash;and its invariable
+      companion, the little couch or <i>sopha</i>, similarly shaped but much
+      narrower, used only for the siesta;&mdash;and the thick red earthen
+      vessels (<i>dobannes</i>) which keep your drinking-water cool on the
+      hottest days, but which are always filled thrice between sunrise and
+      sunset with clear water from the mountain,&mdash;<i>dleau toutt vivant</i>,
+      "all alive";&mdash;and the <i>verrines</i>, tall glass vases with stems of
+      bronze in which your candle will burn steadily despite a draught;&mdash;and
+      even those funny little angels and Virgins which look at you from their
+      bracket in the corner, over the oil lamp you are presumed to kindle
+      nightly in their honor, however great a heretic you may be.... You adopt
+      at once, and without reservation, those creole home habits which are the
+      result of centuries of experience with climate,&mdash;abstention from
+      solid food before the middle of the day, repose after the noon meal;&mdash;and
+      you find each repast an experience as curious as it is agreeable. It is
+      not at all difficult to accustom oneself to green pease stewed with sugar,
+      eggs mixed with tomatoes, salt fish stewed in milk, palmiste pith made
+      into salad, grated cocoa formed into rich cakes, and dishes of titiri
+      cooked in oil,&mdash;the minuscule fish, of which a thousand will scarcely
+      fill a saucer. Above all, you are astonished by the endless variety of
+      vegetables and fruits, of all conceivable shapes and inconceivable
+      flavors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And it does not seem possible that even the simplest little recurrences of
+      this antiquated, gentle home-life could ever prove wearisome by daily
+      repetition through the months and years. The musical greeting of the
+      colored child, tapping at your door before sunrise,&mdash;"<i>Bonjou',
+      Missié</i>,"&mdash;as she brings your cup of black hot coffee and slice of
+      corossole;&mdash;the smile of the silent brown girl who carries your meals
+      up-stairs in a tray poised upon her brightly coiffed head, and who stands
+      by while you dine, watching every chance to serve, treading quite silently
+      with her pretty bare feet;&mdash;the pleasant manners of the <i>màchanne</i>
+      who brings your fruit, the <i>porteuse</i> who delivers your bread, the <i>blanchisseuse</i>
+      who washes your linen at the river,&mdash;and all the kindly folk who
+      circle about your existence, with their trays and turbans, their <i>foulards</i>
+      and <i>douillettes</i>, their primitive grace and creole chatter: these
+      can never cease to have a charm for you. You cannot fail to be touched
+      also by the amusing solicitude of these good people for your health,
+      because you are a stranger: their advice about hours to go out and hours
+      to stay at home,&mdash;about roads to follow and paths to avoid on account
+      of snakes,&mdash;about removing your hat and coat, or drinking while
+      warm.... Should you fall ill, this solicitude intensifies to devotion; you
+      are tirelessly tended;&mdash;the good people will exhaust their wonderful
+      knowledge of herbs to get you well,&mdash;will climb the mornes even at
+      midnight, in spite of the risk of snakes and fear of zombis, to gather
+      strange plants by the light of a lantern. Natural joyousness, natural
+      kindliness, heart-felt desire to please, childish capacity of being
+      delighted with trifles,&mdash;seem characteristic of all this colored
+      population. It is turning its best side towards you, no doubt; but the
+      side of the nature made visible appears none the less agreeable because
+      you suspect there is another which you have not seen. What kindly
+      inventiveness is displayed in contriving surprises for you, or in finding
+      some queer thing to show you,&mdash;some fantastic plant, or grotesque
+      fish, or singular bird! What apparent pleasure in taking trouble to
+      gratify,&mdash;what innocent frankness of sympathy!... Childishly
+      beautiful seems the readiness of this tinted race to compassionate: you do
+      not reflect that it is also a savage trait, while the charm of its novelty
+      is yet upon you. No one is ashamed to shed tears for the death of a pet
+      animal; any mishap to a child creates excitement, and evokes an immediate
+      volunteering of services. And this compassionate sentiment is often
+      extended, in a semi-poetical way, even to inanimate objects. One June
+      morning, I remember, a three-masted schooner lying in the bay took fire,
+      and had to be set adrift. An immense crowd gathered on the wharves; and I
+      saw many curious manifestations of grief,&mdash;such grief, perhaps, as an
+      infant feels for the misfortune of a toy it imagines to possess feeling,
+      but not the less sincere because unreasoning. As the flames climbed the
+      rigging, and the masts fell, the crowd moaned as though looking upon some
+      human tragedy; and everywhere one could hear such strange cries of pity
+      as, "<i>Pauv' malhérè!</i>" (poor unfortunate), "<i>pauv' diabe!</i>"... "<i>Toutt
+      baggaïe-y pou allé, casse!</i>" (All its things-to-go-with are broken!)
+      sobbed a girl, with tears streaming down her cheeks.... She seemed to
+      believe it was alive....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... And day by day the artlessness of this exotic humanity touches you
+      more;&mdash;day by day this savage, somnolent, splendid Nature&mdash;delighting
+      in furious color&mdash;bewitches you more. Already the anticipated
+      necessity of having to leave it all some day&mdash;the far-seen pain of
+      bidding it farewell&mdash;weighs upon you, even in dreams.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      II.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Reader, if you be of those who have longed in vain for a glimpse of that
+      tropic world,&mdash;tales of whose beauty charmed your childhood, and made
+      stronger upon you that weird mesmerism of the sea which pulls at the heart
+      of a boy,&mdash;one who had longed like you, and who, chance-led, beheld
+      at last the fulfilment of the wish, can swear to you that the magnificence
+      of the reality far excels the imagining. Those who know only the lands in
+      which all processes for the satisfaction of human wants have been
+      perfected under the terrible stimulus of necessity, can little guess the
+      witchery of that Nature ruling the zones of color and of light. Within
+      their primeval circles, the earth remains radiant and young as in that
+      preglacial time whereof some transmitted memory may have created the
+      hundred traditions of an Age of Gold. And the prediction of a paradise to
+      come,&mdash;a phantom realm of rest and perpetual light: may this not have
+      been but a sum of the remembrances and the yearnings of man first exiled
+      from his heritage,&mdash;a dream born of the great nostalgia of races
+      migrating to people the pallid North?...
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... But with the realization of the hope to know this magical Nature you
+      learn that the actuality varies from the preconceived ideal otherwise than
+      in surpassing it. Unless you enter the torrid world equipped with
+      scientific knowledge extraordinary, your anticipations are likely to be at
+      fault. Perhaps you had pictured to yourself the effect of perpetual summer
+      as a physical delight,&mdash;something like an indefinite prolongation of
+      the fairest summer weather ever enjoyed at home. Probably you had heard of
+      fevers, risks of acclimatization, intense heat, and a swarming of venomous
+      creatures; but you may nevertheless believe you know what precautions to
+      take; and published statistics of climatic temperature may have persuaded
+      you that the heat is not difficult to bear. By that enervation to which
+      all white dwellers in the tropics are subject you may have understood a
+      pleasant languor,&mdash;a painless disinclination to effort in a country
+      where physical effort is less needed than elsewhere,&mdash;a soft
+      temptation to idle away the hours in a hammock, under the shade of giant
+      trees. Perhaps you have read, with eyes of faith, that torpor of the body
+      is favorable to activity of the mind, and therefore believe that the
+      intellectual powers can be stimulated and strengthened by tropical
+      influences:&mdash;you suppose that enervation will reveal itself only as a
+      beatific indolence which will leave the brain free to think with lucidity,
+      or to revel in romantic dreams.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      III.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      You are not at first undeceived;&mdash;the disillusion is long delayed.
+      Doubtless you have read the delicious idyl of Bernardin de Saint-Pierre
+      (this is not Mauritius, but the old life of Mauritius was wellnigh the
+      same); and you look for idyllic personages among the beautiful humanity
+      about you,&mdash;for idyllic scenes among the mornes shadowed by primeval
+      forest, and the valleys threaded by a hundred brooks. I know not whether
+      the faces and forms that you seek will be revealed to you;&mdash;but you
+      will not be able to complain for the lack of idyllic loveliness in the
+      commonest landscape. Whatever artistic knowledge you possess will merely
+      teach you the more to wonder at the luxuriant purple of the sea, the
+      violet opulence of the sky, the violent beauty of foliage greens, the
+      lilac tints of evening, and the color-enchantments distance gives in an
+      atmosphere full of iridescent power,&mdash;the amethysts and agates, the
+      pearls and ghostly golds, of far mountainings. Never, you imagine, never
+      could one tire of wandering through those marvellous valleys,&mdash;of
+      climbing the silent roads under emeraldine shadow to heights from which
+      the city seems but a few inches long, and the moored ships tinier than
+      gnats that cling to a mirror,&mdash;or of swimming in that blue bay whose
+      clear flood stays warm through all the year. <a href="#linknote-51"
+      name="linknoteref-51" id="linknoteref-51">[51]</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Or, standing alone, in some aisle of colossal palms, where humming-birds
+      are flashing and shooting like a showering of jewel-fires, you feel how
+      weak the skill of poet or painter to fix the sensation of that
+      white-pillared imperial splendor;&mdash;and you think you know why creoles
+      exiled by necessity to colder lands may sicken for love of their own,&mdash;die
+      of home-yearning, as did many a one in far Louisiana, after the political
+      tragedies of 1848....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... But you are not a creole, and must pay tribute of suffering to the
+      climate of the tropics. You will have to learn that a temperature of 90°
+      Fahr. in the tropics is by no means the same thing as 90° Fahr. in Europe
+      or the United States;&mdash;that the mornes cannot be climbed with safety
+      during the hotter hours of the afternoon;&mdash;that by taking a long walk
+      you incur serious danger of catching a fever;&mdash;that to enter the high
+      woods, a path must be hewn with the cutlass through the creepers and vines
+      and undergrowth,&mdash;among snakes, venomous insects, venomous plants,
+      and malarial exhalations;&mdash;that the finest blown dust is full of
+      irritant and invisible enemies;&mdash;that it is folly to seek repose on a
+      sward, or in the shade of trees,&mdash;particularly under tamarinds. Only
+      after you have by experience become well convinced of these facts can you
+      begin to comprehend something general in regard to West Indian conditions
+      of life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      IV.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... Slowly the knowledge comes.... For months the vitality of a strong
+      European (the American constitution bears the test even better) may resist
+      the debilitating climate: perhaps the stranger will flatter himself that,
+      like men habituated to heavy labor in stifling warmth,&mdash;those toiling
+      in mines, in founderies in engine-rooms of ships, at iron-furnaces,&mdash;so
+      he too may become accustomed, without losing his strength to the
+      continuous draining of the pores, to the exhausting force of this strange
+      motionless heat which compels change of clothing many times a day. But
+      gradually he finds that it is not heat alone which is debilitating him,
+      but the weight and septic nature of an atmosphere charged with vapor, with
+      electricity, with unknown agents not less inimical to human existence than
+      propitious to vegetal luxuriance. If he has learned those rules of careful
+      living which served him well in a temperate climate, he will not be likely
+      to abandon them among his new surroundings; and they will help him; no
+      doubt,&mdash;particularly if he be prudent enough to avoid the sea-coast
+      at night, and all exposure to dews or early morning mists, and all severe
+      physical strain. Nevertheless, he becomes slowly conscious of changes
+      extraordinary going on within him,&mdash;in especial, a continual
+      sensation of weight in the brain, daily growing, and compelling frequent
+      repose;&mdash;also a curious heightening of nervous sensibility to
+      atmospheric changes, to tastes and odors, to pleasure and pain. Total loss
+      of appetite soon teaches him to follow the local custom of eating nothing
+      solid before mid-day, and enables him to divine how largely the necessity
+      for caloric enters into the food-consumption of northern races. He becomes
+      abstemious, eats sparingly, and discovers his palate to have become oddly
+      exacting&mdash;finds that certain fruits and drinks are indeed, as the
+      creoles assert, appropriate only to particular physical conditions
+      corresponding with particular hours of the day. Corossole is only to be
+      eaten in the morning, after black coffee;&mdash;vermouth is good to drink
+      only between the hours of nine and half-past ten;&mdash;rum or other
+      strong liquor only before meals or after fatigue;&mdash;claret or wine
+      only during a repast, and then very sparingly,&mdash;for, strangely
+      enough, wine is found to be injurious in a country where stronger liquors
+      are considered among the prime necessaries of existence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And he expected, at the worst, to feel lazy, to lose some physical energy!
+      But this is no mere languor which now begins to oppress him;&mdash;it is a
+      sense of vital exhaustion painful as the misery of convalescence: the
+      least effort provokes a perspiration profuse enough to saturate clothing,
+      and the limbs ache as from muscular overstrain;&mdash;the lightest attire
+      feels almost insupportable;&mdash;the idea of sleeping even under a sheet
+      is torture, for the weight of a silken handkerchief is discomfort. One
+      wishes one could live as a savage,&mdash;naked in the heat. One burns with
+      a thirst impossible to assuage&mdash;feels a desire for stimulants, a
+      sense of difficulty in breathing, occasional quickenings of the heart's
+      action so violent as to alarm. Then comes at last the absolute dread of
+      physical exertion. Some slight relief might be obtained, no doubt, by
+      resigning oneself forthwith to adopt the gentle indolent manners of the
+      white creoles, who do not walk when it is possible to ride, and never ride
+      if it is equally convenient to drive;&mdash;but the northern nature
+      generally refuses to accept this ultimate necessity without a protracted
+      and painful struggle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... Not even then has the stranger fully divined the evil power of this
+      tropical climate, which remodels the characters of races within a couple
+      of generations,&mdash;changing the shape of the skeleton,&mdash;deepening
+      the cavities of the orbits to protect the eye from the flood of light,&mdash;transforming
+      the blood,&mdash;darkening the skin. Following upon the nervous
+      modifications of the first few months come modifications and changes of a
+      yet graver kind;&mdash;with the loss of bodily energy ensues a more than
+      corresponding loss of mental activity and strength. The whole range of
+      thought diminishes, contracts,&mdash;shrinks to that narrowest of circles
+      which surrounds the physical sell, the inner ring of merely material
+      sensation: the memory weakens appallingly;&mdash;the mind operates
+      faintly, slowly, incoherently,&mdash;almost as in dreams. Serious reading,
+      vigorous thinking, become impossible. You doze over the most important
+      project;&mdash;you fall fast asleep over the most fascinating of books.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then comes the vain revolt, the fruitless desperate striving with this
+      occult power which numbs the memory and enchants the will. Against the set
+      resolve to think, to act, to study, there is a hostile rush of unfamiliar
+      pain to the temples, to the eyes, to the nerve centres of the brain; and a
+      great weight is somewhere in the head, always growing heavier: then comes
+      a drowsiness that overpowers and stupefies, like the effect of a narcotic.
+      And this obligation to sleep, to sink into coma, will impose itself just
+      so surely as you venture to attempt any mental work in leisure hours,
+      after the noon repast, or during the heat of the afternoon. Yet at night
+      you can scarcely sleep. Repose is made feverish by a still heat that keeps
+      the skin drenched with thick sweat, or by a perpetual, unaccountable,
+      tingling and prickling of the whole body-surface. With the approach of
+      morning the air grows cooler, and slumber comes,&mdash;a slumber of
+      exhaustion, dreamless and sickly; and perhaps when you would rise with the
+      sun you feel such a dizziness, such a numbness, such a torpor, that only
+      by the most intense effort can you keep your feet for the first five
+      minutes. You experience a sensation that recalls the poet's fancy of
+      death-in-life, or old stories of sudden rising from the grave: it is as
+      though all the electricity of will had ebbed away,&mdash;all the vital
+      force evaporated, in the heat of the night....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      V.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It might be stated, I think, with safety, that for a certain class of
+      invalids the effect of the climate is like a powerful stimulant,&mdash;a
+      tonic medicine which may produce astonishing results within a fixed time,&mdash;but
+      which if taken beyond that time will prove dangerous. After a certain
+      number of months, your first enthusiasm with your new surroundings dies
+      out;&mdash;even Nature ceases to affect the senses in the same way: the <i>frisson</i>
+      ceases to come to you. Meanwhile you may have striven to become as much as
+      possible a part of the exotic life into which you have entered,&mdash;may
+      have adopted its customs, learned its language. But you cannot mix with it
+      mentally;&mdash;You circulate only as an oil-drop in its current. You
+      still feel yourself alone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The very longest West Indian day is but twelve hours fifty-six minutes;&mdash;perhaps
+      your first dissatisfaction was evoked by the brevity of the days. There is
+      no twilight whatever; and all activity ceases with sundown: there is no
+      going outside of the city after dark, because of snakes;&mdash;club life
+      here ends at the hour it only begins abroad;&mdash;there is no visiting of
+      evenings; after the seven o'clock dinner, everyone prepares to retire. And
+      the foreigner, accustomed to make evening a time for social intercourse,
+      finds no small difficulty in resigning himself to this habit of early
+      retiring. The natural activity of a European or American mind requires
+      some intellectual exercise,&mdash;at least some interchange of ideas with
+      sympathetic natures; the hours during the suspension of business after
+      noon, or those following the closing of offices at sunset, are the only
+      ones in which busy men may find time for such relaxation; and these very
+      hours have been always devoted to restorative sleep by the native
+      population ever since the colony began. Naturally, therefore, the stranger
+      dreads the coming of the darkness, the inevitable isolation of long
+      sleepless hours. And if he seek those solaces for loneliness which he was
+      wont to seek at home,&mdash;reading, study,&mdash;he is made to
+      comprehend, as never before, what the absence of all libraries, lack of
+      books, inaccessibility of all reading-matter, means for the man of the
+      nineteenth century. One must send abroad to obtain even a review, and wait
+      months for its coming. And this mental starvation gnaws at the brain more
+      and more as one feels less inclination and less capacity for effort, and
+      as that single enjoyment, which at first rendered a man indifferent to
+      other pleasures,&mdash;the delight of being alone with tropical Nature,&mdash;becomes
+      more difficult to indulge. When lethargy has totally mastered habit and
+      purpose, and you must at last confess yourself resigned to view Nature
+      from your chamber, or at best from a carriage window,&mdash;then, indeed,
+      the want of all literature proves a positive torture. It is not a
+      consolation to discover that you are an almost solitary sufferer,&mdash;from
+      climate as well as from mental hunger. With amazement and envy you see
+      young girls passing to walk right across the island and back before
+      sunset, under burdens difficult for a strong man to lift to his shoulder;&mdash;the
+      same journey on horseback would now weary you for days. You wonder of what
+      flesh and blood can these people be made,&mdash;what wonderful vitality
+      lies in those slender woman-bodies, which, under the terrible sun, and
+      despite their astounding expenditure of force, remain cool to the sight
+      and touch as bodies of lizards and serpents! And contrasting this savage
+      strength with your own weakness, you begin to understand better how mighty
+      the working of those powers which temper races and shape race habits in
+      accordance with environment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... Ultimately, if destined for acclimatation, you will cease to suffer
+      from these special conditions; but ere this can be, a long period of
+      nervous irritability must be endured; and fevers must thin the blood,
+      soften the muscles, transform the Northern tint of health to a dead brown.
+      You will have to learn that intellectual pursuits can be persisted in only
+      at risk of life;&mdash;that in this part of the world there is nothing to
+      do but to plant cane and cocoa, and make rum, and cultivate tobacco,&mdash;or
+      open a magazine for the sale of Madras handkerchiefs and <i>foulards</i>,&mdash;and
+      eat, drink, sleep, perspire. You will understand why the tropics settled
+      by European races produce no sciences, arts, or literature,&mdash;why the
+      habits and the thoughts of other centuries still prevail where Time itself
+      moves slowly as though enfeebled by the heat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And with the compulsory indolence of your life, the long exacerbation of
+      the nervous system, will come the first pain of nostalgia,&mdash;the first
+      weariness of the tropics. It is not that Nature can become ever less
+      lovely to your sight; but that the tantalization of her dangerous beauty,
+      which you may enjoy only at a safe distance, exasperates at last. The
+      colors that at first bewitched will vex your eyes by their violence;&mdash;the
+      creole life that appeared so simple, so gentle, will reveal dulnesses and
+      discomforts undreamed of. You will ask yourself how much longer can you
+      endure the prodigious light, and the furnace heat of blinding blue days,
+      and the void misery of sleepless nights, and the curse of insects, and the
+      sound of the mandibles of enormous roaches devouring the few books in your
+      possession. You will grow weary of the grace of the palms, of the gemmy
+      colors of the ever-clouded peaks, of the sight of the high woods made
+      impenetrable by lianas and vines and serpents. You will weary even of the
+      tepid sea, because to enjoy it as a swimmer you must rise and go out at
+      hours while the morning air is still chill and heavy with miasma;&mdash;you
+      will weary, above all, of tropic fruits, and feel that you would gladly
+      pay a hundred francs for the momentary pleasure of biting into one rosy
+      juicy Northern apple.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      VI.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;But if you believe this disillusion perpetual,&mdash;if you fancy
+      the old bewitchment has spent all its force upon you,&mdash;you do not
+      know this Nature. She is not done with you yet: she has only torpefied
+      your energies a little. Of your willingness to obey her, she takes no
+      cognizance;&mdash;she ignores human purposes, knows only molecules and
+      their combinations; and the blind blood in your veins,&mdash;thick with
+      Northern heat and habit,&mdash;is still in dumb desperate rebellion
+      against her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Perhaps she will quell this revolt forever,&mdash;thus:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One day, in the second hour of the afternoon, a few moments after leaving
+      home, there will come to you a sensation such as you have never known
+      before: a sudden weird fear of the light.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It seems to you that the blue sky-fire is burning down into your brain,&mdash;that
+      the flare of the white pavements and yellow walls is piercing somehow into
+      your life,&mdash;creating an unfamiliar mental confusion,&mdash;blurring
+      out thought.... Is the whole world taking fire?... The flaming azure of
+      the sea dazzles and pains like a crucible-glow;&mdash;the green of the
+      mornes flickers and blazes in some amazing way.... Then dizziness
+      inexpressible: you grope with eyes shut fast&mdash;afraid to open them
+      again in that stupefying torrefaction,&mdash;moving automatically,&mdash;vaguely
+      knowing you must get out of the flaring and flashing,&mdash;somewhere,
+      anywhere away from the white wrath of the sun, and the green fire of the
+      hills, and the monstrous color of the sea.... Then, remembering nothing,
+      you find yourself in bed,&mdash;with an insupportable sense of weight at
+      the back of the head,&mdash;a pulse beating furiously,&mdash;and a strange
+      sharp pain at intervals stinging through your eyes.... And the pain grows,
+      expands,&mdash;fills all the skull,&mdash;forces you to cry out, replaces
+      all other sensations except a weak consciousness, vanishing and recurring,
+      that you are very sick, more sick than ever before in all your life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... And with the tedious ebbing of the long fierce fever, all the heat
+      seems to pass from your veins. You can no longer imagine, as before, that
+      it would be delicious to die of cold;&mdash;you shiver even with all the
+      windows closed;&mdash;you feel currents of air,&mdash;imperceptible to
+      nerves in a natural condition,&mdash;which shock like a dash of cold
+      water, whenever doors are opened and closed; the very moisture upon your
+      forehead is icy. What you now wish for are stimulants and warmth. Your
+      blood has been changed;&mdash;tropic Nature has been good to you: she is
+      preparing you to dwell with her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... Gradually, under the kind nursing of those colored people,&mdash;among
+      whom, as a stranger, your lot will probably be cast,&mdash;you recover
+      strength; and perhaps it will seem to you that the pain of lying a while
+      in the Shadow of Death is more than compensated by this rare and touching
+      experience of human goodness. How tirelessly watchful,&mdash;how naïvely
+      sympathetic,&mdash;how utterly self-sacrificing these women-natures are!
