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A MARTINIQUE METISSE. 
 (In "douillette" and "madras.') 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
TWO YEARS 
 
 IN THE 
 
 FRENCH WEST INDIES 
 
 vs.: ■■ 
 
 By LAFCADIO HEARN 
 
 AUTHOR OF "CHITA""eTC. 
 
 ILLUSTRATED 
 
 
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 NEW YORK AND LONDON 
 HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS 
 
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 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
'\^l(o^l 
 
 '•■La fafon d'etre du pays est si agrjable, la temp&ature si 
 bonne, et Von y vit dans une libertd k honnHe, que je n'aye 
 fas vu un seul homnie, ny une seule femme, qui en soient 
 revenus, en qui je n'aye remarqu^ une grande tassion d } 
 retourner." — Le PiRE DUTERTRE (1667) 
 
 Copyright, 1S90, by Harper & Brothers. A II rights reserved. 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
A MON CHER AMI 
 
 LEOPOLD ARNOUX 
 
 NoTAiRE A Saint Pierre, Martinique 
 
 Souvenir de nos promenades, — de nos voyages, — de nos causeries,- 
 des sympathies ichangies, — de tout le charme d^une amitii 
 inalterable et inoubliable, — de tout ce qui parle a 
 Vdnie au doux Pays des Revenants. 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 During a trip to the Lesser Antilles in the summer of 
 1887, the writer of the following pages, landing at Mar- 
 tinique, 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 
 sereral, papers have been published in Harper's Mag- 
 azine ; 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 
 
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6 Preface. 
 
 notes taken upon a voyage of nearly three thousand 
 miles, accomplished in less than two months. Dur- 
 ing such hasty journeying it is scarcely possible for a 
 writer to attempt anything more serious than a mere re- 
 flection 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 prepara- 
 tion of the illustrations. 
 
 L. H. 
 
 Philadelphia, 1889. 
 
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CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 A Midsummer Trip to the Tropics 13 
 
 Martinique Sketches: — 
 
 I. Les Porteuses lOI 
 
 II. La Grande Anse 121 
 
 III. Un Revenant - 148 
 
 IV. La Guiablesse 184 
 
 V. La ViRETTE 202 
 
 VI. Les Blanchisseuses 241 
 
 VII. La Pel£e 254 
 
 VIII. 'Tl CANOTlfi 294 
 
 IX. La Fille de Couleur 311 
 
 X. BfiTE-NI-Plfi 338 
 
 XI. Ma Bonne 348 
 
 XIL "Pa combine, CHfe!" 380 
 
 XIII. Yt 400 
 
 XIV. Lys 4" 
 
 XV. Appendix; — Some Creole Melodies 424 
 
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Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 A Martinique Matisse Frontispiece 
 
 La Place Bertin, St. Pierre, Martinique .... Faces page 36 
 
 42 
 50 
 
 58 
 62 
 64 
 66 
 68 
 70 
 72 
 74 
 76 
 78 
 82 
 84 
 86 
 
 Itinerant Pastry-seller 
 
 In the Citnetilre 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, Baa-badoes . . . 
 Trafalgar Square, Bridgetown, Barbadoes . 
 Street in Georgetown, Demerara . . . . . 
 Avenue in Georgetown, Demerara , . . . 
 Victoria Regia in the Canal a-t 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 
 
 92 
 96 
 
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lo Illustrations. 
 
 '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 
 
 Riviire des Blanc his seuses 
 
 Foot of La PeUe, behind the Quarter of the Fort . 
 
 Village of Mome Rouge 
 
 PeUe as seen from Grande Anse . . , . . 
 
 Arborescent Ferns on a Mountain Road .... 
 
 'TV 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 
 
 Faces page 106 
 
 " 
 
 112 
 
 <( '* 
 
 124 
 
 (1 <* 
 
 138 
 
 f( (( 
 
 146 
 
 4( •« 
 
 176 
 
 «C <C 
 
 206 
 
 <l 1< 
 
 214 
 
 • < (( 
 
 242 
 
 «C (( 
 
 258 
 
 
 268 
 
 
 278 
 
 
 284 
 
 
 297 
 
 
 312 
 
 
 314 
 
 
 316 
 
 
 318 
 
 
 320 
 
 
 321 
 
 
 330 
 
 
 356 
 
 
 362 
 
 
 416 
 
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A Trip to the Tropics. 
 
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Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
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. Gradifally the gray vanishes, and a beautiful, 
 paJe, 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 green- 
 
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14 A Midsummer Trip to the Tropics. 
 
 ish 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, — pat- 
 ting the flanks of the vessel, and whispering to one an- 
 other. 
 
 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 daz- 
 zling 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 war.es boisterous. Swing- 
 ing ends of cordage crack like whips. There is an im- 
 mense humming that drowns speech, — a humming made 
 up of many sounds : whining of pulleys, whistling of 
 '■iggings, flapping and fluttering of canvas, roar of net- 
 
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A Midsuuuncr Trip to the Tropics. 15 
 
 tings 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. Catch- 
 ing 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. Vio- 
 let the night comes ; and the rigging of the foremast 
 cuts a cross upon the face of the moon. 
 
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1 6 A Midsummer Trip to the Tropics. 
 
 II. 
 
 Morning: the second day. The sea is an extraor- 
 dinary blue, — looks to me something like violet ink. 
 Close by the ship, where the foam-clouds are, it is beau- 
 tifully 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. Atten- 
 dez ten peu ! . . . 
 
 . . . The sky-tone deepens as the sun ascends, — deep- 
 ens 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 tropi- 
 cal blue ?" I cry to my French fellow-traveller. "Man 
 Dieu ! 7ion," he exclaims, as in astonishment at the ques- 
 tion ; — " 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 Guadteloupe 
 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 call- 
 ing blue sea. The clouds have melted away in the bright 
 glow. There is no sign of life in the azure eulf above 
 
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A Midsummer Trip to the Tropics. 17 
 
 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 hori- 
 zon, — 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 bright- 
 ens it ; — the blue glows as if it were taking fire through- 
 out. 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 ex- 
 travagantly, 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 
 
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1 8 A Midsummer Trip to the Tropics. 
 
 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 thick- 
 ened 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 de- 
 scribe. 
 
 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 be- 
 fore 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 discern- 
 ed from the level of our deck. 
 
 . . . TSn 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 wa- 
 ter. . . . 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 be- 
 lieve him. 
 
 Mid-day. — The splendor of the sky is weird ! No clouds 
 above — only blue fire ! Up from the warm deepi color of 
 
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A Midsummer Trip to the Tropics. 19 
 
 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 tempta- 
 tion. . . . 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 slum- 
 ber ; — 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 pas- 
 sional mood. Passengers converse of pleasant tempting 
 things, — tropical fruits, tropical beverages, tropical mount- 
 ain-breezes, '^'-'^p-—'' wom^n 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 whisper- 
 ing of the seas : sounds as of articulate speech under 
 the breath, — as of women telling secrets, . . . 
 
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20 A Midsummer Trip to the Tropics. 
 
 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 climb- 
 ings 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 alto- 
 gether disagreeable ;— one feels that vast elemental pow- 
 ers are near at hand, and that the blood is already aware 
 of their approach. , 
 
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A Midsummer Trip to the Tropics. 2 1 
 
 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,—^\'Ca. 
 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, smoul- 
 der 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 influ- 
 ence 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. 
 
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22 A Midsummer Trip to ihe Tropics. 
 
 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 high- 
 est 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 
 
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A Midsummer Trip to the Tropics. 2; 
 
 more luminously green. Glens and sheltered valleys stil 
 hold blues and grays ; but points fairly illuminated b; 
 the solar glow show just such a fiery green as burns ii 
 the plumage of certain humming-birds. And just as th( 
 lustrous colors of these birds shift according to change; 
 of light, so the island shifts colors here and there, — fron 
 emerald to blue, and blue to gray. . . . But now we an 
 near : it shows us a lovely heaping of high bright hills ii 
 front, — with a further coast-line very low and long anc 
 verdant, fringed with a white beach, and tufted with spi 
 dery palm-crests. Immediately opposite, other palms an 
 poised ; their trunks look like pillars of unpolished sil 
 ver, their leaves shimmer like bronze. 
 
 . . . The water of the harbor is transparent and pali 
 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 swin 
 well, but will not venture out far because of the sharks 
 A boat puts off to bring colored girls on board. The; 
 are tall, and not uncomely, although very dark ; — the; 
 coax us, with all sorts of endearing words, to purchasi 
 bay rum, fruits, Florida water. . . . We go ashore in boats 
 The water of the harbor has a slightly fetid o'dor. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Viewed from the bay, under the green shadow of thi 
 hills overlooking it, Frederiksted has the appearance 
 a beautiful Spanish town, with its Romanesque piazzas 
 churches, many arched buildings peeping through break 
 in a line of mahogany, bread-fruit, mango, tamarind, an( 
 palm trees, — an irregular mass of at least fifty differen 
 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, witi 
 buildings only two stories high. The lower part, o 
 
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24 A Midsummer Trip to the Tropics. 
 
 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 
 fiimsily, not massively and enduringly, as by the first 
 colonialbuilders. 
 
 There is great wealth of verdure. Cabbage and co- 
 coa palms overlook all the streets, bending above al- 
 most 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 sav- 
 age 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 neigh- 
 boring arcade. Their wares are piled up at their feet, 
 for the most part. Some few have little tables,ibut as a 
 
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A Midsummer Trip to the Tropics. 25 
 
 rule the eatables are simply laid on the dusty ground or 
 heaped upon the steps of the piazza — reddish-yellow man- 
 goes, 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 in- 
 telligible 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 un- 
 der 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 bare- , 
 legged black women are walking past us,— carrying bun- 
 dles 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, car- 
 rying 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 cotton- 
 
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26 A Midsummer Trip to the Tropics. 
 
 ade stuffs, and the general effect of the costume in a 
 large gathering is very agreeable, the dominant hues be- 
 ing 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 some- 
 times 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 amaz- 
 ing juiciness. Peeling one of them is sufficient to per- 
 fume the skin of the hands for the rest of the day, how- 
 ever 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 pleas- 
 ant, soothing effect : both have a rich aroma. There is 
 a wholesome originality about the flavor of these prod- 
 ucts, 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, daz- 
 zles 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 yel- 
 low like a ripe banana. 
 
 ... It is now after mid-day. Looking up to the hills, 
 or along sloping streets towards the shore, wonderful va- 
 riations 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 mass- 
 es ot pomme-cannelle ironAe.sce.nc^, the groves of lemon g.nd 
 orange; while tamarind and mahoganies are heavily som- 
 bre. Everywhere palm-crests soar above the wood-lines 
 
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A Midsummer Trip to the Tropics. 27 
 
 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, with- 
 out 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 un- 
 der 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 sun- 
 light 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 bright- 
 ness 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 morn- 
 ing 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, run- 
 ning, pitching shells. Their simple grace is in admi- 
 rable harmony with that of Nature's green creations 
 
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28 A Midsummer Trip to the Tropics. 
 
 about them -rhymes faultlessly with the perfect self-bal- 
 ance of the palms that poise along the shore. ... 
 
 Boom ! and a thunder-rolling of echoes. We move slow- 
 ly out of the harbor, then swiftly towards the south- 
 east. . . . 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 pro- 
 traction 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 shin- 
 ing green has changed to a less vivid hue ; they are tak- 
 ing 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 dimen- 
 sions 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 horizoH-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 rhyth- 
 mical swing of the steamer. Before us the bows spout 
 fire ; behind us there is a flaming and roaring as of Phleg- 
 
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A Midsummer Trip to the Tropics. 29 
 
 ethon ; 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 an- 
 other 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 ori- 
 gin. There are curiously scalloped heights, which, though 
 emerald from base to crest, still retain all the physiog- 
 nomy of volcanoes : their ribbed sides must be lava un- 
 der 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. Trun- 
 cated, jagged, or rounded, all these elevations are in- 
 terunited by their curving hollows of land or by fila- 
 ments, — 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 re- 
 flection of light than in Santa Cruz ; there is less quaint- 
 ness ; no Spanish buildings, no canary-colored arcades. 
 All the narrow streets are gray or neutral-tinted; the 
 
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30 A Midsummer Trip to the Tropics. 
 
 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 over- 
 looking 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 Botani- 
 cal Garden, with its banyans and its palms, its monstrous 
 lilies and extraordinary fruit-trees, and its beautiful lit- 
 tle fountains. From softie of these trees a peculiar til- 
 land sia streams down, much like our Spanish moss, — ^but 
 it is black ! 
 
 ... As we move away southwardly, the receding out- 
 lines 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 th^ heights of 
 Nevis, — another creation of the subterranean fires. 
 
 It draws nearer, floats steadily into definition: a great 
 
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A Midsummer Trip to the Tropics. 3 1 
 
 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 sym- 
 metrical crater-form I have yet seen. All are still gray- 
 ish-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 im- 
 mense wreath of perennial green. On the lower slopes 
 little settlements are sprinkled in white, red, and brown : 
 houses, windmills, sugar-factories, high chimneys are dis- 
 tinguishable ; — cane -plantations unfold gold -green sur- 
 faces. 
 
 We pass away. The island does not seem to sink be- 
 hind us, but to become a ghost. All its outlines grow 
 shadowy. For a little while it continues green ; — but it is 
 a hazy, spectral green, as of colored vapor. The sea to- 
 day looks almost black : the south-west wind has filled 
 the day with luminous mist ; and the phantom of Nevis 
 melts in the vast glow, dissolves utterly. . . . Once more 
 we are out of sight of land, — in the centre of a blue-black 
 circle of sea. The water-line cuts blackly against the 
 immense light of the horizon, — a huge white glory that 
 flames up very high before it 'fades and melts into the 
 eternal blue. 
 
 X. 
 
 Then a high white shape like a cloud appears before 
 us, — on the purplish-dark edge of the sea. The cloud- 
 shape enlarges, heightens without changing contour. It 
 is not a cloud, but an island ! Its outlines begin to 
 sharpen, — with faintest pencillings of color. Shadowy 
 valleys appear, spectral hollows, phantom slopes of pal- 
 lid 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 
 3 
 
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32 A Midsummer Trip to the Tropics. 
 
 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. Ap- 
 proaching, you discern only one or two fa5ades above the 
 sea-wall, and the long wharf projecting through an open- 
 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 odi curves and angles, — and like- 
 wise 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 dimin- 
 utive, — 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 be- 
 come 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 
 
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A Midsummer Trip to the Tropics. 33 
 
 scream and gesticulate, half naked, their silhouettes 
 against the sunset seem forms of great black apes. 
 
 . . . Under steam and sail we are making south again, 
 with a warm wind blowing south-east, — a wind very moist, 
 very powerful, and soporific. Facing it, one feels almost 
 cool; but the moment one is sheltered from it profuse 
 perspiration bursts out. The ship rocks over immense 
 swells ; night falls very blackly ; and there are surpris- 
 ing displays of phosphorescence. 
 
 XI. 
 
 "... Morning. A gold sunrise over an indigo sea. 
 The wind is a great warm caress ; the sky a spotless blue. 
 \\'e are steaming on Dominica, — the loftiest of the lesser 
 Antilles. While the silhouette is yet all violet in dis- 
 tance, nothing more solemnly beautiful can well be imag- 
 ined : 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 hoUowings of the emerald coast. In 
 glen and vale the color of cane-fields shines like a pool- 
 ing 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 tur- 
 quoise sea ; and beyond it, a beautiful mountain form, 
 blue and curved like a hip, slopes seaward, showing light- 
 ed wrinkles here and there, of green. And from the fore- 
 ground, against the blue of the softly outlined shape, co- 
 coa-palms are curving, — all sharp and shining in the sun. 
 
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34 ^ Midsummer Trip to the Tropics. 
 
 . . . Another hour ; and Martinique looms before us. 
 At first it appears all gray, a vapory gray ; then it be- 
 comes 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 fa- 
 miliar 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 impos- 
 ingly, 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 view- 
 ed, the whole island shape is a mass of green, with pur- 
 plish streaks and shadowings here and there : glooms of 
 forest-hollowSj or movihg 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 an- 
 swered 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 choco- 
 late tint. They row with two little square, flat pieces of 
 
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A Midsiivimer Trip to the Tropics. 35 
 
 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 intercross- 
 ing 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-lk!" 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 shil- 
 ling, 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 ap- 
 parent 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, queer- 
 est, and the prettiest withal, among West Indian cities : 
 
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36 A Midsummer Trip to the Tropics. 
 
 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 delight- 
 fully 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 be- 
 tween the paved thoroughfare and the absurd little side- 
 walks, varying in width from one to three feet. The 
 architecture is quite old : it is seventeenth century, prob- 
 ably; and it reminds one a great deal of that character- 
 izing 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 stud- 
 ies, — just to please the whim of some extravagant artist. 
 The windows are frameless openings without glass ; some 
 have iron bars ; all have heavy wooden shutters with 
 movable slats, through which light and air can enter as 
 through Venetian blinds. These are usually painted 
 green or bright bluish-gray. 
 
 So steep are the streets descending to, the harbor, — 
 by flights of old mossy stone steps, — that looking down 
 them to the azure water you have the sensation of gazing 
 from a cliff. From certain 'openings in the main street — 
 the Rue Victor Hugo — you can get something like a 
 bird's-eye view of the harbor with its shipping. The 
 roofs of the street below are under your feet, and other 
 streets are rising behind you to meet the mountain roads. 
 They climb at a very steep angle, occasionally breaking 
 into stairs of laVa rock, all grass-tufted and moss-lined. 
 
 The town has an aspect of great solidity : it is a cre- 
 ation of crag — looks almost as if it had been hewn out. 
 of one mountain fragment, instead of having been con- 
 structed stone by stone. Although commonly consisting 
 
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A Midsummer Trip to the Tropics. 37 
 
 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 earth- 
 quakes, 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 curv- 
 ing 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 enclos- 
 ing public squares : glittering threads of water spurting 
 through lion-lips of stone. Some mountain torrent, skil- 
 fully directed and divided, is thus perpetually refresh- 
 ing 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 
 
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38 A Midsummer Trip to the Tropics. 
 
 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 stum- 
 ble from the upper into the lower street. Looking tow- 
 ards 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 be- 
 low, you see a ship resting in the azure aperture, — seem- 
 ingly suspended there in sky-tolor, floating in blue light. 
 And everywhere and always, through sunshine or shad- 
 ow, comes to you the scent of the city, — the characteris- 
 tic 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 popula- 
 tion of the Arabian Nights. It is many-colored ; but the 
 general dominant tint is yellow, like that of the town it- 
 self—yellow in the interblending of all the hues charac- 
 terizing mul&fresse, capresse, griffe, quarteronne, metisse, cha- 
 M'ne,~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 digni- 
 fied 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 
 
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A Midsummer Trip to the Tropics. 39 
 
 the very tip of the bare foot. All, or nearly all, are with- 
 out 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 fashiofts 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 z. 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 cos- 
 tume, 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 
 
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40 A Midsummer Trip to the Tropics. 
 
 ear-rings, each pendant being formed of five gold cylin- 
 ders joined together (cylinders sometimes two inches 
 long, and an inch at least in circumference) ; — a neck- 
 lace of double, triple, quadruple, or quintuple rows of 
 large hollow gold beads (sometimes smooth, but gener- 
 ally graven) — the wonderful collie?--choux. Now, this glow- 
 ing 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, — ped- 
 dling vegetables, cakes, fruit, ready - cooked food, from 
 door to door, — are very simply dressed in a single plain 
 robe of vivid colors {doiiillette) 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 hun- 
 dred 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 child- 
 hood 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 hav- 
 ing been once placed in position. The head remains al- 
 most motionless ; but the black, quick, piercing eyes flash 
 into every window and door-way to watch for a custom- 
 er's signal. And the Creole street-cries, uttered in a so- 
 
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A Midsummer Trip to the Tropics. 41 
 
 norous, far-reaching high key, interblend and produce 
 random harmonies very pleasant to hear. 
 
 ..." 'Qk moiiHe-lci, (a qui Ik bel mango V Her basket 
 of mangoes certainly weighs as much as herself. ..." fa 
 qui Ve bel avocatr The alligator-pear— cuts and tastes 
 like beautiful green cheese. . . . '■' Qa qui leescargotV Call 
 her, if you like snails. ..." fa qtu li titiri V Minus- 
 cule fish, of which a thousand would scarcely fill a tea- 
 cup ; — one of the most delicate of Martinique dishes. . . . 
 "■Qa qui II €071910.2 — fa qui le char ban? — fa qui le di 
 pain aube f (Who wants ducks, charcoal, or pretty little 
 loaves shaped like cucumbers.) . . ." Ca qui Ik pain-mi V A 
 sweet maize cake in the form of a tiny sugar-loaf, wrapped 
 in a piece of banana leaf. ..." fa qui le fromassk " 
 {pharmacie) " lapotecai Creole ?" She deals in Creole roots 
 and herbs, and all the leaves that make tisanes or poul- 
 tices or medicines : matriquin, feuill-corossol, balai-doux, 
 manioc- chapelle, Marie- Perrine, graine-enba-feuill, bois- 
 d'lhomme, zhebe- gras, bonnet - carre, zhebe-codeinne, zhebe- 
 d-femme, zhebe -d-ch&tte, canne-dleau, poque, fleu-papillon, 
 lateigne, and a score of others you never saw or heard 
 of before. . . . "fa qui le dicaments2" (overalls for labor- 
 ing-men). . . . "f^ moune-ld, si ou pa Ik achett canari-a dans 
 lanmain moin, moin ke crazk 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. . . . "Hi! 
 gens pa' enko', gens pa' enbas, gens di galtas, moin ni bel 
 gououbs 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 ! . . . "Z^ ! fa qui U mange yonne V — those are " ak- 
 ras," — flat yellow-brown cakes, made of pounded codfish, 
 or beans, or both, seasoned with pepper and fried in but- 
 ter. . . . And then comes the pastry-seller, black as ebony, 
 
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42 A Midsummer Trip to the Tropics. 
 
 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 com- 
 merce;— 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 ob- 
 jects exposed for sale the most attractive, because the 
 most exotic, is a doll,— the Martinique poupes. There 
 are two kinds, — the poupke-capresse, of which the body is 
 covered with smooth reddish-brown leather, to imitate 
 the tint of the capresse race ; and the poupee-negresse, cov- 
 ered 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-capresse is a delightful curiosity. Both varieties 
 of dolls are attired in the costume of the people ; but 
 the nkgresse is usually dressed the more simply. Each 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
"< Shir|i)|iiiiiiiiiii|iiiiiiiiii 
 
 "ii'irniiiiiiii.iiiiifHluM 
 
 1 i(^';ii(ii(iiiiiin'ii.i;u((/('.'((!Vf(i/////f//;(;////m)Wr7/;» :■//.', 
 
 .,,' "I 
 
 ITINERANT PASTRY-SELLER. 
 
 "Toujours content, 
 Toujours joyeux. " 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
A Midsummer Trip to the Tropics. 43 
 
 doll has a broidered chemise, a tastefully arranged jupe 
 of bright hues, a silk foulard, a collier-choux, ear-rings of 
 five cylinders (zanneaux-d-cloits), and a charming little 
 yellow-banded Madras turban. Such a doll is a perfect 
 costume-model, — a perfect miniature of Martinique fash- 
 ions, to the smallest details of material and color : it is 
 almost too artistic for a toy. 
 
 These old costume-colors of Martinique — always re- 
 lieved by brilliant yellow stripings or checkerings, except 
 in the special violet dresses worn on certain religious 
 occasions — have an indescribable luminosity, — a won- 
 derful 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 expres- 
 sion 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 chro- 
 matic witchcrafts and chromatic laws. 
 
 . . . This evening, as I write, La Pel^e 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 eastume defete, like a capresse 
 attired for a baptism or a ball ; and in her phantom tur- 
 ban one great star glimmers for a brooch. 
 4- 
 
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44 
 
 A Midsummer Trip to the Tropics. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 Following the Rue. Victor Hugo in the direction of 
 the Fort —crossing the Rivifere Roxelane, or Rivifere des 
 Blanchisseuses, whose rocky bed is white with unsoaped 
 linen far as the eye can reach —you descend through 
 some tortuous narrow streets into the principal market- 
 place * 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 deaf- 
 ened 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 1 — 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 gold- 
 en bellies. Among the stalls you can study the mon- 
 sters, — 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 
 
 * Since this was written the marliet 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. 
 
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A Midsummer Trip to the Tropics. 45 
 
 resemble shapes of red polished granite. These are 
 meringues. The balaou, couliou, macriau, tazard, tcha-tcha, 
 bonnique, and zorphi severally represent almost all pos- 
 sible 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-zii is 
 vermilion; the couronnk, 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 pen- 
 cil ; — the Bon-Dii-manii-moin (" the Good-God handled 
 me"), which has something like finger-marks upon it; — 
 the Iambi, a huge sea-snail ; — \h& pisquette, the laline (the 
 Moon) ; — the crapaud-de-mer, or sea-toad, with a danger- 
 ous dorsal iin ; — 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 va- 
 rieties 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, frit- 
 ters, 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 
 
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46 A Midsummer Trip to the Tropics. 
 
 the black, brown, and yellow people who are watching 
 you curiously from beneath their Madras turbans, or 
 from under the shade of mushroom-shaped hats as large 
 as umbrellas. And as you observe the bare backs, bare 
 shoulders, bare legs and arms and feet, you will find 
 that the colors of flesh are even more varied and surpris- 
 ing than the colors of fruit. Nevertheless, it is only with 
 fruit-colors that many of these skin-tints can be correctly 
 compared : the only terms of comparison used by the col- 
 ored people themselves being terms of this kind, — such 
 d& peau-chapotille, " sapota-skin." The sapota or sapotilk 
 is a juicy brown fruit with a rind satiny like a human 
 cuticle, and just the color, when flushed and ripe, of cer- 
 tain half-breed skins. But among the brighter half- 
 breeds, the colors, I think, are much more fruit-like ; — 
 there are banana-tints, lemon-tones, orange - hues, with 
 sometimes such a mingling of ruddiness as in the pink 
 ripening of a mango. Agreeable to the eye the darker 
 skins certainly are, and often very remarkable — all clear 
 tones of bronze being represented ; but the brighter 
 tints are absolutely beautiful. Standing perfectly naked 
 at door-ways, or playing naked in the sun, astonishing 
 children may sometimes be seen, — banana-colored or 
 orange babies. There is one rare race-type, totally un- 
 like the rest: the skin has a perfect gold-tone, an exqui- 
 site metallic yellow ; the eyes are long, and have long 
 silky lashes ; — the hair is a mass of thick, rich, glossy 
 curls that show blue lights in the sun. What mingling 
 of races produced this beautiful type ? — there is some 
 strange blood in the blending, — not of coolie, nor of 
 African, nor of Chinese, although there are Chinese 
 types here of indubitable beauty.* 
 
 * 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 
 
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A Midsummer Trip to the Tropics. 47 
 
 ... 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 vent- 
 ure to say that the muscular development of the working- 
 men here is something which must be seen in order to 
 
 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 emi- 
 nent 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 mdtis whose olive skins, elegant and slender fig- 
 ures, fine straight profiles, and regular features remind us of the in- 
 habitants of Madras or 'Pondicherry, — we ask ourselves in wonder, 
 while looking at their long eyes, full of a strange and gentle melan- 
 choly (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 sin- 
 gular variety, — in which there is a dominant characteristic that 
 seems indelible, and always shows more and more strongly in pro- 
 portion 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 inter- 
 blending, the race-characteristic that invariably reveals its presence 
 in the blood of every being through whose veins it flows." — " Re- 
 cherches chronologiques et historiques sur I'Origine et la Propaga- 
 tion de la Fiivre 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. 
 
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48 A Midsummer Trip to the Tropics. 
 
 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 power- 
 ful; but they have the aspect of sculptural or even of 
 anatomical models ; they seem absolutely devoid of adi- 
 pose tissue ; their muscles stand out with a saliency that 
 astonishes the eye. At a tanning-yard, while I was watch- 
 ing a dozen blacks at work, a young mulatto with the 
 mischievous face of a faun walked by, wearing nothing 
 but a clout (Jantcho) 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 Mer- 
 cury 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 sym- 
 metry and saliency of muscles: race - crossing, climate, 
 perpetual exercise, healthy labor— many conditions must 
 have combined to cause it. Also it is certain that this 
 tropical sun has a tendency to dissolve spare flesh, to 
 melt away all superfluous tissue, leaving the muscular 
 fibre dense and solid as mahogany. 
 
 At the mouillage, below a green morne, is the bathing- 
 place. A rocky beach rounding away under heights of 
 tropical wood ;— palms curving out above the sand, or 
 bending half-way across it. Ships at anchor in blue 
 water, against golden-yellow horizon. A vast blue glow. 
 Water clear as diamond, and lukewarm. 
 
 It is about one hour after sunrise; and the higher 
 parts of Montagne Pelee are still misty blue. • Under the 
 
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A Midsummer Trip to the Tropics. 49 
 
 palms and among the lava rocks, and also in little cabins 
 farther up the slope, bathers are dressing or undress- 
 ing : the water is also dotted with heads of swimmers. 
 Women and girls enter it well robed from feet to shoul- 
 ders ; — men go in very sparsely clad; — there are lads 
 wearing nothing. Young boys — yellow and brown lit- 
 tle 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, in- 
 credible ; — 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 chap- 
 els, statues of saints. You will see crucifixes and statu- 
 ettes even in the forks or hollows of trees shadowing 
 the high-roads. As you ascend these towards the inte- 
 rior 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 ascend- 
 ing to the summit,— fourteen little tabernacles, each con- 
 
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50 A Midsummer Trip to the Tropics. 
 
 taining a reliei'O 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 crown- 
 ing 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 neighbor- 
 ing 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 cathe- 
 dral, 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 Afri- 
 can feeling is observable in their impressive but incan- 
 tatory manner of ringing. The bourdon must have cost 
 a fortune. When it is made to speak, the effect is star- 
 tling : all the city vibrates to a weird sound difficult to 
 describe, — an abysmal, quivering moan, producing unfa- 
 miliar harmonies as the voices of the smaller bells are 
 seized and interblended by it. . . - One will not easily 
 forget the ringing of a hel-midi. 
 
 . . . Beliind the cathedral, above the peaked city roofs, 
 and at the foot of the wood-clad Morne d'Orange, is the 
 Cimetiire 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 ex- 
 actly after the fashion of the squares on a chess-board ; 
 
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 ''ii i>''m ''i 
 
 }N THF ClMETl^RE DU MOUILLAGE, ST. PIERRP, 
 
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A Midsummer Trip to the Tropics. 5 1 
 
 at the foot of each grave stands a black cross, bearing 
 at its centre a little white plaque, on which the name is 
 graven in delicate and tasteful lettering. So pretty these 
 little tombs are, that you might almost believe yourself 
 in a toy cemetery. Here and there, again, are miniature 
 marble chapels built over the dead, — containing white 
 Madonnas and Christs and little angels, — while flower- 
 ing creepers climb and twine about the pillars. Death 
 seems so luminous here that one thinks of it uncon- 
 sciously as a soft rising from this soft green earth, — like 
 a vapor invisible, — to melt into the prodigious day. Ev- 
 erything 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 hun- 
 dred 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 verd- 
 ure higher than the cathedral towers. 
 
 Behind all this, the dumb green life of the morne 
 seems striving to descend, to invade the rest of the dead. 
 It thrusts green hands over the wall, — pushes strong 
 roots underneath ; — it attacks every joint of the 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 come the giants, rooting deeper,— feeling for 
 the dust of hearts, groping among the bones ;— and all 
 that love has hidden away shall be restored to Nature, — 
 absorbed into the rich juices of her verdure, — revitalized 
 in her bursts of color,— resurrected in her upliftings of 
 emerald and gold to the great sun. . . . 
 
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52 A Midsummer Trip to the Tropics. 
 
 XV. 
 
 Seen from the bay, the little red -white -and -yellow 
 city forms but one multicolored streak against the burn- 
 ing green of the lofty island. There is no naked soil, 
 no bare rock : the chains of the mountains, rising by suc- 
 • cessive 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 vegeta'tion 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 your- 
 self, after twenty minutes' walk, in front of the Morne 
 Parnasse, and before the verge of a high wood, — rem- 
 nant of the enormous growth once covering all the isl- 
 and. 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 pre- 
 sents 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 stagger- 
 ing 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 
 
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A Midsummer Trip to the Tropics. 53 
 
 mockeries of limbs. No distinct head appears except 
 where some palm pushes up its crest in the general fight 
 for sun. All else looks as if under a veil, — hidden and 
 half smothered by heavy drooping things. Blazing green 
 vines cover every branch and stem ; — they form draperies 
 and tapestries and curtains and motionless cascades — 
 pouring down over all projections like a thick silent flood : 
 an amazing inundation of parasitic life. ... It is a weird 
 and awful beauty that you gaze upon ; and yet the spec- 
 tacle 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, corre- 
 sponding to some of our winter months, the forests sud- 
 denly break into a very conflagration of color, caused by 
 the blossoming of the lianas — crimson, canary -yellow, 
 blue, and white. There are other flowerings, indeed ; 
 but that of the lianas alone has chromatic force enough 
 to change the aspect of a landscape. 
 
 XVI. 
 
 ... If it is possible for a West Indian forest to be de- 
 scribed at all, it could not be described more powerfully 
 than it has been by Dr. E. Rufz, a Creole of Martinique, 
 from one of whose works I venture to translate the fol- 
 lowing remarkable pages : 
 
 ..." The sea, the sea alone, because it is the most co- 
 lossal of earthly spectacles, — only the sea can afford us 
 any term of comparison for the attempt to describe a 
 grand-bois ; — but even then one must imagine the sea on 
 a day of storm, suddenly immobilized in the expression 
 of its mightiest fury. For the summits of these vast 
 
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54 -^ Midsummer Trip to the Tropics. 
 
 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 possi- 
 ble 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 li- 
 anas, 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 be- 
 side the gommier, which is the cedar of the colonies ;— 
 you see the acomat, the courbaril, the mahogany, the ten- 
 dre-^-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 
 
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A Midsummer Trip to the Tropics. 5 5 
 
 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 ddbris, — under a sort of 
 manure that has been accumulating there since the cre- 
 ation : you sink into it as into slime ; you walk upon pu- 
 trefied trunks, in a dust that has no name ! Here indeed 
 it is that one can get some comprehension of what vege- 
 table antiquity signifies ; — a lurid light {lurida lux), green- 
 ish, 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.'"* 
 
 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 black- 
 ness of rare gaps, revealing its inconceived profundity; 
 and the million mysterious sounds which make up its 
 
 * " Enquete sur le Serpent de la Martinique (Vip^re Fer-de-Lance, 
 Bothrops Lanceole, etc.)." Par le Docteur E. Itufz. 2 ed. 1859. 
 Paris: Germer-Balliere. pp. 55-57 (note). 
 
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56 A Midsummer Trip to the Tropics. 
 
 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 with- 
 in the same vast crucible. There are trees distilling 
 venom, there .are plants that have fangs, there are per- 
 fumes that affect the brain, there are cold green creep- 
 ers 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 (trigonoceph- 
 alus lanceolatus, — bothrops lanceolatus, — craspodecephalus), 
 — deadliest of the Occidental thanatophidia, and prob- 
 ably 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. • 
 
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A Midsummer Trip to the Tropics. 57 
 
 And the fer-de-lance reigns absolute king over the 
 mountains and the ravines ; he is lord of the forest and 
 the solitudes by day, and by night he extends his domin- 
 ion over the public roads, the familiar paths, the parks, 
 the pleasure resorts. People must remain at home after 
 dark, unless they dwell in the city itself : if you happen 
 to be out visiting after sunset, only a mile from town, 
 your friends will caution you anxiously not to follow the 
 boulevard as you go back, and to keep as closely as pos- 
 sible to the very centre of the path. Even in the bright- 
 est noon you cannot venture to enter the woods without 
 an experienced escort ; you cannot trust your eyes to de- 
 tect danger : at any moment a seeming branch, a knot 
 of lianas, a pink or gray root, a clump of pendent yellow 
 fruit, may suddenly take life, writhe, stretch, spring, 
 strike. . . . Then you will need aid indeed, and most 
 quickly ; for within the span of a few heart- beats the 
 wounded flesh chills, tumefies, softens. Soon it changes 
 color, and begins to spot violaceously ; while an icy cold- 
 ness creeps through all the blood. If th.t pans eur or the 
 physician arrives in time, and no vein has been pierced, 
 there is hope ; but it more often happens that the blow is 
 received directly on a vein of the foot or ankle, — in which 
 case nothing can save the victim. Even when life is 
 saved the danger is not over. Necrosis of the tissues is 
 likely to set in : the flesh corrupts, falls from the bone 
 sometimes in tatters ; and the colors of its putrefaction 
 simulate the hues of vegetable decay,— the ghastly grays 
 and pinks and yellows of trunks rotting down into the 
 dark soil which gave them birth. The human victim 
 moulders as the trees moulder, — crumbles and dissolves 
 as crumbles the substance of the dead palms and bala- 
 tas : the Death-of-the-Woods is upon him. 
 
 To-day a fer-de-lance is seldom found exceeding six feet 
 in length; but the dimensions of the reptile, at least, 
 would seem to have been decreased considerably by 
 
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58 A Midsummer Trip to the Tropics. 
 
 man's warring upon it since the time of Pfere Labat, 
 who mentions having seen a fer-de-lance nine feet long 
 and five inches in diameter. He also speaks of a cou- 
 resse — 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 ne- 
 gro woodsmen kill both creatures indiscriminately; and 
 as the older reptiles are the least likely to escape ob- 
 servation, 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 danger?;.; 
 ous after dark; — yet more than three hundred snakes 
 have been killed in twelve months on a single planta- 
 tion. The introduction of the Indian raongoos, or man- 
 gousfe (ichneumon), proved futile as a means of repress- 
 ing 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 ne- 
 groes, who live to a considerable extent by raising and 
 selling chickens. 
 
 . . . Domestic animals are generally able to discern the 
 presence of their deadly enemy long before a human eye 
 can perceive it. If your horse rears and plunges in the 
 darkness, trembles and sweats, do not try to ride on until 
 you are assured the way is clear. Or your dog may come 
 running back, whining, shivering : you will do well to ac- 
 cept his warning. The animals kept about country resi- 
 dences usually try to fight for their lives; the hen battles 
 for her chickens; the bull endeavors to gore .and stamp 
 
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IN THE JARDIN DES I'LANTES, ST. PIERRE. 
 
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A Midsummer Trip to the Tropics. 59 
 
 his supple enemy; the pig gives more successful com- 
 bat; but the creature who fears the monster least is the 
 brave cat. Seeing a snake, she at once carries her kit- 
 tens to a place of safety, then boldly advances to the 
 encounter. She will walk to the very limit of the ser- 
 pent's striking range, and begin to feint, — teasing him, 
 startling him, trying to draw his blow. How the emer- 
 ald 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 ac- 
 tive, 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 beau- 
 tiful 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 ser- 
 pent; once more the light, quick, cutting blow. But the 
 trigonocephalus is blind, is stupefied ; — before he can 
 attempt to coil pussy has leaped upon him,— nailing the 
 horrible flat head fast to the ground with her two sinewy 
 paws. Now let him lash, writhe, twine, strive to strangle 
 her ! — in vain ! he will never lift his head : an instant 
 more, and he lies still: — the keen white teeth of the 
 cat have severed the vertebra just behind the triangular 
 skull ! . . . 
 
 xviir. 
 
 The Jardin des Plantes is not absolutely secure from 
 the visits of the serpent ; for the trigonocephalus goes 
 everywhere, — mounting to the very summits of the 
 cocoa-palms, swimming rivers, ascending walls, hiding 
 in palm-thatched roofs, breeding in bagasse heaps. But, 
 despite what has been printed to the contrary, this reptile 
 
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6o A Midsummer Trip to the Tropics. 
 
 fears man and hates light : it rarely shows itself volun- 
 tarily during the day. Therefore, if you desire to ob- 
 tain 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 infi- 
 nitely 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 chff ; 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 hun- 
 dred 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 minia- 
 tures of Martinique, Guadeloupe, and Dominica : these 
 are covered with tropical plants, many of which are total 
 strangers even here : they are natives of India, Sene- 
 gambia, Algeria, and the most eastern East. Arbores- 
 cent ferns of unfamiliar elegance curve up from path- 
 
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A Midsummer Trip to the Tropics. 6i 
 
 verge or lake-brink ; and the great arbre-du-voyageur 
 outspreads its colossal fan. Giant lianas droop down 
 over the way in loops and festoons ; tapering green 
 cords, which are creepers descending to take root, hang 
 everywhere ; and parasites with stems thick as cables 
 coil about the trees like boas. Trunks shooting up out 
 of sight, into the green wilderness above, display no 
 bark ; you cannot guess what sort of trees they are ; 
 they are so thickly wrapped in creepers as to seem pil- 
 lars of leaves. Between you and the sky, where every- 
 thing is fighting for sun, there is an almost unbroken 
 vault of leaves, a cloudy green confusion in which noth- 
 ing 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 anoth- 
 er, — 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 grot- 
 tos, bridges, basins, terraces, step^, — are darkened by 
 time and velveted with mossy things. ... It is of anoth- 
 er 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 fall- 
 ing water ; — there is a break in the vault of green above 
 the bed of a river below you ; and at a sudden turn you 
 come in sight of the cascade. Before you is the Morne 
 itself ; and against the burst of descending light you dis- 
 cern a precipice -verge. Over it, down one green fur- 
 row 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 
 
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62 A Midsummer Trip to the Tropics. 
 
 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 eflfect of 
 one, — flanked at its summit by white - stemmed palms 
 which lift their leaves so high into the light that the lof- 
 tiness of them gives the sensation of vertigo. . . . Dizzy 
 also the magnificence of the great colonnade of palm- 
 istes and angelins, two hundred feet high, through which 
 you pass if you follow the river-path from the cascade, — 
 the famed Alike 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 as- 
 piration, 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 un- 
 pleasantly ;— it never ceases to remind you that where 
 Nature is most puissant to charm, there also is she might- 
 iest to destroy. 
 
 The beautiful garden is now little more than a wreck 
 of what it once was : since the fall of the Empire it has 
 been shamefully abused and neglected. Some agronome 
 sent out to take charge of it by the Republic, began 
 its destruction by cutting down acres of enormous and 
 magnificent trees,— including a superb alley of palms,— 
 for the purpose of experimenting with roses' But the 
 
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CASCADE IN THE JARDIN DES PLANTES. 
 
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A Midsummer Trip to the Tropics. 67, 
 
 rose-trees would not be cultivated there; and the ser- 
 pents avenged the demolition by making the experi- 
 mental garden unsafe to enter; — they always swarm into 
 underbrush and shrubbery after forest-trees have been 
 cleared away. ... Subsequently the garden was greatly 
 damaged by storms and torrential rains; the mountain 
 river overflowed, carrying bridges away and demolishing 
 stone-work. No attempt was made to repair these de- 
 structions; but neglect alone would not have ruined the 
 loveliness of the place; — barbarism was necessary! Un- 
 der 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 
 of this Nature ! . . . The enormous silent poem of color 
 and light — (you who know only the North do not know 
 color, do not know light !)— of sea and sky, of the woods 
 and the peaks, so far surpasses imagination as to para- 
 lyze 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 ex- 
 pression of creative magic numbs thought. In the great 
 centres of civilization we admire and study only the re- 
 sults 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 morn^ 
 ing of creation. Man here seems to bear scarcely more 
 relation to the green life about him than the insect; and 
 
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64 A Midsummer Trip to the Tropics. 
 
 the results of human effort seem impotent by compari- 
 son with the operation of those vast blind forces which 
 clothe the peaks and crown the dead craters with impene- 
 trable 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 ^perpet- 
 ual struggle of the blood to preserve itself from fermenta- 
 tion, 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 ap- 
 pears 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 ; — fhen, very 
 
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A MidsuHiincr Trip to tlic Tropics. 65 
 
 swiftly, the gloom mounts to the heights, whose very 
 loftiest peak may remain glowing like a volcano at its 
 tip for several minutes after the rest of the island is 
 veiled in blackness and all the stars are out. . . . 
 
 . . . Tropical nights have a splendor that seems strange 
 to northern eyes. The sky does not look so high — so 
 far away as in the North ; but the stars are larger, and 
 the luminosity greater. 
 
 With the rising of the moon all the violet of the sky 
 flushes ; — there is almost such a rose-color as heralds 
 northern dawn. 
 
 Then the moon appears over the mornes, very large, 
 very bright — brighter certainly than many a befogged 
 sun one sees in northern Novembers ; and it seems to 
 have a weird magnetism — this tropical moon. Night- 
 birds, insects, frogs, — everything that can sing", — all sing 
 very low on the nights of great moons. Tropical wood- 
 life begins with dark : in the immense white light of a 
 full moon this nocturnal life seems afraid to cry out as 
 usual. Also, this moon has a singular effect on the 
 nerves. It is very difficult to sleep on such bright 
 nights : you feel such a vague uneasiness as the coming 
 of a great storm gives. . . . 
 
 XXI. 
 
 You reach Fort-de-France, the capital of Martinique, 
 by steamer from St. Pierre, in about an hour and a 
 half. . . . There is an overland route — La Trace ; but it 
 is a twenty-five-mile ride, and a weary one in such a cli- 
 mate, 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-Royalj has little of out- 
 
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66 A~ Midsummer. Trip to the Tropics. 
 
 ward interest by comparison with St. Pierre. It lies in 
 a low, moist plain, and has few remarkable buildings : 
 you can walk all over the little town in about half an 
 hour. But the Savane, — the great green public square, 
 with its grand tamarinds and sabliers, — would be worth 
 the visit alone, even were it not made romantic by the 
 marble memory of Josephine. 
 
 I went to look at the white dream of her there, a creation 
 of master-sculptors. ... It seemed to me absolutely lovely. 
 
 Sea winds have bitten it ; tropical rains have streaked 
 it : some microscopic growth has darkened the exqui- 
 site hollow of the throat. And yet such is the human 
 charm of the figure that you almost fancy you are gaz- 
 ing 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 recollec- 
 tions of memoir-writers vanish away ; the gossip of his- 
 tory 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. ... ^ 
 
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STATUE OF JOSEPHINE. 
 
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A Midsummer Trip to the Tropics. 67 
 
 XXII. 
 
 One leaves Martinique with regret, even after so brief 
 a stay : the old colonial hfe itself, not less than the reve- 
 lation of tropic nature, having in this island a quality of 
 uniqueness, a special charm, unlike anything previously 
 seen. . . . We steam directly for Barbadoes ; — the ves- 
 sel 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 be- 
 gin to rise before us ; and by nightfall they spread into 
 one pitch -blackness over all the sky. Then comes a 
 wind in immense sweeps, lifting the water, — but a wind 
 that is still strangely warm. The ship rolls heavily in 
 the dark for an hour or more ; — then torrents of tepid 
 rain make the sea smooth again ; the clouds pass, and 
 the violet transparency of tropical night reappears,— 
 < ablaze with stars. 
 
 At early morning a long low land appears on the hori- 
 zon, — totally unlike the others we have seen ; it has no 
 visible volcanic forms. That is Barbadoes, — a level burn- 
 ing 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 magni- 
 fied 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 raag- 
 
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68 A Midsummer Trip to the Tropics. 
 
 nificence of blue. . . . Meanwhile the island coast has 
 clearly brought out all its beauties : first you note the 
 long white winding thread -line of beach — coral and 
 bright sand ; — then the deep green fringe of vegetation 
 through which roofs and spires project here and there, 
 and quivering feathery heads of palms with white trunks. 
 The general tone of this verdure is sombre green, though 
 it is full of lustre : there is a glimmer in it as of metal. 
 Beyond all this coast-front long undulations of misty 
 pale green are visible, — far slopes of low hill and plain ; 
 the highest curving line, the ridge of the island, bears a 
 row of cocoa-palms. They are so far that their stems 
 diminish almost to invisibility : only the crests are clear- 
 ly 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 thou- 
 sands 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 trop- 
 ical 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 odd- 
 ly at variance with the quiet indolence of oRier West 
 
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A Midsummer Trip to the Tropics. 69 
 
 Indian peoples, seems almost unnatural. Pressure of 
 numbers has largely contributed to this characteristic ; 
 but Barbadoes would be in any event, by reason of posi- 
 tion 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 in- 
 surance companies, good hotels, libraries and reading- 
 rooms, and excellent public schools. Its annual export 
 trade figures for nearly $6,000,000. 
 
 The fact which seems most curious to the stranger, on 
 his first acquaintance with the city, is that most of this 
 business activity is represented by black men— black 
 merchants, shopkeepers, clerks. Indeed, the Barbadian 
 population, as a mass, strikes one as the darkest in the 
 West Indies. Black regiments march through the street 
 to the sound of English music, — uniformed as Zouaves ; 
 black police, in white helmets and white duck uniforms, 
 maintain order ; black postmen distribute the mails ; 
 black cabmen wait for customers at a shilling an hour. 
 It is by no means an attractive population, physically, — 
 rather the reverse, and frankly brutal as well — different 
 as possible from the colored race of Martinique ; but it 
 has immense energy, and speaks excellent English. One 
 is almost startled on hearing Barbadian negroes speaking 
 English with a strong Old Country accent. Without see- 
 ing 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 dif- 
 ferent condition of prosperity from that of the other col- 
 onies, and oiEfered a totally different social aspect — hav- 
 ing a white population of 50,000. At that time the island 
 
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"JO A Midsummer Trip to the Tropics. 
 
 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 no* 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 nat- 
 ure 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 for- 
 mation; 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 influ- 
 ence 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 dark- 
 ness, broken only by the phosphorescence of the sea, 
 which to-night displays extraordinary radiance. 
 
 The steamer's wake is a great broad, seething river 
 of fire, — white like strong moonshine : the glow is bright 
 enough to read by. At its centre the trail is brightest;— 
 towards either edge it pales off cloudily,— curling like 
 smoke of phosphorus. Great sharp lights burst up mo- 
 mfentarily through it like meteors. Weirder than this 
 strange wake are the long slow fires that Iceep burning 
 
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A Midsjimmer Trip to the Tropics. 71 
 
 about us at a distance, out in the dark. Nebulous in- 
 candescences 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 near- 
 ing 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 grow- 
 ing deeper. There is a bluish-white glow in the hori- 
 zon, — 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 near- 
 ing 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-col- 
 ored 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 vari- 
 ation in his soundings — a quarter of a fathom or half a 
 
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72 A Midsummer Trip to the Tropics. 
 
 fathom difference. The warm air has a sickly heaviness, 
 like the air of a swamp; the water shows olive and ochre- 
 ous tones alternately; — the foam is yellow in our wake. 
 These might be the colors of a fresh -water inunda- 
 tion. . . . 
 
 A fellow-traveller tells me, as we lean over the rail, 
 that this same viscous, glaucous sea washes the great 
 penal colony of Cayenne— which he visited. When a 
 convict dies there, the corpse, sewn up in a sack, is 
 borne to the water, and a great bell tolled. Then the 
 still surface is suddenly broken by fins innumerable, — 
 black fins of sharks rushing to the hideous funeral: they 
 know the Bell ! . . . 
 
 There is land in sight — very low land, — a thin dark 
 line suggesting marshiness; and the nauseous color of 
 the water always deepens. 
 
 As the land draws near, it reveals a beautiful tropical 
 appearance. The sombre green line brightens color, 
 sharpens into a splendid fringe of fantastic evergreen 
 fronds, bristling with palm crests. Then a mossy sea- 
 wall comes into sight — dull gray stone-work, green-lined 
 at all its joints. There is a fort. The steamer's whistle 
 is exactly mocked by a queer echo, and the cannon-shot 
 once reverberate'd — only once: there are no mountains 
 here to multiply a sound. And all the while the w^- 
 ter becomes a thicker and more turbid green; the wake 
 looks more and more ochreous, the foam ropier and yel- 
 lower. 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 Goverhment ware- 
 
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A Midsummer Trip to the Tropics. 73 
 
 houses without getting wet. In fifteen minutes the 
 shower ceases ; and we leave the warehouses to find our- 
 selves in a broad, palm-bordered street illuminated by 
 the most prodigious day that yet shone upon our voyage. 
 The rain has cleared the air and dissolved the mists; 
 and the light is wondrous. 
 
 My own memory of Demerara will always be a mem- 
 ory of enormous light. The radiance has an indescrib- 
 able 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, fiare almost 
 unbearably. 
 
 . . . Georgetown has an exotic aspect peculiar to it- 
 self, — 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 cool- 
 ness 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 pro- 
 longed and lengthened into beautiful piazzas and bal-. 
 conies. 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 beauti- 
 ful in the vegetation of the tropics has had a place con- 
 trived for it, a home prepared for it. Each dwelling has 
 its garden ; each garden blazes with singular and lovely 
 
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74 ^ Midsummer Trip to the Tropics. 
 