+      Patiently, through weeks of stifling days and sleepless nights,&mdash;cruelly
+      unnatural to them, for their life is in the open air,&mdash;they struggle
+      to save without one murmur of fatigue, without heed of their most ordinary
+      physical wants, without a thought of recompense;&mdash;trusting to their
+      own skill when the physician abandons hope,&mdash;climbing to the woods
+      for herbs when medicines prove, without avail. The dream of angels holds
+      nothing sweeter than this reality of woman's tenderness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And simultaneously with the return of force, you may wonder whether this
+      sickness has not sharpened your senses in some extraordinary way,&mdash;especially
+      hearing, sight, and smell. Once well enough to be removed without danger,
+      you will be taken up into the mountains somewhere,&mdash;for change of
+      air; and there it will seem to you, perhaps, that never before did you
+      feel so acutely the pleasure of perfumes,&mdash;of color-tones,&mdash;of
+      the timbre of voices. You have simply been acclimated.... And suddenly the
+      old fascination of tropic Nature seizes you again,&mdash;more strongly
+      than in the first days;&mdash;the <i>frisson</i> of delight returns; the
+      joy of it thrills through all your blood,&mdash;making a great fulness at
+      your heart as of unutterable desire to give thanks....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      VII.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... My friend Felicien had come to the colony fresh from the region of the
+      Vosges, with the muscles and energies of a mountaineer, and cheeks pink as
+      a French country-girl's;&mdash;he had never seemed to me physically
+      adapted for acclimation; and I feared much for him on hearing of his first
+      serious illness. Then the news of his convalescence came to me as a
+      grateful surprise. But I did not feel reassured by his appearance the
+      first evening I called at the little house to which he had been removed,
+      on the brow of a green height overlooking the town. I found him seated in
+      a <i>berceuse</i> on the veranda. How wan he was, and how spectral his
+      smile of welcome,&mdash;as he held out to me a hand that seemed all of
+      bone!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... We chatted there a while. It had been one of those tropic days whose
+      charm interpenetrates and blends with all the subtler life of sensation,
+      and becomes a luminous part of it forever,&mdash;steeping all after-dreams
+      of ideal peace in supernal glory of color,&mdash;transfiguring all fancies
+      of the pure joy of being. Azure to the sea-line the sky had remained since
+      morning; and the trade-wind, warm as a caress, never brought even one
+      gauzy cloud to veil the naked beauty of the peaks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the sun was yellowing,&mdash;as only over the tropics he yellows to
+      his death. Lilac tones slowly spread through sea and heaven from the west;&mdash;mornes
+      facing the light began to take wondrous glowing color,&mdash;a tone of
+      green so fiery that it looked as though all the rich sap of their woods
+      were phosphorescing. Shadows blued;&mdash;far peaks took tinting that
+      scarcely seemed of earth,&mdash;iridescent violets and purples
+      interchanging through vapor of gold.... Such the colors of the <i>carangue</i>,
+      when the beautiful tropic fish is turned in the light, and its gem-greens
+      shift to rich azure and prism-purple.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Reclining in our chairs, we watched the strange splendor from the veranda
+      of the little cottage,&mdash;saw the peaked land slowly steep itself in
+      the aureate glow,&mdash;the changing color of the verdured mornes, and of
+      the sweep of circling sea. Tiny birds, bosomed with fire, were shooting by
+      in long curves, like embers flung by invisible hands. From far below, the
+      murmur of the city rose to us,&mdash;a stormy hum. So motionless we
+      remained that the green and gray lizards were putting out their heads from
+      behind the columns of the veranda to stare at us,&mdash;as if wondering
+      whether we were really alive. I turned my head suddenly to look at two
+      queer butterflies; and all the lizards hid themselves again. <i>Papillon-lanmò</i>,&mdash;Death's
+      butterflies,&mdash;these were called in the speech of the people: their
+      broad wings were black like blackest velvet;&mdash;as they fluttered
+      against the yellow light, they looked like silhouettes of butterflies.
+      Always through my memory of that wondrous evening,&mdash;when I little
+      thought I was seeing my friend's face for the last time,&mdash;there
+      slowly passes the black palpitation of those wings....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... I had been chatting with Felicien about various things which I thought
+      might have a cheerful interest for him; and more than once I had been
+      happy to see him smile.... But our converse waned. The ever-magnifying
+      splendor before us had been mesmerizing our senses,&mdash;slowly
+      overpowering our wills with the amazement of its beauty. Then, as the
+      sun's disk&mdash;enormous,&mdash;blinding gold&mdash;touched the lilac
+      flood, and the stupendous orange glow flamed up to the very zenith, we
+      found ourselyes awed at last into silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The orange in the west deepened into vermilion. Softly and very swiftly
+      night rose like an indigo exhalation from the land,&mdash;filling the
+      valleys, flooding the gorges, blackening the woods, leaving only the
+      points of the peaks a while to catch the crimson glow. Forests and fields
+      began to utter a rushing sound as of torrents, always deepening,&mdash;made
+      up of the instrumentation and the voices of numberless little beings:
+      clangings as of hammered iron, ringings as of dropping silver upon a
+      stone, the dry bleatings of the <i>cabritt-bois</i>, and the chirruping of
+      tree-frogs, and the <i>k-i-i-i-i-i-i</i> of crickets. Immense trembling
+      sparks began to rise and fall among the shadows,&mdash;twinkling out and
+      disappearing all mysteriously: these were the fire-flies awakening. Then
+      about the branches of the <i>bois-canon</i> black shapes began to hover,
+      which were not birds&mdash;shapes flitting processionally without any
+      noise; each one in turn resting a moment as to nibble something at the end
+      of a bough;&mdash;then yielding place to another, and circling away, to
+      return again from the other side...the <i>guimbos</i>, the great bats.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But we were silent, with the emotion of sunset still upon us: that ghostly
+      emotion which is the transmitted experience of a race,&mdash;the sum of
+      ancestral experiences innumerable,&mdash;the mingled joy and pain of a
+      million years.... Suddenly a sweet voice pierced the stillness,&mdash;pleading:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"<i>Pa combiné, chè!&mdash;pa combiné conm ça!</i>" (Do not think,
+      dear!&mdash;do not think like that!)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... Only less beautiful than the sunset she seemed, this slender
+      half-breed, who had come all unperceived behind us, treading soundlessly
+      with her slim bare feet.... "And you, Missié", she said to me, in a tone
+      of gentle reproach;&mdash;"you are his friend! why do you let him think?
+      It is thinking that will prevent him getting well."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Combiné</i> in creole signifies to think intently, and therefore to be
+      unhappy,&mdash;because, with this artless race, as with children, to think
+      intensely about anything is possible only under great stress of suffering.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"<i>Pa combiné,&mdash;non, chè</i>," she repeated, plaintively,
+      stroking Felicien's hair. "It is thinking that makes us old.... And it is
+      time to bid your friend good-night."...
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"She is so good," said Felicien, smiling to make her pleased;&mdash;"I
+      could never tell you how good. But she does not understand. She believes I
+      suffer if I am silent. She is contented only when she sees me laugh; and
+      so she will tell me creole stories by the hour to keep me amused, as if I
+      were a child."...
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he spoke she slipped an arm about his neck.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"<i>Doudoux</i>," she persisted;&mdash;and her voice was a dove's
+      coo,&mdash;"<i>Si ou ainmein moin, pa combiné-non!</i>"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And in her strange exotic beauty, her savage grace, her supple caress, the
+      velvet witchery of her eyes,&mdash;it seemed to me that I beheld a
+      something imaged, not of herself, nor of the moment only,&mdash;a
+      something weirdly sensuous: the Spirit of tropic Nature made golden flesh,
+      and murmuring to each lured wanderer:&mdash;"<i>If thou wouldst love me,
+      do not think</i>"...
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0013" id="link2HCH0013">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XIII. &mdash; YÉ.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Almost every night, just before bedtime, I hear some group of children in
+      the street telling stories to each other. Stories, enigmas or <i>tim-tim</i>,
+      and songs, and round games, are the joy of child-life here,&mdash;whether
+      rich or poor. I am particularly fond of listening to the stories,&mdash;which
+      seem to me the oddest stories I ever heard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I succeeded in getting several dictated to me, so that I could write them;&mdash;others
+      were written for me by creole friends, with better success. To obtain them
+      in all their original simplicity and naive humor of detail, one should be
+      able to write them down in short-hand as fast as they are related: they
+      lose greatly in the slow process of dictation. The simple mind of the
+      native story-teller, child or adult, is seriously tried by the inevitable
+      interruptions and restraints of the dictation method;&mdash;the reciter
+      loses spirit, becomes soon weary, and purposely shortens the narrative to
+      finish the task as soon as possible. It seems painful to such a one to
+      repeat a phrase more than once,&mdash;at least in the same way; while
+      frequent questioning may irritate the most good-natured in a degree that
+      shows how painful to the untrained brain may be the exercise of memory and
+      steady control of imagination required for continuous dictation. By
+      patience, however, I succeeded in obtaining many curiosities of oral
+      literature,&mdash;representing a group of stories which, whatever their
+      primal origin, have been so changed by local thought and coloring as to
+      form a distinctively Martinique folk-tale circle. Among them are several
+      especially popular with the children of my neighborhood; and I notice that
+      almost every narrator embellishes the original plot with details of his
+      own, which he varies at pleasure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I submit a free rendering of one of these tales,&mdash;the history of Yé
+      and the Devil. The whole story of Yé would form a large book,&mdash;so
+      numerous the list of his adventures; and this adventure seems to me the
+      most characteristic of all. Yé is the most curious figure in Martinique
+      folk-lore. Yé is the typical Bitaco,&mdash;or mountain negro of the lazy
+      kind,&mdash;the country black whom city blacks love to poke fun at. As for
+      the Devil of Martinique folk-lore, he resembles the <i>travailleur</i> at
+      a distance; but when you get dangerously near him, you find that he has
+      red eyes and red hair, and two little horns under his <i>chapeau-Bacouè</i>,
+      and feet like an ape, and fire in his throat. <i>Y ka sam yon gouôs, gouôs
+      macaque</i>....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      II.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Ça qui pa té connaitt Yé?</i>... Who is there in all Martinique who
+      never heard of Yé? Everybody used to know the old rascal. He had every
+      fault under the sun;&mdash;he was the laziest negro in the whole island;
+      he was the biggest glutton in the whole world. He had an amazing number <a
+      href="#linknote-52" name="linknoteref-52" id="linknoteref-52">[52]</a> of
+      children; and they were most of the time all half dead for hunger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Well, one day Yé went out to the woods to look for something to eat. And
+      he walked through the woods nearly all day, till he became ever so tired;
+      but he could not find anything to eat. He was just going to give up the
+      search, when he heard a queer crackling noise,&mdash;at no great distance.
+      He went to see what it was,&mdash;hiding himself behind the big trees as
+      he got nearer to it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All at once he came to a little hollow in the woods, and saw a great fire
+      burning there,&mdash;and he saw a Devil sitting beside the fire. The Devil
+      was roasting a great heap of snails; and the sound Yé had heard was the
+      crackling of the snail-shells. The Devil seemed to be very old;&mdash;he
+      was sitting on the trunk of a bread-fruit tree; and Yé took a good long
+      look at him. After Yé had watched him for a while, Yé found out that the
+      old Devil was quite blind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;The Devil had a big calabash in his hand full of <i>feroce</i>,&mdash;that
+      is to say, boiled salt codfish and manioc flour, with ever so many
+      pimentos (<i>épi en pile piment</i>),&mdash;just what negroes like Yé are
+      most fond of. And the Devil seemed to be very hungry; and the food was
+      going so fast down his throat that it made Yé unhappy to see it
+      disappearing. It made him so unhappy that he felt at last he could not
+      resist the temptation to steal from the old blind Devil. He crept quite
+      close up to the Devil without making any noise, and began to rob him.
+      Every time the Devil would lift his hand to his mouth, Yé would slip his
+      own fingers into the calabash, and snatch a piece. The old Devil did not
+      even look puzzled;&mdash;he did not seem to know anything; and Yé thought
+      to himself that the old Devil was a great fool. He began to get more and
+      more courage;&mdash;he took bigger and bigger handfuls out of the
+      calabash;&mdash;he ate even faster than the Devil could eat. At last there
+      was only one little bit left in the calabash. Yé put out his hand to take
+      it,&mdash;and all of a sudden the Devil made a grab at Yé's hand and
+      caught it! Yé was so frightened he could not even cry out, <i>Aïe-yaïe</i>.
+      The Devil finished the last morsel, threw down the calabash, and said to
+      Yé in a terrible voice:&mdash;"<i>Atò, saff!&mdash;ou c'est ta moin!</i>"
+      (I've got you now, you glutton;&mdash;you belong to me!) Then he jumped on
+      Yé's back, like a great ape, and twisted his legs round Yé's neck, and
+      cried out:&mdash;-"Carry me to your cabin,&mdash;and walk fast!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... When Yé's poor children saw him coming, they wondered what their papa
+      was carrying on his back. They thought it might be a sack of bread or
+      vegetables or perhaps a <i>régime</i> of bananas,&mdash;for it was getting
+      dark, and they could not see well. They laughed and showed their teeth and
+      danced and screamed: "Here's papa coming with something to eat!&mdash;papa's
+      coming with something to eat!" But when Yé had got near enough for them to
+      see what he was carrying, they yelled and ran away to hide themselves. As
+      for the poor mother, she could only hold up her two hands for horror.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When they got into the cabin the Devil pointed to a corner, and said to
+      Yé:&mdash;"Put me down there!" Yé put him down. The Devil sat there in the
+      corner and never moved or spoke all that evening and all that night. He
+      seemed to be a very quiet Devil indeed. The children began to look at him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But at breakfast-time, when the poor mother had managed to procure
+      something for the children to eat,&mdash;just some bread-fruit and yams,&mdash;the
+      old Devil suddenly rose up from his corner and muttered:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"<i>Manman mò!&mdash;papa mò!&mdash;touttt yche mò!</i>" (Mamma
+      dead!&mdash;papa dead!&mdash;all the children dead!)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And he blew his breath on them, and they all fell down stiff as if they
+      were dead&mdash;<i>raidi-cadave!</i>. Then the Devil ate up everything
+      there was on the table. When he was done, he filled the pots and dishes
+      with dirt, and blew his breath again on Yé and all the family, and
+      muttered:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"<i>Toutt moune lévé!</i>" (Everybody get up!)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then they all got up. Then he pointed to all the plates and dishes full of
+      dirt, and said to them:&mdash;*
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      [* In the original:&mdash;"Y té ka monté assous tabe-là, épi y té ka fai
+      caca adans toutt plats-à, adans toutt zassiett-là."]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"<i>Gobe-moin ça!</i>"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And they had to gobble it all up, as he told them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After that it was no use trying to eat anything. Every time anything was
+      cooked, the Devil would do the same thing. It was thus the next day, and
+      the next, and the day after, and so every day for a long, long time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yé did not know what to do; but his wife said she did. If she was only a
+      man, she would soon get rid of that Devil. "Yé," she insisted, "go and see
+      the Bon-Dié [the Good-God], and ask him what to do. I would go myself if I
+      could; but women are not strong enough to climb the great morne."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So Yé started off very, very early one morning, before the peep of day,
+      and began to climb the Montagne Pelée. He climbed and walked, and walked
+      and climbed, until he got at last to the top of the Morne de la Croix.*
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      [*A peaklet rising above the verge of the ancient crater now filled with
+      water.]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he knocked at the sky as loud as he could till the Good-God put his
+      head out of a cloud and asked him what he wanted:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"<i>Eh bien!&mdash;ça ou ni, Yé fa ou lè?</i>"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Yé had recounted his troubles, the Good-God said:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"<i>Pauv ma pauv!</i> I knew it all before you came, Yé. I can tell
+      you what to do; but I am afraid it will be no use&mdash;you will never be
+      able to do it! Your gluttony is going to be the ruin of you, poor Yé!
+      Still, you can try. Now listen well to what I am going to tell you. First
+      of all, you must not eat anything before you get home. Then when your wife
+      has the children's dinner ready, and you see the Devil getting up, you
+      must cry out:&mdash;'<i>Tam ni pou tam ni bé!</i>' Then the Devil will
+      drop down dead. Don't forget not to eat anything&mdash;<i>ou tanne?</i>"...
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yé promised to remember all he was told, and not to eat anything on his
+      way down;&mdash;then he said good-bye to the Bon-Dié (<i>bien conm y faut</i>),
+      and started. All the way he kept repeating the words the Good-God had told
+      him: "<i>Tam ni pou tam ni bé!"&mdash;"tam ni pou tam ni bé!</i>"&mdash;over
+      and over again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;But before reaching home he had to cross a little stream; and on
+      both banks he saw wild guava-bushes growing, with plenty of sour guavas
+      upon them;&mdash;for it was not yet time for guavas to be ripe. Poor Yé
+      was hungry! He did all he could to resist the temptation, but it proved
+      too much for him. He broke all his promises to the Bon-Dié: he ate and ate
+      and ate till there were no more guavas left,&mdash;and then he began to
+      eat <i>zicaques</i> and green plums, and all sorts of nasty sour things,
+      till he could not eat any more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;By the time he got to the cabin his teeth were so on edge that he
+      could scarcely speak distinctly enough to tell his wife to get the supper
+      ready.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And so while everybody was happy, thinking that they were going to be
+      freed from their trouble, Yé was really in no condition to do anything.
+      The moment the supper was ready, the Devil got up from his corner as
+      usual, and approached the table. Then Yé tried to speak; but his teeth
+      were so on edge that instead of saying,&mdash;"<i>Tam ni pou tam ni bé</i>,"
+      he could only stammer out:&mdash;-"<i>Anni toqué Diabe-là cagnan</i>."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This had no effect on the Devil at all: he seemed to be used to it! He
+      blew his breath on them all, sent them to sleep, ate up all the supper,
+      filled the empty dishes with filth, awoke Yé and his family, and ordered
+      them as usual;&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"<i>Gobe-moin ça!</i>" And they had to gobble it up,&mdash;every
+      bit of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The family nearly died of hunger and disgust. Twice more Yé climbed the
+      Montagne Pelée; twice more he climbed the Morne de la Croix; twice more he
+      disturbed the poor Bon-Dié, all for nothing!&mdash;since each time on his
+      way down he would fill his paunch with all sorts of nasty sour things, so
+      that he could not speak right. The Devil remained in the house night and
+      day;&mdash;the poor mother threw herself down on the ground, and pulled
+      out her hair,&mdash;so unhappy she was!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But luckily for the poor woman, she had one child as cunning as a rat,&mdash;*
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     [* The great field-rat of Martinique is, in Martinique folk-
+     lore, the symbol of all cunning, and probably merits its
+     reputation.]
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      a boy called Ti Fonté (little Impudent), who bore his name well. When he
+      saw his mother crying so much, he said to her:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"Mamma, send papa just once more to see the Good-God: I know
+      something to do!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The mother knew how cunning her boy was: she felt sure he meant something
+      by his words;&mdash;she sent old Yé for the last time to see the Bon-Dié.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yé used always to wear one of those big long coats they call <i>lavalasses</i>;&mdash;whether
+      it was hot or cool, wet or dry, he never went out without it. There were
+      two very big pockets in it&mdash;one on each side. When Ti Fonté saw his
+      father getting ready to go, he jumped <i>floup!</i> into one of the
+      pockets and hid himself there. Yé climbed all the way to the top of the
+      Morne de la Croix without suspecting anything. When he got there the
+      little boy put one of his ears out of Yé's pocket,&mdash;so as to hear
+      everything the Good-God would say.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This time he was very angry,&mdash;the Bon-Dié: he spoke very crossly; he
+      scolded Yé a great deal. But he was so kind for all that,&mdash;he was so
+      generous to good-for-nothing Yé, that he took the pains to repeat the
+      words over and over again for him:&mdash;"<i>Tam ni pou tam ni bé</i>."...