 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 won- 
 derful 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 av- 
 enues 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. Some- 
 times 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 varia- 
 tion of color, where some dead leaf droops like an im- 
 mense 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 
 
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A Midsumnur Trip to the Tropics. 75 
 
 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 pro- 
 duced 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 ine, I remember, with a sen- 
 sation 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. . . . 
 
 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 nat- 
 ural growths, but like idealizations of plants, — those beau- 
 tiful fantasticalities imagined by sculptors. All these we 
 see in glimpses from a carriage- window, — yellow, indi- 
 go, black, and crimson plants. . . ^\'e 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 
 
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76 A Mtdsuiniiicr Trip to the Tropics. 
 
 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, per- 
 fect 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 — stand- 
 ing, 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 p'hysical and 
 
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A Midmntmcr Trip to the Tropics. yy 
 
 moral. In the mighty swarming of India these have 
 learned the full meaning and force of life's law as we 
 Occidentals rarely learn it. Under the dark fixed frown 
 the eye glitters like a serpent's. 
 
 Nearly all wear the same Indian dress ; the thickly 
 folded turban, usually white, white drawers reaching but 
 half-way down the thigh, leaving the knees and the legs 
 bare, and white jacket. A few don long blue robes, and 
 wear a colored head-dress : these are babagees — priests. 
 Most of the men look tall ; they are slender and small- 
 boned, but the limbs are well turned. They are grave 
 — talk in low tones, and seldom smile. Those you see 
 with heavy black beards are probably Mussulmans : I 
 am told they have their mosques here, and that the muez- 
 zin's call to prayer is chanted three times daily on many 
 plantations. Others shave, but the Mohammedans al- 
 low 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 round- 
 ed ; 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 light- 
 ness 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 dec- 
 orated ; others coarse, round, smooth, with ends ham- 
 mered into the form of viper-heads. She has large flow- 
 ers of gold in her ears, a small gold flower in her very 
 dehcate little nose. This nose ornament does not seem 
 absurd ; on these dark skins the effect is almost as pleas- 
 
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78 A Midsummer Trip to the Tropics. 
 
 ing 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. 
 
 . . . 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 un- 
 familiar 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. « 
 
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A Alidsununer Trip to the Tropics. ■jg 
 
 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 — mist}' shapes that grow and lengthen as we ad- 
 vance. We are nearing Trinidad. 
 
 It first takes definite form as a prolonged, undulating, 
 pale gray mountain chain, — the outline of a sierra. Ap- 
 proaching nearer, we discern other hill summits round- 
 ing 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 re- 
 mains unclothed by creepers and shrubs. Between 
 them the sea leaps and whitens. 
 
 . . . And we begin to steam along a magnificent trop- 
 ical 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 ter- 
 races, or projecting like turret-lines, or shooting up into 
 semblance of cathedral forms or suggestions of castel- 
 lated architecture. . . . But the secrets of these woods 
 
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' So -i Jfidsummir Trip to the T'':rics. 
 
 have not been unexplored ; — one of the noblest Yrrit- 
 ers of our time has so beautifully and fully written of 
 them as to leave little for any one else to say. He who 
 knows Charles Kin^sley"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 mount- 
 ains and forests of Trinidad have an aspect very dif- 
 ferent from those of the other Antilles. The heights are 
 less lofty, — less jagged and abrupt, — with rounded sum- 
 mits ; 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 mightv 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 distm-bed by hurricanes. Over unruflBed water the 
 lights of Port-of-Spain shoot long stiU vellow beams. . . . 
 The night grows dull ; — ^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 hori- 
 zon being filled to a great height with greenish-golden 
 haze, — a mist of unspeakably sweet tint, a hue that imi- 
 tated in any aquarelle, would be cried out against as an im- 
 possibility. As yet the hills are nearly aU grav, the for- 
 ests also inwrapping them are gray and ghostlv. for the 
 sun has but just risen above them, and vapors hang Uke 
 
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A Midstimmer Trip to the Tropics. 8i 
 
 a veil between. Then, oyer the glassy level of the flood, 
 bands of purple and violet and pale blue and fluid gold 
 begin to shoot and quiver and broaden ; these are the 
 currents of the morning, catching varying color with the 
 deepening of the day and the lifting of the tide. 
 
 Then, as the sun rises higher, green masses begin to 
 glimmer among the grays; the outlines of the forest 
 summits commence to define themselves through the va- 
 pory light, to left and right of the gneat 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, sen- 
 suous 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 project- 
 ing 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 be- 
 calmed ships sprinkling the western water, all spreading 
 colored wings to catch the morning breeze. 
 
 The more the sun ascends, the more rapid the devel- 
 opment 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, some- 
 
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82 A Midsummer Trip to the Tropics. 
 
 what 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 un- 
 der 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 wav- 
 ing banana leaves and fronds of palms. ... A general 
 sensation of drowsy warmth and vast light and exotic 
 vegetation, — coupled with some vague disappointment at, 
 the absence of that picturesque humanity that delighted 
 us in the streets of St. Pierre, Martinique. The bright cos- 
 tumes of the French colonies are not visible here : there 
 is nothing like them in any of the English islands. Nev- 
 ertheless, this wonderful Trinida,d is as unique ethnolog- 
 ically as it is otherwise remarkable among all the other 
 Antilles. It has three distinct Creole populations, — Eng- 
 lish, Spanish, and French, — besides its German and Ma- 
 deiran settlers. There is also a special black or half-breed 
 element, corresponding to each creole race, and speak- 
 ing the language of each ; there are fifty thousand Hin- 
 doo 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 im- 
 pressions, 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 
 
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A Midsummer Trip to the Tropics. 83 
 
 fantastic ethnic background of all this colonial life, this 
 strong, bearded English visage takes something of heroic 
 relief ;— one feels, in a totally novel way, the dignity of a 
 white skin. 
 
 ... I hire a carriage to take me to the nearest coolie vil- 
 lage;— a delightful drive Sometimes the smooth white 
 
 road curves round the slope of a forest-covered mount- 
 ain ; — 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 elab- 
 orate 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 per- 
 petual 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 
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84 A Midsummer Trip to the Tropics. 
 
 trees and the roofs, rise the far hill shapes, some bright- 
 ly 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 labor- 
 ers 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 shad- 
 ows 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 ridic- 
 ulous little anvil set into a wooden block buried level 
 with the soil. Through a rear door come odors of un- 
 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 
 
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COOLIES OF TRINIDAD. 
 
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A Midsummer Trip to the Tropics. 85 
 
 me, inquiringly, a face lialf veiled by a black beard, — a 
 turbaned Indian face, sharp, severe, and slightly unpleas- 
 ant in expression. " Vie 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. 
 
 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 un- 
 adorned ; all the bracelets are on the fore-arm. Very 
 clumsy and coarse they prove to be on closer examina- 
 tion : 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, 
 
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A MidsunDHer Trip to the Tropic 87 
 
 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 so- 
 lemnity 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 ruin- 
 ous 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 leap- 
 ing 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 pre- 
 cipitous 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 arch- 
 ways 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 
 
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88 A Midsummer Trip to the Tropics. 
 
 by a flood ; everywhere disjointed brickwork, crumbling 
 roofs, pungent odors of mould. Yet this Spanish archi- 
 tecture 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 rail- 
 ings 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 extraordinaiy, 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 micro- 
 scopic organisms ; paint peels, stucco falls, tiles tumble, 
 stones slip out of place, and in every chink tiny g.reen 
 things nestle, propagating themselves through the joint- 
 ures and dislocating the masonry. There is an appalling 
 mouldiness, an exaggerated mossiness — the mysterjr and 
 the melancholy of a city deserted. Old warehouses with- 
 out 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 mendi- 
 cant from time to time. And high above all this, over- 
 looking streets too steep for any vehicle, slope the red 
 walls of the mouldering fort, patched with the virides- 
 cence of ruin. 
 
 By a road leading up beyond the city, you reach the 
 cemetery. The staggering iron gates by which you en- 
 ter 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 reid are 
 
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A Midsummer Trip to the Tropics. 
 
 89 
 
 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 crick- 
 ets perched — grass - colored creatures with two ruby 
 
 COOLIE MERCHANT. 
 
 specks for eyes. They make a sound shrill as the scream 
 of machinery bevelling marble. At the farther end of 
 the cemetery is a heavy ruin that would seem to have 
 once been part of a church : it is so covered with creep- 
 
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90 A Midsummer Trip to the Tropics. 
 
 ing 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 ter- 
 ribly impressive: this luxuriant, evergreen, ever-splen- 
 did Nature consumes the results of human endeavor so 
 swiftly, buries memories so profoundly, distorts the la- 
 bors 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 equi- 
 librium. 
 
 ... A gloomy road winds high around one cliff over- 
 looking 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 
 
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A Midsummer Trip to the Tropics. 91 
 
 thick growths far up waver in the breathless air as if 
 something were moving sinuously through them. And al- 
 ways 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 capi- 
 tal 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 developijient of 
 her secondary cultures — coffee and cocoa — she hopes 
 with good reason to repair some of the vast losses in- 
 volved by the decay of the sugar industry. 
 
 Still, in this silence of mouldering streets, this melan- 
 choly of abandoned dwellings, this invasion of vegeta- 
 tion, 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 in- 
 dustry 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 pop- 
 ulous 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. 
 
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92 A Midsummer Trip to the Tropics. 
 
 Now, in almost every island the negro idiom is differ- 
 ent. So often have some of the Antilles changed own- 
 ers, 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 oth- 
 er rulers and another tongue were thrust upon him,— and 
 this may have occurred three or four times ! The result 
 is a totally incoherent agglomeration of speech-forms— a 
 baragouin fantastic and unintelligible beyond the power 
 of any one to imagine who has not heard it. . . . 
 
 XXXII. 
 
 ... A BEAUTIFUL fantastic shape floats to us through 
 the morning light ; first cloudy gold like the horizon, 
 then pearly gray, then varying blue, with growing green 
 lights ; — Saint Lucia. Most strangely formed of all 
 this volcanic family ; — everywhere mountainings sharp 
 as broken crystals. Far off the Pitons — twin peaks of 
 the high coast— show softer contours, like two black 
 breasts pointing against the sky. . . . 
 
 ... As we enter the harbor of Castries, the lines of 
 the land seem no less exquisitely odd, in spite of their 
 rich verdure, than when viewed afar off; — they have a 
 particular pitch of angle. . . . Other of these islands 
 show more or less family resemblance; — you might 
 readily mistake one silhouette for another as seen at a 
 distance, even after several West Indian journeys. But 
 Saint Lucia at once impresses you by its eccentricity. 
 
 Castries, drowsing under palm leaves at the edge of 
 its curving harbor, — perhaps an ancient crater, — seems 
 more of a village than a town : streets of low cottages 
 and little tropic gardens. It has a handsome half breed 
 population : the old French colonial manners have been 
 less changed here by English influence than in Saint 
 Kitt's and elsewhere ; — the Creole patois is still spoken, 
 
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A Midsummer Trip to the Tropics. 93 
 
 though the costumes have changed. ... A more beauti- 
 ful 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 be- 
 yond ; 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, vol- 
 canic 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 refrac- 
 tion. Substarjces 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 atmos- 
 pheric 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 hori- 
 zon. . . . The general impression of the whole landscape 
 is one of motion suddenly petrified, — of an earthquake 
 surging and tossing suddenly arrested and fixed : a rag- 
 ing 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 
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94 ^ Midsummer Trip to the Tropics. 
 
 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. 
 
 . . . VVe pass the Pitons, and enter another little cra- 
 terine harbor, to cast anchor before the village of Choi- 
 seuL It lies on a ledge above the beach and unfler 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, gur- 
 gling 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 
 
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A M idsumincr Trip to the Tropics. 95 
 
 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 Soufribre : still another semicircular 
 bay in a hollow of green hills. Glens hold bluish shad- 
 ows. The color of the heights is very tender; but there 
 are long streaks and patches of dark grefen, marking wa- 
 tercourses 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, vari- 
 ations of tint, become invisible. Saint Lucia is only a 
 monstrous sUhouette ; all its billowing hills, its volcanic 
 bays, its amphitheatrical valleys, turn black as ebony. 
 
 And you behold before you a geological dream, a vi- 
 sion of the primeval sea : the apparition of the land as 
 first brought forth, all peak-tossed and fissured and na- 
 ked and grim, in the tremendous birth of an archipelago. 
 
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96 A Midsummer Trip to the Tropics. 
 
 XXXIII. 
 
 Homeward bound. 
 
 Again the enormous poem of azure and emerald un- 
 rolls 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 re- 
 ceive 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 lumi- 
 nous cloud which seems the breathing of each island- 
 life, — its vital manifestation. . . . 
 
 . . . 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, ac- 
 quired 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 popu- 
 lations 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 form- 
 er cultivators : St. Vincent is becoming desolate : Toba- 
 go is a ruin; St. Martin lies half abandoned; ^t. Chris- 
 topher is crumbling ; Grenada has lost more than half 
 
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A Midsiimnicr Trip to the Tropics. 97 
 
 her whites ; St. Thomas, once the most prosperous, the 
 most active, the most cosmopoHtan of West Indian 
 ports, is in full decadence. And while the white ele- 
 ment 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 re- 
 sults of emancipation. The general belief among the Cre- 
 ole whites of the Lesser Antilles would seem to confirm 
 the old prediction that the slave races of the past must be- 
 come 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 con- 
 ditions-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 con- 
 sumes the energies of the races of the North, which de- 
 vours all that has been accomplished by their heroism 
 or their crimes, — effacing their cities, rejecting their civ- 
 ilization. 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 endur- 
 ing 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 competi- 
 tion 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 beau- 
 tiful fruit-colored populations, seem doomed to extinc- 
 tion : the future tendency must be to universal black- 
 
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98 A Midsummer Trip to the Tropics. 
 
 ness, if existing conditions continue — perhaps to uni- 
 versal 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 sci- 
 ence 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 ? 
 
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Martinique Sketches, 
 
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LES PORTEUSES. 
 
 ^^'HEN 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 be- 
 fore, 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 eccen- 
 tricity of bright narrow streets, all aglow with warm col- 
 oring, — 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 at- 
 titudes, — the unconscious harmony of groupings, — the 
 gathering and folding and falling of light robes that os- 
 cillate with swaying of free hips, — the sculptural symme- 
 
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102 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 try 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 an- 
 cient smoking to heaven. And all at once the secret of 
 your dream is revealed, with the rising of many a lumi> 
 nous 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 mill- 
 ions are the ages of his almighty glory ; but for one in- 
 stant of reverie he seemeth larger, — even that sun im- 
 possible 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. 
 
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Les Por tenses. 103 
 
 II. 
 
 But wiiat slaves were the fathers of this free genera- 
 tion ? Your anthropologists, your ethnologists, seem at 
 fault here : the African traits have become transform- 
 ed; 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 de- 
 veloped ; 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 isl- 
 and 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 wom- 
 en 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 popula- 
 tion 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 grea' 
 
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I04 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 steamers of the Compagnie G^ne'rale 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 won- 
 derful 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 can- 
 not 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 slop- 
 ing 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 
 
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Les Porteuses. 105 
 
 twelve and fifteen miles a day. At sixteen or seventeen 
 she is a tall robust girl, — lithe, vigorous, tough, — all 
 tendon and hard flesh ; — she carries a tray or a basket 
 of the largest size, and a burden of one hundred and 
 twenty to one hundred and fifty pounds weight ; — she 
 can now earn about thirty francs (about six dollars) a 
 month, by walking fifty miles a day, as an itinerant seller. 
 
 Among her class there are figures to make you dream 
 of 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 environ- 
 ment, the type is a peculiarly local one, — a type of hu- 
 man thorough-bred representing the true secret of grace : 
 economy of force. There are no corpulent porteuses for 
 the long interior routes ; all are built li^tly and firmly as 
 racers. There are no old porteuses ; — to do the work 
 even at forty signifies a constitution of astounding solid- 
 ity. 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 " un- 
 load " (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 wom- 
 an 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 makmg any con- 
 
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io6 
 
 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 ditions 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 Cre- 
 ole abounds.* 
 
 V. 
 
 Preparing for her journey, the young machanne (mar- 
 chande) 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 con- 
 fined 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 
 
 * Extract from the '^ Story of Marie," as written from dictation: 
 
 . . . Manman-i t^ ni yon gouos 
 ja a cai'e-U. Ji-la te touop lou'de 
 pou Marie. Ce te li menm man- 
 man li qui te kalle pouend dileau. 
 Yon jou y pouend ja-la pou y te 
 alle pouend dileau. Lh^ man- 
 man-a rive b6 la fontaine, y pa 
 trouve pesonne pou chage y. Y 
 rete ; y ka crie," Toutt bon Chri- 
 tien, vini chage moin !" 
 
 . . . Lhe nifinman rete y oue pa 
 te ni piess bon Chritien pou chfige 
 y. Y rete ; y crie: " Pouloss, si 
 pa ni bon Chritien, ni mauvais 
 Chritien ! toutt mauvais Chritien 
 vini ch&ge moin !" 
 
 Lhe y fini di 9a, y oue yon diabe 
 qui ka vini, ka di conm 9a," Pou 
 moin chage ou, 9a ou ke baill 
 moin?" Manman-li di, — y re- 
 ponne," Moin pa ni arien!" Di- 
 abe-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. \Vhen this 
 mamma had got to the fountain, 
 she could not find any one to load 
 her. She stood there, crying out, 
 "Any good Christian, come load 
 me!" 
 
 ... 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 an- 
 swered, and said, " I have noth- 
 ing !" The devil answered her, 
 " Must give me Marie if vou want 
 me to load you." 
 
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TI MARIE. 
 (On the Route from St- Pierre to Basse-Pointe.) 
 
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Les Porteuses. 107 
 
 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, tbche, by winding the kerchief 
 round her fingers as you would coil up a piece of string ; — 
 and the soft mass, flattened with a patting of the hand, 
 is placed upon her head, over the coiffure. On this the 
 great loaded trait is poised. 
 
 She wears no shoes ! To wear shoes and do her work 
 swiftly and well in such a land of mountains would be 
 impossible. She must climb thousands and descend 
 thousands of feet every day, — march up and down slopes 
 so steep that the horses of the country all break down 
 after a few years of similar journeying. The girl in- 
 variably outlasts the horse, — though carrying an equal 
 weight Shoes, unless extraordinarily well made, would 
 shift place a little with every change from ascent to de- 
 scent, 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 rub- 
 bing, 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 Euro- 
 pean or American — the terrible sun of the tropics ! San- 
 dals 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 /a/fa,— 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 
 
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lo8 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 mountains by a beautiful and marvellous plan of hydrau- 
 lic engineering : she will have to drink betimes the com- 
 mon spring-water of the bamboo -fountains on the re- 
 moter high-roads ; and this may cause dysentery if swal- 
 lowed without a spoonful of spirits. Therefore she never 
 travels without a little liquor. 
 
 VI. 
 
 . . . So! — She is ready: '' Chagk main, souplh, chef" 
 She bends to lift the end of the heavy trait: some one 
 takes the ot\i&x,^yon / — de ! — toua ! — it is on her head. 
 Perhaps she winces an instant; — the weight is not per- 
 fectly 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 slack- 
 ening — save for a minute to eat and drink at mid-4ay, — 
 for at least twelve hours and fifty-six minutes, the ex- 
 treme 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 ob- 
 servations, partly upon the declarations of the trust- 
 worthy 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-quar- 
 ters. She makes the transit easily in three hour^ and a 
 
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Lcs Porteuses. 
 
 109 
 
 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 mkchannes 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 high- 
 ways, 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 de- 
 scending 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 con- 
 struction required engineering talent of the highest or- 
 der, — the building of bridges beyond counting, and de- 
 vices the most ingenious to provide against dangers of 
 storms, floods, and land -slips. Most have drinking- 
 fountains along their course at almost regular inter- 
 vals, — generally made by the negroes, who have a sim- 
 ple but excellent plan for turning the water of a spring 
 
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no Martinique Sketches. 
 
 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 as- 
 tonishment. This tropic Nature appears to call into 
 being nothing ordinary : the shapes which she evokes 
 are always either gracious or odd, — and her eccentrici- 
 ties, her extravagances, have a fantastic charm, a gro- 
 tesqueness as of artistic whim. Even where the land- 
 ' scape-view is cut off by high woods the forms of ancient 
 trees — the infinite interwreathing of vine growths all 
 on fire with violence of blossom-color, — the enormous 
 green outbursts of balisiers, with leaves ten to thirteen 
 feet long, — the columnar solemnity of great palmistes, — • 
 the pliant quivering exquisiteness of bamboo, — the furi- 
 ous 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 Uke 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 hasti- 
 ly term them, — but no palm was ever so gracUe ; no 
 
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Les Porieuses. 1 1 1 
 
 palm ever bore so dainty a head of green plumes light 
 as lace ! These likewise are ferns (rare~~-«urvivors, 
 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 be- 
 ing protected by double and triple water-proof coverings 
 well bound down over her trait. Yet these tropical rains, 
 coming suddenly with a cold wind upon her heated and 
 almost naked body, are to be feared. To any European 
 or unacclimated white such a wetting, while the pores 
 are all open during a profuse perspiration, would proba- 
 bly prove fatal : even for white natives the result is al- 
 ways 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 ?nar- 
 chande 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 
 
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1 1 2 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 thrived;— she is now a pretty chocolate-colored girl of 
 eight, who follows her mother every day from their mount- 
 ain 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 mer- 
 chandise 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, sing- 
 ing 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 se- 
 lected for special work by reason of extraordinary physi- 
 cal 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 bas- 
 kets 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 
 
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Les Portetises. 113 
 
 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 Iwitts, 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 learn- 
 ed that she had walked a whole mile out of her way un- 
 der that sky of fire, just to bring her little gift of gratitude. 
 
 IX. 
 
 Forty to fifty miles a day, always under a weight of 
 more than a hundred pounds, — for when the trait has 
 been emptied she puts in stones for ballast ; — carrying 
 her employer's merchandise and money over the mount- 
 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 
 season of rains or the season of heat, the time of fevers 
 or the time of hurricanes, at a franc a day ! . . . How does 
 she live upon it ? 
 
 There are twenty sous to the franc. The girl leaves 
 St. Pierre with her load at early morning. At the sec- 
 ond 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 bis- 
 cuit or two. Altogether she may be expected to eat five 
 sous of biscuit or bread before reaching Grande Anse, 
 
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1 14 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 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 fif- 
 teen 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 in- 
 clude 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 'II 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 comes from 
 
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Les Porteuses. 1 1 5 
 
 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\ Chichelle ! coument 
 ou kalli, Rina, chef" . . . Throw open the folding-doors 
 to let the great trays pass. . . . Now all three are un- 
 loaded by old Th6reza and by young Adou; — all the 
 packs are on the floor, and the water-proof wrappings 
 are being uncorded, while Ah-Manmzell, the adopted 
 child, brings the rum and water for the tall walkers. 
 
 ..." Oh, what a medley, Maiyotte !" . . . Inkstands 
 and wooden cows ; purses and paper dogs and cats ; dolls 
 and cosmetics ; pins and needles and soap and tooth- 
 brushes ; candied fruits and smoking-caps ; pelotes of 
 thread, and tapes, and ribbons, and laces, and Madeira 
 wine ; cuffs, and collars, and dancing-shoes, and tobacco 
 sachets. . . . But what is in that little flat bundle ? Pres- 
 ents for your guipe, if you have one. . . . yesis-Mdia ! — 
 the pretty foulards ! Azure and yellow in checkerings ; 
 orange and crimson in stripes ; rose and scarlet in plaid- 
 ings ; and bronze tints, and beetle-tints of black and 
 green. 
 
 " Chdchelle, what a bloucoutoum if you should ever 
 let that tray fall — die ydie ydie !" 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, Chdchelle : there is not a Prosperine 
 this side of St. Pierre], " Azaline," "Leontine," "Zdphyr- 
 ine," "Albertine," " Chrysaline," "Florine," "Coral- 
 line," "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 pen- 
 cils and note-paper and envelopes ! . . . 
 
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ii6 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 ..." 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), — trop- 
 ical 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 fiat 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 some- 
 thing 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 float- 
 ing 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 ex- 
 quisitely. And mHongines, or egg-plants ; and palhiiste- 
 pith, and chadiques, and pommes-d Ha'Uii — 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 oi palates among them. Old Therdza's 
 magic will transform these shapeless muddy things, be- 
 fore evening, into pyramids of smoking gold, — into odor- 
 ous 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 
 
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Les Porteuses. 117 
 
 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 Solo- 
 mon, 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 kilo- 
 metres you must walk, and the heat, and the dust, and 
 all the disappointments ? Ah, you are cunning, Mai- 
 yotte ! 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 dis- 
 tance 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 talk- 
 ing to the trees, to the flowers, — talking to the high clouds 
 and the far peaks of changing color, — talking to the set- 
 ting sun ! 
 
 Over the miles of the morning she sees, perchance, the 
 mighty Piton Gel^, a cone of amethyst in the light; and , 
 she talks to it : " Ou jojoll, oui! — main ni envie monti assou 
 ou, pou moin one Men, bienJ" (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 
 
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Ii8 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 heads form one unbroken awning of green. Many rise 
 straight as masts; some bend at beautiful angles, seem- 
 ing 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 pit-bois-lcL ./—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 lantnk ka gadt main!" (There is the great 
 sea looking at me!) "■ Machk toujou deit moin, lanmel" 
 (Walk after me, O Sea !) 
 
 Or she views the clo^uds of PeMe, spreading gray from 
 the invisible summit, to shadow against the sun ; and she 
 fears the rain, and she talks to it : "Fas mouillk moin, lap- 
 lie-a ! Qiiitte moin rivk avant mouillk moin ! " (Do not wet 
 me, O Rain ! Let me get there before thou wettest me !) 
 
 Sometimes a dog barks at her, menaces her bare limbs ; 
 and she talks to the dog : " Chien-a, pas mbdi moin. Men 
 — anh ! Moin pa ft ou arien, chien, pou ou mbdi moin ! " 
 (Do not bite me, O Dog ! Never did I anything to thee 
 that thou shouldst bite me, O Dog! Do not bite me, 
 dear I Do not bite me, doudoux /) 
 
 Sometimes she meets a laden sister travelling the op- 
 posite way. ..." Coument ou ye, chi 2" she cries. (How 
 art thou, dear ?) And the other makes answer, " Toutt 
 douce, che, — et ouf (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 
 — grdie-gras, graie-gras ! — and the gossip of the canes — 
 chououa, chououa ! — and the husky speech of the pois- 
 Angole, ka babillk conm yon vik fenme, — that babbles like 
 an old woman; — and the murmur of the 7?/a(7-tre^s, like 
 the murmur of the River of the Washerwomen. 
 
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Les Porteuses. 119 
 
 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 dark- 
 nesses of the way from far Grande Anse, to halt a mo- 
 ment 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, Mddelle, — all to- 
 gether, as usual, — with' Ti-Cle trotting behind, very 
 tired. . . . Never mind, Ti-C16 ! — you will outwalk your 
 cousins when you are a few years older, — pretty Ti- 
 C\6. . . . 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, al- 
 ways wearing robes and kerchiefs of similar color, — so 
 II 
 
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I20 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 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 yi, 
 chel coument ou kallS ?" . . . (How art thou, dear? — how 
 goes it with thee ?) 
 
 And they mostly make answer, Toutt douce, eke, — et 
 ou 1" (All sweetly, dear, — and thou ?) But some, over- 
 weary, cry to him, "Ah I dkhAgi moin vite, che ! main 
 iasse, 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, — sound- 
 lessly as faUing leaves. Still I can hear the voices 
 crying, "Ah/ dech&gk moin vite, che ! — moin lasse I" — 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 com- 
 ing feet of the bearers,- and even this light of sunset, — 
 sunset that is ever larger and nearer to us than dawn, 
 even as death than birth. And the weird way appeareth 
 a way whose dust is the dust of generations ; — and the 
 Shape that waits is never Jean-Marie, but one darker 
 and stronger ;— and these are surely voices of tired souls 
 who cry to Thee, thou dear black Giver of the per- 
 petual rest, "Ah! dechage moin vite, chi .'—main lasse!" 
 
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LA GRANDE ANSE. 
 I. 
 
 While at the village of Morne Rouge, I was frequent- 
 ly impressed by the singular beauty of young girls from 
 the north-east coast — all porteuses, who passed almost 
 daily, on their way from Grande Anse to St. Pierre and 
 back again, — a total trip of thirty-five miles. ... I knew 
 they were from Grande Anse, because the village baker, 
 at whose shop they were wont to make brief halts, told 
 me a good deal about them : he knew each one by name. 
 Whenever a remarkably attractive girl appeared, and I 
 would inquire whence she came, the invariable reply 
 (generally preceded by that peculiarly intoned French 
 "Ah!" signifying, "Why, you certainly ought to know !") 
 was "Grande Anse." . . .'Ah! tfest tie Grande Anse, (a/ 
 And if any commonplace, uninteresting type showed it- 
 self, it would be signalled as from somewhere else — 
 Gros-Morne, Capote, Marigot, perhaps, — but never from 
 Grande Anse. The Grande Anse girls were distinguish- 
 able by their clear yellow or brown skins, lithe light fig- 
 ures, and a particular grace in their way of dressing. 
 Their short robes were always of bright and pleasing 
 colors, perfectly contrasting with the ripe fruit-tint of 
 nude limbs and faces : I could discern a partiality for 
 white stuffs with apricot-yellow stripes, for plaidings of 
 blue and violet, and various patterns of pink and mauve. 
 They had a graceful way of walking under their trays, 
 with hands clasped behind their heads, and arms uplifted 
 
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122 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 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 an- 
 swered, " although I have been forty years in Marti- 
 nique ; but I know there is a fine class of young girls 
 there : il y a une belle jemusse la, mon cherf" 
 
 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 ad- 
 jacent 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 con- 
 siderable inducement to make the journey on horseback; 
 and only the professional carrier-girls, plantation mes- 
 sengers, and colored people of peculiarly tough constitu- 
 tion 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 
 
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La Grande Anse. 123 
 
 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 Por- 
 teuses, when the opportunity afforded itself to make the 
 trip with a friend obliged to go thither on some impor- 
 tant 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 mount- 
 ains the journey is slow and wearisome in the perpetual 
 tropic heat. Whether made on horseback or in a car- 
 riage, 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 stop- 
 pages 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 west- 
 
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124 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 em 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 andJessening undulations to the 
 eastern shore. It sinks between mornes wooded to their 
 summits,— bridges a host of torrents and ravines,— pass- 
 es 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 portSuse passes, walk- 
 ing 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 greet- 
 ings 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', Missiel 
 Then you should reply, if the speaker be a woman and 
 pretty, "Good-day, dear" {bonjou', chl), or, "Good-day, my 
 daughter" {mqfi) even if she be old; while if the pass- 
 er-by be a man, your proper reply is, "Good-day, my 
 son " {monji). . . . They are less often uttered now than 
 in other years, these kindly greetings, but they still form 
 part of the good and true Creole manners. 
 
 The feathery beauty of the tree-ferns shadowing each 
 brook, the grace of bamboo and arborescent grasses, seem 
 to decrease as the road descends, — but the palms grow 
 taller. Often the way skirts a precipice dominating some 
 marvellous valley prospect ; again it is walled in by high 
 green banks or shrubby slopes which cut off the view; 
 and always it serpentines so that you cannot s^e more 
 than a few hundred feet of the white track before you. 
 
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A CREOLE CAPRE IN WORKING GARB. 
 
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La Grande Anse. 125 
 
 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 coun- 
 try 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 bewilder- 
 ing 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 Fa- 
 laise (marked Filasse upon old maps), — with its shallow 
 crystal torrent flowing through a very deep and rocky 
 channel, — and the Capote and other streams; and over 
 the yellow rim of cane-hills the long blue bar of the sea 
 appears, edged landward with a dazzling fringe of foam. 
 The heights you have passed are no longer verdant, but 
 purplish or gray, — with 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. 
 
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126 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 III. 
 
 Leaving Morne Rouge at about eight in the morning, 
 my friend and I reached Grande Ansa 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 S6guinau, 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 Rivifere 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 Faille, because the cot- 
 tages lining it were formerly all thatched with cane 
 straw ; and there is one above it, edging the cane-fields 
 
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La Grande Anse. , 127 
 
 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 ob- 
 tain 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 sil- 
 houette, 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 Rivifere 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 ex- 
 panse 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 al- 
 most black under the prodigious blaze of light. The 
 foundations of volcanic rock, three or four feet high, on 
 
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128 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 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 fagades 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 mi- 
 caceous 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 land- 
 scape about you. On the roads leading from the town 
 you note from time to time rnasses of jagged rock or 
 great bowlders protruding through the green of the 
 slopes, and dark as ink. These black surfaces also 
 sjArkle. 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 char- 
 coal ; 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 ef- 
 fervescence. 
 
 This extraordinary sand contains ninety per cent, of 
 natural steel, and efforts have been made to utilize it in- 
 dustrially. 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 interrup- 
 
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La Grande Anse. 129 
 
 tion of an electric current precipitated the metal into ap- 
 propriate 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 con- 
 sequent upon the establishment of universal suffrage 
 frightened capitalists who might have aided the under- 
 taking 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 ra- 
 diant with flowers of the loseilk-bois, — the Creole name 
 for a sort of begonia, whose closed bud exactly resem- 
 bles 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, decom- 
 
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ijo Martinique Sketches. 
 
 posing rubbish spread out by old tides. The one soli- 
 tary 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 sen- 
 sation 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 indefin- 
 able 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 recoUectio'^s 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 ligtited 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 sweet- 
 ness. 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 
 
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La Grande Anse. 131 
 
 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 sun- 
 sets 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 ori&ige 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 At- 
 lantic : 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 
 
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132 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 Anse it rains more moderately and less often. The at- 
 mosphere at St. Pierre is always more or less impreg- 
 nated with vapor, and usually an enervating heat pre- 
 vails, 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 wa- 
 ter and rough pebbly shore of St. Pierre. The Creoles 
 really prefer their rivers as bathing-places ; and when 
 willing to take a sea bath, they will walk up and down 
 hill for kilometres in order to reach some river mouth, 
 so as to wash off in the fresh-water afterwards. They 
 say that the effect of sea-salt upon the skin gives boutons- 
 chauds (what we call " prickly heat "). Friends took me 
 all the way to the mouth of the Lorrain one morning 
 that I might have the experience of such a double bath ; 
 but after leaving the tepid sea, I must confess the plunge 
 into the river was something terrible — an icy shock 
 which cured me of all further desire for river baths. 
 My willingness to let the sea-water dry upon me was 
 regarded as an eccentricity. 
 
 VI. 
 
 It may be said that on all this coast the ocean, per- 
 petually 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 break- 
 ers come in lines more than a mile long, between the 
 Pointe du Rochet and the Pointe de S6guinau, — every 
 unfurling a thunder-clap. There is no travellingiby sea. 
 
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La Grande Anse. 133 
 
 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 merchan- 
 dise 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 ani- 
 mals could not endure the work. Cocoa can be carried 
 to St.. Pierre by the porteuses, but sugar and rum must 
 go by sea, or not at all ; and the risks and difficulties of 
 shipping these seriously affect the prosperity of all the 
 north and north-east coast. Planters have actually been 
 ruined by inability to send their products to market dur- 
 ing 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 develop- 
 ing 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 cau- 
 tion, 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 
 12 
 
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134 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 hills. The shell is one of those great spiral shells, weigh- 
 ing 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 orna- 
 ments,— the shell of a Iambi. Here you can often see 
 the Iambi crawling about with its nacreous house upon 
 Its back : an enormous sea-snail with a yellowish back 
 and rose-colored belly, with big horns and eyes in the 
 tip of each horn— very pretty eyes, having a golden iris. 
 This creature is a common article of food ; but its thick 
 white flesh is almost compact as cartilage, and must be 
 pounded before being cooked.* 
 
 At the sound of the blowing of the Iambi-shell, wagons 
 descend to the beach, accompanied by young colored men 
 running beside the mules. Each wagon discharges a cer- 
 tain number of barrels of tafia, and simultaneously the 
 young men strip. They are slight, well built, and gen- 
 erally well muscled. Each man takes a barrel of tafia, 
 pushes it before him into the surf, and then begins to 
 swim to the pirogue, — impelhng 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 ex- 
 perts who manage as many as three barrels together, — 
 pushing them forward in hne, with the head of one against 
 the bottom of the next. It really requires much dex- 
 terity 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,- — mak- 
 ing it dive through. If it once glide well out of his 
 reach while he is in the breakers, it becomes an enemy, 
 
 * Y batt li conm Iambi — "he beat him like a Iambi" — is an ex- 
 pression that may often be heard in a Creole court from witnesses 
 testifying in a case of assault and battery. One must have seen a 
 Iambi pounded to appreciate the terrible picturesquei^ss of the 
 phrase. 
 
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La Grande Anse. 
 
 135 
 
 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 be- 
 fore 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 pecul- 
 iar 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 expe- 
 dition. There is always much interest in this event; a 
 crowd gathers on the beach ; and the professional swim- 
 mers 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 
 
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136 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 grace, that untaught grace which tempts an artistic pen- 
 cil. 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, ''Rhalt bois- 
 canotf" . . . 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 fisher- 
 men 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 drag- 
 on-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 rnakes 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 
 h. 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 repre- 
 sented by an extraordinary conformation of the jaws ; — 
 and the barriqtie-de-vin (" wine cask "), with round bone- 
 less body, secreting in a curious vesicle a liquor precise- 
 ly 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 
 
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La Grande Anse. 137 
 
 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 famil- 
 iar 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 re- 
 moved, 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 
 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 pre- 
 dominating race element of the whole commune is cer- 
 tainly 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 concentrate4 
 
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138 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 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 Rivifere 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 wel- 
 come, Vive Monseigneur. On that event, the long proces- 
 sion of young girls to be confirmed — all in white robes, 
 white veils, and white satin slippers — is a numerical sur- 
 prise. 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 ^ho 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, 
 
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La Grande Anse. 
 
 139 
 
 brothers, and mothers working with cutlass and hoe in 
 the snake-swarming cane-fields ; — sisters walking bare- 
 footed every day to St. Pierre and back to earn a few 
 francs a month. 
 
 . . . While watching such a procession it seemed to 
 me that I could discern in the features and figures of 
 the young confirmants something of a prevailing type 
 and tint, and I asked an old planter beside me if he 
 thought my impression correct. 
 
 " Partly," he answered; " there is certainly a tendency 
 towards an attractive physical type here, but the ten- 
 dency 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 domi- 
 nate in certain communes, but the particular characteris- 
 tics 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 t)rpe, 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 fur- 
 nishes the finest physical examples of all, — you, a stran- 
 ger, 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 ob- 
 serve 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 moth- 
 er — in whom the tint is precisely the same." 
 
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140 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 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 som- 
 nolent 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 fish- 
 ing parties, surf-bathing, and visits to neighboring plan- 
 tations 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 es- 
 tates on the hills near the village. 
 
 It is not easy to describe the charm of a Creole inte- 
 rior, whether in the city or the country. The cool shad- 
 owy court, with its wonderful plants and fountain of 
 sparkling mountain water, or the lawn, with its ances- 
 tral 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 in- 
 wrap 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 hflndred 
 
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La Grande Anse. 141 
 
 greens, — mountains far winding in blue and pearly 
 shadowing, — rivers singing seaward behind curtains of 
 arborescent reeds and bamboos, — and, perhaps, Pel6e, 
 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 tt 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 wben young, — less in size 
 than the tarantula, but equally hairy and venomous ; and 
 the crabe-d 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 confes- 
 sion, " 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-misk — 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 com- 
 
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142 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 mon 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 impercepti- 
 ble ; — it seems to live so, that you feel guilty of murder 
 if you break off a leaf. It is called Zhebe-moin-mist, or 
 ".Plant-did-I-amuse-myself," because it is supposed to 
 tell naughty little children who play truant, or who de- 
 lay much longer than is necessary in delivering a mes- 
 sage, whether they deserve a whipping or not. The 
 guilty child touches the plant, and asks, ''Ess main 
 amisk 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-d-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-&.-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-k-vent during 
 a hurricane which he recollected. It was found neces- 
 sary to secure the door within by means of stron| ropes ; 
 
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La Grande Anse. 143 
 
 and the mere task of holding it taxed the strength of a 
 dozen powerful men : it would bulge in under the press- 
 ure of the awful wind, — swelling like the side of a bar- 
 rel; 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 hoWday faleintia in the villages, where 
 the amusement is too often terminated by a voum (general 
 row) or a goumage (a serious fight) ; — and when I men- 
 tioned 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 bk^ (which 
 latter is accompanied by chanted improvisation) are 
 danced on Sundays to the soured of the drum on almost 
 every plantation in the island. The drum, indeed, is an 
 instrument to which the country-folk are so much at- 
 tached that they swear by it, — Tambou ! being the oath 
 uttered upon all ordinary occasions of surprise or vexa- 
 tion. But the instrument is quite as often called ka, be* 
 cause made out of a quarter-barrel, or quart, — in the 
 patois " ka." Both ends of the barrel having been re- 
 moved, 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 Pfere Labat the negro drums had a some- 
 what different form. There were then two kinds of drums 
 — a big tamtam and a little one, which used to be played 
 
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144 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 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* was of the same length, but only eight 
 or nine inches in diameter. Pfere 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 cotii, 
 covered with some kind of skin. It had four strings of 
 silk or catgut, and a very long neck. The tradition of 
 this African instrument is said to survive in the modern 
 " banza " (banza neg Guinke) . 
 
 The skilful playet {bel tambouyi) straddles his ka strip- 
 ped to the waist, and plays upon it with the finger-tips 
 of both hands simultaneously, — taking care that the vi- 
 brating string qccupies a horizontal position. Occasion- 
 ally the heel of the naked foot is pressed lightly or vig- 
 orously 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 it- 
 self, well played, has a wild power that makes and mas- 
 ters all the excitement of the dance — a complicated dou- 
 ble 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 bUip 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 
 
 * 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 tris-gros bam- 
 bou." — "Description de la partie franjaise de Saint Domingue," 
 vol. i., p. 44. 
 
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La Grande Anse. 145 
 
 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 tambouyk. The 
 same commandk 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, die, ydie ! mon che! — y fai tambou-a 
 pale!" said the command^, 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 trem- 
 bling all the time — die, ydie-ydie ! Then he got off that ka. 
 I mounted it ; I thought a moment ; then I struck up the 
 'River-of-the-Lizard,' — mais, mon che, yon larivie-Liza toutt 
 pi! — such a River-of-the-Lizard, ah! just perfectly pure! 
 I gave heel to that ka; I worried that ka; — I made it 
 mad; — I made it crazy;— I made it talk; — I won!" 
 
 During some dances a sort of chant accompanies the 
 music — a long sonorous cry, uttered at intervals of seven 
 or eight seconds, which perfectly times a particular meas- 
 ure in the drum roll. It may be the burden of a song, 
 or a mere improvisation : 
 
 " Oh! yoie-yoi'e!" 
 " Oh! missie-a!" 
 "Y bel tambouye!" 
 "Aie, ya, yaie!" 
 "Joli tambouye!" 
 " ChaufFe tambou-a!' 
 " Gene tambou-a!" 
 
 {Drum roll!) 
 [Drum roll) 
 (Drum roll) 
 {Drum roll!) 
 (Drum roll) 
 (Drum roll!) 
 
 (Drum roll!) 
 " Craze tambou-a!" etc., etc. 
 
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146 Martiniqiie Sketches. 
 
 . . . 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, gath- 
 erings, when the blood becomes overheated by tafia — 
 the mock fight may become a real one ; and then even 
 cutlasses are brought into play. 
 
 But in the old days, those improvisations which gave 
 one form of dance its name, MU (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 improv- 
 isation. There is a dancing pause at the end of each line 
 during the perforrhance : 
 
 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; — ' 
 
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MANNER OF PLAYING THE KA. 
 
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La Grande Anse. 147 
 
 When I see the Garde Royale 
 
 Coming to arrest my sweet heart, 
 
 I fall down at the feet of the Garde Royale, — 
 
 I pray for mercy and forgiveness. 
 
 "Arrest me instead, but let my dear Love go!" 
 
 How, alas! with this tender heart of mine, 
 
 Can I bear to see such an arrest made! 
 
 No, no! I would rather die! 
 
 Dost not remember, when our pillows lay close together. 
 
 How we told each to the other all that our hearts thought? . . . etc. 
 
 The stars were all out when I bid my host good-bye ; — 
 he sent his black servant along with me to carry a lan- 
 tern and keep a sharp watch for snakes along the mount- 
 ain 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 reach- 
 ing 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 lumi- 
 nous 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 ar£ no 
 woods, no ships, no sunsets, . . . only the ocean roaring 
 forever over its beach of black sand. 
 
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La Grande Anse. 147 
 
 When I see the Garde Royale 
 
 Coming to arrest my sweet heart, 
 
 I fall down at the feet of the Garde Royale, — 
 
 I pray for mercy and forgiveness. 
 
 "Arrest me instead, but let my dear Love go!" 
 
 How, alas! with this tender heart of mine, 
 
 Can I bear to see such an arrest made! 
 
 No, no! I would rather die! 
 
 Dost not remember, when our pillows lay close together, 
 
 How we told each to the other all that our hearts thought? . . . etc. 
 
 The stars were all out when I bid my host good-bye ; — 
 he sent his black servant along with me to carry a lan- 
 tern and keep a sharp watch for snakes along the mount- 
 ain 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 reach- 
 ing 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 lumi- 
 nous 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. 
 
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UN REVENANT. 
 
 He who first gave to Martinique its poetical name, 
 Le Pays des Reveriants, 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 ev- 
 ery 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, ev- 
 ery village and valley along the coast, has its special 
 folk-lore, its particular tradition. The legend of Tho- 
 masseau 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 spec- 
 tral 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 dis- 
 appear forever ;— the legend of I'Abbe Piot, who cursed 
 the sea with the curse of perpetual unrest ; — the legend 
 of Aimee Derivry of Robert, captured by Barbary pi- 
 rates, and sold to become a Sultana- Validd— (she never 
 
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Un Revenant. 149 
 
 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 Trinitfe, according as a rising of some peak into view, 
 or the sudden opening of an anse before the vessel's ap- 
 proach, 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 sirlgle 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 further- 
 more specialized in each separate locality where it ob- 
 tains a habitat. On tracing back such a legend or tra- 
 dition 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 " Missi6 Bon." No 
 legendary expression is more wide-spread throughout the 
 country than temps coudvent Missii 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 Missii Bon. 
 And some years ago, in all the Creole police-courts, old 
 colored witnesses who could not tell their age would in- 
 variably try to give the magistrate some idea of it by 
 
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150 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 referring to the never-to-be-forgotten temps coudvent 
 Missit Bon. 
 
 . . . '^ Temps coudvent Missit Bon, main tk ka tktk encb" (I 
 was a child at the breast in the time of the big wind of 
 Missie Bon) ; oS ''Temps coudvent Missik Bon, moin th toutt 
 piti manmaille, — moin ka souvini y pouend cdie manman 
 moin phtk allL" (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 I 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-Ditj one day sent a great wind which blew 
 away Missit 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 suc- 
 ceeded 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 Cre- 
 oles usually do. He laughed at the legend I had found, 
 but informed me that I could trace it, with slight varia- 
 tions, through nearly every canton of Martinique. 
 
 "And now," he continued, "I can tell you the real 
 history of ' Missi6 Bon,' — for he was an old friend of my 
 grandfather ; and my grandfather related it tc^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 bgen con- 
 signed to my grandfather, invited him and the collector 
 
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Un Revenant. 1 5 1 
 
 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 rnorning 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 with- 
 out 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, tak- 
 ing 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."* 
 
 " But did Monsieur Bon ever do. anything to deserve 
 the reputation he has left among the people?" I asked. 
 
 '■'■Ah! k 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-fash- 
 ioned days. . . . Never had a slave in his life \" 
 
 II. 
 
 The legend of " Missis Bon " had prepared me to 
 hear without surprise the details of a still more singular 
 
 ♦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 Pire 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. 
 
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152 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 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 in- 
 describably soft; and stars were beginning to twinkle 
 out everywhere through the violet. Suddenly I noticed 
 on the flank of a neighboring morne — which I remem- 
 bered 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 simul- 
 taneously ; — he crossed himself, and exclaimed : 
 
 "Main ka coue c' est f anal Pe LabattI''' (I believe it is 
 the lantern of Pfere Labat.) 
 
 " Does he live there ?" I innocently inquired. 
 
 " Live there ? — why he has been dead hundreds of 
 years ! . . . Ouill! you never heard of Pfe 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 Thdr6za 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 " Missis Bon," — that 
 his memory had created, in fact, the most impressive le- 
 gend in all Martinique folk-lore. 
 
 "Whether you really saw Pfe Labatt's lantern," .said 
 old Th^reza, " 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 Pfe Labatt; and it is not good -luck to 
 see it. 
 
 " Pb Labatt was a priest who lived here hundreds of 
 
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Un Revenant. 153 
 
 years ago; and he wrote a book about what he saw. 
 He was the first person to introduce slavery into Marti- 
 nique; 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, Pfe 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 Pfe Labatt, be- 
 cause 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 moth- 
 ers tell their children, when the little ones are naughty : 
 ^Mi ! moin ke fai Fk Labatt vini pouend ou, — out/' (I 
 will make Pe Labatt come and take you away.)" . . . 
 
 What old TherSza stated regarding the establishment 
 of slavery in Martinique by Pfere Labat, I knew required 
 no investigation, — inasmuch as slavery was a flourishing 
 institution in the time of Pfere Dutertre, another Domini- 
 can missionary and historian, who wrote his book, — a 
 queer book in old French,* — before Labat was born. 
 But it did not take me long to find out that such was the 
 general belief about Pfere Labat's sin and penance, and 
 to ascertain that his name is indeed used to frighten 
 naughty children. £h ! ti manmailk-ld, moin M fai Pe 
 Labatt vini pouend ou ! — is an exclamation often heard 
 
 * " Histoire Generale des Antilles . . . habites par les Franjais.'' 
 Par le R. P. Du Tertre, de I'Ordre des Frires Prescheurs. Paris : 
 1661-71. 4 vols, (with illustrations) in 4to. 
 
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154 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 in the vicinity of ajoupas just about the hour when all 
 good little children ought to be in bed and asleep. 
 
 . . . The first variation of the legend I heard was on a 
 plantation in the neighborhood of Ajoupa - Bouillon. 
 There I was informed that Pfere Labat had come to his 
 death by the bite of a snake,— the hugest snake that 
 ever was seen in Martinique. Pfere Labat had believed 
 it possible to exterminate the fer-de-lance, and had adopt- 
 ed extraordinary measures for its destruction. On receiv- 
 ing his death-wound he exclaimed, " Cest pe toutt stpent 
 qui te ka mhde nioiii " (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 Pfere 
 Labat still hunting for snakes. 
 
 " Ou pa pe suive ti litnik-lci piess !" continued my in- 
 formant. " 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 promon- 
 tory that reaches three leagues into the sea south of the 
 harbor of La Trinity.* And on my return to St. Pierre I 
 
 * 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 ex- 
 ceedingly, and became very savage. Notwithstanding their feroc- 
 ity, however, large numbers of thera were driven away at night, and 
 secretly slaughtered or sold, by somebody who used to poetise the 
 art of cattle-stealing with a lantern, and evidently without aid. A 
 
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Un Revenant. 155 
 
 found a totally different version of the legend ; — my in- 
 formant 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 Friend- 
 ships. 
 
 . . . "Ah! Pe Labatt, out!" she exclaimed, at my first 
 question, — " Vh 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 ser- 
 pent's bite. They lied about him ; they slandered him 
 until they got him sent away from the country. But be- 
 fore 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, O 
 Martinique ! — I curse you ! There will be food for noth- 
 ing, 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 ban- 
 ish me ; — but I will come back again.' " * 
 
 watch was set, and the thief arrested. Before the magistrate he 
 displayed extraordinary assurance, asserting that he had never stolen 
 from a poor man — he had stolen only from M. Eustache who could 
 not count his own cattle — yon richard, mon che! ' ' How many cows 
 did you steal from him?" asked the magistrate. "Ess main pe 
 save? — main U 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. "Main 
 pa k/ r/U la gedle," 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. 
 