+      And this time the Bon-Dié was not talking to no purpose: there was
+      somebody there well able to remember what he said. Ti Fonté made the most
+      of his chance;&mdash;he sharpened that little tongue of his; he thought of
+      his mamma and all his little brothers and sisters dying of hunger down
+      below. As for his father, Yé did as he had done before&mdash;stuffed
+      himself with all the green fruit he could find.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The moment Yé got home and took off his coat, Ti Fonté jumped out, <i>plapp!</i>&mdash;and
+      ran to his mamma, and whispered:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"Mamma, get ready a nice, big dinner!&mdash;we are going to have it
+      all to ourselves to-day: the Good-God didn't talk for nothing,&mdash;I
+      heard every word he said!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the mother got ready a nice <i>calalou-crabe</i>, a <i>tonton-banane</i>,
+      a <i>matété-cirique</i>,&mdash;several calabashes of <i>couss-caye</i>,
+      two <i>régimes-figues</i> (bunches of small bananas),&mdash;in short, a
+      very fine dinner indeed, with a <i>chopine</i> of tafia to wash it all
+      well down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Devil felt as sure of himself that day as he had always felt, and got
+      up the moment everything was ready. But Ti Fonté got up too, and yelled
+      out just as loud as he could:&mdash;-"<i>Tam ni pou tam ni bé!</i>"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At once the Devil gave a scream so loud that it could be heard right down
+      to the bottom of hell,&mdash;and he fell dead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meanwhile, Yé, like the old fool he was, kept trying to say what the
+      Bon-Dié had told him, and could only mumble:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"<i>Anni toqué Diabe-là cagnan!</i>"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He would never have been able to do anything;&mdash;and his wife had a
+      great mind just to send him to bed at once, instead of letting him sit
+      down to eat all those nice things. But she was a kind-hearted soul; and so
+      she let Yé stay and eat with the children, though he did not deserve it.
+      And they all ate and ate, and kept on eating and filling themselves until
+      daybreak&mdash;<i>pauv piti!</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But during this time the Devil had begun to smell badly and he had become
+      swollen so big that Yé found he could not move him. Still, they knew they
+      must get him out of the way somehow. The children had eaten so much that
+      they were all full of strength&mdash;<i>yo tè plein lafòce</i>; and Yé got
+      a rope and tied one end round the Devil's foot; and then he and the
+      children&mdash;all pulling together&mdash;managed to drag the Devil out of
+      the cabin and into the bushes, where they left him just like a dead dog.
+      They all felt themselves very happy to be rid of that old Devil.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But some days after old good-for-nothing Yé went off to hunt for birds. He
+      had a whole lot of arrows with him. He suddenly remembered the Devil, and
+      thought he would like to take one more look at him. And he did.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Fouinq!</i> what a sight! The Devil's belly had swelled up like a
+      morne: it was yellow and blue and green,&mdash;looked as if it was going
+      to burst. And Yé, like the old fool he always was, shot an arrow up in the
+      air, so that it fell down and stuck into the Devil's belly. Then he wanted
+      to get the arrow, and he climbed up on the Devil, and pulled and pulled
+      till he got the arrow out. Then he put the point of the arrow to his nose,&mdash;just
+      to see what sort of a smell dead Devils had.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The moment he did that, his nose swelled up as big as the refinery-pot of
+      a sugar-plantation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yé could scarcely walk for the weight of his nose; but he had to go and
+      see the Bon-Dié again. The Bon-Dié said to him:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"Ah! Yé, my poor Yé, you will live and die a fool!&mdash;you are
+      certainly the biggest fool in the whole world!... Still, I must try to do
+      something for you;&mdash;I'll help you anyhow to get rid of that nose!...
+      I'll tell you how to do it. To-morrow morning, very early, get up and take
+      a big <i>taya</i> [whip], and beat all the bushes well, and drive all the
+      birds to the Roche de la Caravelle. Then you must tell them that I, the
+      Bon-Dié, want them to take off their bills and feathers, and take a good
+      bath in the sea. While they are bathing, you can choose a nose for
+      yourself out of the heap of bills there."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Poor Yé did just as the Good-God told him; and while the birds were
+      bathing, he picked out a nose for himself from the heap of beaks,&mdash;and
+      left his own refinery-pot in its place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The nose he took was the nose of the <i>coulivicou</i>.* And that is why
+      the <i>coulivicou</i> always looks so much ashamed of himself even to this
+      day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      [* The <i>coulivicou</i>, or "Colin Vicou," is a Martinique bird with a
+      long meagre body, and an enormous bill. It has a very tristful and
+      taciturn expression.... <i>Maig conm yon coulivicou</i>, "thin as a
+      coulivicou," is a popular comparison for the appearance of anybody much
+      reduced by sickness.]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      III.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... Poor Yé!&mdash;you still live for me only too vividly outside of those
+      strange folk-tales of eating and of drinking which so cruelly reveal the
+      long slave-hunger of your race. For I have seen you cutting cane on peak
+      slopes above the clouds;&mdash;I have seen you climbing from plantation to
+      plantation with your cutlass in your hand, watching for snakes as you
+      wander to look for work, when starvation forces you to obey a master,
+      though born with the resentment of centuries against all masters;&mdash;I
+      have seen you prefer to carry two hundred-weight of bananas twenty miles
+      to market, rather than labor in the fields;&mdash;I have seen you
+      ascending through serpent-swarming woods to some dead crater to find a
+      cabbage-palm,&mdash;and always hungry,&mdash;and always shiftless! And you
+      are still a great fool, poor Yé!&mdash;and you have still your swarm of
+      children,&mdash;your <i>rafale yche</i>,&mdash;and they are famished; for
+      you have taken into your <i>ajoupa</i> a Devil who devours even more than
+      you can earn,&mdash;even your heart, and your splendid muscles, and your
+      poor artless brain,&mdash;the Devil Tafia!... And there is no Bon-Dié to
+      help you rid yourself of him now: for the only Bon-Dié you ever really
+      had, your old creole master, cannot care for you any more, and you cannot
+      care for yourself. Mercilessly moral, the will of this enlightened century
+      has abolished forever that patriarchal power which brought you up strong
+      and healthy on scanty fare, and scourged you into its own idea of
+      righteousness, yet kept you innocent as a child of the law of the struggle
+      for life. But you feel that law now;&mdash;you are a citizen of the
+      Republic! you are free to vote, and free to work, and free to starve if
+      you prefer it, and free to do evil and suffer for it;&mdash;and this new
+      knowledge stupefies you so that you have almost forgotten how to laugh!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0014" id="link2HCH0014">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XIV &mdash; LYS
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is only half-past four o'clock: there is the faintest blue light of
+      beginning day,&mdash;and little Victoire already stands at the bedside
+      with my wakening cup of hot black fragrant coffee. What! so early?... Then
+      with a sudden heart-start I remember this is my last West Indian morning.
+      And the child&mdash;her large timid eyes all gently luminous&mdash;is
+      pressing something into my hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Two vanilla beans wrapped in a morsel of banana-leaf,&mdash;her poor
+      little farewell gift!...
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Other trifling souvenirs are already packed away. Almost everybody that
+      knows me has given me something. Manm-Robert brought me a tiny packet of
+      orange-seeds,&mdash;seeds of a "gift-orange": so long as I can keep these
+      in my vest-pocket I will never be without money. Cyrillia brought me a
+      package of <i>bouts</i>, and a pretty box of French matches, warranted
+      inextinguishable by wind. Azaline, the blanchisseuse, sent me a little
+      pocket looking-glass. Cerbonnie, the <i>màchanne</i>, left a little cup of
+      guava jelly for me last night. Mimi&mdash;dear child!&mdash;brought me a
+      little paper dog! It is her best toy; but those gentle black eyes would
+      stream with tears if I dared to refuse it.... Oh, Mimi! what am I to do
+      with a little paper dog? And what am I to do with the chocolate-sticks and
+      the cocoanuts and all the sugar-cane and all the cinnamon-apples?...
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      II.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... Twenty minutes past five by the clock of the Bourse. The hill shadows
+      are shrinking back from the shore;&mdash;the long wharves reach out yellow
+      into the sun;&mdash;the tamarinds of the Place Bertin, and the pharos for
+      half its height, and the red-tiled roofs along the bay are catching the
+      glow. Then, over the light-house&mdash;on the outermost line depending
+      from the southern yard-arm of the semaphore&mdash;a big black ball
+      suddenly runs up like a spider climbing its own thread.... <i>Steamer from
+      the South!</i> The packet has been sighted. And I have not yet been able
+      to pack away into a specially purchased wooden box all the fruits and
+      vegetable curiosities and odd little presents sent to me. If Radice the
+      boatman had not come to help me, I should never be able to get ready; for
+      the work of packing is being continually interrupted by friends and
+      acquaintances coming to say good-bye. Manm-Robert brings to see me a
+      pretty young girl&mdash;very fair, with a violet foulard twisted about her
+      blonde head. It is little Basilique, who is going to make her <i>pouémiè
+      communion</i>. So I kiss her, according to the old colonial custom, once
+      on each downy cheek;&mdash;and she is to pray to <i>Notre Dame du Bon Port</i>
+      that the ship shall bear me safely to far-away New York.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And even then the steamer's cannon-call shakes over the town and into the
+      hills behind us, which answer with all the thunder of their phantom
+      artillery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      III.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... There is a young white lady, accompanied by an aged negress, already
+      waiting on the south wharf for the boat;&mdash;evidently she is to be one
+      of my fellow-passengers. Quite a pleasing presence: slight graceful
+      figure,&mdash;a face not precisely pretty, but delicate and sensitive,
+      with the odd charm of violet eyes under black eye-brows....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A friend who comes to see me off tells me all about her. Mademoiselle Lys
+      is going to New York to be a governess,&mdash;to leave her native island
+      forever. A story sad enough, though not more so than that of many a gentle
+      creole girl. And she is going all alone, for I see her bidding good-bye to
+      old Titine,&mdash;kissing her. "<i>Adié encò, chè;&mdash;Bon-Dié ké béni
+      ou!</i>" sobs the poor servant, with tears streaming down her kind black
+      face. She takes off her blue shoulder-kerchief, and waves it as the boat
+      recedes from the wooden steps.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... Fifteen minutes later, Mademoiselle and I find ourselves under the
+      awnings shading the saloon-deck of the <i>Guadeloupe</i>. There are at
+      least fifty passengers,&mdash;many resting in chairs, lazy-looking
+      Demerara chairs with arm-supports immensely lengthened so as to form rests
+      for the lower limbs. Overhead, suspended from the awning-frames, are two
+      tin cages containing parrots;&mdash;and I see two little greenish monkeys,
+      no bigger than squirrels, tied to the wheel-hatch,&mdash;two <i>sakiwinkis</i>.
+      These are from the forests of British Guiana. They keep up a continual
+      thin sharp twittering, like birds,&mdash;all the while circling,
+      ascending, descending, retreating or advancing to the limit of the little
+      ropes attaching them to the hatch.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The <i>Guadeloupe</i> has seven hundred packages to deliver at St. Pierre:
+      we have ample time,&mdash;Mademoiselle Violet-Eyes and I,&mdash;to take
+      one last look at the "Pays des Revenants."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I wonder what her thoughts are, feeling a singular sympathy for her,&mdash;for
+      I am in that sympathetic mood which the natural emotion of leaving places
+      and persons one has become fond of, is apt to inspire. And now at the
+      moment of my going,&mdash;when I seem to understand as never before the
+      beauty of that tropic Nature, and the simple charm of the life to which I
+      am bidding farewell,&mdash;the question comes to me: "Does she not love it
+      all as I do,&mdash;nay, even much more, because of that in her own
+      existence which belongs to it?" But as a child of the land, she has seen
+      no other skies,&mdash;fancies, perhaps, there may be brighter ones....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... Nowhere on this earth, Violet-Eyes!&mdash;nowhere beneath this sun!...
+      Oh! the dawnless glory of tropic morning!&mdash;the single sudden leap of
+      the giant light over the purpling of a hundred peaks,&mdash;over the
+      surging of the mornes! And the early breezes from the hills,&mdash;all
+      cool out of the sleep of the forests, and heavy with vegetal odors thick,
+      sappy, savage-sweet!&mdash;and the wild high winds that run ruffling and
+      crumpling through the cane of the mountain slopes in storms of papery
+      sound!&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the mighty dreaming of the woods,&mdash;green-drenched with silent
+      pouring of creepers,&mdash;dashed with the lilac and yellow and rosy foam
+      of liana flowers!&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the eternal azure apparition of the all-circling sea,&mdash;that as
+      you mount the heights ever appears to rise perpendicularly behind you,&mdash;that
+      seems, as you descend, to sink and flatten before you!&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the violet velvet distances of eyening;&mdash;and the swaying of palms
+      against the orange-burning,&mdash;when all the heaven seems filled with
+      vapors of a molten sun!...
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      IV.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      How beautiful the mornes and azure-shadowed hollows in the jewel clearness
+      of this perfect morning! Even Pelée wears only her very lightest
+      head-dress of gauze; and all the wrinklings of her green robe take
+      unfamiliar tenderness of tint from the early sun. All the quaint peaking
+      of the colored town&mdash;sprinkling the sweep of blue bay with red and
+      yellow and white-of-cream&mdash;takes a sharpness in this limpid light as
+      if seen through a diamond lens; and there above the living green of the
+      familiar hills I can see even the faces of the statues&mdash;the black
+      Christ on his white cross, and the White Lady of the Morne d'Orange&mdash;among
+      curving palms.... It is all as though the island were donning its utmost
+      possible loveliness, exerting all its witchery,&mdash;seeking by supremest
+      charm to win back and hold its wandering child,&mdash;Violet-Eyes over
+      there!... She is looking too.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I wonder if she sees the great palms of the Voie du Parnasse,&mdash;curving
+      far away as to bid us adieu, like beautiful bending women. I wonder if
+      they are not trying to say something to her; and I try myself to fancy
+      what that something is:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;"Child, wilt thou indeed abandon all who love thee!... Listen!&mdash;'tis
+      a dim grey land thou goest unto,&mdash;a land of bitter winds,&mdash;a
+      land of strange gods,&mdash;a land of hardness and barrenness, where even
+      Nature may not live through half the cycling of the year! Thou wilt never
+      see us there.... And there, when thou shalt sleep thy long sleep, child&mdash;that
+      land will have no power to lift thee up;&mdash;vast weight of stone will
+      press thee down forever;&mdash;until the heavens be no more thou shalt not
+      awake!... But here, darling, our loving roots would seek for thee, would
+      find thee: thou shouldst live again!&mdash;we lift, like Aztec priests,
+      the blood of hearts to the Sun."...
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      IV.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... It is very hot.... I hold in my hand a Japanese paper-fan with a
+      design upon it of the simplest sort: one jointed green bamboo, with a
+      single spurt of sharp leaves, cutting across a pale blue murky double
+      streak that means the horizon above a sea. That is all. Trivial to my
+      Northern friends this design might seem; but to me it causes a pleasure
+      bordering on pain.... I know so well what the artist means; and they could
+      not know, unless they had seen bamboos,&mdash;and bamboos peculiarly
+      situated. As I look at this fan I know myself descending the Morne
+      Parnasse by the steep winding road; I have the sense of windy heights
+      behind me, and forest on either hand, and before me the blended azure of
+      sky and sea with one bamboo-spray swaying across it at the level of my
+      eyes. Nor is this all;&mdash;I have the every sensation of the very
+      moment,&mdash;the vegetal odors, the mighty tropic light, the 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... And it seems to me now that all which I have tried to write about the
+      <i>Pays des Revenants</i> can only be for others, who have never beheld
+      it,&mdash;vague like the design upon this fan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      VI.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Brrrrrrrrrrr!</i>... The steam-winch is lifting the anchor; and the <i>Guadeloupe</i>
+      trembles through every plank as the iron torrent of her chain-cable
+      rumbles through the hawse-holes.... At last the quivering ceases;&mdash;there
+      is a moment's silence; and Violet-Eyes seems trying to catch a last
+      glimpse of her faithful <i>bonne</i> among the ever-thickening crowd upon
+      the quay.... Ah! there she is&mdash;waving her foulard. Mademoiselle Lys
+      is waving a handkerchief in reply....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly the shock of the farewell gun shakes heavily through our hearts,
+      and over the bay,&mdash;where the tall mornes catch the flapping thunder,
+      and buffet it through all their circle in tremendous mockery. Then there
+      is a great whirling and whispering of whitened water behind the steamer&mdash;another,&mdash;another;
+      and the whirl becomes a foaming stream: the mighty propeller is
+      playing!.... All the blue harbor swings slowly round;&mdash;and the green
+      limbs of the land are pushed out further on the left, shrink back upon the
+      right;&mdash;and the mountains are moving their shoulders. And then the
+      many-tinted façades,&mdash;and the tamarinds of the Place Bertin,&mdash;and
+      the light-house,&mdash;and the long wharves with their throng of turbaned
+      women,&mdash;and the cathedral towers,&mdash;and the fair palms,&mdash;and
+      the statues of the hills,&mdash;all veer, change place, and begin to float
+      away... steadily, very swiftly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0043" id="linkimage-0043">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%">
+      <img src="images/40-Basse-Terre.jpg" alt="Basse-terre St. Kitts. "
+      width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      Farewell, fair city,&mdash;sun-kissed city,&mdash;many-fountained city!&mdash;dear
+      yellow-glimmering streets,&mdash;white pavements learned by heart,&mdash;and
+      faces ever looked for,&mdash;and voices ever loved! Farewell, white towers
+      with your golden-throated bells!&mdash;farewell, green steeps, bathed in
+      the light of summer everlasting!&mdash;craters with your coronets of
+      forest!&mdash;bright mountain paths upwinding 'neath pomp of fern and
+      angelin and feathery bamboo!&mdash;and gracious palms that drowse above
+      the dead! Farewell, soft-shadowing majesty of valleys unfolding to the
+      sun,&mdash;green golden cane-fields ripening to the sea!...
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... The town vanishes. The island slowly becomes a green silhouette. So
+      might Columbus first have seen it from the deck of his caravel,&mdash;nearly
+      four hundred years ago. At this distance there are no more signs of life
+      upon it than when it first became visible to his eyes: yet there are
+      cities there,&mdash;and toiling,&mdash;and suffering,&mdash;and gentle
+      hearts that knew me.... Now it is turning blue,&mdash;the beautiful shape!&mdash;becoming
+      a dream....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      VII.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And Dominica draws nearer,&mdash;sharply massing her hills against the
+      vast light in purple nodes and gibbosities and denticulations. Closer and
+      closer it comes, until the green of its heights breaks through the purple
+      here and there,&mdash;in flashings and ribbings of color. Then it remains
+      as if motionless a while;&mdash;then the green lights go out again,&mdash;and
+      all the shape begins to recede sideward towards the south.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... And what had appeared a pearl-grey cloud in the north slowly reveals
+      itself as another island of mountains,&mdash;hunched and horned and
+      mammiform: Guadeloupe begins to show her double profile. But Martinique is
+      still visible;&mdash;Pelée still peers high over the rim of the south....
+      Day wanes;&mdash;the shadow of the ship lengthens over the flower-blue
+      water. Pelée changes aspect at last,&mdash;turns pale as a ghost,&mdash;but
+      will not fade away....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... The sun begins to sink as he always sinks to his death in the tropics,&mdash;swiftly,&mdash;too
+      swiftly!&mdash;and the glory of him makes golden all the hollow west,&mdash;and
+      bronzes all the flickering wave-backs. But still the gracious phantom of
+      the island will not go,&mdash;softly haunting us through the splendid
+      haze. And always the tropic wind blows soft and warm;&mdash;there is an
+      indescribable caress in it! Perhaps some such breeze, blowing from Indian
+      waters, might have inspired that prophecy of Islam concerning the Wind of
+      the Last Day,&mdash;that "Yellow Wind, softer than silk, balmier than
+      musk,"&mdash;which is to sweep the spirits of the just to God in the great
+      Winnowing of Souls....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then into the indigo night vanishes forever from my eyes the ghost of
+      Pelée; and the moon swings up,&mdash;a young and lazy moon, drowsing upon
+      her back, as in a hammock.... Yet a few nights more, and we shall see this
+      slim young moon erect,&mdash;gliding upright on her way,&mdash;coldly
+      beautiful like a fair Northern girl.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      VIII.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And ever through tepid nights and azure days the <i>Guadeloupe</i> rushes
+      on,&mdash;her wake a river of snow beneath the sun, a torrent of fire
+      beneath the stars,&mdash;steaming straight for the North.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Under the peaking of Montserrat we steam,&mdash;beautiful Montserrat, all
+      softly wrinkled like a robe of greenest velvet fallen from the waist!&mdash;breaking
+      the pretty sleep of Plymouth town behind its screen of palms... young
+      palms, slender and full of grace as creole children are;&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And by tall Nevis, with her trinity of dead craters purpling through
+      ocean-haze;&mdash;by clouded St. Christopher's mountain-giant;&mdash;past
+      ghostly St. Martin's, far-floating in fog of gold, like some dream of the
+      Saint's own Second Summer;&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Past low Antigua's vast blue harbor,&mdash;shark-haunted, bounded about by
+      huddling of little hills, blue and green.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Past Santa Cruz, the "Island of the Holy Cross,"&mdash;all radiant with
+      verdure though well nigh woodless,&mdash;nakedly beautiful in the tropic
+      light as a perfect statue;&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Past the long cerulean reaching and heaping of Porto Rico on the left, and
+      past hopeless St. Thomas on the right,&mdash;old St. Thomas, watching the
+      going and the coming of the commerce that long since abandoned her port,&mdash;watching
+      the ships once humbly solicitous for patronage now turning away to the
+      Spanish rival, like ingrates forsaking a ruined patrician;&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the vapory Vision of, St. John;&mdash;and the grey ghost of Tortola,&mdash;and
+      further, fainter, still more weirdly dim, the aureate phantom of Virgin
+      Gorda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      IX.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then only the enormous double-vision of sky and sea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sky: a cupola of blinding blue, shading down and paling into spectral
+      green at the rim of the world,&mdash;and all fleckless, save at evening.