 * Y sucoue souye y assous quai-li; — y ka di: " Moin ka maudi ou, 
 Lanmatinique ! — moin ka maudi ou! . . . Ke ni mange pou engnien: 
 ou pa ke pe menm achete y ! K^ ni tousle pou engnien : ou pa ke , 
 pe menm achete yon robe ! Epi yche ke batt manman. . . . Ou 
 banni moin! — moin ke vini enc6!" 
 
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156 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 " And then what happened, Manm-Robert ?" 
 "Eh! fouinq! che, all that Pfe Labatt said has come 
 true. There is food for almost nothing, and people are 
 starving here in St. Pierre ; there is clothing for almost 
 nothing, and poor girls cannot earn enough to buy a 
 dress. The pretty printed calicoes (indiennes) that used 
 to be two francs and a half the metre, now sell at twelve 
 sous the metre ; but nobody has any money. And if you 
 read our papers, — Les Colonies, La Defense Coloniale, — 
 you will find that there are sons wicked enough to beat 
 their mothers : oui! yche ka bait manman! It is the mal- 
 ediction of Pfe 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. . . . Sub- 
 sequently 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 in- 
 vited to pass an afternoon at the home of a gentleman 
 residing upon the Morne d' Orange, — the locality sup- 
 posed to be especially haunted by Pfere 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 P^re Labat haunted this 
 
 mountain, and I often saw what was alleged to be his 
 light. It looked very much like a lantern swinging in 
 
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Un Revetiant. 157 
 
 the hand of some one cHmbing 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 inac- 
 cessible as it looks : still, we could never discover who 
 the individual was, nor could we imagine what his pur- 
 pose 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 encyclo- 
 paedias 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 His- 
 toriques has that charm of sympathetic comprehension 
 by which a master -biographer sometimes reveals him- 
 self 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 biogra- 
 phy 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 ^rave and keen, which be- 
 speak great energy and quick discernment. This was 
 the Pfere Labat, a native of Paris, then in his thirtieth 
 year. Half priest, half layman, one might have been 
 
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158 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 tempted to surmise from his attire; and such a judg- 
 ment would not have been unjust. Labat's character 
 was too large for his calling, — expanded naturally be- 
 yond 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 Marti- 
 nique. 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 ex- 
 tent that ruin threatened all their West Indian establish- 
 ments. Labat, with the quick decision of a mind suf- 
 fering 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 In- 
 dies was slow, irregular, and difficult. Labat had to wait 
 at Rochelle six whole months for a ship. In the con- 
 vent at Rochelle, where he stayed, there were others 
 waiting for the same chance, — including several Jesuits 
 and Capuchins as well as Dominicans. These unani- 
 mously elected him their leader, — a significant fact con- 
 sidering the mutual jealousy of the various religious or- 
 ders 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 submis- 
 sion 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 th6 captain 
 
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Un Revenant. 1 59 
 
 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 iirst Ijeheld 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, bro- 
 ken 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, con- 
 sidering the time of the year." 
 
 Almost immediately after his arrival he was sent by 
 the Superior of the convent to Macouba, for acclima- 
 tion ; Macouba then being considered the healthiest part 
 of the island. Whoever makes the journey on horse- 
 back 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,^ — com- 
 menting 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 every- 
 body's friend ; and many are hoping you will continue 
 to be only theirs.". . . Labat knew how to take legiti- 
 mate advantage of this good-will; — he persuaded his ad- 
 mirers to rebuild the church at Macouba, according to 
 designs made by himself. 
 
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i6o Martinique Sketches. 
 
 At Macouba, however, he was not permitted to so- 
 journ as long as the good people of the little burgh 
 would have deemed even reasonable : he had shown cer- 
 tain aptitudes which made his presence more than de- 
 sirable 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 ev- 
 erything, and set to work for the plantation, not merely 
 as general director, but as engineer, architect, machin- 
 ist, 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 proper- 
 ty, and leased at an annual rent of 50,000 francs — re- 
 mains 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 bank- 
 ruptcy, but had made it rich ; and if the monks deemed 
 him veritably inspired, the test of time throws no ridi- 
 cule 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 com- 
 mercial methods — has lost little of its value. 
 
 Such talents could not fail to excite wide-spread ad- 
 miration, — nor to win for him a reputation in the col- 
 onies beyond precedent. He was wainted 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 
 
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Un Revenant. i6i 
 
 at home in this new role — building bastions, scarps, coun- 
 terscarps, 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 
 parte i') He replies only after returning the fire with a 
 better-directed aim, and then repeats the mocking ques- 
 tion : " 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 dis- 
 tinction, 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 in- 
 terests of the Dominicans whereof the narration fills six 
 ample volumes. As a traveller Pfere 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 vis- 
 ited by him, but were studied in their every geographical 
 detail. Travel in the West Indies is difficult to a de- 
 gree of which strangers have little idea ; but in the time 
 of P^re 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. 
 14 
 
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1 62 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 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 con- 
 sult 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 per- 
 sonal friend; — he even becomes tlieir 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 him- 
 self in making the prisoners, among whom are several 
 ladies, enjoy the event like a holiday. On another voy- 
 age Labat's vessel is captured by a Spanish ship. At 
 one moment sabres are raised above his head, and load- 
 ed muskets levelled at his breast ; — the next, every Span- 
 iard is on his knees, appalled by a cross that Labat holds 
 before the eyes of the captors, — the cross worn by offi- 
 cers 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 medi- 
 aeval 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. • 
 
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Un Revenant. 163 
 
 For other dangers he exhibits absolute unconcern. 
 He studies the phenomena of hurricanes with almost 
 pleasurable interest, while his comrades on the ship aban- 
 don 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 ob- 
 serves 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 re- 
 mains ; what has vanished was removed by human agen- 
 cy, 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, more- 
 over, 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 set- 
 
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164 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 tied at Paris, where he prepared and published the vo- 
 luminous 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 re- 
 fused. To such a character, the restraint of the cloister 
 must have proved a slow agony ; but he had to endure 
 it for many long years. He died at Paris in 1738, aged 
 seventy-five. 
 
 ... It was inevitable that such a man should make 
 bitter enemies : his preferences, his position, his activity, 
 his business shrewdness, his necessary self-assertion, 
 must have created secret hate and jealousy even when 
 open malevolence might not dare to show itself. And to 
 these natural results of personal antagonism or opposi- 
 tion were afterwards superadded various resentments^ 
 irrational, perhaps, but extremely violent, — caused by 
 the father's cynical frankness as a writer. He spoke 
 freely about the family origin and personal failings of 
 various colonists considered high personages in their 
 own small world ; and to this day his book has an evil 
 reputation undeserved in those old Creole communities, 
 where any public mention of a family scandal is never 
 forgiven or forgotten. . . . But probably even before his 
 work appeared it had been secretly resolved that he 
 should never be permitted to return to Martinique or 
 Guadeloupe after his European mission. The exact 
 purpose of the Government in this policy remains a 
 mystery, — whatever ingenious writers may have alleged 
 to the contrary. We only know that M. Adrien Des- 
 salles, — 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 : — * 
 
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Un Revenant. 165 
 
 . . . " Le Pbre 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 I'Am^rique " with a feeling approaching re- 
 gret; for although the six pursy little volumes com- 
 posing it — full of quaint drawings, plans, and odd at- 
 tempts 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 conversation- 
 alists who measure the weight of every word and nev- 
 er 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 par- 
 ticularly 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 ; supersti- 
 tious and yet cynical ; unsympathetic by his positivism, 
 but agreeable through natural desire to give pleasure ; 
 just by nature, yet capable of merciless severity ; pro- 
 foundly 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 em- 
 ploying 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 Guade- 
 loupe wrote me that he would find it difficult to employ 
 this refiner because the man was a Lutheran. This 
 
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1 66 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 scruple gave me pleasure, as I had long wanted to have 
 him upon our plantation in the Fond Saint-Jacques, but 
 did not know how I would be able to manage it. I 
 wrote to the Superior at once that all he had to do was 
 to send the man to me, because it was a matter of indif- 
 ference to me whether the sugar he might make were 
 Catholic or Lutheran sugar, provided it were very 
 white."* 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 ex- 
 tinct species of West Indian nocturnal bird) were fish or 
 flesh, and might or might not be eaten in Lent, he tells 
 us that he was fairly worsted, — (although he could cite 
 the celebrated myth of the "barnacle-geese " as a "fact" 
 in justification of one's right to doubt the nature of di- 
 ablotins). 
 
 One has reason to suSpect that Pere Labat, notwith- 
 standing 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 be- 
 trays 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 ;t and Pfere Labat does not attempt to conceal his 
 fondness for — cooked parrots. (He does not appear to 
 
 * Vol. iii., p. 382-3. Edition of 1722. 
 
 f 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 wingsi, throat, and 
 tail. 
 
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Un Revenant. 167 
 
 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 {tme 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 vin- 
 egar, and then to strangle them while they have the vin- 
 egar still in their throats by twisting their necks"; and 
 the fourth way is " to skin them alive " {de les horcher 
 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 i^ne 
 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 necessi- 
 ties 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 capa- 
 ble of modifying. Labat seems to have possessed but a 
 very small quantity of altruism ; his cynicism on the sub- 
 ject of animal suffering is not offset by any visible sym- 
 pathy with human pain ; — ^he never compassionates : you 
 may seek in vain through all' his pages for one gleam of 
 the goodness of gentle Pfere Du Tertre, who, filled with 
 intense pity for the condition of the blacks, prays mas- 
 ters 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 pur- 
 
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1 68 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 chases them himself for the Saint-Jacques plantation, 
 never makes a mistake or a bad bargain, and never ap- 
 pears to feel a particle of commiseration for their lot. 
 In fact, the emotional feeling displayied 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 de\'il, — 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 cer- 
 tain 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 re- 
 veal 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 com- 
 pacts 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. Thei\ the negro 
 child, who had begun to understand and speak a little 
 
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Un Revenant. 169 
 
 French, told his masters that he was a Rain-maker, that 
 he could obtain them all the rain they wanted. " Tliis 
 proposition," says Pfere Labat, "greatly astonished the 
 fathers : they consulted together, and at last, curiosity 
 ■overcoming reason, they gave their consent that this un- 
 baptized child should make some rain fall on their gar- 
 den." 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 un- 
 known tongue. Then he got three small orange-branch- 
 es, stuck a branch in each orange, and repeated his pros- 
 trations 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 ap- 
 proached 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. P^re Labat declares there 
 is no question as to the truth of the occurrence : he cites 
 the names of Pfere Fraise, Pfere Rosid, Pfere Temple, and 
 Pfere Bournot, — all members of his own order, — as trust- 
 worthy witnesses of this incident. 
 
 Pfere Labat displays equal credulity in his recital of a 
 still more extravagant story told him by Madame la Com- 
 tesse 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 
 
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170 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 factory there established. But the vessel on which these 
 were embarked was unable to leave the coast, in spite 
 of a good breeze : she seemed bewitched. Some of the 
 slaves finally told the captain there was a negress on 
 board who had enchanted the ship, and who had the 
 power to " dry up the hearts " of all who refused to obey 
 her. A number of deaths taking place among the blacks, 
 the captain ordered autopsies made, and it was found 
 that the hearts of the dead negroes were desiccated. 
 The negress was taken on deck, tied to a gun and whip- 
 ped, 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 ask- 
 ed 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 cap- 
 tain made the experiment. When the chest was opened, 
 the melons appeared to be there ; but on touching them 
 it was found that only the outer rind remained : the 
 interior had been dried up, — like the surgeon's heart. 
 Thereupon the captain put the witch and her friends 
 ashore, and sailed away without further trouble. 
 
 Another story of African sorcery for the truth of which 
 P^re Labat earnestly vouches is the following : — 
 
 A negro was sentenced to be burned alive for witch- 
 craft 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 w^y to the 
 place of execution, jeeringly observed, " Well, you can- 
 
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Un Revenant. 171 
 
 not 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 mid- 
 dle 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 cer- 
 tain French port on such a date ; that she would reach 
 St. Thomas within three days ; that she had been de- 
 layed 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 ab- 
 solutely correct in every particular. 
 
 . . . Pfere 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 — ap- 
 parently 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 
 
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172 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 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 sus- 
 picion that Pfere Labat was watching him through a chink; 
 and, after having consulted his fetiches, he told the sick 
 woman she would die within four days. At this juncture 
 the priest suddenly burst in the door and entered, fol- 
 lowed 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 in- 
 spired by the devil. Then he had the sorcerer stripped 
 and flogged in his presence. 
 
 " I had him given," he calmly observes, " about ien- 
 viroii) three hundred lashes, which flayed him {I'icorchait) 
 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 punish- 
 ment, — 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 strong- 
 ly 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 mis- 
 erable black. Perhaps the tradition of this frightful whip- 
 ping may have had something to do with the tejror which 
 gtill attaches to the name of the Dominican in Marti- 
 
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Un Revenant. 173 
 
 nique. The legal extreme punishment was twenty-nine 
 lashes. 
 
 Pfere 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 be- 
 lieved, he says, that these pains were merely rheumatic ; 
 but after all known remedies for rheumatism had been 
 fruitlessly applied, he became convinced there was some- 
 thing 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 pro- 
 tection against snakes and as a weapon of offence and 
 defence in village quarrels, for unless a negro be extraor- 
 dinarily 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* 
 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 per- 
 son with them even lightly, and through any thickness of 
 clothing, would produce terrible and continuous pain. 
 
 * The Creole word moudongue is said to be a corruption of Mon- 
 dongue, 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 de- 
 note 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. 
 
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174 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 Believing in these things, and withal unable to decide 
 whether the sun revolved about the earth, or the earth 
 about the sun,* Pfere Labat was, nevertheless, no more 
 credulous and no more ignorant than the average mis- 
 sionary of his time : it is only by contrast with his practi- 
 cal 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 Domin- 
 ican 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 supersti- 
 tion alone, by the belief in zombis and goblins. . . . "Mi! 
 ti manmailk-ld., moin kk fai Pe Labatt vini pouend oul" .. . 
 
 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 re- 
 sults ? — was the colossal work of a Pfere Labat all in 
 
 * Accounting for the origin of the trade-winds, lie 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 neces- 
 sary, very sure, and very continuous, since they result either from 
 the movement of the Earth around the Stm, or from the movement 
 of the Sun around the Earth. Whether it be the one, or the othef 
 of these two great bodies which moves. . ." etc. 
 
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Un Revenant. 175 
 
 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 rep- 
 resented 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 complet- 
 ed, — 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 du- 
 ration of the real work accomplished by the missions. 
 
 . . . Even after a prolonged residence in Martinique, 
 its visible religious condition continues to impress one 
 as something phenomenal. A stranger, who has no op- 
 portunity 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. Wherevef 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 
 
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176 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 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 ab- 
 surd 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 sup- 
 posed it to be, until one day that I saw a long proces- 
 sion 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, vary- 
 ing in height from one to sixteen inches, — a St. Joseph, — 
 a St. John, — a crucifix, — and a host of little objects in 
 the shape of hearts or crosses, each having some special 
 religious significance; — while the walls were covered 
 with framed certificates of baptism, " first-communion," 
 confirmation, and other documents commemorating the 
 whole church life of the family for two generations. 
 
 . . . Certainly the first impression created by this per- 
 petual display of crosses, statues, and miniature chapels 
 is not pleasing, — particularly as the work is often inar- 
 
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A WAYSIDE SHRINE, OR CHAPELLE. 
 
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Un Revenant. 177 
 
 tistic 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 al- 
 most 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 mer- 
 chants 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 busi- 
 ness ; — 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 Mar- 
 tinique ; 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 Mar- 
 tinique 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) ; — 
 
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178 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 "Moin ka quitti bef-ld, ba ou pou gadt ba main. Quand 
 main vini, si main pa trouvk compte-moin, moin kk foutk ou 
 vingt-nef coudfouett P' (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 direc- 
 tion ; — 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 ar- 
 rested, tried, and sentenced to imprisonment, with hard 
 labor, for life ! In those days there were no colored 
 magistrates ; — the judges were all btkks. 
 
 "Rather a severe sentence," I remarked to my in- 
 formant, 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 mainte- 
 nance of social order is more than doubtful. A Poly- 
 nesian laxity of morals among the black and colored 
 population, and the history of race-hatreds and revolu- 
 tions 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, lyc^es, and other educational 
 institutions where the teaching is largely characterized 
 by aggressive antagonism to Catholic idea's;— by the 
 
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Un Revenant. 170 
 
 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 tri- 
 umphs in her hostility to the Government schools ; and 
 to the same extent she holds an educational monopo- 
 ly. No white Creole would dream of sending his chil- 
 dren to a lay school or a lyc^e— notwithstanding the un- 
 questionable 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 hor- 
 ror tha,t the Government professors are socially ostra- 
 cized. No doubt the prejudice or pride which abhors 
 mixed schools aids the Church in this respect; she her- 
 self 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 edu- 
 cated in the Government schools, or their foreign pro- 
 fessors, 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 inca- 
 pable 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 com- 
 promise 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 
 
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l8o Martinique Sketches. 
 
 Jew whose whereabouts I never could discover; — but 
 these were strangers. 
 
 It was only through the establishment of universal suf- 
 frage, 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 inter- 
 ests 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 em- 
 pire or a revival of the monarchy, the white Creoles and 
 their Church are forced into hostility against republican- 
 ism and the republic. And political newspapers contin- 
 ually 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 class- 
 es ; — her ceremonies are always well attended ; money 
 pours into her coffers ; and one Can still witness the cu- 
 rious annual procession of the "converted," — aged wom- 
 en 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 dan- 
 gerous forces of revolution exist, Christian feeling is al- 
 most 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 
 
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Un Revenant. i8t 
 
 powers, previously concealed. or repressed, have obtained 
 formidable development. The old enemy of Pbre Labat, 
 the wizard (the quimboiseur), already wields more author- 
 ity than the priest, exercises more terror than the magis- 
 trate, commands more confidence than the physician. 
 The educated mulatto class may affect to despise him ; — 
 but he is preparing their overthrow in the dark. Aston- 
 ishing is the persistence with which the' African has clung 
 to these beliefs and practices, so zealously warred upon 
 by the Church and so mercilessly punished by the courts 
 for centuries. He still goes to mass, and sends his 
 children to the priest; but he goes more often to the 
 quimboiseur and the "magnetise." He finds use for both 
 beliefs, but gives large preference to the savage one, — ■ 
 just as he prefers the pattering of his tamtam to the mu- 
 sic 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-win- 
 dows, — 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 ev- 
 
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1 82 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 ery 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 Pfere Labat. 
 
 And nevertheless, — although no believer in ghosts, — I 
 see thee very plainly sometimes, thou quaint White Fa- 
 ther, 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 pri- 
 meval 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, — ^nd the luminous peace of thy Martinique con- 
 vent, — and odor of roasting parrots fattened upon grains 
 tie bois d'Inde and guavas, — " I'odeur de muscade et degirofle 
 qui fait plaisir." . . . 
 
 Eh, Pfere 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-build- 
 ings, and the appellation of the river still known as the 
 ■ Rivibre des Pferes. Also the Ursulines are gone, leaving 
 only their name on the corner of a crumbling street. 
 And there are no more slaves ; and there are new races 
 of colors thou wouldst deem scandalous though beauti- 
 ful ; 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 char- 
 coal, 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 diabi), — cric-crac ! — cric-crac 1 — 
 all chanting together : — * 
 
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Un Revenant. 183 
 
 " Soh - soh ! — yaie -yah I 
 RhdU bois - canot !' ' 
 
 And all that ephemeral man has had power to change 
 has been changed, — ideas, morals, beliefs, the whole so- 
 cial 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 pur- 
 ple 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, Pfere 
 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 /ana/ Pi Labatt ! — mi 
 Pi Labatt ka vini pouend ou J" 
 
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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 pe- 
 culiarly sinister. Shapes of Vegetation that startle even 
 while the sun shines upon therti assume, after his setting, 
 a grimness, — a grotesquery, — k 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 cap- 
 ital 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 vari- 
 ous 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, 
 
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La Guiablesse . 185 
 
 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 mon- 
 strous umbrages : what he most fears, next to the dead- 
 ly serpent, are human witchcrafts. A white rag, an old 
 bone lying in the path, might be a malefice which, if trod- 
 den 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, drop- 
 ped by the way-side, might contain the skin of a Soucou- 
 yan. But the ghastly being who doffs or dons his skin 
 at will — and the Zombi — and the Moun-Mb — 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 pechaps discern the glow of the next, if the road be 
 level and straight. They are almost everywhere, — shin- 
 ing along the skirts of the woods, at the entrance of ra- 
 vines, 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 ap- 
 pear 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 trill- 
 ing; nations of tree-frogs are chanting; the Cabri-des- 
 
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1 86 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 bois* or era -era, almost deafens you with the wheezy 
 bleating sound by which it earned its Creole name ; birds 
 pipe : everything that bells, ululates, drones, clacks, gug- 
 gles, 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 mbim gran'-jou (he is 
 afraid of ghosts even in broad daylight) is a phrase which 
 does not sound exaggerated in these latitudes, — not, at 
 least, to any one knowing something of the conditions 
 that nourish or inspire weird beliefs. In the awful peace 
 of tropical day, in the hush of the woods, the solemn 
 silence of the hills (broken only by torrent voices that 
 cannot make themselves heard at night), even in the 
 amazing luminosity, there is a something apparitional 
 and weird, — something that seems to weigh upon the 
 world like a measureless haunting. So still all Nature's 
 chambers are that a loud utterance jars upon the ear 
 brutally, like a burst of laughter in a sanctuary. With 
 all its luxuriance of color, with all its violence of light, 
 this tropical day has its ghostliness and its ghosts. Among 
 the people of color there are many who believe that even 
 at noon — when the boulevards behind the city are most 
 deserted — the zombis will show themselves to solitary 
 loiterers. 
 
 II. 
 
 . . . Here a doubt occurs to me, — a doubt regarding 
 the precise nature of a wordj which I call upon Adou to 
 
 * In Creole, ca//ritt-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. 
 
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La Guiablesse. 187 
 
 explain. Adou is the daughter of the kind old capresse 
 from whom I rent my room in this little mountain cot- 
 tage. The mother is almost precisely the color of cin- 
 namon ; 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 theiA. 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 serious- 
 ly, that she has never seen a zombi, and does not want 
 to see one. 
 
 — ''''Main pa te janmain one zombi, — pa Ue oue (a, 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 1 Mais (a 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 ? I5. it one who comes 
 back r 
 
 — " Non, Missik, — non; (e pa fa." 
 
 — " Not that ? . . . Then what was it you said the other 
 night when you were afraid to pass the cemetery on an 
 errand, — fa ou te ka di, Adou ?" 
 
 — " Moin te ka di : ' Moin pa I^ k'alld bb cimetiMk pa 
 ouappb moun-mb ; — moun-mb ke barre moin : moin pa se 
 pb vini enco.' " {I said, "■ I do not want to go by that cem- 
 etery 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-mh ki barre on". . . 
 
 — "But are the dead folk zombis, Adou ?" 
 
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1 88 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 — " No ; the moun-mb 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! papAli fa/I". . . 
 
 — " No ! tell me, Adou ?" 
 
 — " Why, yes : that would be a, zombi. It is the zom- 
 bis who make all those noises at night one cannot un- 
 derstand. , . . 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 Thfereza's voice from the little 
 out-building where the evening meal is being prepared, 
 over a charcoal furnace, in an earthen canari. 
 
 — "Missii-ia ka mandk save (a (a 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 ph zombi'''' — I find from old Th^reza's explana- 
 tions — is a phrase indefinite as our own vague expres- 
 sions, " afraid of ghosts," " afraid of the dark." But the 
 word "Zombi" also has special strange meanings. . . . 
 "Ou pass6 nans grand chimin lanuitt, epi ou ka oufe 
 gouos dif^, ^pi plis ou ka vini assou dif6-k pli ou ka 
 oub d\i6-'k ka mkchi : 9^, zombi ka fai 5a; . . . Enco, chou- 
 val ka passe, — chouval ka ni anni toua patt : 5a 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^) 
 
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La Guiablesse. 189 
 
 — " How big is the fire that the zombi makes ?" I ask. 
 
 — " It fills the whole road," answers Thereza : "/« 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 kS 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, — (e 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 sis- 
 ter at last became much annoyed by it, and used to cry 
 out: 'Ah! mais pd guiole ou, Baidaux! ou fou pou em- 
 betd moin conm 5a ! — 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-lk moin mene ba ou ! Tou lejou moin te 
 ka di ou moin tini yonne yche : ou pa t€ 'le coufe, — eh, 
 ben ! mi y !' [Look at the child I have brought you ! 
 Every day I have been telling you I had a chil'd : you 
 would not believe me,— very well, look at him !] 
 
 "The sister gave one look, and cried out: 'Baidaux, 
 otf ou pouend yche-lk ?' . . . For the child was growing 
 taller and taller every moment. . . . And Baidaux, — be- 
 cause he was mad, — kept saying: ' <^€ yche - moin ! 5^ 
 yche moin !' [It is my child!] 
 
 " And the sister threw open the shutters and screamed 
 to all the neighbors, — ' Stcou, secou, secou 1 Vint ouk (a 
 
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I go Martinique Sketches. 
 
 Baidaux mene ba moin !' [Help ! help ! Come see what 
 Baidaux has brought in here !] And the child said to 
 Baidaux: ' Ou ni bonh'h 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 unexpected- 
 ly 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 ripen- 
 ing 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 undu- 
 lations take hazier verdancy and darker shadows ; far- 
 ther 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, fis- 
 sured, horned, fantastically tall. . . . Such at least are 
 the tints of the morning. . . . Here and ther^, between 
 
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La Guiablesse. 191 
 
 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 im- 
 mense archway. Farther along ajoupas begin to line 
 the way, — the dwellings of the field hands, — tiny cot- 
 tages 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 ame- 
 thystine color as if they were going to become trans- 
 parent. 
 
 IV. 
 
 ... It is a breezeless and cloudless noon. Under 
 the dazzling downpour of light the hills seem to smoke 
 blue : something like a thin yellow fog haloes the leagues 
 of ripening cane, — a vast reflection. There is no stir in 
 all the green mysterious front of the vine-veiled woods. 
 The palms of the roads keep their heads quite still, as if 
 listening. The canes do not utter a single susurration. 
 Rarely is there such absolute stillness among them : 
 upon the calmest days there are usually rustlings audi- 
 16 
 
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ig2 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 ble, thin cracklings, faint creepings : sounds that betray 
 the passing of some Httle animal or reptile — a rat or a 
 manicou, or a zanoli or couresse, — more often, however, 
 no harmless lizard or snake, but the deadly /^r-//if-/a«c?. 
 To-day, all these seem to sleep ; and there are no work- 
 ers among the cane to clear away the weeds, — to uproot 
 the pU-treffe, pii-pouk, pie-balai, zhibe-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. . . . Sound- 
 less as shadow the motion of all these naked-footed peo- 
 ple 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 " bonsoub, Missid" This sudden " becoming 
 aware " in broad daylight of a living presence unseen is 
 even more disquieting than that sensation which, in ab- 
 solute 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 spe- 
 cialized sense, — like an animal, — and to become con- 
 scious 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 ob- ' 
 served by the habitants of the ajoupas ; — dark faces peer 
 out from windows and door-ways ; — one half-nude labor- 
 er even strolls out to the road-side under tte sun to 
 
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La Gidablesse. 193 
 
 watch her coming. He looks a moment, turns to the hut 
 again, 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 ! quimbd moin !'] cries black Fafa, enthusiasti- 
 cally; "fouinq! li bel! — Jdsis-Maia ! li doux !". . . Nei- 
 ther 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 passe larivife " 
 ( 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 im- 
 mobile ; — 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 libra- 
 tion, 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 Vau- 
 clin, nor from Lamentin, nor from Marigot, — from Case- 
 Pilote or from Case-Navire : Fafa knows all the people 
 
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194 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 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 Frangois, 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 simul- 
 taneous " Bonjou', Manzell." 
 
 — " Bonjou', Missid," 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. 
 
 — " Qa ka fai moin pfe," exclaims Gabou, turning his 
 face towards the ajoupa. Something indefinable in the 
 gaze of the stranger has terrified him. 
 
 — "/'a ka fai moiti pe^fouinq /" (She does not make 
 me afraid) laughs Fafa, boldly following her with a smil- 
 ing swagger. 
 
 — " Fafa !" cries Gabou, in alarm. "Fafa, pa fai (a/" 
 
 But Fafa does not heed. The strange woman has 
 slackened her pace, as if inviting pursuit ; — another mo- 
 ment and he is at her side. 
 
 — " Oti ou ka retd, chfe ?" he demands, with the boldness 
 of one who knows himself a fine specimen of his race. 
 
 — " Zaffai cabritt pa zaffai lapin," she answers, mock- 
 ingly. 
 
 — " Mais pouki ou rhabill^ toutt noufe conm ga." 
 
 — " Moin pbtd deil pou name moin mo." 
 
 — "Aie ya yaie! . . . Non,voue! — 5a ou kaile atouele- 
 ment?" 
 
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La Guiablesse. 
 
 195 
 
 — " Lanmou pkti': moin pkti dei^ lanmou." 
 
 — " Ho ! — ou ni guepe, anh ?" 
 
 — " Zanoli bail yon bal ; 6pi maboya rentr^ ladans." 
 
 — " Di moin oti ou kalle, doudoux ?" 
 
 — " Jouq larivife Lezk." 
 
 — " Fouinq ! — ni plis passd trente kilomett !" 
 
 — " Eh ben ? — ess ou '1^ vini dpi moin ?"* 
 
 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 : Gabon, 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 dis- 
 tance, — of the white road glaring in the dead heat : then 
 he looks again into the black eyes of the strange wom- 
 an, and answers : 
 
 — "Oui; — moin kd vini epi ou." 
 
 With a burst of mischievous laughter, in which Fafa 
 joins, she walks on, — Fafa striding at her side. . . . And 
 Gabon, far off, watches them go, — and wonders that, for 
 
 * — "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 yate ! . . . 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 m??" 
 
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196 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 the first time sincp ever they worked together, his com- 
 rade failed to answer his oukli. 
 
 — " Coument yo ka crie ou, chb ?" asks Fafa, curious 
 to know her name. 
 
 — " Chachd nom moin ou-menm, duvind." 
 
 But Fafa never was a good guesser, — never could 
 guess the simplest of tim-tim. 
 
 —"Ess Cendrine?" 
 
 — " Non, ge pa ga." 
 
 — " Ess Vitaline ?" 
 
 — "Non, 96 pa 9a." 
 
 —"Ess Aza?" 
 
 — " Non, 56 pa 5a." 
 
 — " Ess Nini ?" 
 
 — " Chache' encb." 
 
 — " Ess Titd ?" 
 
 — " Ou pa save, — tant pis pou ou !" 
 
 — " Ess Youma ?" 
 
 — " Pouki ou 'Ife save nom moin ? — 9a ou kd fai 
 6pi y ?" 
 
 — " Ess Yaiya ?" 
 
 — "Non, 96 pa y." 
 
 — " Ess Maiyotte ?" 
 
 — " Non ! ou pa ke janmain trouvd y !" 
 
 — " Ess Sounoune ? — ess Loulouze ?" 
 
 She does not answer, but quickens her pace and be- 
 gins 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 inexpressi- 
 ble, then rising all at once to a liquid purling bird- 
 tone, ahd descending as abruptly again to the first deep 
 quavering strain : — 
 
 "A te— 
 
 moin ka ddmi toute longue; 
 Yon paillasse se fai moin bien, 
 
 Doudoux 1 < 
 
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La Guiablesse. 197 
 
 A t^— 
 
 moin ka d6mi toute longue; 
 Yon robe biese se fai moin bien, 
 
 Doudoux ! 
 A \.h— 
 
 moin ka d6mi toule longue ; 
 D4 jolis foula se fai moin bien, 
 
 Doudoux ! 
 A t^— 
 
 moin ka domi toute longue ; 
 Yon joli madras se fai moin bien, 
 
 Doudoux ! 
 A te — 
 
 moin ka d6mi toute longue : 
 ^e 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 
 step, her silent respiration, reveal no effort : she laughs 
 at his desperate straining to remain by her side. 
 
 — "Marche toujou' deid moin, — anh, chfe? — march^ 
 toujou' deie !" . . . 
 
 And the involuntary laggard — utterly bewitched by 
 the supple allurement of her motion, by the black flame 
 of her gaze, by the savage melody of her chant — won- 
 ders 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 oukl6 betimes — 
 suddenly starts, halts, turns, and hurries back, fearfully 
 crossing himself at every step. 
 
 He has seen the sign by which She is known. . . . 
 
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198 Martiniqjie Sketches. 
 
 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 blos- 
 soms, 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, — some- 
 times 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 resur- 
 rected by the illusive haze of evening. And the fallow 
 of the canes takes a faint warm ruddy tinge. On cer- 
 tain 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 «if song be- 
 
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La Guiablesse. 199 
 
 times. 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 strange- 
 ly 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 unspeak- 
 able, 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, pur- 
 pling into richest velvety blackness, appear outlined 
 against passions, of fire that rise half-way to the ze- 
 nith, — enormous furies of vermilion. 
 
 . . . The Woman all at once leaves the main road, — be- 
 gins 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 
 
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200 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 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 W ?" he cries. 
 
 — "Mais conm Qa! — chimin talaplis cou't, — coument?" 
 
 It may be the shortest route, indeed; — but then, the 
 fer-de-lance ! . . . 
 
 — " Ni sfepent ciya, — en pile." 
 
 No : there is not a single one, she avers ; she has taken 
 that path too often not to know : 
 
 — " Pa ni sfepent piess ! Moin ni coutime pass6 Ik ; — 
 pa ni piess !" 
 
 . . . She leads the way. . . . Behind them the tremen- 
 dous glow deepens ; — before them the gloom. Enormous 
 gnarled forms of ceiba, balata, acoma, stand dimly reveal- 
 ed 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 pfe oufe 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. 
 
 — "I§itt! — quimb^ 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. , 
 
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La Guiablesse. 201 
 
 The wood is below their feet now; the path curves 
 on eastward between a long swaying of ferns sable in 
 the gloom, — as between a waving of prodigious black 
 feathers. Through the further purpling, loftier altitudes 
 dimly loom; and from some viewless depth, a dull vast 
 rushing sound rises into the night. ... Is it the speech of 
 hurrying waters, or only some tempest of insect voices 
 from those ravines in which the night begins ? . . . 
 
 Her face is in the darkness as she stands ; — Fafa's eyes 
 are turned to the iron-crimson of the western sky. He 
 still holds her hand, fondles it, — murmurs something to 
 her in undertones. 
 
 — "Ess ou ainmein moin conm 9a?" she asks, almost 
 in a whisper. 
 
 Oh! yes, yes, yes ! . . . more than any living being he 
 loves her! . . . How much? Ever so much, — gouis conm 
 caze! . . .Yet she seems to doubt him, — repeating her 
 question over and over: 
 
 — " Ess ou ainmein moin ?" 
 
 And all the while, — gently, caressingly, impercepti- 
 bly, — she draws him a little nearer to the side of the 
 path, nearer to the black waving of the ferns, nearer to 
 the great dull rushing sound that rises from beyond them : 
 
 — "Ess ou ainmein moin?" 
 
 — "Oui, oui!" he responds, — "ou save ga ! — oui, chh 
 doudoux, ou save 9a !". . . 
 
 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: 
 
 —"Atb, b'o!"* 
 
 For the fraction of a moment he knows her name : — 
 then, smitten to the brain with the sight of her, reels, re- 
 coils, and, backward falling, crashes two thousand feet 
 down to his death upon the rocks of a mountain torrent. 
 
 * " Kiss me now !" 
 
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LA VERETTE. 
 
 ^- —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 fash- 
 ionable street, the Rue du Morne Mirail ; but, after all, 
 there is no particularly fashionable street in this extraor- 
 dinary 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 any- 
 body 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 tpi coubouyon lamori), akras, etc. ; but her 
 bouts probably bring her the largest profit — they are all 
 bought up by the b6kes. Manm-Robert is also a sort of 
 doctor : whenever any one in the neighborhood falls 
 sick she is sent for, and always comes, and very often 
 cures, — as she is skilled in the knowledge and use 
 of medicinal herbs, which she gathers herself upon the 
 mornes. But for these services she never accepts any 
 
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La Virette. 203 
 
 remuneration : she is a sort of Mother of the poor in 
 her immediate vicinity. She helps everybody, Hstens to 
 everybody's troubles, gives everybody some sort of con- 
 solation, trusts everybody, and sees a great deal of the 
 thankless side of human nature without seeming to feel 
 any the worse for it. Poor as she must really be she 
 appears to have everything that everybody wants ; and 
 will lend anything to her neighbors except a scissors or a 
 broom, which it is thought bad-luck to lend. And, finally, 
 if anybody is afraid of being bewitched (^quimboise) Manm- 
 Robert can furnish him or her with something that will 
 keep the bewitchment away. . . . 
 
 February 15 th. 
 
 . . . Ash-Wednesday. The last masquerade will ap- 
 pear this afternoon, notwithstanding ; for the Carnival 
 lasts in Martinique a day longer than elsewhere. 
 
 All through the country districts since the first week 
 of January there have been wild festivities every Sunday 
 — dancing on the public highways to the pattering of 
 tamtams, — African dancing, too, such as is never seen 
 in St. Pierre. In the city, however, there has been less 
 merriment than in previous years ; — -the natural gaiety 
 of the population has been visibly affected by the advent 
 of a terrible and unfamiliar visitor to the island, — La 
 Verette : she came by steamer from Colon. 
 
 ... It was in September. Only two cases had been 
 reported when every neighboring British colony quaran- 
 tined against Martinique. Then other West Indian col- 
 onies 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 pro- 
 tests. Among West Indian populations the malady has 
 a signification unknown in Europe or the United States : 
 it means an exterminating plague. 
 
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204 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 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 De- 
 cember, 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: 
 tarn ! — tam ! — tafntamtam t The Grande Rue is lined 
 with expectant multitudes ; and its tiny square, — the Bat; 
 terie d'Esnotz, — thronged with b6kes. Tam! — tam! — 
 tamtamtam .^ ... In our own street the people are begin- 
 ning 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 be- 
 sides 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 chil- 
 dren. Were it not for the fact that their mother's beautiful 
 brown hair is usually covered with a violet foulard, you 
 would certainly believe them white as any children in the 
 world. Now there are children whom every one knows to 
 be white, living not very far from here, but in a much more 
 
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La Verette. 205 
 
 silent street, and in a rich house full of servants, — chil- 
 dren who resemble these as oxi& fleur-d' amourhXo^som re- 
 sembles 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 be- 
 fore 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 hun- 
 dred 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 masquer- 
 ading in that violet head-dress and long loose robe. . . . 
 
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2o6 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 — " Vini oue! — vini oue!" cry the children to one an- 
 other, — " come and see !" The drums are drawing 
 near ; — everybody is running to the Grande Rue. . . . 
 
 IV. 
 
 Tarn/ — tarn! — tamtamtam! . . . The spectacle is inter- 
 esting 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 Intripides. They are 
 rivals ; they are the composers and singers of those Car- 
 nival songs, — cruel satires most often, of which the local 
 meaning is unintelligible to those unacquainted with the 
 incident inspiring the improvisation, — of which the words 
 are too often coarse or obscene, — whose burdens will 
 be caught up and re-echoed through all the burghs of 
 the island. Vile as may be the motive, the satire, the 
 malice, these chants are preserved for generations by 
 the singular beauty of the airs ; and the victim of a 
 Carnival song need never hope that his failing or his 
 wrong will be forgotten : it will be sung of long after he 
 is in his grave. 
 
 . . . Ten minutes more, and the entire length of the 
 street is thronged with a shouting, shrieking, laughing, 
 gesticulating host of maskers. Thicker and thicker the 
 press becomes ; — the drums are silent : all are waiting 
 for the signal of the general dance. Jests and prac- 
 tical jokes are being everywhere perpetrated; there is 
 a vast hubbub, mkde up of screams, cries, fchattering, 
 
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RUE VICTOR HUGO (formerly GRANDE RUE), ST. PIERRE. 
 
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La Vdrette. 207 
 
 laughter. Here and there snatches of Carnival song are 
 being sung: — " Cambronne, Cambronne ;" or "Tifenm-lA 
 doux, li doux. It douxl" ..." Sweeter than sirup the little 
 woman is"; — this burden will be remembered when the 
 rest of the song passes out of fashion. Brown hands 
 reach out from the crowd of masks, pulling the beards 
 and patting the faces of white spectators. . . . "Main con- 
 naitt oil, che I — main 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 kalei- 
 doscopes into some sort of order ; and the immense pro- 
 cessional 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 pur- 
 suit. 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"*}. Everybody now seems to 
 
 * " Petits amoureux aux plumes, 
 
 Enfants d'un brillant sejour, 
 Vous ignorez I'amertume, 
 
 Vous parlez souvent d'amour; . 
 Vous meprisez la dorure, 
 
 Les salons, et les bijoux; 
 Vous cherissez Ja Nature,' 
 
 Petits oiseaux, becquetez-vous 1 
 
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2o8 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 know this song by heart ; you hear children only five or 
 six years old singing it : there are pretty lines in it, al- 
 though 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. 
 
 . . . Extraordinary things are happening in the 
 streets through which the procession passes. Pest-smit- 
 ten women rise from their beds to costume themselves, — 
 to mask face already made unrecognizable by the hide- 
 ous 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 
 
 "Voyez labas, dans cette eglise, 
 Auprfc d'un confessional, 
 Le pretre, qui veut faire croire a Lise, 
 
 Qu'un baiser est un grand mal; — 
 Pour prouver k la mignonne 
 
 Qu'un baiser bien fait, bien doux, 
 N'a jamais damne personne 
 
 Petits oiseaux, becquetez-vous 1" 
 
 [ 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 1 
 Now to prove, to his vexation. 
 
 That no tender kiss and true 
 Ever caused a soul's damnation, 
 
 Pretty birdlings, bill and coo ! * 
 
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La Verette. 209 
 
 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 Sa- 
 vane, and over the river-bridge into the high streets of 
 the Fort, carrying contagion with them ! . . . No extraor- 
 dinary example, this : the ranks of the dancers hold many 
 and many a verrettier. 
 
 VI. 
 
 . . . The costumes are rather disappointing, — though 
 the mummery has some general characteristics that are 
 not unpicturesque ; — for example, the predominance of 
 crimson and canary-yellow in choice of color, and a mark- 
 ed 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 yel- 
 low, 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 riegue gouos-sirop (" little molas- 
 ses-negro"); zxiAiht. diablesse. 
 
 The Congo is merely the exact reproduction of the 
 dress worn by workers on the plantations. For the wom- 
 en, a gray calico shirt and coarse petticoat of percaline ; 
 with two coarse handkerchiefs {moiichoirs fafas), one for 
 her neck, and one for the head, over which is worn a 
 monstrous straw hat ; — she walks either barefoot or shod 
 
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2IO Martinique Sketches. 
 
 with rude native sandals, and she carries a hoe. For 
 the man the costume consists of a gray shirt of rough 
 material, blue canvas pantaloons, a large mouchoir fatas 
 to tie around his waist, and a chapeau Bacout, — an enor- 
 mous hat of Martinique palm-straw. He walks barefoot- 
 ed and carries a cutlass. 
 
 The sight of a troupe of young girls en bebe, in baby- 
 dress, is really pretty. This costume comprises o^ly a 
 loose embroidered chemise, lace-edged pantalettes, and 
 a child's cap; the whole being decorated with bright rib- 
 bons of various colors. As the dress is short and leaves 
 much of the lower limbs exposed, there is ample oppor- 
 tunity 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 smear- 
 ed with an atrocious mixture of soot and molasses. He 
 is supposed to represent the original African ancestor. 
 
 The devilesses (diablesses) are few in number ; for it 
 requires a very tall woman to play deviless. These are 
 robed all in black, with a white turban and white foulard; 
 they wear black masks. They also carry boms (large 
 tin cans), which they allow to fall upon the pavement 
 from time to time ; and they walk barefoot. . . . The dev- 
 iless (in true Bitaco idiom, " guiablesse ") represents a sin- 
 gular 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, " V te ka 
 oue la Guiabkssel" . . . The tallest among the devilesses 
 always walks first, chanting the question, "^ou ouve?" 
 (Is it yet daybreak ?) And all the others reply in chorus, 
 "youpa'ncb 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, 
 
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i 
 
 La Virette. 211 
 
 having the form of an oval and regular human face ;— and 
 they disguise the wearer absolutely, although they can be 
 seen through perfectly well from within. It struck me 
 at once that this peculiar type of wire mask gave an 
 indescribable tone of ghostliness to the whole exhibi- 
 tion. It is not in the least comical ; it is neither comely 
 nor ugly; it is colorless as mist,— expressionless, void, 
 dead;— it lies on the face like a vapor, like a cloud,— 
 creating the idea of a spectral vacuity behind it. . . . 
 
 VII. 
 
 . . . Now comes the band of the Intrkpides, playing the 
 bouen'e. 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 Pbre Labat wrote in 1722 : — 
 
 —"It is not modest. Nevertheless, it has not failed to 
 become so popular with the Spanish Creoles of America, 
 and so much in vogue among them, that it now forms the 
 chief of their amusements, and that it enters even into 
 their devotions. They dance it even in their Churches, 
 and in their Processions ; and the Nuns seldom fail to 
 dance it Christmas Night, upon a stage erected in their 
 Choir and immediately in front of their iron grating, 
 which is left open, so that the People may share in the 
 joy manifested by these good souls for the birth of the 
 Saviour."*. . . 
 
 *. . ." Cette danse est opposee 4 la pudeur. Avec tout cela, elle 
 ne laisse pas d'etre tellement du goflt des Espagnols CreoUes de I'A- 
 merique, & si fort en usage parmi eux, qu'elle fait la meilleure partie 
 de leurs divertissements, & qu'elle entre meme dans leurs devotions, 
 lis la dansent meme dans leurs Eglises & i leurs processions ; et les 
 Religieuses ne manquent guire de la danser la Nuit de Noel, sur un 
 
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212 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 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, cari- 
 caturing the most unpopular thing in city life or in poli- 
 tics. 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 in- 
 tention to bury a bois-bois laverette, — a manikin that was 
 to represent the plague. But this bois-bois does not 
 make its appearance. La Vtrette is too terrible a vis- 
 itor 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 gob- 
 lin crying from behind his wire mask, in imitation of the 
 mkchannes: "fa qui 'li quathze 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 infinite- 
 ly 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 
 
 theatre eleve dans leur Choeur, vis-i-vis de leur grille, qui est ou- 
 verte, afiii que le Peuple ait sa part dans la joye que ces bonnes ames 
 temoignent pour la naissance du Sauveur." • 
 
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La Vcrctte. 213 
 
 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 be- 
 hind 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-Dii ka passe! ("It is the Good-God who goes 
 by!") The father is bearing the "viaticum" to some vic- 
 tim of 4he 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 swift- 
 ly 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 - f ashipned 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 simul- 
 taneity that testifies how strongly the sense of rhythm 
 
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214 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 enters into the natural musical feeling of the African, — 
 a feeling powerful enough to impose itself upon all Span- 
 ish-America, and there create the unmistakable charac- 
 teristics of all that is called " Creole music." 
 
 — " Bimbolo !" 
 
 — " Zimabolo I" 
 
 — " Bimbolo !" 
 
 — " Zimabolo !" 
 
 — "Et zimbolo!" 
 
 — "Et bolo-pol" 
 — sing the Devil and his chorus. His chant is cavern- 
 ous, abysmal, — booms from his chest like the sound of 
 a drum beaten in the bottom of a well. . . . Ti manmdille- 
 Id, baill main 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 manmai//c-id, Iniill moin lavoix 1"" . . . Then 
 he halts before a dwelling in the Rue Peysette, and 
 thunders : — 
 
 — "Ell! Marit-sans-dait I — Mil diabe-lh derlibl" 
 
 That is evidently a piece of spite-work ; there is some- 
 body living there against whom he has a grudge. . . . 
 "Hey I Marie -withojit- teeth I lookl the Devil is outsider'' 
 And the chorus catch the clue, 
 
 Devil, — "Eh I Marie-sans-dcnt I" . . . 
 
 Chorus, — " Maric-sans-dent I mil — diabe-ld. derhl I" 
 
 \).—"Ehl Maric-sans-dcntr . . 
 
 C—" Marie-sans dent I mil — diahc-d derhbl" 
 
 V>.—"Ehl Marie-sans-dentI" . . . etc. 
 
 The Devil at last descends to the main street, always 
 singing the same song ; — I follow the chorus to the Sa-f 
 vanna, 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. — "C/2 ouk diabe-ld. passi lanvii V (Where 
 
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La Vt'rette. 
 
 215 
 
 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 ouk diabe-ld. pass'e 
 larivie V 
 
 Devil.—" Oti one diabeV . . . 
 
 Chorus. — " Oti oul diabe-lh passe larivii ?" 
 
 B.—^Otiouediabe?" 
 
 C. — "Oti oue diabe-ld, passi larivie ?" 
 
 T>.—"Oti oui diabe f . . . etc. 
 
 About midnight the return of the Devil and his follow- 
 ing arouses me from sleep : — all are chanting a new re- 
 frain, " The Devil and the zombis sleep anywhere and 
 everywhere !" (Diabe ipi zombi ka dhmi tout-pd.tout.) The 
 voices of the boys are still clear, shrill, fresh, — clear as 
 a chant of frogs ; — they still clap hands with a precision 
 of rhythm that is simply wonderful, — making each time 
 a sound almost exactly like the bursting of a heavy 
 wave : — 
 
 Devil. — " Diabe ipi zombi.'''' . . . 
 
 Chorus. — "Diabe ipi zombi ka dhmi tout-pdtout !" 
 
 D.^" Diabe ipi zombiy . . . 
 
 C. — "Diabe ipi zombi ka dhmi tout-pd.tout P'' 
 
 D. — "Diabe ipi zombie . . . etc. 
 
 . . . What is this after all but the old African method 
 of chanting at labor. The practice of carrying the bur- 
 den 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 reg- 
 ular intervals the crescendo of the burden, — a wild swelling 
 
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2i6 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 of many hundred boy-voices all rising together, — a re- 
 treating storm of rhythmic song, wafted to the ear in 
 gusts, in rafales of contralto. . . . 
 
 XL 
 
 February nth. 
 
 . . . YzoRE is a calendeuse. 
 
 The calendeuses are the women who make up the 
 beautiful Madras turbans and color them ; for the amaz- 
 ingly 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 ex- 
 perience to do this well. . . . After the Madras has been 
 " calendered " (calendf) 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 disar- 
 rangeinent, 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 " {marri 
 yon tete); and a prettily folded turban is spoken of as "a 
 head well tied" {yon tete Men marrk). . . . However, the 
 profession of calendeuse is far from being a lucrative 
 
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La Virette. 217 
 
 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 sim- 
 ply 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 drench- 
 ing from perspiration, and an after-feeling of exhaustion 
 almost indescribable — best expressed, perhaps, by the 
 local term : corps ecrasi. Therefore, on entering one's 
 room for the siesta, one strips, puts on the light mo- 
 resques 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 chi- 
 noises 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. . . . 
 
 ^^^- February 22d. 
 
 . . . Old physicians indeed predicted it; but who be- 
 lieved them ? . . . 
 
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2i8 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 It is as though something sluggish and viewless, dor- 
 mant 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 purify- 
 ing 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 il- 
 lumination 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.* 
 
 ^^^^- 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 shop- 
 
 * During p hurricane, several years ago, a West Indian steamer 
 was disabled at a dangerously brief distance from the coast of the 
 island by having her propeller fouled. Some broken and drifting 
 rigging had become wrapped around it. One of the crew, a Marti- 
 nique 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. . . . 
 
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La Vdrette. 219 
 
 girls of the Grande Rue, — a rare type of sang-mllie. 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 be- 
 fore 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 gener- 
 ation 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 chil- 
 dren, too, recovering from the disorder : the skin is not 
 pitted, like that of the darker classes j and the rose-col- 
 ored 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 un- 
 rolled, 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. 
 
 ■^^^- February 29ih. 
 
 . . . The whites remain exempt from the malady. 
 
 One might therefore hastily suppose that liability to 
 contagion would be diminished in proportion to the ex- 
 cess of white blood over African; but such is far from 
 being the case ; — St. Pierre is losing its handsomest oc- 
 toroons. 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 quartermnt (not to be confounded with the 
 quarteron or quadroon); — or even 127 to i, as in the 
 18 
 
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220 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 sang-milk, 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 im- 
 munity appear to offer a different basis for argument ; 
 but these might be due to the social position of the indi- 
 vidual 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 constitu- 
 tional 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 cen- 
 turies ; — while among these visibly mixed or black pop- 
 ulations 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 vac- 
 cination here. People even now declare that those vac- 
 cinated 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 sys- 
 tem. . . . Even the priests, who pray their congregations 
 to adopt the only known safeguard against the disease, 
 can do little against this scepticism. 
 