+      Then, with sunset, comes a light gold-drift of little feathery cloudlets
+      into the West,&mdash;stippling it as with a snow of fire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sea: no flower-tint may now make my comparison for the splendor of its
+      lucent color. It has shifted its hue;&mdash;for we have entered into the
+      Azure Stream: it has more than the magnificence of burning cyanogen....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But, at night, the Cross of the South appears no more. And other changes
+      come, as day succeeds to day,&mdash;a lengthening of the hours of light, a
+      longer lingering of the after-glow,&mdash;a cooling of the wind. Each
+      morning the air seems a little cooler, a little rarer;&mdash;each noon the
+      sky looks a little paler, a little further away&mdash;always heightening,
+      yet also more shadowy, as if its color, receding, were dimmed by distance,&mdash;were
+      coming more faintly down from vaster altitudes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... Mademoiselle is petted like a child by the lady passengers. And every
+      man seems anxious to aid in making her voyage a pleasant one. For much of
+      which, I think, she may thank her eyes!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      X.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A dim morning and chill;&mdash;blank sky and sunless waters: the sombre
+      heaven of the North with colorless horizon rounding in a blind grey
+      sea.... What a sudden weight comes to the heart with the touch of the cold
+      mist, with the spectral melancholy of the dawn;&mdash;and then what
+      foolish though irrepressible yearning for the vanished azure left behind!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... The little monkeys twitter plaintively, trembling in the chilly air.
+      The parrots have nothing to say: they look benumbed, and sit on their
+      perches with eyes closed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... A vagueness begins to shape itself along the verge of the sea, far to
+      port: that long heavy clouding which indicates the approach of land. And
+      from it now floats to us something ghostly and frigid which makes the
+      light filmy and the sea shadowy as a flood of dreams,&mdash;the fog of the
+      Jersey coast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At once the engines slacken their respiration. The <i>Guadeloupe</i>
+      begins to utter her steam-cry of warning,&mdash;regularly at intervals of
+      two minutes,&mdash;for she is now in the track of all the ocean vessels.
+      And from far away we can hear a heavy knelling,&mdash;the booming of some
+      great fog-bell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... All in a white twilight. The place of the horizon has vanished;&mdash;we
+      seem ringed in by a wall of smoke.... Out of this vapory emptiness&mdash;very
+      suddenly&mdash;an enormous steamer rushes, towering like a hill&mdash;passes
+      so close that we can see faces, and disappears again, leaving the sea
+      heaving and frothing behind her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... As I lean over the rail to watch the swirling of the wake, I feel
+      something pulling at my sleeve: a hand,&mdash;a tiny black hand,&mdash;the
+      hand of a <i>sakiwinki</i>. One of the little monkeys, straining to the
+      full length of his string, is making this dumb appeal for human sympathy;&mdash;the
+      bird-black eyes of both are fixed upon me with the oddest look of
+      pleading. Poor little tropical exiles! I stoop to caress them; but regret
+      the impulse a moment later: they utter such beseeching cries when I find
+      myself obliged to leave them again alone!...
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... Hour after hour the <i>Guadeloupe</i> glides on through the white
+      gloom,&mdash;cautiously, as if feeling her way; always sounding her
+      whistle, ringing her bells, until at last some brown-winged bark comes
+      flitting to us out of the mist, bearing a pilot.... How strange it must
+      all seem to Mademoiselle who stands so silent there at the rail!&mdash;how
+      weird this veiled world must appear to her, after the sapphire light of
+      her own West Indian sky, and the great lazulite splendor of her own tropic
+      sea!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But a wind comes;&mdash;it strengthens,&mdash;begins to blow very cold.
+      The mists thin before its blowing; and the wan blank sky is all revealed
+      again with livid horizon around the heaving of the iron-grey sea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... Thou dim and lofty heaven of the North,&mdash;grey sky of Odin,&mdash;bitter
+      thy winds and spectral all thy colors!&mdash;they that dwell beneath thee
+      know not the glory of Eternal Summer's green,&mdash;the azure splendor of
+      southern day!&mdash;but thine are the lightnings of Thought illuminating
+      for human eyes the interspaces between sun and sun. Thine the generations
+      of might,&mdash;the strivers, the battlers,&mdash;the men who make Nature
+      tame!&mdash;thine the domain of inspiration and achievement,&mdash;the
+      larger heroisms, the vaster labors that endure, the higher knowledge, and
+      all the witchcrafts of science!...
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But in each one of us there lives a mysterious Something which is Self,
+      yet also infinitely more than Self,&mdash;incomprehensibly multiple,&mdash;the
+      complex total of sensations, impulses, timidities belonging to the unknown
+      past. And the lips of the little stranger from the tropics have become all
+      white, because that Something within her,&mdash;ghostly bequest from
+      generations who loved the light and rest and wondrous color of a more
+      radiant world,&mdash;now shrinks all back about her girl's heart with fear
+      of this pale grim North.... And lo!&mdash;opening mile-wide in dream-grey
+      majesty before us,&mdash;reaching away, through measureless mazes of
+      masting, into remotenesses all vapor-veiled,&mdash;the mighty perspective
+      of New York harbor!...
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thou knowest it not, this gloom about us, little maiden;&mdash;'tis only a
+      magical dusk we are entering,&mdash;only that mystic dimness in which
+      miracles must be wrought!... See the marvellous shapes uprising,&mdash;the
+      immensities, the astonishments! And other greater wonders thou wilt behold
+      in a little while, when we shall have become lost to each other forever in
+      the surging of the City's million-hearted life!... 'Tis all shadow here,
+      thou sayest?&mdash;Ay, 'tis twilight, verily, by contrast with that glory
+      out of which thou camest, Lys&mdash;twilight only,&mdash;but the Twilight
+      of the Gods!... <i>Adié, chè!&mdash;Bon-Dié ké bént ou!</i>...
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      APPENDIX &mdash; SOME CREOLE MELODIES
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%">
+      <img alt="41 (125K)" src="images/41.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%">
+      <img alt="42 (127K)" src="images/42.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%">
+      <img alt="43 (127K)" src="images/43.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%">
+      <img alt="44 (113K)" src="images/44.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%">
+      <img alt="45 (132K)" src="images/45.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%">
+      <img alt="46 (40K)" src="images/46.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0020" id="link2H_4_0020">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      ENDNOTES
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linknote-1" id="linknote-1">
+      <!-- Note --></a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="foot">
+      1 (<a href="#linknoteref-1">return</a>)<br /> [ Since this was written the
+      market has been removed to the Savane,&mdash;to allow of the erection of a
+      large new market-building on the old site; and the beautiful trees have
+      been cut down.]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linknote-2" id="linknote-2">
+      <!-- Note --></a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="foot">
+      2 (<a href="#linknoteref-2">return</a>)<br /> [ I subsequently learned the
+      mystery of this very strange and beautiful mixed race,&mdash;many fine
+      specimens of which may also be seen in Trinidad. Three widely diverse
+      elements have combined to form it: European, negro, and Indian,&mdash;but,
+      strange to say, it is the most savage of these three bloods which creates
+      the peculiar charm.... I cannot speak of this comely and extraordinary
+      type without translating a passage from Dr. J. J. J. Cornilliac, an
+      eminent Martinique physician, who recently published a most valuable
+      series of studies upon the ethnology, climatology, and history of the
+      Antilles. In these he writes:...]
+    </p>
+    <p class="foot">
+      "When, among the populations of the Antilles, we first notice those
+      remarkable <i>métis</i> whose olive skins, elegant and slender figures,
+      fine straight profiles, and regular features remind us of the inhabitants
+      of Madras or Pondicherry,&mdash;we ask ourselves in wonder, while looking
+      at their long eyes, full of a strange and gentle melancholy (especially
+      among the women), and at the black, rich, silky-gleaming hair curling in
+      abundance over the temples and falling in profusion over the neck,&mdash;to
+      what human race can belong this singular variety,&mdash;in which there is
+      a dominant characteristic that seems indelible, and always shows more and
+      more strongly in proportion as the type is further removed from the
+      African element. It is the Carib blood&mdash;blended with blood of
+      Europeans and of blacks,&mdash;which in spite of all subsequent crossings,
+      and in spite of the fact that it has not been renewed for more than two
+      hundred years, still conserves as markedly as at the time of the first
+      interblending, the race-characteristic that invariably reveals its
+      presence in the blood of every being through whose veins it flows."&mdash;"Recherches
+      chronologiques et historiques sur l'Origine et la Propagation de la Fièvre
+      Jaune aux Antilles." Par J. J. J. Cornilliac. Fort-de-France: Imprimerie
+      du Gouvernement. 1886.
+    </p>
+    <p class="foot">
+      But I do not think the term "olive" always indicates the color of these
+      skins, which seemed to me exactly the tint of gold; and the hair flashes
+      with bluish lights, Like the plumage of certain black birds.]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linknote-3" id="linknote-3">
+      <!-- Note --></a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="foot">
+      3 (<a href="#linknoteref-3">return</a>)<br /> [ <i>Extract from the "Story
+      of Marie," as written from dictation:</i>
+    </p>
+    <p class="foot">
+      ... 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!"
+    </p>
+    <p class="foot">
+      ... 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!"
+    </p>
+    <p class="foot">
+      ... 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,&mdash;y réponne, "Moin
+      pa ni arien!" Diabe-la réponne y, "Y fau ba moin Marie pou moin pé châgé
+      ou."
+    </p>
+    <p class="foot">
+      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!"
+    </p>
+    <p class="foot">
+      As the mamma stood there she saw there was not a single good Christian to
+      help her load. She stood there, and cried out: "Well, then, if there are
+      no good Christians, there are bad Christians. Any bad Christian, come and
+      load me!"
+    </p>
+    <p class="foot">
+      The moment she said that, she saw a devil coming, who said to her, "If I
+      load you, what will you give me?" This mamma answered, and said, "I have
+      nothing!" The devil answered her, "Must give me Marie if you want me to
+      load you."]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linknote-4" id="linknote-4">
+      <!-- Note --></a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="foot">
+      4 (<a href="#linknoteref-4">return</a>)<br /> [ <i>Y batt li conm lambi</i>&mdash;"he
+      beat him like a lambi"&mdash;is an expression that may often be heard in a
+      creole court from witnesses testifying in a case of assault and battery.
+      One must have seen a lambi pounded to appreciate the terrible
+      picturesqueness of the phase.]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linknote-5" id="linknote-5">
+      <!-- Note --></a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="foot">
+      5 (<a href="#linknoteref-5">return</a>)<br /> [ Moreau de Saint-Méry
+      writes, describing the drums of the negroes of Saint Domingue: "Le plus
+      court de ces tambours est nommé <i>Bamboula</i>, attendu qu'il est formé
+      quelquefois d'un très-gros bambou."&mdash;"Description de la partie
+      française de Saint Domingue", vol. i., p. 44.]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linknote-6" id="linknote-6">
+      <!-- Note --></a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="foot">
+      6 (<a href="#linknoteref-6">return</a>)<br /> [ What is known in the West
+      Indies as a hurricane is happily rare; it blows with the force of a
+      cyclone, but not always circularly; it may come from one direction, and
+      strengthen gradually for days until its highest velocity and destructive
+      force are reached. One in the time of Père Labat blew away the walls of a
+      fort;&mdash;that of 1780 destroyed the lives of twenty-two thousand people
+      in four islands: Martinique, Saint Lucia, St. Vincent, and Barbadoes.
+    </p>
+    <p class="foot">
+      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.]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linknote-7" id="linknote-7">
+      <!-- Note --></a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="foot">
+      7 (<a href="#linknoteref-7">return</a>)<br /> [ "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.]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linknote-8" id="linknote-8">
+      <!-- Note --></a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="foot">
+      8 (<a href="#linknoteref-8">return</a>)<br /> [ One of the lights seen on
+      the Caravelle was certainly carried by a cattle-thief,&mdash;a colossal
+      negro who had the reputation of being a sorcerer,&mdash;a <i>quimboiseur</i>.
+      The greater part of the mountainous land forming La Caravelle promontory
+      was at that time the property of a Monsieur Eustache, who used it merely
+      for cattle-raising purposes. He allowed his animals to run wild in the
+      hills; they multiplied exceedingly, and became very savage.
+      Notwithstanding their ferocity, however, large numbers of them were driven
+      away at night, and secretly slaughtered or sold, by somebody who used to
+      practise the art of cattle-stealing with a lantern, and evidently without
+      aid. A watch was set, and the thief arrested. Before the magistrate he
+      displayed extraordinary assurance, asserting that he had never stolen from
+      a poor man&mdash;he had stolen only from M. Eustache who could not count
+      his own cattle&mdash;<i>yon richard, man chè!</i> "How many cows did you
+      steal from him?" asked the magistrate. "<i>Ess moin pè save?&mdash;moin té
+      pouend yon savane toutt pleine</i>," replied the prisoner. (How can I
+      tell?&mdash;I took a whole savanna-full.)... Condemned on the strength of
+      his own confession, he was taken to jail. "<i>Moin pa ké rété geole</i>,"
+      he observed. (I shall not remain in prison.) They put him in irons, but on
+      the following morning the irons were found lying on the floor of the cell,
+      and the prisoner was gone. He was never seen in Martinique again.]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linknote-9" id="linknote-9">
+      <!-- Note --></a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="foot">
+      9 (<a href="#linknoteref-9">return</a>)<br /> [ Y sucoué souyé assous
+      quai-là;&mdash;y ka di: "Moin ka maudi ou, Lanmatinique!&mdash;moin ka
+      maudi ou!...Ké ni mangé pou engnien: ou pa ké pè menm acheté y! Ké ni
+      touèle pou engnien: ou pa ké pè menm acheté yon robe! Epi yche ké batt
+      manman.... Ou banni moin!&mdash;moin ké vini encò"]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linknote-10" id="linknote-10">
+      <!-- Note --></a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="foot">
+      10 (<a href="#linknoteref-10">return</a>)<br /> [ Vol. iii., p. 382-3.
+      Edition of 1722.]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linknote-11" id="linknote-11">
+      <!-- Note --></a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="foot">
+      11 (<a href="#linknoteref-11">return</a>)<br /> [ The parrots of Martinique
+      he describes as having been green, with slate-colored plumage on the top
+      of the head, mixed with a little red, and as having a few red feathers in
+      the wings, throat, and tail.]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linknote-12" id="linknote-12">
+      <!-- Note --></a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="foot">
+      12 (<a href="#linknoteref-12">return</a>)<br /> [ The creole word <i>moudongue</i>
+      is said to be a corruption of <i>Mondongue</i>, the name of an African
+      coast tribe who had the reputation of being cannibals. A Mondongue slave
+      on the plantations was generally feared by his fellow-blacks of other
+      tribes; and the name of the cannibal race became transformed into an
+      adjective to denote anything formidable or terrible. A blow with a stick
+      made of the wood described being greatly dreaded, the term was applied
+      first to the stick, and afterward to the wood itself.]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linknote-13" id="linknote-13">
+      <!-- Note --></a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="foot">
+      13 (<a href="#linknoteref-13">return</a>)<br /> [ Accounting for the origin
+      of the trade-winds, he writes: "I say that the Trade-Winds do not exist in
+      the Torrid Zone merely by chance; forasmuch as the cause which produces
+      them is very necessary, very sure, and very continuous, since they result
+      <i>either from the movement of the Earth around the Sun, or from the
+      movement of the Sun around the Earth. Whether it be the one or the other,
+      of these two great bodies which moves...</i>" etc.]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linknote-14" id="linknote-14">
+      <!-- Note --></a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="foot">
+      14 (<a href="#linknoteref-14">return</a>)<br /> [ In creole, <i>cabritt-bois</i>,&mdash;("the
+      Wood-Kid")&mdash;a colossal cricket. Precisely at half-past four in the
+      morning it becomes silent; and for thousands of early risers too poor to
+      own a clock, the cessation of its song is the signal to get up.]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linknote-15" id="linknote-15">
+      <!-- Note --></a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="foot">
+      15 (<a href="#linknoteref-15">return</a>)<br /> [ &mdash;"Where dost stay,
+      dear?"&mdash;"Affairs of the goat are not affairs of the rabbit."&mdash;"But
+      why art thou dressed all in black thus?"&mdash;"I wear mourning for my
+      dead soul."&mdash;"<i>Aïe ya yaïe!</i>...No, true!...where art thou going
+      now?"&mdash;"Love is gone: I go after love."&mdash;"Ho! thou hast a Wasp
+      [lover]&mdash;eh?"&mdash;"The zanoli gives a ball; the <i>maboya</i>
+      enters unasked."&mdash;"Tell me where thou art going, sweetheart?"&mdash;"As
+      far as the River of the Lizard."&mdash;"<i>Fouinq!</i>&mdash;there are
+      more than thirty kilometres!"&mdash;"What of that?&mdash;dost thou want to
+      come with me?"]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linknote-16" id="linknote-16">
+      <!-- Note --></a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="foot">
+      16 (<a href="#linknoteref-16">return</a>)<br /> [ "Kiss me now!"]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linknote-17" id="linknote-17">
+      <!-- Note --></a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="foot">
+      17 (<a href="#linknoteref-17">return</a>)<br /> [ 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!
+    </p>
+    <p class="foot">
+      "Voyez làbas, dans cette église, Auprès d'un confessional, Le prêtre, qui
+      veut faire croire à Lise, Qu'un baiser est un grand mal;&mdash;Pour
+      prouver à la mignonne Qu'un baiser bien fait, bien doux, N'a jamais damné
+      personne Petits oiseaux, becquetez-vous!"
+    </p>
+    <p class="foot">
+      Translation:
+    </p>
+    <p class="foot">
+      Little feathered lovers, cooing, Children of the radiant air, Sweet your
+      speech,&mdash;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!
+    </p>
+    <p class="foot">
+      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!]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linknote-18" id="linknote-18">
+      <!-- Note --></a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="foot">
+      18 (<a href="#linknoteref-18">return</a>)<br /> [ "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, &amp; si fort en usage parmi eux,
+      qu'elle fait la meilleure partie de leurs divertissements, &amp; qu'elle
+      entre même dans leurs devotions. Ils la dansent même dans leurs Églises
+      &amp; à leurs processions; et les Religieuses ne manquent guère de la
+      danser la Nuit de Noël, sur un 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."]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linknote-19" id="linknote-19">
+      <!-- Note --></a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="foot">
+      19 (<a href="#linknoteref-19">return</a>)<br /> [ 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.]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linknote-20" id="linknote-20">
+      <!-- Note --></a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="foot">
+      20 (<a href="#linknoteref-20">return</a>)<br /> [ "<i>Bel laline, moin ka
+      montré ti pièce moin!&mdash;ba moin làgent toutt temps ou ka clairé!</i>"...
+      This little invocation is supposed to have most power when uttered on the
+      first appearance of the new moon.]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linknote-21" id="linknote-21">
+      <!-- Note --></a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="foot">
+      21 (<a href="#linknoteref-21">return</a>)<br /> [ "Guardian-angel, watch
+      over me;&mdash;have pity upon my weakness; lie down on my little bed with
+      me: follow me whithersoever I go."...The prayers are always said in
+      French. Metaphysical and theological terms cannot be rendered in the
+      patois; and the authors of creole catechisms have always been obliged to
+      borrow and explain French religious phrases in order to make their texts
+      comprehensible.]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linknote-22" id="linknote-22">
+      <!-- Note --></a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="foot">
+      22 (<a href="#linknoteref-22">return</a>)<br /> [ &mdash;"Moin té ouè yon
+      bal;&mdash;moin rêvé: moin té ka ouè toutt moune ka dansé masqué; moin té
+      ka gàdé. Et toutt-à-coup moin ka ouè c'est bonhomme-càton ka danse. Et
+      main ka ouè yon Commandè: y ka mandé moin ça moin ka fai là. Moin reponne
+      y conm ça:&mdash;'Moin ouè yon bal, moin gàdé-coument!' 'Y ka réponne
+      moin:&mdash;'Pisse ou si quirièse pou vini gàdé baggaïe moune, faut rété
+      là pou dansé 'tou.' Moin réponne y:&mdash;'Non! main pa dansé épi
+      bonhomme-càton!&mdash;moin pè!'... Et moin ka couri, moin ka couri, main
+      ka couri à fòce moin te ni pè. Et moin rentré adans grand jàdin; et moin
+      ouè gouôs pié-cirise qui té chàgé anni feuill; et moin ka ouè yon nhomme
+      assise enba cirise-à. Y mandé moin:&mdash;'Ça ou ka fai là?' Moin di y:&mdash;'Moin
+      ka châché chimin pou moin allé.' Y di moin:&mdash;'Faut rété içitt.' Et
+      moin di y:&mdash;'Non!'&mdash;et pou chappé cò moin, moin di y:&mdash;'Allé
+      enhaut-là: ou ké ouè yon bel bal,&mdash;toutt bonhomme-càton ka dansé, épi
+      yon Commande-en-càton ka coumandé yo.'... Epi moin levé, à fòce moin té
+      pè."...]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linknote-23" id="linknote-23">
+      <!-- Note --></a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="foot">
+      23 (<a href="#linknoteref-23">return</a>)<br /> [ Lit.,&mdash;"brought-up-in-a-hat."