 ^^- 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 
 
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La Verette. 221 
 
 of pain, sobbing, despairing cries as Death makes his 
 nightly round, — sometimes, again, angry words, and laugh- 
 ter, and even song, — always one melancholy chant: the 
 voice has that peculiar metallic timbre that reveals the 
 young negress : — 
 
 "Pauv' ti UU, 
 
 Pauv ti L^l^ ! 
 
 Li gagnin douU, doulh, doul}, — 
 
 Li gagnin doulh 
 
 Tout-phtout !" 
 
 I want to know who little \A\i 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; what- 
 ever she tried to do resulted only in misfortune ; — when 
 it was morning she wished it were evening, that she 
 might sleep and forget; but when the night came she 
 could not sleep for thinking of the trouble she had had 
 during the day, so that she wished it were morning. . . . 
 
 More pleasant it is to hear the chatting of Yzore's 
 children across the way, after the sun has set, and the 
 stars come out. . . . Gabrielle always wants to know 
 what the stars are : — 
 
 — '■'■Qa qui ka clairk conm (a, tna7imanf' (What is it 
 that shines like that ?) 
 
 And Yzore answers : — 
 
 — "^a, mafi, — dest ti limie Bon-Dik." (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." Ga- 
 brielle can only count up to seven. "Moin peide/ — I am 
 lost, mamma!" 
 
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222 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 The moon comes up ; — she cries ■.—"■Mi! manmait I— 
 gadk goubs dife qui adans ciel-d, t Look at the great fire 
 in the sky." 
 
 — " It is the Moon, child ! . . . Don't you see St. Jo- 
 seph 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 r — -^ , 
 
 — "Pretty Moon, I show you my little money; — now 
 let me always have money so long as you shine !"* 
 
 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." \. . . 
 
 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 : — 
 
 * ^^ Bel laline, moin kef viontri ou H pihe nioin ! — ba mom lagent 
 toutt temfs ou ka clairc' !" . . . This little invocation is supposed to 
 have most povi^er when uttered on the first appearance of the new 
 moon. 
 
 f ' ' Guardian-angel, watch over me ; — have pity upon my weak- 
 ness ; 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 com- 
 prehensible. 
 
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La Verette. 
 
 223 
 
 —"Zange-gddien, c est yon j due ft, 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 flick- 
 ering 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. . . . 
 
 XVT 
 
 -^ ^ '• 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 fa ye, Manm-Robert i" 
 
 — "/'(7Z/ empechi on pouend laverette" she answers. It 
 is to keep me from catching the verette! . . . And what is 
 inside it.' 
 
 — "Toua graines mats, epi dicamfre.'" (Three grains of 
 com, with a bit of camphor !) . . . 
 
 ■^^^^- March 8th. 
 
 . . . Rich households throughout the city are almost 
 helpless for the want of servants. One can scarcely ob- 
 tain help at any price : it is true that young country-girls 
 keep coming into town to fill the places of the dead; but 
 these new-comers fall a prey to the disease much more 
 readily than those who preceded them. And such deaths 
 often represent more than a mere derangement in the 
 mechanism of domestic life. The Creole bonne bears a re- 
 lation to the family of an absolutely peculiar sort, — a rela- 
 tion of which the term " house-servant " does not convey 
 
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224 ' Martinique Sketches. 
 
 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 addition- 
 al 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 per- 
 mitted to join in conversation when there is no company 
 present, and to express her opinion about domestic af- 
 fairs. 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 sup- 
 ported upon an "elephant" (Ikfaii) — 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 con- 
 sideration. 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. * 
 
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La VSreite. 225 
 
 XVIII. March 10th. 
 
 . . . YzoRE and her little ones are all in Manm- Rob- 
 ert's shop;— she is recounting her troubles, — fresh trou- 
 bles: forty-seven francs' worth of work delivered on time, 
 and no money received. ... So much I hear as I enter 
 the little boutique myself, to buy a package of "bouts." 
 
 — "Assise!" says Manm-Robert, handing me her own 
 chair ; — she is always pleased to see me, pleased to chat 
 with me about Creole folk-lore. Then observing a smile 
 exchanged between myself and Mimi, she tells the chil- 
 dren to bid me good-day: — "Alle di bonjou' Missik-d,!" 
 
 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 min- 
 utes without being able to obtain an answer, ventures to 
 demand of me on the strength of this introduction : — 
 
 — "Missii, oti masque-d, 2" 
 
 — "Ybenfou, pouloss!" the mother cries out;^" Why, 
 the child must be going out of her senses ! . . . Mimi pa 
 'mbeti moune conm (al^pa ni piess masque: c'est la-vkrette 
 qui ni." (Don't annoy people like that! — there are no 
 maskers nowj 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 Manni revi masque-d.," continues 
 
 Yzore. ... I am curious to know what Mimi's dreams 
 are like; — wonder if I can coax her to tell me. . . , 
 
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226 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 ... I HAVE written Mimi's last dream from the child's 
 dictation : — * 
 
 — " 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 cauous 
 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 try- 
 ing to find my way out' He said : — ' You must stay 
 
 * — " Moin te ou^ yon bal ; — moin reve : moin te ka oufe toutt 
 moune ka danse masque ; moin te ka gide. Et toutt-i-coup moin 
 ka Gui c'est bonhomme-caton ka danse. Et moin ka ouA yon Com- 
 mandA : y ka mande moin 9a moin ka fai \k. Moin reponne y conm 
 9a: — 'Moin ouA yon bal, moin g^de — coument!' Y ka reponne 
 moin : — •' Pisse ou si quiriise pou vini gide baggai'e moune, faut 
 rete \k pou danse 'tou.' Moin reponne y: — 'Non! moin pa danse 
 epi bonhomme - citon ! — moin p4 '' . , . Et moin ka couri, moin ka 
 couri, moin ka couri i fAce moin te ni pA. Et moin rentre adans 
 grand jidin ; et moin ouk gouos pie-cirise qui t^ chig^ anni feuiU ; 
 et moin ka owh yon nhomme assise enba cirise-i. Y mande moin: 
 — ' ^a ou ka fai la?' Moin di y; — 'Moin ka chache chimin pou 
 moin alle.' Y di moin; — ' Faut rete i9itt.' Et moin di y: — 'Non!' 
 — et pou chappe c6 moin, moin di y: — 'Alle enhaut-li; ou k^ oak 
 yon bel bal, — toutt bonhomme-citon ka dans^, epi yon CommandA- 
 en-citon ka coumand^ yo.' . . . Epi moin leve, i f6c? moin tp 
 pe.". . , 
 
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La V&ette. 227 
 
 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 paste- 
 board commandeur commanding them!'. . . And then I 
 got so frightened that I awoke." . . . 
 
 ..." And why were you so afraid of them, Mimi ?" I 
 ask. 
 
 — '^Faceyo ti toutt vide endedans 1" answers Mimi. (Be- 
 cause they were all hollow inside /) 
 
 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 im- 
 mense stretchers, — covered with a sort of canvas awn- 
 ing, — 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 scarce- 
 ly any clothing, sleeping on bare floors, exposing them- 
 selves to all changes of weather, eating the cheapest 
 and coarsest food. Yet, though living under such ad- 
 verse 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 unpro- 
 tected a life, made extraordinarily rapid havoc ; and bodi- 
 ly cleariliness availed little against the contagion. Now all 
 
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228 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 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 hun- 
 dred thousand francs. 
 
 ^^^- _ March 20th. 
 
 . . . The infinite goodness of this colored population 
 to one another is something which impresses with aston- 
 ishment 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 em- 
 ployers. . . . There are, however, many cases where a 
 mistress will not suffer her bonne to take the risks of the 
 pest-house, — especially in fatailies 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 hard- 
 ened pessimist to conceive a higher idea of humanity. 
 There is never a moment's hesitation in visiting a strick- 
 en 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 
 
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La Virette. 229 
 
 a thought of the danger, — nay, of the almost absolute 
 certainty of contagion. If the patient have no means, 
 all contribute : what the sister or brother has not, the 
 uncle or the aunt, the godfather or godmother, the cousin, 
 brother-in-law or sister-in-law, may be able to give. No 
 one dreams of refusing money or linen or wine or any- 
 thing possible to give, lend, or procure on credit. Wom- 
 en seem to forget that they are beautiful, that they are 
 young, that they are loved, — to forget everything but 
 the sense of that which they hold to be duty. You see 
 young girls of remarkably elegant presence, — young col- 
 ored girls well educated and Hevees-en- chateau* (that is 
 to say, brought up like white Creole girls, dressed and ac- 
 complished 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 per- 
 form 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 vac- 
 cinated): — "Ah! quand il sagit du devoir, la vie ou la 
 mori 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 
 the 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 be- 
 ,comes silent : every one here retires early and rises 
 
 * 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 indi- 
 cates a desire to affiliate with the white class. 
 
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230 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 with the sun. But sometimes, when the night is excep- 
 tionally 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 hide- 
 ous), 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 op- 
 pressive 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 up- 
 lifted and hands joined above her head. A more grace- 
 ful little figure it would be hard to find as she appears 
 thus posed ; but, all unconsciously, she is violating an- 
 other superstition by this very attitude ; and the angry 
 mother shrieks : — 
 
 — "Ti manmaille-ld, I — tire lanmain-ou assous iite-ou, 
 foute! pisse moin encb Id, I . . . Espkri moin allk lazarett 
 avant mettk lanmain conm (a 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 !) 
 
 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 ti ka venne chapeau, d, fbce moin ni malhi, 
 
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La V ire tie. 231 
 
 toutt manman si fai yche yo sans tHe." (I have that ill- 
 luck, that if I were selling hats all the mothers would 
 have children without heads !) 
 
 — Those who sit at their doors, I observe, do not sit, 
 as a rule, upon the steps, even when these are of wood. 
 There is a superstition which checks such a practice. 
 "Si ou assise assous pas-laphte, ou M pouend douli 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 popu- 
 lation put on mourning : — it is a custom among them 
 centuries old. 
 
 You will not perceive a single gaudy robe to-day, a 
 single calendered Madras : not a speck of showy color 
 is visible through all the ways of St. Pierre. The cos- 
 tumes donned are all similar to those worn for the death 
 of relatives: either full mourning, — a black robe with 
 violet foulard, and dark violet-banded headkerchief ; or 
 half-mourning, — a dark violet robe with black foulard and 
 turban ; — the half- mourning being worn only by those 
 who cannot afford the more sombre costume. From my 
 window I can see long processions climbing the mornes 
 about the city, to visit the shrines and crucifixes, and to 
 pray for the cessation of the pestilence. 
 
 . . ' . Three o'clock. Three cannon-shots shake the 
 hills : it is the supposed hour of the Saviour's death. 
 All believers — whether in the churches, on the high- 
 ways, or in their homes — bow down and kiss the cross 
 thrice, or, if there be no cross, press their lips three 
 
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232 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 times to the ground or the pavement, and utter those 
 three wishes which if expressed precisely at this tradi- 
 tional moment will surely, it is held, be fulfilled. Im- 
 mense 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 be- 
 come angry, nor utter unkind words, — any fault com- 
 mitted 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 daugh- 
 ter grow up vicious, — become a shame to the family and 
 a curse to the parents, — it is observed of such : — " f«, 
 c'est yon pkM 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. ^^^^^ g^^f_ 
 
 . . . 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 Imen 
 
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La Virette. 233 
 
 of the lazarettos has been washed therein ; and to-day 
 there are fewer bathers than usual. 
 
 But there are twenty- seven burials. Now they are 
 burying the dead two together : the cemeteries are over- 
 burdened. . . . 
 
 XXV. 
 
 ... In most of the old stone houses you will occa- 
 sionally 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 any one being bit- 
 ten by them ; and among the poor it is deemed unlucky 
 to injure or drive them away. . . . But early this morn- 
 ing Yzore swept her house clean, and ejected through 
 the door-way quite a host of these monster insects. 
 Manm-Robert is quite dismayed : — 
 
 — '' yesis-Mdia ! — ou 'Ife malhfe encb pou fai 5a, chb .'" 
 (You want to have still more bad luck, that you do such 
 a thing ?) 
 
 And Yzore answers : — 
 
 — "Toutt moune ifitt pa ni yon sou ! — gouts conm (a fil 
 zagrignin, et moin pa mentn mange! Epi laverette encb. . . . 
 Main coue toutt (a ka phte 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 ipi moin /" (Come with me !) 
 
 And Yzore — already feeling a little remorsfe for her 
 treatment of the spiders — murmurs apologetically as 
 she crosses over to Manm-Robert's little shop : — '■^Moin 
 pa tchouk yo; moin chassk yo — ke vini encb." (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. . . . 
 
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234 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 XXVI. ^p^i gth. 
 
 —"Toutt bel bois ka alii," says Manm-Robert. (All the 
 beautiful trees are going.) ... I do not understand. 
 
 — "Toutt bel bois — toutt bel moune ka alle," she adds, in- 
 terpretatively. (All the "beautiful trees,"— all the hand- 
 some 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 sub- 
 stituted 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 bal- 
 lad about a youth of Fort-de-France sent to St. Pierre 
 by his father to purchase a stock of dobannes,* who, 
 falling in love with a handsome colored girl, spent all 
 his father's money in buying her presents and a wed- 
 ding outfit : — 
 
 ' ' Moin descenne Saint-Pie 
 
 Achete dobannes 
 
 Aulie ces dobannes 
 
 Cast 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." 
 
 * 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." 
 
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La Verette. 235 
 
 XXVII. ^p^l yi^_ 
 
 — 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 lavirette-pouff, — a 
 form of the disease which strangles its victim within a 
 few hours. 
 
 Ti Marie was certainly the neatest little mkchanne 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 cafi i — qui 'le sirop V (Who wants 
 coffee ? — who wants syrup ?) She looked about sixteen • 
 but was a mother. " Where is her husband ?" I ask. 
 "■Nhomme-y nib laverette 'tou." (Her man died of the 
 verette also.) "And the little one, her .yc/^^i^" "Ylaz- 
 arett." (At the lazaretto.) . . . But only those without 
 friends or relatives in the city are suffered to go to the 
 lazaretto ; — Ti Marie cannot have been of St. Pierre ? 
 
 — " No : she was from Vauclin," answers Manm- Rob- 
 ert. "You do not often see pretty red girls who are 
 natives of St. Pierre. St. Pierre has pretty sang-milkes. 
 The pretty red girls mostly come from Vauclin. The yel- 
 low 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 employ- 
 ing capresses for house-servants loses them ;— one family 
 living at the next corner has lost four in succession. . . , 
 19 
 
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236 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 The tint is a cinnamon or chocolate color ; — the skin 
 is naturally clear, smooth, glossy : it is of the capresse es- 
 pecially that the term "sapota-skin " {peau-chapoti) is 
 used, — coupled with all curious creole adjectives to ex- 
 press what is coxasiy, ^ojoll, beaujoll,* etc. The hair is 
 ' long, but bushy ; the limbs light and strong, and admira- 
 bly shaped. ... I am told that when transported to a cold- 
 er 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. — "Main pas noue," she says ; — " moin 
 oubuge: oufai moin noue nans pbtrait-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 instru- 
 ment 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. 
 
 * I may cite in this relation one stanza of a Creole song — very pop- 
 ular 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!" » 
 
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La Virette. 237 
 
 XXIX. ^p^l ^g^f^ 
 
 . . . Manm-Robert is much annoyed and puzzled be- 
 cause the American steamer — the bom-mange, as she calls 
 it — does not come. It used to bring regularly so many 
 barrels of potatoes and beans, so much lard and cheese 
 and garlic and dried pease — everything, almost, of which 
 she keeps a stock. It is now nearly eight weeks since 
 the cannon of a New York steamer aroused the echoes 
 of the harbor. Every morning Manm-Robert has been 
 sending out her little servant Louis to see if there is any 
 sign of the American ^dic\iet:—"Alleoue£atteried'Esnotz 
 si bom-mange-a pas vini." But Louis always returns with 
 the same rueful answer : — 
 
 — '■'■ Manm-Robert, pa ni piess bom-mangi" (there is not 
 so much as a bit of a bom-mangf). 
 
 ..." No more American steamers for Martinique :" 
 that is the news received by telegraph ! The disease has 
 broken out among the shipping ; the harbors have been 
 declared infected. United States mail-packets drop their 
 Martinique mails at St. Kitt's or Dominica, and pass us 
 by. There will be suffering now among the canotiers, the 
 caboteurs, all those who live by stowing or unloading car- 
 go ; — great warehouses are being closed up, and strong 
 men discharged, because there will be nothing for them 
 to do. 
 
 . . . They are burying twenty-five verettiers per day in 
 the city. 
 
 But never was this tropic sky more beautiful ; — never 
 was this circling sea more marvellously blue ; — never 
 were the mornes more richly robed in luminous green, 
 under a more golden day. . . . And it seems strange that 
 Nature should remain so lovely. . . . 
 
 . . . Suddenly it occurs to me that I have not seen 
 Yzore nor her children for some days ; and I wonder if 
 
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238 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 they have moved away. . . . Towards evening, passing by 
 Manm-Robert's, I ask about them. The old woman an- 
 swers me very gravely : — 
 
 — "-Aib, mon che, c'est Yzore qui ni lavkrettel" 
 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 al- 
 lowed to leave the house, for fear some one should tell 
 them what it were best they should not know. . . . Pauv 
 ti manmaille! 
 
 X^^- 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 so- 
 lemnities 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 condi- 
 tions 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 tor- 
 rent of peaked caps, and the spectral masks, and the 
 swaying of bodies and wa,ving 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 View- 
 less Something seemed to scatter the shapes as leaves 
 
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La Verette. 239 
 
 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-Dii ka passe P\ . . 
 
 XXXI. April 20th. 
 
 . . . Very early yesterday morning Yzore was carried 
 away under a covering of quick-lime : the children do 
 not know; Manm- Robert took heed they should not see. 
 They have been told their mother has been taken to the 
 country to get well, — that the doctor will bring her back 
 soon. . . . All the furniture is to be sold at auction to 
 pay the debts ; — the landlord was patient, he waited 
 four months ; the doctor was kindly : but now these 
 must have their due. Everything will be bidden off, 
 except the chapelle, with its Virgin and angels of porce- 
 lain : yo pa ka pe venne Bon-Die (the things of the Good- 
 God must not be sold). And Manm-Robert will take care 
 of the little ones. 
 
 The bed — a relic of former good-fortune, — a great 
 Martinique bed of carved heavy native wood, — a lit-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. 
 
 X^^^^- April S8tk. 
 
 — Tatn-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 oui I— 
 
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240 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 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 ac- 
 customed 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 f 
 
 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 ksou! — quitti main chd,ch'e papa- 
 ou qui adans cimHie pou vini pouend ou tou !" (Ye three 
 little penniless white ones ! — let me go call youjr father, 
 who is in the cemetery, to come and take you also away !) 
 
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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 charm- 
 ing 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 Roxe- 
 lane 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 pris- 
 matic basalt ; and the dark bronze-limbed women, with 
 faces hidden under immense straw hats, and knees in the 
 rushina 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 prob- 
 ably continue thus at the Rivifere 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 pub- 
 lic 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 
 
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242 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 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 an- 
 cient 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 wom- 
 en, 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 ! No^mi !" . . . " Coument ou yd, chfe ?" . . . 
 " Eh ! Pascaline !" . . . " Bonjou', Youtte ! — Dedd ! — 
 Fifi !— Henrillia !" . . . " Coument ou kalld, Cyrillia ?" . . . 
 " Toutt douce, chfe ! — et Ti Me'me ?" . . " Y bien ; — oti 
 Ninotte ?" . . . " Bo ti manmaille pou moin, chb — 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 fam- 
 ily-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 
 
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 ^f* r r\ 
 
 i^lv^^'" 
 
 
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Les Blanchisseuses. 243 
 
 of a mile you can see well exemplified one natural law 
 of life's struggle, — the best chances to the best constitu- 
 tions. 
 
 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 wash- 
 ing-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 dur- 
 ing 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 nib 
 toutt dkau " (we all die of the water), one told me, reply- 
 ing to a question. No feeble or light-skinned person 
 can attempt to do a single day's work of this kind with- 
 out 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 lead- 
 ing 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 mischiev- 
 ously : — 
 
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244 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 — ^' Ou vini pou pouend yon bain?" (Coming to take 
 a bath ?) For the river is a great bathing-place. 
 
 — "Non; main vini lavt." (No ; I am coming to wash.) 
 — "Aie! die! die !^y vini lavk P' . . . And all within 
 hearing laughed together. "Are you crazy, girl?— ^Ji- 
 oufouV 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 kd lave 
 toutt ga ba ou bien vite, chfe, — va, amis^ 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 mkchanne-mangd — 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 oc- 
 cupy 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. 
 
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Les Blanchisseuses. 245 
 
 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" 
 {frotti in Creole) ; — after she can do this pretty well, she 
 is taught the curious art of whipping it {/esse). You can 
 hear the sound of the fessd a great way off, echoing and 
 re-echoing among the mornes : it is not a sharp smack- 
 ing 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 fess^. 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 tear- 
 ing or damaging the material. By an experienced hand 
 the linen is never torn ; and even pearl and bone but- 
 tons are much less often broken than might be sup- 
 posed. The singular echo is altogether due to the man- 
 ner 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 " 
 (lacdie lessive) — overlooking the river from a point on the 
 Fort bank opposite to the higher end of the Savane. 
 Here each blanchisseuse hires a small or a large vat, or 
 even several, — according to the quantity of work done, — 
 
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246 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 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 riv- 
 er, — 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 (ouvouiyf). 
 
 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 bar- 
 gain 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 thir- 
 ty-three pieces — including such large ones as sheets, bed- 
 covers, and several douillettes (the long Martinique trail- 
 ing 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 blan- 
 chisseuses. Few of them can read or write or under- 
 stand 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 prop- 
 erty is safe. And cheap as her rates are, a good profes- 
 sional 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 
 
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Les Blanchisseuses. 247 
 
 purchasing power of money) as J60 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 be- 
 comes 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 lit- 
 tle children, can drink rum ; the blanchisseuse cannot, 
 unless she wishes to die of a congestion. Her strong- 
 est 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, bareifooted, under their burdens 
 built up tower-shape on their trays ; — silently as ghosts 
 they descend the steps to the river-bed, and begin to un- 
 fold 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 heavi- 
 ness 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 strong- 
 
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248 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 Iy^_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\ chef" Idle men 
 stare at some pretty washer, till she points at them and 
 cries:— ''GadS Missit-a ka guetti nou!—anhl—anh!— 
 anh!" And all the others look up and repeat the 
 gxo2iri—''anh/—anh!—anh!" till the starers beat a re- 
 treat. 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 giv- 
 en their voices a singular sonority and force : it is well 
 worth while to hear them sing. One starts the song,— 
 the next joins her ; then another and another, till all the 
 channel rings with the melody from the bridge of the 
 Jardin des Plantes to the Pont-bois : — 
 
 " C'est moin qui te ka lave, 
 Passe, raccommode : 
 Y te nef hi disoue 
 Ou matte moin derh6, — 
 Yche moin assous bouas moin ; — 
 Laplie te ka tombe — 
 Lefan moin assous tete moin ! 
 Doudoux, ou m'abandonne! 
 Moin pa ni pisonne pou soigne moin." * 
 
 ... A melancholy chant — originally a Carnival improv- 
 isation made to bring public shame upon the perpetra- 
 tor 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 
 
 * 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. • 
 
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Les Blanchisscuscs. 249 
 
 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, " Chh 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. 
 
 ..." Dear mamma, once you were young like I ; — dear papa, you 
 also have been young ; — dear great elder brother, you too have been 
 young. Ah ! let me cherish this sweet friendship ! — so sick my 
 heart is — yes, 'tis very, very ill, this heart of mine : love, only love 
 can make it well again.". . . 
 
 II. 
 
 " O cursed eyes he praised that led me to him ! O cursed lips of 
 mine which ever repeated his name ! O cursed moment in which I 
 gave up my heart to the ingrate who no longer knows how to love. ". . . 
 
 III. 
 
 " Doudoux, you swore to me by Heaven! — doudoux, you swore to 
 me by your faith ! . . . And now you cannot come to me ? . . . Oh ! 
 my heart is withering with pain ! . . . I was passing by the ceme- 
 tery ; — 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 toe) 
 is an onomatope for the sound of knocking at a door. 
 
 "To, to, fo.'—'(^SL qui li?' 
 — ' C'est moin-menme, lanmou ; — 
 Ouve lapott ba moin !' 
 20 
 
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250 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 "To, to, to!—'(^a. qui la? 
 — ' C'est moin-menme lanmou, 
 Qui ka ba ou khe moin!* 
 
 "To, to, to.'—'<^2L 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 merr)-, jaunty, sarcastic ditties, — Carnival com- 
 positions, — in which the African sense of rhythmic 
 melody is more marked: — " Marie -Clemence maudi," 
 " Loema tombe," " Quand ou ni ti mari jojoU."* 
 
 — At mid-day the mkchanne-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 col- 
 ors come to the river, and leap down the steps crying, 
 "£ti.' manman /" — "She/" — " Xenneitie P' 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. I<arge 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 
 
 * See Appendix for specimens of Creole music. 
 
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Les Blanchisseuses. 251 
 
 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." 
 
 — "Oufemi lapote larivii, chi—anh ?" 
 
 — "AA/ out, chel — moin fhmS y, ou tanne? — moin ni 
 ladi-d, I" (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 perpet- 
 ual 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 blanchis- 
 seuse, — the treachery of the stream ! . . . Watch them 
 working, and observe how often they turn their eyes to 
 the high north-east, to look at Pelde. Pelde 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 
 
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252 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 rocks' and trees and wreck of forests, uplifting crags, de- 
 vastating 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 hap- 
 pened 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 crazi, 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 ab- 
 sent 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, scat- 
 tered as it is — "one! — two!— five! — seven I"; — 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 "biiE ; — 
 
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Les Blanchisseuses. 253 
 
 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 
 fioating far in the bay, — drifting upon her face in a thou- 
 sand feet of water, — with faithful dead hands still hold- 
 ing fast the property of her employer. 
 
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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 Pfere Dutertre, of the Or- 
 der of Friars-Preachers. 
 