+      To wear the madras is to acknowledge oneself of color;&mdash;to follow the
+      European style of dressing the hair, and adopt the costume of the white
+      creoles indicates a desire to affiliate with the white class.]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linknote-24" id="linknote-24">
+      <!-- Note --></a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="foot">
+      24 (<a href="#linknoteref-24">return</a>)<br /> [ Red earthen-ware jars for
+      keeping drinking-water cool. The origin of the word is probably to be
+      sought in the name of the town, near Marseilles, where they are made,&mdash;Aubagne.]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linknote-25" id="linknote-25">
+      <!-- Note --></a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="foot">
+      25 (<a href="#linknoteref-25">return</a>)<br /> [ I may cite in this
+      relation one stanza of a creole song&mdash;very popular in St. Pierre&mdash;celebrating
+      the charms of a little capresse:&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "...Moin toutt jeine,
+     Gouôs, gouâs, vaillant,
+     Peau,di chapoti
+     Ka fai plaisi;&mdash;Lapeau moin
+     Li bien poli;
+     Et moin ka plai
+     Mênm toutt nhomme grave!"
+</pre>
+    <p class="foot">
+      &mdash;Which might be freely rendered thus:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p class="foot">
+      "...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!"]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linknote-26" id="linknote-26">
+      <!-- Note --></a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="foot">
+      26 (<a href="#linknoteref-26">return</a>)<br /> [ It was I who washed and
+      ironed and mended;&mdash;at nine o'clock at night thou didst put me
+      out-of-doors, with my child in my arms,&mdash;the rain was falling,&mdash;with
+      my poor straw mattress upon my head!... Doudoux! thou dost abandon me!...
+      I have none to care for me.]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linknote-27" id="linknote-27">
+      <!-- Note --></a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="foot">
+      27 (<a href="#linknoteref-27">return</a>)<br /> [ Also called <i>La Barre
+      de 'Isle</i>,&mdash;a long high mountain-wall interlinking the northern
+      and southern system of ranges,&mdash;and only two metres broad at the
+      summit. The "Roches-Carrées", display a geological formation unlike
+      anything discovered in the rest of the Antillesian system, excepting in
+      Grenada,&mdash;columnar or prismatic basalts.... In the plains of Marin
+      curious petrifactions exist;&mdash;I saw a honey-comb so perfect that the
+      eye alone could scarcely divine the transformation.]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linknote-28" id="linknote-28">
+      <!-- Note --></a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="foot">
+      28 (<a href="#linknoteref-28">return</a>)<br /> [ Thibault de Chanvallon,
+      writing of Martinique in 1751, declared:&mdash;"All possible hinderances
+      to study are encountered here (<i>tout s'oppose à l'etude</i>): if the
+      Americans [creoles] do not devote themselves to research, the fact must
+      not be attributed solely to indifference or indolence. On the one hand,
+      the overpowering and continual heat,&mdash;the perpetual succession of
+      mornes and acclivities,&mdash;the difficulty of entering forests rendered
+      almost inaccessible by the lianas interwoven across all openings, and the
+      prickly plants which oppose a barrier to the naturalist,&mdash;the
+      continual anxiety and fear inspired by serpents also;&mdash;on the 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,&mdash;since such
+      study is necessarily unaccompanied either by the one or the other in a
+      country where nobody undertakes it."&mdash;(<i>Voyage à la Martinique</i>.)...The
+      conditions have scarcely changed since De Chanvallon's day, despite the
+      creation of Government roads, and the thinning of the high woods.]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linknote-29" id="linknote-29">
+      <!-- Note --></a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="foot">
+      29 (<a href="#linknoteref-29">return</a>)<br /> [ Humboldt believed the
+      height to be not less than 800 <i>toises</i> (1 toise=6 ft. 4.73 inches),
+      or about 5115 feet.]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linknote-30" id="linknote-30">
+      <!-- Note --></a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="foot">
+      30 (<a href="#linknoteref-30">return</a>)<br /> [ There used to be a
+      strange popular belief that however heavily veiled by clouds the mountain
+      might be prior to an earthquake, these would always vanish with the first
+      shock. But Thibault de Chanvallon took pains to examine into the truth of
+      this alleged phenomenon; and found that during a number of earthquake
+      shocks the clouds remained over the crater precisely as usual.... There
+      was more foundation, however, for another popular belief, which still
+      exists,&mdash;that the absolute purity of the atmosphere about Pelée, and
+      the perfect exposure of its summit for any considerable time, might be
+      regarded as an omen of hurricane.]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linknote-31" id="linknote-31">
+      <!-- Note --></a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="foot">
+      31 (<a href="#linknoteref-31">return</a>)<br /> [ "De la piqure du serpent
+      de la Martinique," par Auguste Charriez, Medecin de la Marine. Paris:
+      Moquet, 1875]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linknote-32" id="linknote-32">
+      <!-- Note --></a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="foot">
+      32 (<a href="#linknoteref-32">return</a>)<br /> [ 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.
+    </p>
+    <p class="foot">
+      The negro panseur method is much more elaborate and, to some extent,
+      mysterious. He cups and bleeds, using a small <i>couï</i>, or
+      half-calabash, in lieu of a grass; and then applies cataplasms of herbs,&mdash;orange-leaves,
+      cinnamon-leaves, clove-leaves, <i>chardon-béni</i>, <i>charpentier</i>,
+      perhaps twenty other things, all mingled together;&mdash;this poulticing
+      being continued every day for a month. Meantime the patient is given all
+      sorts of absurd things to drink, in tafia and sour-orange juice&mdash;such
+      as old clay pipes ground to powder, or <i>the head of the fer-de-lance
+      itself</i>, roasted dry and pounded.... The plantation negro has no faith
+      in any other system of cure but that of the panseur;&mdash;he refuses to
+      let the physician try to save him, and will scarcely submit to be treated
+      even by an experienced white over-seer.]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linknote-33" id="linknote-33">
+      <!-- Note --></a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="foot">
+      33 (<a href="#linknoteref-33">return</a>)<br /> [ The sheet-lightnings
+      which play during the nights of July and August are termed in creole <i>Zéclai-titiri</i>,
+      or "titiri-lightnings";&mdash;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,&mdash;it is commonly said, "<i>Zéclai-a ka fai
+      yo écloré</i>" (the lightning hatches them).]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linknote-34" id="linknote-34">
+      <!-- Note --></a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="foot">
+      34 (<a href="#linknoteref-34">return</a>)<br /> [ Dr. E. Rufz: "Études
+      historiques," vol. i., p. 189.]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linknote-35" id="linknote-35">
+      <!-- Note --></a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="foot">
+      35 (<a href="#linknoteref-35">return</a>)<br /> [ The brightly colored
+      douillettes are classified by the people according to the designs of the
+      printed calico:&mdash;<i>robe-à-bambou</i>,&mdash;<i>robe-à-bouquet</i>,&mdash;<i>robe-arc-en-ciel</i>,
+      &mdash;<i>robe-à-carreau</i>,&mdash;etc., according as the pattern is in
+      stripes, flower-designs, "rainbow" bands of different tints, or plaidings.
+      <i>Ronde-en-ronde</i> means a stuff printed with disk-patterns, or
+      link-patterns of different colors,&mdash;each joined with the other. A
+      robe of one color only is called a <i>robe-uni</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p class="foot">
+      The general laws of contrasts observed in the costume require the silk
+      foulard, or shoulder-kerchief, to make a sharp relief with the color of
+      the robe, thus:&mdash; Robe. Foulard. Yellow Blue. Dark blue Yellow. Pink
+      Green. Violet Bright red. Red Violet. Chocolate (cacoa) Pale blue. Sky
+      blue Pale rose.
+    </p>
+    <p class="foot">
+      These refer, of course, to dominant or ground colors, as there are usually
+      several tints in the foulard as well as the robe. The painted Madras
+      should always be bright yellow. According to popular ideas of good
+      dressing, the different tints of skin should be relieved by special choice
+      of color in the robe, as follows:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p class="foot">
+      <i>Capresse</i> (a clear red skin) should wear.... Pale yellow. <i>Mulatresse</i>
+      (according to shade).... Rose. Blue. Green. <i>Negresse</i>.... White.
+      Scarlet, or any violet color.]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linknote-36" id="linknote-36">
+      <!-- Note --></a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="foot">
+      36 (<a href="#linknoteref-36">return</a>)<br /> [ "Vouèla Cendrillon evec
+      yon bel ròbe velou grande lakhè.... Ça té ka bail ou mal ziè. Li té tini
+      bel zanneau dans zòreill li, quate-tou-chou, bouoche, bracelet, tremblant,&mdash;toutt
+      sòte bel baggaïe conm ça."...&mdash;(<i>Conte Cendrillon</i>,&mdash;d'après
+      Turiault.)
+    </p>
+    <p class="foot">
+      &mdash;"There was Cendrillon with a beautiful long trailing robe of velvet
+      on her!... It was enough to hurt one's eyes to look at her! She had
+      beautiful rings in her ears, and a collier-choux of four rows, brooches,
+      <i>tremblants</i>, bracelets,&mdash;everything fine of that sort."&mdash;(Story
+      of Cinderella in Turinault's Creole Grammar).]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linknote-37" id="linknote-37">
+      <!-- Note --></a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="foot">
+      37 (<a href="#linknoteref-37">return</a>)<br /> [ It is quite possible,
+      however, that the slaves of Dutertre's time belonged for the most part to
+      the uglier African tribes; and that later supplies may have been procured
+      from other parts of the slave coast. Writing half a century later, Père
+      Labat declares having seen freshly disembarked blacks handsome enough to
+      inspire an artist:&mdash;"<i>J'en ai vu des deux sexes faits à peindre, et
+      beaux par merveille</i>" (vol. iv. chap, vii,). He adds that their skin
+      was extremely fine, and of velvety softness;&mdash;"<i>le velours n'est
+      pas plus doux</i>."... Among the 30,000 blacks yearly shipped to the
+      French colonies, there were doubtless many representatives of the finer
+      African races.]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linknote-38" id="linknote-38">
+      <!-- Note --></a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="foot">
+      38 (<a href="#linknoteref-38">return</a>)<br /> [ "Leur sueur n'est pas
+      fétide comme celle des nègres de la Guinée," writes the traveller
+      Dauxion-Lavaysse, in 1813.]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linknote-39" id="linknote-39">
+      <!-- Note --></a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="foot">
+      39 (<a href="#linknoteref-39">return</a>)<br /> [ Dr. E. Rufz: "Études
+      historiques et statistiques sur la population de la Martinique." St.
+      Pierre: 1850. Vol. i., pp. 148-50.
+    </p>
+    <p class="foot">
+      It has been generally imagined that the physical constitution of the black
+      race was proof against the deadly climate of the West Indies. The truth is
+      that the freshly imported Africans died of fever by thousands and
+      tens-of-thousands;&mdash;the creole-negro race, now so prolific,
+      represents only the fittest survivors in the long and terrible struggle of
+      the slave element to adapt itself to the new environment. Thirty thousand
+      negroes a year were long needed to supply the French colonies. Between
+      1700 and 1789 no less than 900,000 slaves were imported by San Domingo
+      alone;&mdash;yet there were less than half that number left in 1789. (See
+      Placide Justin's history of Santo Domingo, p. 147.) The entire slave
+      population of Barbadoes had to be renewed every sixteen years, according
+      to estimates: the loss to planters by deaths of slaves (reckoning the
+      value of a slave at only £20 sterling) during the same period was
+      £1,600,000 ($8,000,000). (Burck's "History of European Colonies," vol.
+      ii., p. 141; French edition of 1767.)]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linknote-40" id="linknote-40">
+      <!-- Note --></a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="foot">
+      40 (<a href="#linknoteref-40">return</a>)<br /> [ Rufz: "Études," vol. i.,
+      p. 236.]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linknote-41" id="linknote-41">
+      <!-- Note --></a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="foot">
+      41 (<a href="#linknoteref-41">return</a>)<br /> [ I am assured it has now
+      fallen to a figure not exceeding 5000.]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linknote-42" id="linknote-42">
+      <!-- Note --></a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="foot">
+      42 (<a href="#linknoteref-42">return</a>)<br /> [ Rufz: "Études," vol. ii.,
+      pp. 311, 312.]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linknote-43" id="linknote-43">
+      <!-- Note --></a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="foot">
+      43 (<a href="#linknoteref-43">return</a>)<br /> [ Rufz: "Études," vol. i.,
+      p. 237.]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linknote-44" id="linknote-44">
+      <!-- Note --></a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="foot">
+      44 (<a href="#linknoteref-44">return</a>)<br /> [ <i>La race de sang-mêlé,
+      issue des blancs et des noirs, est éminement civilizable. Comme types
+      physiques, elle fournit dans beaucoup d'individus, dans ses femmes en
+      général, les plus beaux specimens de la race humaine</i>.&mdash;"Le
+      Préjugé de Race aux Antilles Françaises." Par G. Souquet-Basiège. St.
+      Pierre, Martinique: 1883. pp. 661-62.]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linknote-45" id="linknote-45">
+      <!-- Note --></a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="foot">
+      45 (<a href="#linknoteref-45">return</a>)<br /> [ Turiault: "Étude sur le
+      langage Créole de la Martinique." Brest: 1874.... On page 136 he cites the
+      following pretty verses in speaking of the <i>fille-de-couleur</i>:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p class="foot">
+      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.]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linknote-46" id="linknote-46">
+      <!-- Note --></a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="foot">
+      46 (<a href="#linknoteref-46">return</a>)<br /> [ A sort of land-crab;&mdash;the
+      female is selected for food, and, properly cooked, makes a delicious dish;&mdash;the
+      male is almost worthless.]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linknote-47" id="linknote-47">
+      <!-- Note --></a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="foot">
+      47 (<a href="#linknoteref-47">return</a>)<br /> [ "Voyage à la Martinique,"
+      Par J. R., Général de Brigade. Paris: An, XII., 1804. Page 106.]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linknote-48" id="linknote-48">
+      <!-- Note --></a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="foot">
+      48 (<a href="#linknoteref-48">return</a>)<br /> [ 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.]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linknote-49" id="linknote-49">
+      <!-- Note --></a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="foot">
+      49 (<a href="#linknoteref-49">return</a>)<br /> [ There is record of an
+      attempt to manufacture bread with one part manioc flour to three of wheat
+      flour. The result was excellent; but no serious effort was ever made to
+      put the manioc bread on the market.]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linknote-50" id="linknote-50">
+      <!-- Note --></a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="foot">
+      50 (<a href="#linknoteref-50">return</a>)<br /> [ I must mention a
+      surreptitious dish, <i>chatt</i>;&mdash;needless to say the cats are not
+      sold, but stolen. It is true that only a small class of poor people eat
+      cats; but they eat so many cats that cats have become quite rare in St.
+      Pierre. The custom is purely superstitious: it is alleged that if you eat
+      cat seven times, or if you eat seven cats, no witch, wizard, or <i>quimboiseur</i>
+      can ever do you any harm; and the cat ought to be eaten on Christmas Eve
+      in order that the meal be perfectly efficacious.... The mystic number
+      "seven", enters into another and a better creole superstition;&mdash;if
+      you kill a serpent, seven great sins are forgiven to you: <i>ou ké ni sept
+      grands péchés effacé</i>.]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linknote-51" id="linknote-51">
+      <!-- Note --></a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="foot">
+      51 (<a href="#linknoteref-51">return</a>)<br /> [ Rufz remarks that the
+      first effect of this climate of the Antilles is a sort of general physical
+      excitement, an exaltation, a sense of unaccustomed strength,&mdash;which
+      begets the desire of immediate action to discharge the surplus of nervous
+      force. "Then all distances seem brief;&mdash;the greatest fatigues are
+      braved without hesitation."&mdash; <i>Études</i>.]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linknote-52" id="linknote-52">
+      <!-- Note --></a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="foot">
+      52 (<a href="#linknoteref-52">return</a>)<br /> [ In the patois, "<i>yon
+      rafale yche</i>,"&mdash;a "whirlwind of children."]
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 6em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+
+
+
+
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@@ -0,0 +1,13996 @@
+Project Gutenberg's Two Years in the French West Indies, by Lafcadio Hearn
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Two Years in the French West Indies
+
+Author: Lafcadio Hearn
+
+Release Date: August, 2004  [EBook #6381]
+Last Updated: August 23, 2012
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FRENCH WEST INDIES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Richard Farris
+
+
+
+
+
+
+TWO YEARS IN THE FRENCH WEST INDIES
+
+By Lafcadio Hearn
+
+Author Of "Chita" Etc.
+
+
+Illustrated
+
+
+"_La facon d'etre du pays est si agreable, la temperature si bonne,
+et l'on y vit dans une liberte si honnete, que je n'aye pas vu un seul
+homme, ny une seule femme, qui en soient revenues, en qui je n'aye
+remarque une grande passion d'y retourner._"-LE PERE DUTERTRE (1667)
+
+
+
+A MON CHER AMI LEOPOLD ARNOUX
+
+NOTAIRE A SAINT PIERRE, MARTINIQUE
+
+_Souvenir de nos promenades,--de nos voyages,--de nos causeries,--des
+sympathies echangees,--de tout le charme d'une amitie inalterable et
+inoubliable,--de tout ce qui parle a l'ame 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._
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF 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 VERETTE
+       VI. LES BLANCHISSEUSES
+      VII. LA PELEE
+     VIII. 'TI CANOTIE
+       IX. LA FILLE DE COULEUR
+        X. BETE-NI-PIE
+       XI. MA BONNE
+      XII. "PA COMBINE, CHE"
+     XIII. YE
+      XIV. LYS
+
+       XV. APPENDIX:--SOME CREOLE MELODIES
+
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS.
+
+     A Martinique Metisse (Frontispiece)
+     La Place Bertin, St. Pierre, Martinique
+     Itinerant Pastry-seller
+     In the Cimetiere 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
+     Riviere des Blanchisseuses
+     Foot of La Pelle, behind the Quarter of the Fort
+     Village of Morne Rouge
+     Pelle 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 deg. 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 (_verdatre_). 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
+facades, 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 facades
+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-la!" 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 _mulatresse, capresse, griffe, quarteronne, metisse,
+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.
+
+..._"Ce moune-la, ca qui le bel mango?"_ Her basket of mangoes
+certainly weighs as much as herself.... _"Ca qui le bel avocat?,"_ The
+alligator-pear--cuts and tastes like beautiful green cheese... _"Ca qui
+le escargot?"_ Call her, if you like snails.... _"Ca qui le titiri?"_
+Minuscule fish, of which a thousand would scarcely fill a tea-cup;--one
+of the most delicate of Martinique dishes.... _"Ca qui le canna?--Ca
+qui le charbon?--Ca qui le di pain aube?_" (Who wants ducks, charcoal, or
+pretty little loaves shaped like cucumbers.)... _"Ca qui le pain-mi?"_ A
+sweet maize cake in the form of a tiny sugar-loaf, wrapped in a piece of
+banana leaf.... _"Ca qui le fromasse" (pharmacie) "lapotecai creole?"_
+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, zhebe-gras, bonnet-carre, zhebe-codeinne, zhebe-a-femme,
+zhebe-a-chatte, canne-dleau, poque, fleu-papillon, lateigne,_ and
+a score of others you never saw or heard of before.... _"Ca qui le
+dicaments?"_ (overalls for laboring-men).... _"Ce moune-la, si ou pa le
+achete canari-a dans lanmain moin, moin ke craze y."_ The vender of red
+clay cooking-pots;--she has only one left, if you do not buy it she will
+break it!
+
+_"He! zenfants-la!--en deho'!"_ Run out to meet her, little children, if
+you like the sweet rice-cakes.... _"He! gens pa' enho', gens pa' enbas,
+gens di galtas, moin ni bel gououos 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!... _"He! ca qui
+le mange 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 patisserie qui passe,
+     Qui te ka veille 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 _poupee_. There are two kinds,--the
+_poupee-capresse_, of which the body is covered with smooth
+reddish-brown leather, to imitate the tint of the capresse race; and the
+_poupee-negresse_, 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 _poupee-negresse_ is a delightful
+curiosity. Both varieties of dolls are attired in the costume of the
+people; but the _negresse_ 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-a-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 guepe_, "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 Pelee 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 Pelee is in _costume de
+fete_, 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 Riviere Roxelane, or Riviere 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-zie_ is vermilion; the _couronne_,
+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-Die-manie-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
+Pelee 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 _Cimetiere 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 CIMETERE 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-a-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.'" *
+
+     * "Enquete sur le Serpent de la Martinique (Vipere Fer-de-
+     Lance, Bothrops Lanceole, etc.)"  Par le Docteur E. Rufz. 2
+     ed. 1859. Paris: Germer-Balliere.  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 Pere 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 _Allee 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 all this colonial
+life, this strong, bearded English visage takes something of heroic
+relief;--one feels, in a totally novel way, the dignity of a white skin.
+
+[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 naif;--remind one of the first efforts
+of a child with the first box of paints. While I am looking at these
+things, one coolie after another wakes up (these men sleep lightly) and
+begins to observe me almost as curiously, and I fear much less kindly,
+than I have been observing the gods. "Where is your babagee?" I inquire.
+No one seems to comprehend my question; the gravity of each dark face
+remains unrelaxed. Yet I would have liked to make an offering unto Siva.
+
+... Outside the Indian goldsmith's cabin, palm shadows are crawling
+slowly to and fro in the white glare, like shapes of tarantulas. Inside,
+the heat is augmented by the tiny charcoal furnace which glows beside
+a ridiculous little anvil set into a wooden block buried level with the
+soil. Through a rear door come odors of unknown 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. "_Vle beras!_" 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 _beras_, 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 Soufriere: 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 Generale
+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 _charbonniere_, 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" (_chage_ or _dechage_, 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 _machanne_ (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,
+_toche_, 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: "_Chage moin, souple, che!_" She bends
+to lift the end of the heavy trait: some one takes the
+other,--_yon!-de!--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 machannes 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 ragout: 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 'le machanne!_" 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, Chechelle, and Rina. Maiyotte and
+Chechelle 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 Chechelle sell on commission; Rina sells for
+her mother, who has a little garden at Gros-Morne.
+
+... "_Bonjou', Maiyotte;--bonjou', Chechelle! coument ou kalle, Rina,
+che!_"... Throw open the folding-doors to let the great trays pass....
+Now all three are unloaded by old Thereza 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 _guepe_, if you have one.... _Fesis-Maia!_--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.
+
+"Chechelle, what a _bloucoutoum_ if you should ever let that tray
+fall--_aie yaie yaie!_" 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," "Prosperine" [you will
+never sell that, Chechelle: there is not a Prosperine this side of St.
+Pierre], "Azaline," "Leontine," "Zephyrine," "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-cythere_: 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 _melongenes_, or egg-plants;
+and palmiste-pith, and _chadeques_, and _pommes-d' Haiti_,--and
+roots that at first sight look all alike, but they are not: there are
+_camanioc_, and _couscous_, and _choux-caraibes_, and _zignames_,
+and various kinds of _patates_ among them. Old Thereza'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 Chechelle 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
+Gele, a cone of amethyst in the light; and she talks to it: "_Ou jojoll,
+oui!--moin ni envie monte assou ou, pou moin oue 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 pie-bois-la!_"--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 lanme ka gaude moin!_" (There is the
+great sea looking at me!) "_Mache toujou deie moin, lanme!_" (Walk after
+me, 0 Sea!)
+
+Or she views the clouds of Pelee, spreading gray from the invisible
+summit, to shadow against the sun; and she fears the rain, and she talks
+to it: "_Pas mouille moin, laplie-a! Quitte moin rive avant mouille
+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 mode moin, chien--anh! Moin pa fe ou arien,
+chien, pou ou mode 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 ye, che?_" she cries. (How art thou, dear?) And the other
+makes answer, "_Toutt douce, che,--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--_graie-gras,
+graie-gras!_--and the gossip of the canes--_chououa, chououa!_--and the
+husky speech of the _pois-Angole, ka babille conm yon vie 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, Medelle,-all
+together, as usual,--with Ti-Cle trotting behind, very tired.... Never
+mind, Ti-Cle!--you will outwalk your cousins when you are a few years
+older,--pretty Ti-Cle.... Here come Cyrillia and Zabette, and Fefe
+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
+Edoualise.
+
+And all smile to see Jean-Marie waiting for them, and to hear his deep
+kind voice calling, "_Coument ou ye, che? coument ou kalle?_" ...(How art
+thou, dear?--how goes it with thee?)
+
+And they mostly make answer, _"Toutt douce, che,--et ou?_" (All sweetly,
+dear,--and thou?) But some, over-weary, cry to him, "_Ah! dechage moin
+vite, che! 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! dechage moin vite, che! 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! dechage
+moin vite, che! 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, ca!_
+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 la, 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', Missie!_ Then you should reply, if the speaker
+be a woman and pretty, "Good-day, dear" (_bonjou', che_), 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 Riviere 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 Pelee'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
+Seguinau, 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 Seguinau 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 Pelee 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 Riviere 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 facades 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 Pelee 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 Seguinau,--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, "_Rhale 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 _pouesson-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 a 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 belongs rather
+to the valleys and the heights surrounding the _chef-lieu_. Most of the
+porteuses are country girls, and I found that even those living in the
+village are seldom visible on the streets except when departing upon a
+trip or returning from one. An artist wishing to study the type might,
+however, pass a day at the bridge of the Riviere Falaise to advantage,
+as all the carrier-girls pass it at certain hours of the morning and
+evening.
+
+But the best possible occasion on which to observe what my friend the
+baker called _la belle jeunesse_, is a confirmation day,--when the
+bishop drives to Grande Anse over the mountains, and all the population
+turns out in holiday garb, and the bells are tapped like tam-tams, and
+triumphal arches--most awry to behold!--span the road-way, bearing in
+clumsiest lettering the welcome, _Vive Monseigneur_. On that event,
+the long procession of young girls to be confirmed--all in white robes,
+white veils, and white satin slippers--is a numerical surprise. It is
+a moral surprise also,--to the stranger at least; for it reveals the
+struggle of a poverty extraordinary with the self-imposed obligations of
+a costly ceremonialism.
+
+No white children ever appear in these processions: there are not half
+a dozen white families in the whole urban population of about seven
+thousand souls; and those send their sons and daughters to St. Pierre or
+Morne Rouge for their religious training and education. But many of
+the colored children look very charming in their costume of
+confirmation;--you could not easily recognize one of them as the same
+little _bonne_ who brings your morning cup of coffee, or another as the
+daughter of a plantation _commandeur_ (overseer's assistant),--a brown
+slip of a girl who will probably never wear shoes again. And many of
+those white shoes and white veils have been obtained only by the hardest
+physical labor and self-denial of poor parents and relatives: fathers,
+brothers, and mothers working with cutlass and hoe in the snake-swarming
+cane-fields;--sisters walking bare-footed every day to St. Pierre and
+back to earn a few francs a month.
+
+[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 te_ 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 _zhebe-moin-mise_--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 _Zhebe-moin-mise_, 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 amise 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 Pere 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-a-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-a-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-a-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 _bele_ (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 Pere 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.
+
+Pere 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 _coui_, 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 neg Guinee_).
+
+The skilful player (_bel tambouye_) 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 _tambouye_. The
+same _commande_ whose portrait I took while playing told me that he once
+figured in a contest of this kind, his rival being a drummer from the
+neighboring burgh of Marigot.... "_Aie, aie, yaie! mon che!--y fai
+tambou-a pale!_" said the commande, 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--_aie, aie,
+yaie!_ Then he got off that ka, mounted it; I thought a moment; then I
+struck up the 'River-of-the-Lizard,'--_mais, mon che, yon larivie-Leza
+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! yoie-yoie!"
+     (Drum roll.)
+     "Oh! missie-a!"
+     (Drum roll.)
+     "Y bel tambouye!"
+     (Drum roll.)
+     "Aie, ya, yaie!"
+     (Drum roll.)
+     "Joli tambouye!"
+     (Drum roll.)
+     "Chauffe tambou-a!"
+     (Drum roll.)
+     "Gene tambou-a!"
+     (Drum roll.)
+     "Craze tambou-a!" 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, _bele_ (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 pale moin, moin ka reponne:
+     "Khe moin deja place,"
+     Moin ka crie, "Secou! les voisinages!"
+     Moin ka crie, "Secou! la gade royale!"
+     Moin ka crie, "Secou! la gendamerie!
+     Lanmou pouend yon poigna pou poignade 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'Abbe Piot, who cursed the sea with the curse of perpetual
+unrest;--the legend of Aimee Derivry of Robert, captured by Barbary
+pirates, and sold to become a Sultana-Valide-(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
+Trinite, 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 "Missie Bon." No legendary expression is more
+wide-spread throughout the country than _temps coudvent Missie 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 Missie 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 Missie Bon_.
+
+... "_Temps coudvent Missie Bon, moin te ka tete enco_" (I was a child
+at the breast in the time of the big wind of Missie Bon); or "_Temps
+coudvent Missie Bon, moin te toutt piti manmaill,--moin ka souvini y
+pouend caiie manman moin pote alle._" (I was a very, very little child in
+the time of the big wind of Missie 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 Missie Bon among the country-folk was this:
+Missie 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-Die_) one day sent a great wind which blew away Missie
+Bon and Missie 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 'Missie
+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 "Missie 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 coue c'est fanal Pe Labatt!_" (I believe it is the lantern of
+Pere Labat.)
+
+"Does he live there?" I innocently inquired.
+
+"Live there?--why he has been dead hundreds of years!... _Ouill!_ you
+never heard of Pe 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 Thereza as soon as we reached home; and she told
+me all she knew about "Pe Labatt." I found that the father had left
+a reputation far more wide-spread than the recollection of "Missie
+Bon,"--that his memory had created, in fact, the most impressive legend
+in all Martinique folk-lore.
+
+"Whether you really saw Pe 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 Pe Labatt; and it
+is not good-luck to see it.
+
+"Pe 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,
+Pe 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 Pe
+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 ke fai Pe Labatt vini pouend
+ou,--oui!_' (I will make Pe Labatt come and take you away.)"....
+
+What old Thereza stated regarding the establishment of slavery in
+Martinique by Pere Labat, I knew required no investigation,--inasmuch
+as slavery was a flourishing institution in the time of Pere 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 Pere Labat's sin and penance, and to ascertain that his name is
+indeed used to frighten naughty children. _Eh! ti manmaille-la, moin
+ke fai Pe 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 Pere Labat
+had come to his death by the bite of a snake,--the hugest snake that
+ever was seen in Martinique. Pere 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 pe
+toutt sepent qui te ka mode 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 Pere Labat still hunting for snakes.
+
+"_Ou pa pe suive ti limie-la 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 Trinite. [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! Pe Labatt, oui!_" she exclaimed, at my first question,--"Pe
+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! che_, all that Pe 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
+Pe 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 Pere Labat.
+The house of Monsieur M-- stands on the side of the hill, fully five
+hundred feet up, and in a grove of trees: an antiquated dwelling, with
+foundations massive as the walls of a fortress, and huge broad balconies
+of stone. From one of these balconies there is a view of the city, the
+harbor and Pelee, 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 Pere 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 Pere 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 Pere 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?" (_Pere Blanc, ont-ils porte?_) 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 Pere 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 Pere 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 Pere 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 Pere 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 Pere 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'Amerique" 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, Pere
+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 Pere 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 Pere 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 ecorcher 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
+tendrete 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 Pere 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 Pere 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, Pere 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 Pere 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. Pere Labat declares
+there is no question as to the truth of the occurrence: he cites the
+names of Pere Fraise, Pere Rosie, Pere Temple, and Pere Bournot,--all
+members of his own order,--as trust-worthy witnesses of this incident.
+
+Pere Labat displays equal credulity in his recital of a still more
+extravagant story told him by Madame la Comtesse du Genes. M. le Comte
+du Genes, 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 Pere 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.
+
+... Pere 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 Pere 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'ecorchait_) 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 Pere 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.
+
+
+Pere 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] Pere 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 naivete 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-la, moin ke fai Pe 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 Pere 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 quitte bef-la ba ou pou gade ba moin. Quand moin vini, si moin
+pa trouve compte-moin, moin ke foute ou vingt-nef coudfouett!_" (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 _bekes_.
+
+"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, lycees, 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 lycee--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 Pere 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 Pere 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, _Pere 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 Riviere des Peres. 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!--yaie-yah!
+     Rhale 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, Pere 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 Pe Labatt!--mi Pe 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-Mo_--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 pe
+zombi menm 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, Yebe,--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 te janmain oue zombi,--pa 'le oue ca, 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 ca fai desode 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, Missie,--non; ce pa ca._"
+
+--"Not that?... Then what was it you said the other night when you were
+afraid to pass the cemetery on an errand,--_ca ou te ka di_, Adou?"
+
+--"Moin te ka di: 'Moin pa le k'alle bo cimetie-la pa ouappo
+moun-mo;--moun-mo ke barre moin: moin pa se pe 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-mo
+ke barre ou._"...
+
+--"But are the dead folk zombis, Adou?"
+
+--"No; the moun-mo 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 pale ca!!_"...
+
+--"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 Thereza's voice from the little out-building
+where the evening meal is being prepared over a charcoal furnace, in an
+earthen canari.
+
+--"_Missie-la ka mande save ca ca ye 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 pe 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 passe nans grand chimin lanuitt, epi ou ka oue gouos dife, epi plis
+ou ka vini assou dife-a pli ou ka oue dife-a ka mache: ce zombi ka fai
+ca.... Enco, chouval ka passe,--chouval ka ni anni toua patt: ca 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 Thereza: "_li ka rempli toutt
+chimin-la_. Folk call those fires the Evil Fires,--_mauvai dife_;--and
+if you follow them they will lead you into chasms,--_ou ke tombe adans
+labime_."...
+
+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,--_ce zhistoue 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
+pe guiole ou, Baidaux! ou fou pou embete moin conm ca!--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-la moin mene ba ou! Tou lejou moin te ka di ou moin tini yonne
+yche: ou pa te 'le coue,--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-la?'... For the child was growing taller and taller every
+moment.... And Baidaux,--because he was mad,--kept saying: 'Ce
+yche-moin! ce yche moin!' [It is my child!]
+
+"And the sister threw open the shutters and screamed to all the
+neighbors,--'_Secou, secou, secou! Vini oue ca Baidaux mene ba moin!_'
+[Help! help! Come see what Baidaux has brought in here!] And the child
+said to Baidaux: '_Ou ni bonhe 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 pie-treffe, pie-poule, pie-balai, zhebe-en-me: 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 "bonsoue, Missie."
+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!"
+
+--"Eti! Gabou!"
+
+--"Vini ti bouin!--mi bel negresse!"
+
+Out rushes Fafa, with his huge straw hat in his hand: "Oti, Gabou?"
+
+--"Mi!"
+
+--"'Ah! quimbe moin!" cries black Fafa, enthusiastically; "fouinq! li
+bel!--Jesis-Maia! 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 marche tete enlai conm couresse qui ka passelarivie"
+(_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 Francois,
+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', Missie," 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.
+
+--"Ca ka fai moin pe," exclaims Gabou, turning his face towards the
+ajoupa. Something indefinable in the gaze of the stranger has terrified
+him.
+
+--"_Pa ka fai moin pe--fouinq!_" (She does not make me afraid) laughs
+Fafa, boldly following her with a smiling swagger.
+
+--"Fafa!" cries Gabou, in alarm. "_Fafa, pa fai ca!_" 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 rete, 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 rhabille toutt noue conm ca."
+
+--"Moin pote deil pou name main mo."
+
+--"Aie ya yaie!... Non, voue!--ca ou kalle atouelement?"
+
+--"Lanmou pati: moin pati deie lanmou."
+
+--"Ho!--on ni guepe, anh?"
+
+--"Zanoli bail yon bal; epi maboya rentre ladans."
+
+--"Di moin oti ou kalle, doudoux?"
+
+--"Jouq larivie Leza."
+
+--"Fouinq!--ni plis passe trente kilomett!"
+
+--"Eh ben?--ess ou 'le vini epi 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 _oukle_, 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 ke vini epi 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 _oukle_.
+
+--"Coument yo ka crie ou, che" asks Fafa, curious to know her name.
+
+--"Chache nom moin ou-menm, duvine."
+
+But Fafa never was a good guesser,--never could guess the simplest of
+tim-tim.
+
+--"Ess Cendrine?"
+
+--"Non, ce pa ca."
+
+--"Ess Vitaline?"
+
+--"Non ce pa ca."
+
+--"Ess Aza?"
+
+--"Non, ce pa ca."
+
+--"Ess Nini?"
+
+--"Chache enco."
+
+--"Ess Tite"
+
+--"Ou pa save,--tant pis pou ou!"
+
+--"Ess Youma?"
+
+--"Pouki ou 'le save nom moin?--ca ou ke epi y?"
+
+--"Ess Yaiya?"
+
+--"Non, ce pa y."
+
+--"Ess Maiyotte?"
+
+--"Non! ou pa ke janmain trouve 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:--
+
+     "A te--moin ka domi toute longue;
+     Yon paillasse se fai main bien, Doudoux!
+     A te--moin ka domi toute longue;
+     Yon robe biese se fai moin bien,
+     Doudoux!
+
+     A te--moin ka domi toute longue;
+     De jolis foula se fai moin bien,
+     Doudoux!
+
+     A te--moin ka domi toute longue;
+     Yon joli madras se fai moin bien,
+     Doudoux!
+
+     A te--moin ka domi toute longue: Ce a te..."
+
+... 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.
+
+--"Marche toujou' deie moin,--anh, che?--marche toujou' deie!"...
+
+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 oukle 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 kalle la?" he cries.
+
+--"Mais conm ca!--chimin tala plis cou't,--coument?"
+
+It may be the shortest route, indeed;--but then, the fer-de-lance!...
+
+--"Ni sepent ciya,--en pile."
+
+No: there is not a single one, she avers; she has taken that path too
+often not to know:
+
+--"Pa ni sepent piess! Moin ni coutime passe la;--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 pe oue 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.
+
+--"Icitt!--quimbe 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 ca?" she asks, almost in a whisper,
+
+Oh! yes, yes, yes!... more than any living being he loves her!...
+How much? Ever so much,--_gouos 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 ca!--oui, che doudoux, ou save
+ca!"...
+
+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:
+
+--"_Ato, bo!_" [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 VERETTE.
+
+
+
+
+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 machanne 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 epi coubouyon lamori_), akras, etc.; but her bouts probably
+bring her the largest profit--they are all bought up by the bekes.
+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
+(_quimboise_) 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 Verette_: 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 bekes. _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-a?_" 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 oue!--vini oue!_" 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
+_Intrepides_. 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-la
+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, che!--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 ke bien
+amieuse nou!--c'est zaffai si nou mo!_" [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 _bebe_ (or _ti-manmaille_), the _ti negue 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 Bacoue_,--an enormous hat
+of Martinique palm-straw. He walks barefooted and carries a cutlass.
+
+The sight of a troupe of young girls _en bebe_, 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 te ka oue la Guiablesse!_"... The
+tallest among the devilesses always walks first, chanting the question,
+"_Fou ouve?_" (Is it yet daybreak?) And all the others reply in chorus,
+"_Jou pa'nco ouve_." (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 _Intrepides_, playing the _bouene_. 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 Pere 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 machannes: "_Ca qui le
+quatoze 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-Die ka passe!_ ("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-la, 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-la, baill moin lavoix!_"... Then he halts before a dwelling in
+the Rue Peysette, and thunders:--
+
+--"_Eh! Marie-sans-dent!--Mi! diabe-la derho!_"
+
+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-la derho!_"
+
+D.--"_Eh! Marie-sans-dent!_"'...
+
+C.--"_Marie-sans-dent! mi!--diabe-a derho!_"
+
+D.--"_Eh! Marie-sans-dent!_"... etc.
+
+[Illustration: QUARTER OF THE FORT, ST. PIERRE (OVERLOOKING THE RIVIERE
+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 oue diabe-la passe larivie?_" (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 oue diabe-la
+passe larivie?_"
+
+DEVIL.--"_Oti oue diabe?_"...
+
+CHORUS.--"_Oti oue diabe-la passe larivie?_"
+
+D.--"_Oti oue diabe?_"
+
+C,--"_Oti oue diabe-lap passe larivie?_"
+
+D,-"_Oti oue 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 epi zombi ka domi tout-patout_.) 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 epi zombi_."...
+
+CHORUS.--"_Diable epi zombi ka d'omi tout-patout!_"
+
+D.--"_Diable epi zombi_."
+
+C.--"_Diable epi zombi ka domi tout-patout!_"
+
+D.--"_Diable epi 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" (_calende_) 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" (_marre yon tete_); and a prettily folded turban is
+spoken of as "a head well tied" (_yon tete bien marre_).... 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
+ecrase_. 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-melee_. 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 _quarteronne_
+(not to be confounded with the _quarteron_ or quadroon);--or even 127
+to 1, as in the _sang-mele_, 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 Lele,
+     Pauv' ti Lele!
+     Li gagnin doule, doule, doule,--
+     Li gagnin doule Tout-patout!_"
+
+I want to know who little Lele 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 Lele" 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:--
+
+--"_Ca qui ka claire conm ca, manman?_" (What is it shines like that?)
+
+And Yzore answers:--
+
+--"_Ca, mafi,--c'est ti limie Bon-Die._" (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!--gade gouos dife qui adans
+ciel-a!_ 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 pitie 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-gadien, 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,
+
+--"_Ca ca ye, Manm-Robert?_"
+
+--"_Pou empeche ou pouend laverette_," she answers. It to keep me from
+catching the _verette_!... And what is inside it?
+
+--"_Toua graines mais, epi 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" (_lefan_)--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' Missie-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:--
+
+--"_Missie, oti masque-a?_"
+
+--"_Y ben fou, pouloss!_" the mother cries out;--"Why, the child must be
+going out of her senses!... _Mimi pa 'mbete moune conm ca!--pa ni piess
+masque: c'est la-verette 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 reve masque-a_," 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 te 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
+_elevees-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 meme 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-la!--tire lanmain-ou assous tete-ou, foute! pisse moin
+enco la!... Espere moin alle lazarett avant mette lanmain conm ca!_"
+(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 te ka venne chapeau, a foce moin ni malhe, toutt manman se
+fai yche yo sans tete._" (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-lapote, ou ke pouend doule
+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:--"_Ca, c'est yon peche
+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-Maia!_--ou 'le malhe enco pou fai ca, che?" (You want to have
+still more bad luck, that you do such a thing?)
+
+And Yzore answers:--
+
+--"_Toutt moune icitt pa ni yon sou!--gouos conm ca fil zagrignin, et
+moin pa menm mange! Epi laverette enco.... Moin coue toutt ca ka pote
+malhe!_" (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 epi 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 tchoue yo; moin chasse yo--ke vini enco_." (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 alle_," 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-Pie Achete dobannes Aulie ces dobannes C'est yon
+_bel-bois_ moin mennein monte!"
+
+("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 alle_.... News has just come that Ti Marie died
+last night at the lazaretto of the Fort: she was attacked by what they
+call the _laverette-pouff_,--a form of the disease which strangles its
+victim within a few hours.
+
+Ti Marie was certainly the neatest little machanne 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 'le cafe?--qui 'le
+sirop?_" (Who wants coffee?--who wants syrup?) She looked about sixteen,
+but was a mother. "Where is her husband?" I ask. "_Nhomme-y mo 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-melees_. 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 noue_," she says;--"_moin ououge: ou
+fai moin noue nans potrait-a_." (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--_noue conm poule-zo-noue_ ("black as
+a black-boned hen!")
+
+... And this red race is disappearing from St. Pierre--doubtless also
+from other plague-stricken centres.
+
+
+
+XXIX. _April 10th._
+
+
+Manm-Robert is much annoyed and puzzled because the American
+steamer--the _bom-mange_, 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:--"_Alle oue Batterie d' Esnotz si bom-mange-a pas
+vini_." But Louis always returns with same rueful answer:--
+
+--"_Manm-Robert, pa ni piess bom-mange_" (there is not so much as a bit
+of a _bom-mange_).
+
+... "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:--
+
+--"_Ato, mon che, 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 verette 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 bekes 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-Die ka passe!_"...
+
+
+
+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 pe venne Bon-Die_ (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-a-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 oue!_--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-a?_"
+
+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!--qutitte moin chache papaou qui adans
+cimetie 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 Riviere 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! Noemi!"...
+"Coument ou ye, che?"... "Eh! Pascaline!",..."Bonjou',
+Youtte!--Dede!-Fifi!--Henrillia!"... "Coument ou kalle, Cyrillia?"...
+"Toutt douce, che!--et Ti Meme?"... "Y bien;--oti Ninotte?"... "Bo ti
+manmaille pou moin, che--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: RIVIERE 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 mo 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-melee, 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 lave_." (No; I am coming to wash.)
+
+--"_Aie! aie! aie!--y vini lave!_"... 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 ke lave toutt ca ba ou
+bien vite, che,--va, amise 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 machanne-mange--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" (_frotte_ in
+creole);--after she can do this pretty well, she is taught the curious
+art of whipping it (_fesse_). 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
+fesse. 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 fesse.
+
+After this, all the pieces are spread out upon the rocks, in the sun,
+for the "first bleaching" (_pouemie lablanie_). In the evening they
+are gathered into large wooden trays or baskets, and carried to what is
+called the "lye-house" (_lacaie 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 (_coule_ 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 (_ouvouiye_).
+
+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:--"_Gade Missie-a ka guette
+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 te ka lave, Passe,
+raccommode: Y te nef he disoue Ou mette moin derho,--Yche main assous
+bouas moin;--Laplie te ka tombe--Lefan moin assous tete moin! Doudoux,
+ou m'abandonne! Moin pa ni pesonne pou soigne 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, "Che 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:--
+
+
+CHE 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!_--Ca qui la?'--
+'C'est moin-menme, lanmou;--Ouve lapott ba moin!'
+
+"_To, to, to!_--Ca qui la?'--
+'C'est moin-menme lanmou, Qui ka ba ou khe moin!'
+
+"_To, to, to!_--Ca qui la?'--
+'C'est moin-menme lanmou, Laplie ka mouille 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-Clemence maudi," "Loema
+tombe," "Quand ou ni ti mari jojoll."
+
+--At mid-day the machanne-mange 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 fesse 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!"--"Sese!"--"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 feme lapote larivie, che-anh?_"
+
+--"_Ah! oui, che!--moin feme y, ou tanne?--moin ni lacle-a!_" (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 pense toutt lanmize 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 Pelee. Pelee 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 Pelee; 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
+Pelee 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 craze_, 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 PELEE.
+
+
+
+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 Pere 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 hache 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 Pelee, 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 Pele, or Montagne Pelee, 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,--Pelee, 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, Pelee 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 Pelee; 2. Pitons du Carbet;
+3. Roches Carrees; [27] 4. Vauclin; 5. Marin; 6. Morne de la Plaine.
+Forty-two distinct mountain-masses belong to the Carbet system
+alone,--that of Pelee including but thirteen; and the whole Carbet area
+has a circumference of 120,000 metres,--much more considerable than that
+of Pelee. 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 Pelee, dominating
+everything, and filling the north, presents an aspect and occupies an
+area scarcely inferior to those of AEtna.
+
+--Sometimes, while looking at La Pelee, 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 Pelee 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 Pelee, in spite of these annoyances and
+risks, has not yet made his appearance in Martinique. [28]
+
+[Illustration: FOOT OF PELEE, 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
+Pelee appears from these summits. Volcanic hills often seem higher, by
+reason of their steepness, than they really are; but Pelee 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. Pelee 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 Pelee 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-a-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, Pelee 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
+_lantcho_. You will also see that the clouds run in a circle about
+Pelee,--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, Pelee 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 Pelee.
+
+... 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'Etang, 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 Souffriere_,
+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 Precheur, lying at the foot of the western
+slope of Pelee, 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 Souffriere
+qui bout!_" (the Souffriere 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-Corre, and Au Precheur; also
+whitening the neighboring country: the mountain was sending up columns
+of smoke or vapor; and it was noticed that the Riviere 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 deg. Reaumur (116 deg. 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 Pelee 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 Pelee 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 Precheur,--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 Precheur, and
+begin the ascent on foot, through cane-plantations.... The road by
+which you follow the north-west coast round the skirts of Pelee is very
+picturesque:--you cross the Roxelane, the Riviere des Peres, the
+Riviere Seche (whose bed is now occupied only by a motionless torrent
+of rocks);--passing first by the suburb of Fond-Corre, 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 Pelee'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 _campeche_, or logwood, and calabash-trees, and
+multitudes of the pretty shrubs bearing the fruit called in creole
+_raisins-bo-lanme_, or "sea-side grapes." Then you reach Au Precheur: 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 Riviere du
+Precheur, 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 Pelee 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 Pelee 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 Pelee 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 Pelee, 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 Pelee'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 Pelee, 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 Pelee, 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
+(_irisees_, 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 Gele.
+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 Pelee shadowing behind it;--and a grass-grown
+road leads up westward from the national highway towards the volcano.
+This is the Calebasse route to Pelee.
+
+
+
+III.
+
+
+We must be very sure of the weather before undertaking the ascent of
+Pelee; 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 Pelee: 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 Pelee'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 Secheresse_. 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 fraiche_. December to March. Rainfall, about 475
+millimetres. 2. _Saison chaude et seche_. 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 seche_ 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,--Pelee 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 Pelee'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 Pelee 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 Pelee 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
+Pelee.
+
+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 Pelee. 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 sepent-sale_);--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 coumande yo pouend gade pou sepent_," 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 Pelee and Carbet, or penetrate into the mountains of the interior.
+
+[Illustration: LA MONTAGNE PELEE, 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 Pelee 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 Riviere 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 _tetart_,
+_banane_, _loche_, and _dormeur_ are the principal varieties. The tetart
+(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 Pere 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 _razie_:
+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 Etang,--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 Etang,
+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 Etang we have
+just left: it is also of more irregular outline. This is called the
+_Etang 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 Abbe 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 Etang 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-Jesus_ ("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 Pelee, 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 Pere 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 Pere 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 CANOTIE
+
+
+
+
+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-a_, _batiment-la_; but the American
+steamer is always the "bom-ship"--_batiment-bom-a_, or, the
+"food-ship"--_batiment-mange-a_.... You hear women and men asking each
+other, as the shock of the gun flaps through all the town, "_Mi! gade
+ca qui la, che?_" And if the answer be, "_Mais c'est bom-la,
+che,--bom-mange-a ka rive_" (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-cone_,--"the horn-ship." There is
+even a song, of which the refrain is:--
+
+"Bom-la rive, che.-Batiment-cone-la rive."
+
+... 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 canotie_, 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 canotie_--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 Stephane--nicknamed _Ti Chabin_, because of his bright hair,--a
+slim little yellow boy of eleven--led the pursuit, crying always,
+"_Enco, Missie,--enco!_"...
+
+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 Stephane, who had won all the canoe
+contests last 14th of July. Stephane, 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! ca fond icitt!_" 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-la 'le fai nou neye!--laisse y, Stephane!_" he cried. (The
+fellow wants to drown us. _Laisse_--leave it alone.)
+
+But Stephane had recovered breath, and was evidently resolved to try
+again. It was gold!
+
+--"_Mais ca c'est lo!_"
+
+--"_Assez, non!_" screamed Maximilien. "_Pa plonge 'nco, moin ka di ou!
+Ah! foute!_"...
+
+Stephane had dived again!
+
+... And where were the others? "_Bon-Die, gade oti yo ye!_" 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 Stephane 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 te ka di ou laisse y!_" cried Maximilien, in anger and
+alarm.... "_Gade, gade sang-a ka coule nans nez ou,-nans bouche ou!...Mi
+oti Iezautt!_"
+
+_Lezautt_, the rest, were no longer visible.
+
+--"_Et mi oti nou ye!_" cried Maximilien again. They had never ventured
+so far from shore.
+
+But Stephane answered only, "_C'est lo!_" 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 ye!_" reiterated Maximilien. "_Bon-Die!_ 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 Corre?... 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 pagaye,--anh?--ou ni bousoin domi?_" (Thou dost not paddle,
+eh?--thou wouldst go to sleep?)
+
+--"_Si! moin ka pagaye,--epi fo!_" (I am paddling, and hard, too!)
+responded Stephane....
+
+--"_Ou ka pagaye!--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 Stephane, becoming angry. "_Moin ka pagaye!_" (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 douole icitt!_... There is something queer,
+Stephane; there is something queer."...
+
+--"Ah! you begin to see now, Maximilien!-it is the current!"
+
+--"A devil-current, Stephane.... We are drifting: we will go to the
+horizon!"...
+
+To the horizon--"_nou kalle 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 pagaye atouelement_" (It is no use to paddle now),
+sobbed Maximilien, laying down his palettes.
+
+--"_Si! si!_" said Stephane, reversing the motion: "paddle with the
+current."
+
+--"With the current! It runs to La Dominique!"
+
+--"_Pouloss_," phlegmatically returned Stephane,--"_ennou!_--let us make
+for La Dominique!"
+
+--"Thou fool!--it is more than past forty kilometres.... _Stephane, mi!
+gade!--mi quz" gouos 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 Pere 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, Stephane!--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 lanme ka vini plis fo, ca nou ke fai?_" (If the sea roughens,
+what are we to do?) asked Maximilien.
+
+--"Maybe we will meet a steamer," answered Stephane: "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,--piess! piess! piess!"
+
+--"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 Precheur. 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 Stephane, while the great heaving seemed to grow
+vaster,--"_fau nou ka prie Bon-Die_."...
+
+Maximilien answered nothing.
+
+--"_Fau prie Bon-Die_" (We must pray to the Bon-Die), repeated Stephane.
+
+--"_Pa lapeine, li pas pe oue nou ato!_" (It is not worth while: He
+cannot see us now) answered the little black.... In the immense darkness
+even the loom of the island was no longer visible.
+
+--"O Maximilien!--_Bon-Die ka oue toutt, ka connaitt toutt_" (He sees
+all; He knows all), cried Stephane.
+
+--"_Y pa pe oue non piess atoueelement, moin ben sur!_" (He cannot see
+us at all now,--I am quite sure) irreverently responded Maximilien....
+
+--"Thou thinkest the Bon-Die like thyself!--He has not eyes like thou,"
+protested Stephane. "_Li pas ka tini coule; li pas ka tini zie_" (He has
+not color; He has not eyes), continued the boy, repeating the text
+of his catechism,--the curious creole catechism of old Pere Goux, of
+Carbet. [Quaint priest and quaint catechism have both passed away.]
+
+--"_Moin pa save si li pa ka tini coule_" (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 Stephane.... "_'Bon-Die, li conm
+vent: vent tout-patout, et nou pa save oue li;-li ka touche nou,--li
+ka boulvese lanme.'_" (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-Die is the Wind," responded Maximilien, "then pray thou
+the Wind to stay quiet."
+
+--"The Bon-Die is not the Wind," cried Stephane: "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-Die, 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 Stephane 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 Pelee 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 Pelee 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.
+
+--"_Ca c'est la Dominique_," said Maximilien,--"_Ennou pou ouivage-a!_"
+
+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 Stephane. 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, Stephane 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, Stephane, 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 Stephane out of
+the water. Evidently Stephane could be of no more assistance;--the boy
+was so weak he could not even sit up straight.
+
+--"_Aie! ou ke jete nou enco_," panted Maximilien,--"_mette ou toutt
+longue_."
+
+Stephane 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.... Stephane did not seem to hear: his
+eyes remained closed.
+
+--"Stephane!" cried Maximilien, in alarm,--"Stephane!"
+
+--"_C'est lo, papoute_," murmured Stephane, without lifting his
+eyelids,--"_ca c'est lo!--ou pa janmain oue yon bel piece conm ca?_"
+(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 domi, Stephane?_"--queried Maximilien, wondering,--"art
+asleep?"
+
+But Stephane opened his eyes and looked at him so strangely! Never had
+he seen Stephane look that way before.
+
+--"_C'a ou ni, Stephane?--what ails thee?--aie, Bon-Die, Bon-Die!_"
+
+--"_Bon-Die!_"--muttered Stephane, closing his eyes again at the sound
+of the great Name,--"He has no color!--He is like the Wind."...
+
+--"Stephane!"...
+
+--"He feels in the dark--He has not eyes."...
+
+--"_Stephane, pa pale ca!!_"
+
+--"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,--"Stephane, thou art mad!"
+
+And all at once he became afraid of Stephane,--afraid of all he
+said,--afraid of his touch,--afraid of his eyes... he was growing like a
+_zombi!_
+
+But Stephane'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 _gouos-zie_ 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!_" Stephane 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 Stephane;--Stephane
+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
+Stephane 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 Stephane'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 Stephane 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-Die, li conm vent... li ka touche nou... nou
+pa save oue li_." (But why had the Bon-Die shaken the wind?) "_Li pa ka
+tini zie_," 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-Die was
+there,--bending over him with a lantern,--talking to him in a language
+he did not understand. And the Bon-Die certainly had eyes,--great gray
+eyes that did not look wicked at all. He tried to tell the Bon-Die 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-Die 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 Stephane 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, Desirade, 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 (_zepingue 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-a-clous_ or _zanneaux-chenilles_);
+the bracelets (_portes-bonheur_); the studs (_boutons-a-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-bapteme" 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_, _zepingues 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: _Ca te 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 _elevees 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 Pere 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 Pere 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 Metropole 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 legitimes_, 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-mele_, 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 safely be said refers rather
+to the fille-de-couleur of the past than of the present half-century.
+The race is now in a period of transition: public education and
+political changes are modifying the type, and it is impossible to guess
+the ultimate consequence, because it is impossible to safely predict
+what new influences may yet be brought to affect its social development.
+Befare the present era of colonial decadence, the character of the
+fille-de-couleur was not what it is now. Even when totally uneducated,
+she had a peculiar charm,--that charm of childishness which has power to
+win sympathy from the rudest natures. One could not but feel attracted
+towards this naif 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 _zhebe-m'amise_, or _zhebe-manmzelle_,
+whose leaves close at the touch of a hair. Such human manifestations,
+nevertheless, are apt to attract more in proportion as they are more
+visible,--in proportion as the soul-current, being less profound, flows
+more audibly. But no hasty observation could have revealed the whole
+character of the fille-de-couleur to the stranger, equally charmed and
+surprised: the creole comprehended her better, and probably treated
+her with even more real kindness. The truth was that centuries of
+deprivation of natural rights and hopes had given to her race--itself
+fathered by passion unrestrained and mothered by subjection
+unlimited--an inherent scepticism in the duration of love, and a
+marvellous capacity for accepting the destiny of abandonment as one
+accepts the natural and the inevitable. And that desire to please--which
+in the fille-de-couleur seemed to prevail above all other motives of
+action (maternal affection excepted)--could have appeared absolutely
+natural only to those who never reflected that even sentiment had been
+artificially cultivated by slavery.
+
+She asked for so little,--accepted a gift with such childish
+pleasure,--submitted so unresistingly to the will of the man
+who promised to love her. She bore him children--such beautiful
+children!--whom he rarely acknowledged, and was never asked
+to legitimatize;--and she did not ask perpetual affection
+notwithstanding,--regarded the relation as a necessarily temporary
+one, to be sooner or later dissolved by the marriage of her children's
+father. If deceived in all things,--if absolutely ill-treated and left
+destitute, she did not lose faith in human nature: she seemed a born
+optimist, believing most men good;--she would make a home for another
+and serve him better than any slave.... "_Nee 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 a leurs maitres_. 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,--Acelie, Avrillette, Melie, Robertine, Celianne,
+Francillette, Adee, Catharinette, Sidollie, Celine, 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 (_caches_), wicked, and capable of
+the greatest crimes." A San Domingo historian, far more prejudiced
+than Pere 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 Pere Labat, the historian Borde
+observes:--"The wickedness spoken of by Pere 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--_a coup sur,
+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 Pere 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.
+
+     --"Adieu Madras!
+     Adieu foulard!
+     Adieu dezinde!
+     Adieu collier-choux!
+     Batiment-la
+     Qui sou laboue-la,
+     Li ka mennein
+     Doudoux-a-moin alle.
+
+     --"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',
+     Missie le Consignataire.
+     Moin ka vini
+     Fai yon ti petition;
+     Doudoux-a-moin
+     Y ka pati,--T'enprie, helas!
+     Retade li."
+
+[He answers kindly in French: the _bekes_ 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 chere enfant
+     Il est trop tard,
+     Les connaissements
+     Sont deja signes,
+     Est deja sur la bouee;
+     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 rive,
+     Moin te toujou tini;
+     Madras rive,
+     Moin te toujou tini;
+     Dezindes rive,
+     Moin te toujou tini.--Capitaine sougonde
+     C'est yon bon gacon!
+
+     "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 aime;
+     Toutt moune tini
+     Yon moune yo cheri;
+     Toutt moune tini
+     Yon doudoux a yo.
+     Jusse moin tou sele
+     Pa tini ca--moin!"
+
+... On the eve of the _Fete 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, "_reposoue Bon-Die_." 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 reposoue Bon-Die_. (The luck of the mulattress is the
+resting-place of the Good-God).
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X. BETE-NI-PIE.
+
+
+
+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:--_ca 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 _bete a-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 _bete-ni-pie_ (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:--"_Quitte moin tchoue ou, maudi!--quitte moin tchoue
+ou, scelerat!--quitte moin tchoue ou, Satan!--quitte moin tchoue
+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
+_bete-a-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 bete-a-mille-pattes was not one which could appeal
+to negro imagination. The slaves themselves invented an equally vivid
+name, _bete-anni-pie_ (the Beast-which-is-all-feet); _anni_ in creole
+signifying "only," and in such a sense "all." Abbreviated by subsequent
+usage to _bete-'ni-pie_, 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:--"_Gade,
+Missie! ni bete-ni-pie 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. "_Missie_," she says, "_lezhe pa aien pou moin: c'est
+minitt ka foute 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', Missie. Coument ou passe lanuitt?_"--"Thanks, my daughter,
+I slept well."--"The weather is beautiful: if Missie 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-lele_. The _baton-lele_ 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-lele 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. _Ca qui le 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
+_mange-Creole_, and I can venture to write something about it after a
+year's observation. By _mange-Creole_ 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 Provencal 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-caraibes_, 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" (_feroce_); 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 _bie-Fouance_; American canned peas, _ti-pois-Fouance_;
+any white foreigner who can talk French is _yon beke-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 passe 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 _matete_; children are very fond of it. Both of these names,
+_cousscaye_ and _matete_, 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 _machannes 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-cafe_, or "coffee-pepper," larger but about the same shape as a
+grain of Liberian coffee, violet-red at one end; the _piment-zoueseau_,
+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
+
+ZHISTOUE PIMENT.
+
+Te ni yon manman qui te ni en pile, en pile yche; et yon jou y pa te ni
+aien pou y te baill yche-la mange. Y te ka leve bon matin-la sans yon
+sou: y pa sa ca y te doue fai,--la y te ke baill latete. Y alle
+lacaie macoume-y, raconte lapeine-y. Macoume baill y toua chopine
+farine-manioc. Y alle lacaill liautt macoume, qui baill y yon grand
+trai piment. Macoume-la di y venne trai-piment-a, epi y te pe achete
+lamori,--pisse y ja te ni farine. Madame-la di: "Meci, macoume;"--y di y
+bonjou'; epi y alle lacaie-y.
+
+Lhe y rive acaie y lime dife: y mette canari epi dleau assous dife-a;
+epi y casse toutt piment-la et mette yo adans canari-a assous dire.
+
+Lhe y oue canari-a ka boui, y pouend _baton-lele_, epi y lele piment-a:
+aloss y ka fai yonne calalou-piment. Lhe calalou-piment-la te tchouitt,
+y pouend chaque zassiett yche-li; y mette calalou yo fouete dans
+zassiett-la; y mette ta-mari fouete, assou, epi ta-y. Epi lhe calalou-la
+te bien fouete, y mette farine nans chaque zassiett-la. Epi y crie toutt
+moune vini mange. Toutt moune vini mette yo a-tabe.
+
+Pouemie bouchee mari-a pouend, y rete,--y crie: "Aie! ouaill! mafenm!"
+Fenm-la reponne mari y: "Ouaill! monmari!" Ces ti manmaille-la crie:
+"Ouaill! manman!" Manman-a. reponne:--"Ouaill! yches-moin!"... Yo toutt
+pouend couri, quitte caie-la sele,--epi yo toutt tombe larvie a touempe
+bouche yo. Ces ti manmaille-la boue dleau sitellement jusse temps yo
+toutt neye: te ka rete anni manman-la epi papa-la. Yo te la bo larivie,
+qui te ka pleire. Moin te ka passe a lhe-a;--moin ka mande yo: "Ca zautt
+ni?"
+
+Nhomme-la leve: y baill moin yon sele coup d'pie, y voye moin lautt bo
+larivie-ou oue moin vini pou conte ca 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, _macoume_,"--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-lele_, 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:--"_Aie!
+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 _Gouos-zie_; the rosy _sade_; the red
+_Bon-Die-manie-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 _couronne_, 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 _becunne_; and there are many fish which,
+although not venomous by nature, have always been considered dangerous.
+In the time of Pere 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 becunne 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 _sadines_;--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 _sadines_ 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 _sadines_ are roasted over a charcoal fire, and flavored with a
+sauce of lemon, pimento, and garlic. When there are no _sadines_, 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-epi-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,
+_lefant_: 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-epi-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:--"_Ca
+ou le 'nco-poule, epi-diri?_" (What more do you want, great
+heavens!--chicken-and-rice?) Naughty children are bribed into absolute
+goodness by the promise of poule-epi-diri:--
+
+     --"_Aie! che, bo doudoux!
+     Doudoux ba ou poule-epi-diri;
+     Aie! che, bo doudoux!_"...
+
+(Aie, dear! kiss _doudoux!--doudoux_ has rice-and-chicken for
+you!--_aie_, 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-caraibes_, little
+black peas (_poix-zie-noue_, "black-eyed peas"), or of crawfish
+(_akra-cribiche_). 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-caraibes_,
+_patates_, _zignames_, _camanioc_, and _cousscouche_: all immense
+roots,--the true potatoes of the tropics. The camanioc is finer than the
+choux-caraibe, 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-caraibe;
+_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-a-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-caraibe_), 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 tire ti lapeau-la sans casse-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 _chadeque_, which grows here to fully three
+feet in circumference, and has a sweet pink pulp; and there is the
+"forbidden-fruit" (_fouitt-defendu_), a sort of cross between the orange
+and the chadeque, 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 ca menm qui fai moune ka fai yche conm ca atouelement!_ The
+fouitt-defendu is wonderful, indeed, in its way; but the fruit which
+most surprised me on my first acquaintance with it was the _zabricot_.
+
+--"_Ou le yon zabricot?_" (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:--"_Ca ke fai ou malade mange toutt ca!_" (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-peche_
+(or peach-mango);--_mango-vert_ (green mango), very large
+and oblong;--_mango-greffe_;--_mangotine_, quite round
+and small;--_mango-quinette_, very small also, almost
+egg-shaped;--_mango-Zeze_, 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-Amelie_ (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 _mange-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-rape_)
+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 ca ici_"--(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: "_ca ke tchoue limie zie 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 le tchoue co-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-Die 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 gade baggaie Bon-Die conm ca!_" (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 Pelee;--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
+(_socies_), 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 ke 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:--
+
+--"Deezhe, toua-zhe-matin: c'est lhe zombi. Yo ka soti dezhe, toua zhe:
+c'est lhe yo. A quattrhe yo ka rentre;--angelus ka sonne." (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 le moune oue 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 quiriese quittee cabane ou pou
+gade 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 ke coqui zie 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 choie 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 _engages_ or _envoyes_--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! macoume_,' asked the sewing-woman, '_ca ou ni dans
+guiole-ou?_' And the other answered, very angrily, '_Ou ni toupet mande
+moin ca moin ni dans guiole moin!--et cete ou qui te brile guiole moin
+nans chandelle-ou hie-soue_.'" (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 range_), or an
+_envoye_?--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!--envoye 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,
+Missie!--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 pile 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:--
+
+--"_Epi quiless moune ca ou ka pale-a?_"
+
+But she would always answer:--"_Moin ka pale anni co 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:--
+
+--"_Missie?_"--timidly.
+
+--"Eh?"
+
+--"_Di moin, che, ti manmaille dans pays ou, toutt piti, piti,--ess ca
+pale 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 drole, ca_" (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 pale negue: ca 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 lefant, forms her
+bed. The _lefant_, 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,--_bourre epi
+fleches-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 _bete-a-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 camphree_
+(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 Marche 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:--"_Gagne ti bouquet pou Viege-ou, che!_... Buy a nosegay,
+dear, for your Virgin;--she is asking you for one;--give her a little
+one, _che 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 lime
+lampe ou pou fai la-Viege passe dans caie-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, Missie_," she answered, smiling, "_moin aimein ti Viege
+moin, pa le 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 Missie
+want to buy me a _chapelle?_--Missie is a Protestant?"
+
+--"I thought it might give you pleasure, Cyrillia."
+
+--"No, Missie, I thank you; it would not give me pleasure. But Missie
+could give me something else which would make me very happy--I often
+thought of asking Missie...but--"
+
+--"Tell me what it is, Cyrillia."
+
+She remained silent a moment, then said:--
+
+--"Missie makes photographs...."
+
+--"You want a photograph of yourself, Cyrillia?"
+
+--"Oh! no, Missie, 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! Missie, 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 potrai pale--anh?... pisse yo ka tire y toutt
+samm ou: c'est ou-menm!... Yo doue fai y pale '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 se cause epi 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-cursed 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 COMBINE, CHE!"
+
+
+
+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 facades 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:--"_ca 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-a-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',
+Missie_,"--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 _machanne_ 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' malhere!_" (poor unfortunate),
+"_pauv' diabe!_"... "_Toutt baggaie-y pou alle, 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 deg. Fahr. in the tropics is by no means the same thing as 90 deg. 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
+naively 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-lanmo_,--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 combine, che!--pa combine conm ca!_" (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, Missie", 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."
+
+_Combine_ 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 combine,--non, che_," 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 combine-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. YE.
+
+
+
+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 Ye and
+the Devil. The whole story of Ye would form a large book,--so numerous
+the list of his adventures; and this adventure seems to me the most
+characteristic of all. Ye is the most curious figure in Martinique
+folk-lore. Ye 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-Bacoue_,
+and feet like an ape, and fire in his throat. _Y ka sam yon gouos, gouos
+macaque_....
+
+
+
+II.
+
+
+_Ca qui pa te connaitt Ye?_... Who is there in all Martinique who never
+heard of Ye? 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 Ye 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 Ye 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 Ye took a
+good long look at him. After Ye had watched him for a while, Ye 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
+(_epi en pile piment_),--just what negroes like Ye 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 Ye 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, Ye 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 Ye 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. Ye put out his hand to take it,--and
+all of a sudden the Devil made a grab at Ye's hand and caught it! Ye was
+so frightened he could not even cry out, _Aie-yaie_. The Devil finished
+the last morsel, threw down the calabash, and said to Ye in a terrible
+voice:--"_Ato, saff!--ou c'est ta moin!_" (I've got you now, you
+glutton;--you belong to me!) Then he jumped on Ye's back, like a great
+ape, and twisted his legs round Ye's neck, and cried out:---"Carry me to
+your cabin,--and walk fast!"
+
+... When Ye'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 _regime_ 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 Ye 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
+Ye:--"Put me down there!" Ye 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 mo!--papa mo!--touttt yche mo!_" (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 Ye and all the family, and muttered:--
+
+--"_Toutt moune leve!_" (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 te ka monte assous tabe-la, epi y te ka fai caca
+adans toutt plats-a, adans toutt zassiett-la."]
+
+--"_Gobe-moin ca!_"
+
+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.
+
+Ye 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. "Ye," she insisted, "go
+and see the Bon-Die [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 Ye started off very, very early one morning, before the peep of day,
+and began to climb the Montagne Pelee. 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!--ca ou ni, Ye fa ou le?_"
+
+When Ye had recounted his troubles, the Good-God said:--
+
+--"_Pauv ma pauv!_ I knew it all before you came, Ye. 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 Ye! 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 be!_' Then the Devil will drop down dead.
+Don't forget not to eat anything--_ou tanne?_"...
+
+Ye promised to remember all he was told, and not to eat anything on his
+way down;--then he said good-bye to the Bon-Die (_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 be!"--"tam ni pou tam ni be!_"--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 Ye 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-Die: 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, Ye 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 Ye tried to speak; but his teeth
+were so on edge that instead of saying,--"_Tam ni pou tam ni be_," he
+could only stammer out:---"_Anni toque Diabe-la 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 Ye and his family, and ordered
+them as usual;--
+
+--"_Gobe-moin ca!_" And they had to gobble it up,--every bit of it.
+
+The family nearly died of hunger and disgust. Twice more Ye climbed the
+Montagne Pelee; twice more he climbed the Morne de la Croix; twice more
+he disturbed the poor Bon-Die, 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 Fonte (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 Ye for the last time to see the
+Bon-Die.
+
+Ye 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 Fonte saw his father getting ready to go, he jumped _floup!_
+into one of the pockets and hid himself there. Ye 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 Ye's pocket,--so as
+to hear everything the Good-God would say.
+
+This time he was very angry,--the Bon-Die: he spoke very crossly; he
+scolded Ye a great deal. But he was so kind for all that,--he was so
+generous to good-for-nothing Ye, that he took the pains to repeat the
+words over and over again for him:--"_Tam ni pou tam ni be_."... And
+this time the Bon-Die was not talking to no purpose: there was somebody
+there well able to remember what he said. Ti Fonte 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, Ye did as he had done before--stuffed himself with all
+the green fruit he could find.
+
+The moment Ye got home and took off his coat, Ti Fonte 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 _matete-cirique_,--several calabashes of _couss-caye_, two
+_regimes-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 Fonte got up too, and
+yelled out just as loud as he could:---"_Tam ni pou tam ni be!_"
+
+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, Ye, like the old fool he was, kept trying to say what the
+Bon-Die had told him, and could only mumble:--
+
+--"_Anni toque Diabe-la 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 Ye 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 Ye 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 te plein lafoce_; and Ye
+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 Ye 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 Ye, 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.
+
+Ye could scarcely walk for the weight of his nose; but he had to go and
+see the Bon-Die again. The Bon-Die said to him:--
+
+--"Ah! Ye, my poor Ye, 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-Die, 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 Ye 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 Ye!--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 Ye!--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-Die to help you rid
+yourself of him now: for the only Bon-Die 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 _machanne_, 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 _pouemie
+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. "_Adie enco, che;--Bon-Die ke beni
+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 Pelee 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 facades,--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;--Pelee still peers high over the rim of the south....
+Day wanes;--the shadow of the ship lengthens over the flower-blue water.
+Pelee 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
+Pelee; 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!... _Adie, che!--Bon-Die ke bent ou!_...
+
+
+
+
+
+ENDNOTES
+
+
+[Footnote 1: Since this was written the market has been removed to the
+Savane,--to allow of the erection of a large new market-building on the
+old site; and the beautiful trees have been cut down.]
+
+[Footnote 2: I subsequently learned the mystery of this very strange and
+beautiful mixed race,--many fine specimens of which may also be seen
+in Trinidad. Three widely diverse elements have combined to form it:
+European, negro, and Indian,--but, strange to say, it is the most savage
+of these three bloods which creates the peculiar charm.... I cannot
+speak of this comely and extraordinary type without translating a
+passage from Dr. J. J. J. Cornilliac, an eminent Martinique physician,
+who recently published a most valuable series of studies upon the
+ethnology, climatology, and history of the Antilles. In these he
+writes:...]
+
+"When, among the populations of the Antilles, we first notice those
+remarkable _metis_ 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 Fievre 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.]
+
+[Footnote 3: _Extract from the "Story of Marie," as written from dictation:_
+
+... Manman-a te ni yon gouos ja a caie-li. Ja-la te touop lou'de pou
+Marie. Ce te li menm manman la qui te kalle pouend dileau. Yon jou
+y pouend ja-la pou y te alle pouend dileau. Lhe manman-a rive bo la
+fontaine, y pa trouve pesonne pou chage y. Y rete; y ka crie, "Toutt bon
+Chritien, vini chage moin!"
+
+... Lhe manman rete y oue pa te ni piess bon Chritien pou chage y. Y
+rete; y crie: "Pouloss, si pa ni bon Chritien, ni mauvais Chritien!
+toutt mauvais Chritien vini chage moin!"
+
+... Lhe y fini di ca, y oue yon diabe qui ka vini, ka di conm caa, "Pou
+moin chage ou, ca ou ke baill moin?" Manman-la di,--y reponne, "Moin pa
+ni arien!" Diabe-la reponne y, "Y fau ba moin Marie pou moin pe chage
+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."]
+
+[Footnote 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.]
+
+[Footnote 5: Moreau de Saint-Mery writes, describing the drums of the negroes
+of Saint Domingue: "Le plus court de ces tambours est nomme
+_Bamboula_, attendu qu'il est forme quelquefois d'un tres-gros
+bambou."--"Description de la partie francaise de Saint Domingue", vol.
+i., p. 44.]
+
+[Footnote 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
+Pere 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.]
+
+[Footnote 7: "Histoire Generale des Antilles... habites par les Francais." Par
+le R. P. Du Tertre, de l'Ordre des Freres Prescheurs. Paris: 1661-71. 4
+vols. (with illustrations) in 4to.]
+
+[Footnote 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 che!_ "How many cows did you steal from him?"
+asked the magistrate. "_Ess moin pe save?--moin te 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 ke rete 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.]
+
+[Footnote 9: Y sucoue souye assous quai-la;--y ka di: "Moin ka maudi ou,
+Lanmatinique!--moin ka maudi ou!...Ke ni mange pou engnien: ou pa ke
+pe menm achete y! Ke ni touele pou engnien: ou pa ke pe menm achete yon
+robe! Epi yche ke batt manman.... Ou banni moin!--moin ke vini enco"]
+
+[Footnote 10: Vol. iii., p. 382-3. Edition of 1722.]
+
+[Footnote 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.]
+
+[Footnote 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.]
+
+[Footnote 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.]
+
+[Footnote 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.]
+
+[Footnote 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."--"_Aie ya yaie!_...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?"]
+
+[Footnote 16: "Kiss me now!"]
+
+[Footnote 17: Petits amoureux aux plumes, Enfants d'un brillant sejour, Vous
+ignorez l'amertume, Vous parlez souvent d'amour;... Vous meprisez la
+dorure, Les salons, et les bijoux; Vous cherissez la Nature, Petits
+oiseaux, becquetez-vous!
+
+"Voyez labas, dans cette eglise, Aupres d'un confessional, Le pretre,
+qui veut faire croire a Lise, Qu'un baiser est un grand mal;--Pour
+prouver a la mignonne Qu'un baiser bien fait, bien doux, N'a jamais
+damne 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!]
+
+[Footnote 18: "Cette danse est opposee a la pudeur. Avec tout cela, elle ne
+lesse pas d'etre tellement du gout des Espagnols Creolles de l'Amerique,
+& si fort en usage parmi eux, qu'elle fait la meilleure partie de leurs
+divertissements, & qu'elle entre meme dans leurs devotions. Ils
+la dansent meme dans leurs Eglises & a leurs processions; et les
+Religieuses ne manquent guere de la danser la Nuit de Noel, sur un
+theatre eleve dans leur Choeur, vis-a-vis de leur grille, qui est
+ouverte, afin que le Peuple ait sa part dans la joye que ces bonnes ames
+temoignent pour la naissance du Sauveur."]
+
+[Footnote 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.]
+
+[Footnote 20: "_Bel laline, moin ka montre ti piece moin!--ba moin lagent toutt
+temps ou ka claire!_"... This little invocation is supposed to have most
+power when uttered on the first appearance of the new moon.]
+
+[Footnote 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.]
+
+[Footnote 22: --"Moin te oue yon bal;--moin reve: moin te ka oue toutt moune
+ka danse masque; moin te ka gade. Et toutt-a-coup moin ka oue c'est
+bonhomme-caton ka danse. Et main ka oue yon Commande: y ka mande moin
+ca moin ka fai la. Moin reponne y conm ca:--'Moin oue yon bal, moin
+gade-coument!' 'Y ka reponne moin:--'Pisse ou si quiriese pou vini gade
+baggaie moune, faut rete la pou danse 'tou.' Moin reponne y:--'Non! main
+pa danse epi bonhomme-caton!--moin pe!'... Et moin ka couri, moin ka
+couri, main ka couri a foce moin te ni pe. Et moin rentre adans grand
+jadin; et moin oue gouos pie-cirise qui te chage anni feuill; et moin ka
+oue yon nhomme assise enba cirise-a. Y mande moin:--'Ca ou ka fai la?'
+Moin di y:--'Moin ka chache chimin pou moin alle.' Y di moin:--'Faut
+rete icitt.' Et moin di y:--'Non!'--et pou chappe co moin, moin di
+y:--'Alle enhaut-la: ou ke oue yon bel bal,--toutt bonhomme-caton ka
+danse, epi yon Commande-en-caton ka coumande yo.'... Epi moin leve, a
+foce moin te pe."...]
+
+[Footnote 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.]
+
+[Footnote 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.]
+
+[Footnote 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,
+     Gouos, gouas, vaillant,
+     Peau,di chapoti
+     Ka fai plaisi;--Lapeau moin
+     Li bien poli;
+     Et moin ka plai
+     Menm 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!"]
+
+[Footnote 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.]
+
+[Footnote 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-Carrees", display a geological
+formation unlike anything discovered in the rest of the Antillesian
+system, excepting in Grenada,--columnar or prismatic basalts.... In
+the plains of Marin curious petrifactions exist;--I saw a honey-comb so
+perfect that the eye alone could scarcely divine the transformation.]
+
+[Footnote 28: Thibault de Chanvallon, writing of Martinique in 1751,
+declared:--"All possible hinderances to study are encountered here
+(_tout s'oppose a 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 a la Martinique_.)...The
+conditions have scarcely changed since De Chanvallon's day, despite the
+creation of Government roads, and the thinning of the high woods.]
+
+[Footnote 29: Humboldt believed the height to be not less than 800 _toises_ (1
+toise=6 ft. 4.73 inches), or about 5115 feet.]
+
+[Footnote 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 Pelee, and the perfect exposure of
+its summit for any considerable time, might be regarded as an omen of
+hurricane.]
+
+[Footnote 31: "De la piqure du serpent de la Martinique," par Auguste Charriez,
+Medecin de la Marine. Paris: Moquet, 1875]
+
+[Footnote 32: M. Francard Bayardelle, overseer of the Presbourg 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 _coui_, or
+half-calabash, in lieu of a grass; and then applies cataplasms of
+herbs,--orange-leaves, cinnamon-leaves, clove-leaves, _chardon-beni_,
+_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.]
+
+[Footnote 33: The sheet-lightnings which play during the nights of July and
+August are termed in creole _Zeclai-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, "_Zeclai-a ka fai yo eclore_" (the lightning hatches
+them).]
+
+[Footnote 34: Dr. E. Rufz: "Etudes historiques," vol. i., p. 189.]
+
+[Footnote 35: The brightly colored douillettes are classified by the
+people according to the designs of the printed
+calico:--_robe-a-bambou_,--_robe-a-bouquet_,--_robe-arc-en-ciel_,
+--_robe-a-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.]
+
+[Footnote 36: "Vouela Cendrillon evec yon bel robe velou grande lakhe....
+Ca te ka bail ou mal zie. Li te tini bel zanneau dans zoreill li,
+quate-tou-chou, bouoche, bracelet, tremblant,--toutt sote bel baggaie
+conm ca."...--(_Conte Cendrillon_,--d'apres 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).]
+
+[Footnote 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, Pere Labat declares having seen freshly
+disembarked blacks handsome enough to inspire an artist:--"_J'en ai vu
+des deux sexes faits a peindre, et beaux par merveille_" (vol. iv.
+chap, vii,). He adds that their skin was extremely fine, and of velvety
+softness;--"_le velours n'est pas plus doux_."... Among the 30,000
+blacks yearly shipped to the French colonies, there were doubtless many
+representatives of the finer African races.]
+
+[Footnote 38: "Leur sueur n'est pas fetide comme celle des negres de la Guinee,"
+writes the traveller Dauxion-Lavaysse, in 1813.]
+
+[Footnote 39: Dr. E. Rufz: "Etudes 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 L20 sterling) during the same
+period was L1,600,000 ($8,000,000). (Burck's "History of European
+Colonies," vol. ii., p. 141; French edition of 1767.)]
+
+[Footnote 40: Rufz: "Etudes," vol. i., p. 236.]
+
+[Footnote 41: I am assured it has now fallen to a figure not exceeding 5000.]
+
+[Footnote 42: Rufz: "Etudes," vol. ii., pp. 311, 312.]
+
+[Footnote 43: Rufz: "Etudes," vol. i., p. 237.]
+
+[Footnote 44: _La race de sang-mele, issue des blancs et des noirs, est
+eminement civilizable. Comme types physiques, elle fournit dans beaucoup
+d'individus, dans ses femmes en general, les plus beaux specimens de
+la race humaine_.--"Le Prejuge de Race aux Antilles Francaises." Par G.
+Souquet-Basiege. St. Pierre, Martinique: 1883. pp. 661-62.]
+
+[Footnote 45: Turiault: "Etude sur le langage Creole 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, naive, et caressante, Faite pour
+plaire, encore plus pour aimer. Portant tous les traits precieux Du
+caractere d'une amante, Le plaisir sur sa bouche et l'amour dans ses
+yeux.]
+
+[Footnote 46: A sort of land-crab;--the female is selected for food, and,
+properly cooked, makes a delicious dish;--the male is almost worthless.]
+
+[Footnote 47: "Voyage a la Martinique," Par J. R., General de Brigade. Paris: An,
+XII., 1804. Page 106.]
+
+[Footnote 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.]
+
+[Footnote 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.]
+
+[Footnote 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 ke ni sept grands peches efface_.]
+
+[Footnote 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."--
+_Etudes_.]
+
+[Footnote 52: In the patois, "_yon rafale yche_,"--a "whirlwind of children."]
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Two Years in the French West Indies, by
+Lafcadio Hearn
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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)
+
+Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the
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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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