 A single glance at the topographical map of Marti- 
 nique would suffice to confirm the father's assertion that 
 the country was found to be trap hachi el trap moniueux: 
 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 "Annu- 
 aire" (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 cen- 
 turies 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 Mon- 
 tague Pelde, in the north, and La Montagne du Vauclin, 
 in the south. The term morne, used throughout the 
 
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La Pelee. 255 
 
 French West Indian colonies to designate certain alti- 
 tudes 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 Montague Pelee, or simply " La 
 Montague," according, perhaps, to the varying degree of 
 respect it inspires in different minds. But even in the 
 popular nomenclature one finds the orography of Mar- 
 tinique, as well as of other West Indian islands, regu- 
 larly classified by pitons, mornes, and monts or montagncs. 
 Momes 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 vegeta- 
 tion, rise from valley-levels and coast-lines with remark- 
 able 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 up- 
 heavals 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 montagiie : 
 there are, as I have already observed, but two thus called 
 in all Martinique, — Pel^e, 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, Pel^e 
 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 
 
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256 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 Martinique is, configuratively, so well as the simple state- 
 ment that, although less than fifty miles in extreme length, 
 and less than twenty in average breadth, there are upwards 
 oifour 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 to- 
 tally inaccessible : many mornes are so on one or two or 
 even three sides. Ninety-one only of the principal mount- 
 ains 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, — i. La Pelee; 2. Pitons du 
 Carbet ; 3. Roches Carries ;* 4. Vauclin ; 5. Marin ; 6. 
 Morne de la Plaine. Forty-two distinct mountain-masses 
 belong to the Carbet system alone, — that of Pel6e in- 
 cluding but thirteen ; and the whole Carbet area has a 
 circumference of 120,000 metres, — much more consider- 
 able than that of Pelde. But its centre is not one enor- 
 mous pyramidal mass like that of " La Montagne " : it is 
 marked only by a group of five remarkable porphyritic 
 cones, — the Pitons of Carbet ; — while Pel^e, dominating 
 everything, and filling the north, presents an aspect and 
 occupies an area scarcely inferior to those of .^tna. 
 — Sometimes, while looking at La Pelde, I have won- 
 
 * Also called La Barre de V Isle, — a long high mountain-wall in- 
 terlinking 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 transformationt 
 
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La Pel^e. 257 
 
 dered if the enterprise of the great Japanese painter who 
 made the Hundred Views of Fusiyaina could not be imi- 
 tated by some Creole artist equally proud of his niative 
 hills, and fearless of the heat of the plains or the snakes of 
 the slopes. A hundred views of Pel^e might certainly be 
 made : for the enormous mass is omnipresent to dwell- 
 ers in the northern part of the island, and can be seen 
 from the heights of the most southern mornes. It is vis- 
 ible 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 tak- 
 ing 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, al- 
 most daily, sudden and violent rains, which are much 
 dreaded (since a thorough wetting, with the pores all dis- 
 tended by heat, may produce pleurisy) ; and there are 
 serpents ! The artist willing to devote , a few weeks of 
 travel and study to Pel^e, in spite of these annoyances and 
 risks, has not yet made his appearance in Martinique.* 
 
 * Thibault de Chanvallon, writing of Martinique in 1751, de- 
 clared: — "All possible hinderances to study are encountered here 
 (tout s' appose a I'^tude): if the Americans [creoles] do not devote them- 
 selves to research, the fact must not be attributed solely to indiffer- 
 ence or indolence. On the one hand, the overpowering and continual 
 heat, — the perpetual succession of mornes and acclivities, — the dif- 
 ficulty of entering forests rendered almost inaccessible by the lianas 
 interwoven across all openings, and the prickly plants which oppose 
 a barrier to the naturalist,— the continual anxiety and fear inspired 
 by serpents also ; — on the other hand, the disheartening necessity of 
 having to work alone, and the discouragement of being unable to 
 communicate one's ideas or discoveries to persons having similar 
 
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258 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 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 Pe- 
 lee appears from these summits. Volcanic hills often 
 seem higher, by reason of their steepness, than they real- 
 ly are ; but Pelee deludes in another manner. From sur- 
 rounding 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 miscon- 
 ception of the comparative height of the eminence you 
 have reached, which deceives by the precipitous pitch of 
 its sides. Pelde is not very remarkable in point of alti- 
 tude, however : its height was estimated by Moreau de 
 Jonn6s at 1600 metres ; and by others at between 4400 
 and 4500 feet. The sum of the various imperfect esti- 
 mates made justify the opinion of Dr. Cornilliac that the 
 extreme summit is over 5000 feet above the sea — perhaps 
 5200.* The clouds of the summit afford no indication to 
 eyes accustomed to mountain scenery in northern coun- 
 tries ; for in these hot moist latitudes clouds hang very 
 low, even in fair weather. But in bulk Pelee is grandi- 
 ose: it spurs out across the island from the Caribbean 
 to the Atlantic : the great chains of mornes about it are 
 
 tastes. And finally, it must be remembered that these discourage- 
 ments 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 h 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. 
 
 * Humboldt believed the height to be not less than 800 ioises 
 (1 toise=6 ft. 4.73 inches), or about 5115 feet. * 
 
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La PelSe. 259 
 
 merely counter-forts ; the Piton Pierreux and the Piton 
 Pain-S,-Sucre {Sugar-loaf Feak), and other elevations vary- 
 ing from 800 to 2 100 feet, are its volcanic children. Near- 
 ly thirty rivers have their birth in its flanks, — besides 
 many thermal springs, variously mineralized. As the cul- 
 minant point of the island, Pel6e is also the ruler of its 
 meteorologic life, — cloud- herder, lightning -forger, and 
 rain-maker. During clear weather you can see it draw- 
 ing to itself all the white vapors of the land, — robbing 
 lesser eminences of their shoulder-wraps and head-cover- 
 ings ; — though the Pitons of Carbet (3700 feet) usually 
 manage to retain about their middle a cloud-clout, — a 
 lantchb. 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 eflges very 
 sharply against the blue, it is a sign of foul rather than 
 of fair weather to come.* 
 
 Even in bulk, perhaps, Pel6e 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 fan- 
 tasticality in its configuration worth months of artistic 
 study : one does not easily tire of watching its slopes un- 
 dulating against the north sky, — and the strange jagging 
 of its ridges, — and the succession of its terraces crum- 
 
 * 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 Chan- 
 vallon took pains to examine into the truth of this alleged phenom- 
 enon ; 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. 
 
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26o Martinique Sketches. 
 
 bling down to other terraces, which again break into ra- 
 vines 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 wher- 
 ever 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 hol- 
 lows, slanting from sudden projections, may become be- 
 fore your eyes almost as unreally beautiful as the land- 
 scape colors of a Japanese fan ; — they shift most gener- 
 ally 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 Pel6e. 
 
 ... 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 cir- 
 cumference. The crater occupied by this lake — called 
 L'Etang, or "The Pool"^ — has never been active within 
 human memory. There are others, — difficult and dan- 
 gerous to visit because opening on the side of a tremen- 
 dous gorge ; and it was one of these, no doubt, which has 
 always been called La Souffriere, that rained ashes ovei 
 the city in 185 1. 
 
 The explosion was almost concomitant with thd last 
 
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La PeUe. 261 
 
 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 Pr^cheur, lying at the foot of the west- 
 ern 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 in- 
 tervals until the following night, sometimes deepening 
 into a rumble like thunder. The mountain guides de- 
 clared: " C'est la Souffriere qui bout!" (the Souffrifere is 
 boiling) ; and a panic seized the negroes of the neighbor- 
 ing plantations. At 1 1 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, com- 
 pared 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 PrScheur ; also whitening the neighbor- 
 ing country: the mountain was sending up columns of 
 smoke or vapor ; and it was noticed that the Rivifere 
 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 situ- 
 ated 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 
 
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262 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 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 out- 
 burst. It was satisfactorily ascertained that the main 
 force of the explosion had been exerted within a peri- 
 meter of about one thousand yards ; that various hot 
 springs had suddenly gushed out, — the temperature of 
 the least warm being about 37° Rdaumur (116° F.) ; — 
 that there was no change in the configuration of the 
 mountain ; — and that the terrific sounds had been pro- 
 duced 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 Pel^e continued to send up an immense col- 
 umn 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 Pel6e can be made by sev- 
 eral 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 Pr^cheur, — 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 
 
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La Pelie. 263 
 
 of Pel^e is very picturesque : — you cross the Roxelane, 
 the Rivifere des Pferes, the Rivifere Sfeche (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 Canon- 
 ville, somnolent villages that occupy wrinkles in the hem 
 of Pelee's lava robe. The drive ultimately rises and low- 
 ers over the undulations of the cliff, and is well shad- 
 owed along the greater part of its course : you will ad- 
 mire many huge frontagers, or silk-cotton trees, various 
 heavy lines of tamarinds, and groups oi 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-bh-lanme, or " sea-side grapes." Then 
 you reach Au Pr^cheur : 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 Rivifere du 
 Pr^cheur, 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 o.ver the Village of the 
 Abysses {Aux Abymes), — whose name was doubtless sug- 
 gested by the immense depth of the sea at that point. 
 . . It was under the shadow of those cliffs that the Con- 
 federate 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 har- 
 bor 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 ves- 
 sels 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, 
 21 
 
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264 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 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 rock- 
 ets 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 be- 
 trayed her manoeuvre 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 Con- 
 federate 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 Pelde 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. Ac- 
 cording to the zigzags of the way, the scenery shifts pan- 
 oramically. 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 crowd- 
 ing 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 re- 
 motenesses 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, al- 
 ways the sea rises with your rising. Viewed at fitst from 
 
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La Pelee. 265 
 
 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, be- 
 gins 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 im- 
 mense blue circle touching the sky all round you, — ex- 
 cept 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 out- 
 line 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, not- 
 withstanding that it almost immediately leaves the city 
 behind, and out of sight. Excepting only La Trace, — 
 the long route winding over mountain ridges and be- 
 tween 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 reach- 
 ing 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 shal- 
 lows up, and Pelee shows less and less of its tremen- 
 
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266 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 dous base. Then you pass through the sleepy, palmy, 
 pretty Village of the Three Bridges {Trois Fonts),— yihe.r& 
 a Fahrenheit thermometer shows already three degrees 
 of temperature lower than at St. Pierre ; — and the na- 
 tional 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 fceibas, with strangely but- 
 tressed 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 an- 
 gled as crystals ; — on the left it dips seaward ; and be- 
 fore you Pelde's head towers over the shoulders of inter- 
 vening 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 ; 
 
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La Pelie. 267 
 
 and Pel6e, 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, consid- 
 ering its situation ; — there are nearly five thousand in- 
 habitants ; 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 im- 
 pressive 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, — start- 
 ing at three or four o'clock in the morning, so as to ar- 
 rive 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 
 
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268 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 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 Pel6e, 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 de- 
 composes ; 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 Mar- 
 tinique resort for invalids ; strangers debilitated by the 
 climate of Trinidad or Cayenne come to it for recupera- 
 tion. 
 
 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 mount- 
 ains, — mountains broken, peaked, tormented -looking, 
 and tinted {irisees, as the Creoles say) with all those gem- 
 
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La Pelie. 269 
 
 tones distance gives in a West Indian atmosphere. Par- 
 ticularly impressive is the beauty of one purple cone in 
 the midst of this many-colored chain : the Piton G616. 
 All the valley-expanse of rich land is checkered with al- 
 ternations of meadow and cane and cacao, — except north- 
 westwardly, 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. 
 
 One must be very sure of the weather before under- 
 taking 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 satisfac- 
 tory observation of the next transit of Venus. More- 
 over, 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 predict- 
 ed 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 any- 
 thing but a thick white cold fog. The sky may remain 
 perfectly blue for weeks in every other direction, and 
 Pelfee's head remain always hidden. In order to make 
 
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270 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 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 per- 
 fectly limpid, with very heavy sudden rains in the mid- 
 dle of the day. It is of no use to rely on the prospect 
 of a dry spell. There is no really dry weather, notwith- 
 standing there recurs — in books — a Saison de la Skhe- 
 resse. 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 dec- 
 larations 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 sat- 
 isfactory 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, 1121 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 luxuri- 
 ance. 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 therftiome- 
 
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La PeUe. 271 
 
 ter mounts in the sun to twice the figure it reaches in the 
 shade. Long and patient observation has, however, es- 
 tablished tlie fact that during the hivernage, if the heavy 
 showers have a certain fixed periodicity, — falling at mid- 
 day or in the heated part of the afternoon, — Pelee is like- 
 ly to be clear early in the morning ; and by starting be- 
 fore 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 west- 
 em counterforts. We drive north along the shore for 
 about half an hour ; then, leaving the coast behind, pur- 
 sue a winding mountain road, leading to the upper plan- 
 tations, 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 amaz- 
 ing silhouette begins to rise, — all blue, — a mountain wall 
 capped with cusps and cones, seeming high as Pel6e it- 
 self in the middle, but sinking down to the sea-level west- 
 ward. There are a number of extraordinary acumina- 
 tions ; but the most inipressive 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 Car- 
 
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272 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 bet. They wear their girdles of cloud, though Pelde 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 him- 
 self ; — it will take him some time yet to climb Pelde. 
 
 Reaching the last plantation, we draw rein in a vil- 
 lage 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 plan- 
 tation. 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 in- 
 struments, 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 val- 
 ley; but we are in the shadow of Pel^e. 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 in- 
 stantly 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 nev- 
 er shows himself by daylight except under the pressure 
 of sudden alarm. We are not likely, in the opinion of 
 
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La Pelee. 273 
 
 all present, to meet with another. Every one in the 
 party, except myself, has some curious experience to re- 
 late. 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 im- 
 mense 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 al- 
 ways kept in his ajoupa " a keg of salted serpents " {yon 
 ka shpent-sali) ; — 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 phy- 
 sician of St. Pierre, — "because the existence of the fer- 
 de-lance renders all serious research dangerous in the 
 extreme." 
 
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274 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 My own experiences do not justify my takipg 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 gundown. 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 Roxe- 
 lane 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 some- 
 times 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 prob- 
 ably fifty*, — 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, 
 
 * " De la piqure du serpent de la Martinique," par Auguste 
 Charriez, Medecin de la Marine. Paris: Moquet, 1875. • 
 
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La Pelee. 2;$ 
 
 who in ten years lost three relatives by the trigonoceph- 
 alus, — 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 ev- 
 ery 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 beauti- 
 fully that it is a delight to watch them. One cannot 
 often enjoy such a spectacle nowadays ; for the intro- 
 duction of the piece-work system has destroyed the pict- 
 uresqueness of plantation labor throughout the island, 
 with rare exceptions. Formerly the work of cane-cut- 
 ting resembled the march of an army; — first advanced 
 the cutlassers in line, naked to the waist ; then the amar- 
 reuses, the women who tied and carried ; and behind 
 these the ha, 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 mil- 
 itary : more than one attack was repelled by the cut- 
 lasses of a plantation atelier. 
 
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2/6 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 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, look- 
 ing, with his cutlass under his arm. I ask one of our 
 guides what the cry is : — 
 
 — " Y ka coumande yo pouend gdde pou sepent" he re- 
 plies. (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 swift- 
 ly as before ; there is hardly ainy emotion ; the travailleur 
 is a fatalist. . . .* 
 
 * 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 /lanseur's 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 glass; and then applies cataplasms of herbs, — 
 orange-leaves, cinnamon-leaves, clove-leaves, chardon-bMi, charpen- 
 tier, perhaps twenty other things, all mingled together ; — this poul- 
 ticing 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 tfie 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 pliysician try to save him, and will 
 scarcely submit to be treated even by an experienced white over- 
 seer. 
 
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La Pelk. iyj 
 
 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 dense- 
 ly do the leafy crests intermingle. But on actually enter- 
 ing 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 ; — hun- 
 dreds have been cut down by charcoal-makers; but the 
 forest is still grand. It is to be regretted that the Gov- 
 ernment has placed no restriction upon the barbarous 
 destruction of trees by the charbonniers, which is going 
 on throughout the island. Many valuable woods are rap- 
 idly disappearing. The courbaril, yielding a fine-grained, 
 heavy, chocolate-colored timber ; the balata, giving a 
 wood even heavier, denser, and darker ; the acajou, pro- 
 ducing a rich red wood, with a strong scent of cedar ; 
 the bois-de-fer ; the bois d'lnde ; the supSrb acomat, — 
 all used to flourish by tens of thousands upon these vol- 
 canic slopes, whose productiveness is eighteen times 
 greater than that of the richest European soil. All Mar- 
 tinique furniture used to be made of native woods ; and 
 the colored cabinet-makers still produce work which 
 would probably astonish New York or London manu- 
 
 22 
 
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278 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 facturers. 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 char- 
 coal 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 P^^ cent; but to find pre- 
 cious woods now, one must climb heights like those of 
 Pelde and Carbet, or penetrate into the mountains of the 
 interior. 
 
 Most common formerly on these slopes were the gom- 
 miers, 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 gom- 
 miers of Dominica. The dimensions of canoes now made 
 from these trees rarefy 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 accus- 
 tomed to walking in tropical woods, one will fall at every 
 step. In a little while I find it impossible to advance. 
 
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La PeUe. 279 
 
 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 cab- 
 bage-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 chasseursde-choux that in 
 these woods few reach a height of even twelve feet be- 
 fore 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 amaz- 
 ing 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 
 
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28o Martinique Sketches. 
 
 roots, — each such web interknotting with others all 
 round it, and these in turn with further ones ; while be- 
 tween 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 in- 
 terlocked 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 un- 
 derstand 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 sev- 
 ered top presenting a sharp angle and proving after- 
 wards dangerous. He never appears to strike hard, — 
 only to give light taps with his blade, which flickers con- 
 tinually 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 an- 
 other 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 som- 
 
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La Pelk. 281 
 
 bre green — crests of trees forming a solid curtain against 
 the sun. Beyond the outer and lower cliff valley-sur- 
 faces 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 Pelde are the clear- 
 est 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, — 
 
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282 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 receiving as they descend the waters of countless smaller 
 streams gushing from either side of the ridge. There 
 are also cold springs, — one of which furnishes St. Pierre 
 with her Eau-de-Gouyave (guava-water), which is always 
 sweet, clear, and cool in the very hottest weather. But 
 the water of almost every one of the seventy-five princi- 
 pal rivers of Martinique is cool and clear and sweet. 
 And these rivers are curious in their way. Their aver- 
 age fall has been estimated at nine inches to every six 
 feet ; — many are cataracts ; — the Rivifere 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 inacces- 
 sible ; and many enter the sea through a channel of 
 rock with perpendicular walls from 150 to 200 feet high. 
 Their waters are necessarily shallow in normal weather ; 
 but during rain-storms they become torrents thunderous 
 and terrific beyond description. In order to compre- 
 hend their sudden swelling, one must know what trop- 
 ical 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 cata- 
 ract ; 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 tkere are 
 
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La Pelee. 283 
 
 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 warn- 
 ing 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 dormeiir are the prin- 
 cipal 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 ena- 
 bles 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*, — tiny white fish, of which 
 a thousand might be put into one teacup. They are de- 
 licious 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 swarm- 
 ing 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 sheet-lightnings which play during the nights of July and 
 August are termed in Creole Ziclai-titiri, or " titiri-lightnings " ; — 
 it is believed these give notice that the titiri have begun to swarm 
 in the rivers. Among the colored population there exists an idea of 
 some queer relation between the lightning and the birth of the little 
 fish; — it is commonly said, "Z^clai-li ka fai yo Mor^" (the lightning 
 hatches them). 
 
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284 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 the gutters in such numbers as to make the air offen- 
 sive. 
 
 The mountain-crab, celebrated for its periodical migra- 
 tions, 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 writ- 
 ers are still occasionally to be seen. The Pfere Du- 
 tertre relates that in 1640, at St. Christophe, thirty sick 
 emigrants, temporarily left on the beach, were attacked 
 and devoured alive during the night by a similar species 
 of crab. " They descended from the mountains in such 
 multitude," he tells us, " that they were heaped higher 
 than houses .over the bodies of the poor wretches . .,. 
 whose bones were picked so clean that not one speck of 
 flesh could be found upon them." . . . 
 
 VIII. 
 
 . . . We enter the upper belt of woods— green twilight 
 again. There are as many hanas 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, arbor- 
 escent 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 pro- 
 truding 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 
 
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ARBORESCENT FERNS ON A MOUNTAIN ROAD. 
 
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La Pelee. 285 
 
 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 Cre- 
 ole physician calls Bromeliacea ; 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 sa- 
 vane, 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 ra- 
 zie : 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 thir- 
 ty inches wide — half hidden by the tangle of leaves, — La 
 Fente. It is a volcanic fissure which divides the whole 
 rjdge, and is said to have no bottom : for fear of a pos- 
 sible 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 our- 
 
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286 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 selves 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 oppo- 
 site 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 reflect- 
 ed 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 coyering of the lake-slopes, — just showing their 
 heads like bunches of great dark-green feathers. 
 
 ■•—The estimate of Dr. Rufz, made in 185 1, and the 
 estimate of the last "Annuaire " regarding the circumfer- 
 ence 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 great- 
 ly swollen by the extraordinary rains of this summer. 
 Our guides say that the little iron cross projecting froni 
 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 
 
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La Pelt-e. 287 
 
 shallow mud, ■which rests — according to investigations 
 made in 185 1 — 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 185 1 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 common- 
 ly 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 hun- 
 dred 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 
 
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288 , Martinique Sketches. 
 
 that. The cone is green to the top with moss, low 
 grasses, small fern, and creeping pretty plants, like vio- 
 lets, 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 high- 
 est 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 cor- 
 rugated ridges already described as buttressing the vol- 
 cano on all sides. Through a cloud-rift we can see an- 
 other 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 danger- 
 ous, — a natural ladder of roots and lianas over a series 
 of precipices. Behind us the Crater of the Three Palm- 
 istes 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 lafge one of 
 
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La Pelie. 289 
 
 wood — probably the same put up by the Abbe Lespi- 
 nasse 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 near- 
 ly 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 com- 
 posed 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. Ca- 
 bane-jfesus ("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 siffUur-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 
 23 
 
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290 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 the intervening gorge, — now spanned by the rocket-leap 
 of a perfect rainbow. 
 
 . . . Valleys and mornes, peaks and ravines, — suc- 
 ceeding 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 Pi- 
 tons of Carbet, gem-violet through the vapored miles, — 
 the tallest one filleted with a single soft white band of 
 cloud. Through all the wonderful chain of the Antilles 
 you might seek in vain for other peaks exquisite of form 
 as these. Their beauty no less surprises the traveller to- 
 day than it did Columbus three hundred and eighty-six 
 years ago, when — on the thirteenth day of June, 1502 — 
 his caravel first sailed into sight of them, and he asked 
 his Indian guide the name of the unknown land, and the 
 names of those marvellous shapes. Then, according to 
 Pedro Martyr de Anghiera, the Indian answered that the 
 name of the island was Madiana ; that those peaks had 
 been venerated from immemorial time by the ancient 
 peoples of the archipelago as the birthplace of the hu- 
 man race ; and that the first brown habitants of Madia- 
 na, having been driven from their natural heritage by 
 the man-eating pirates of the south— the cannibal Car- 
 
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La Pclcc. 291 
 
 ibs, — remembered and mourned for their sacred mount- 
 ains, 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 Moth- 
 er, — 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 heav- 
 ily 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 dis- 
 tance 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 Pel^e, 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 
 Pfere 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 
 
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2g2 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 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 ali- 
 mentary plants, the best forage, the flowers of the gar- 
 dens, 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 dis- 
 tance, the shapes of the hills, there is a something not 
 of Africa : that strange fascination which has g^ven to 
 the island its poetic Creole name, — le Pays des Revenants. 
 And the charm is as puissant in our own day as it was 
 more than two hundred years ago, when Pbre 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 ol 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 catiot waiting for the embellie to 
 make a dash for the beach ; even a negro beijding under 
 the weight of a basket of fruits, and running along the 
 
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La PeUe. 293 
 
 shore to get to market; — and illuminate that with the 
 light of our sun ! What landscapes ! — O Salvator Rosa ! 
 O Claude Lorrain, — if I had you,r pencil ! . . . Well do I 
 remember the day on which, after twenty years of ab- 
 sence, I found myself again in presence of these won- 
 ders ; — 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 beau- 
 tiful."...* 
 
 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 vio- 
 let air, exalted above the hills, soon yields to other emo- 
 tions inspired by the mighty vision and the colossal 
 peace of the heights. Dominating all, I think, is the con- 
 sciousness of the awful antiquity of what one is look- 
 ing 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 congre- 
 gation of the mornes, seem to chorus in the vast re- 
 splendence, — 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. 
 
 * Dr. E. Kufz: " Etudes historiques,'' vol. i., p. 189. 
 
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'TI CANOTIE. 
 
 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 ex- 
 treme importance to the whole pdpulation. To the mer- 
 chant 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-lci ; but the American steamer is al- 
 ways the "bom -ship'' — batiment-bom-a ; or, the "food- 
 ship " — batiment-mangk-h. . . . You hear women and men 
 asking each other, as the shock of the gun flaps through 
 all the town, ^'Mi! gadk (a qui Id, chi 1" And if the an- 
 swer be, '^Mais c'est bom-la, che, — bom-mangt-d. ka riv'e" 
 (Why, it is the bom, dear,— the food-bom that has come), 
 great is the exultation. . 
 
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' Ti CanotiL 295 
 
 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-c6ne-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 'ticanotii, who 
 swarm out immediately in little canoes of their own man- 
 ufacture to dive for coins which passengers gladly throw 
 into the water for the pleasure of witnessing the grace- 
 ful spectacle. No sooner does a steamer drop anchor — 
 unless the water be very rough indeed — than she is sur- 
 rounded by a fleet of the funniest little boats imagina- 
 ble, full of naked urchins screaming Creole. 
 
 These 'ti canotii — these little canoe - boys and pro- 
 fessional divers — are, for the most part, sons of boatmen 
 of color, the real canotiers. I cannot find who first in- 
 vented the 7z canot: the shape and dimensions of the 
 little canoe are fixed according to a tradition several gen- 
 erations 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 ih^ 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 
 
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296 
 
 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 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 lit- 
 tle 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. . . . 
 
 TI CANOT. 
 A, stem; — B, little box for the palettes, etc.; — C,p)-oiu. 
 
 II. 
 
 ... It was five o'clock in the afternoon : the horizon 
 beyond the harbor was turning lemon-color ; — and a thin 
 warm wind began to come in weak puffs from the south- 
 west,— the first breaths to break the immobility of the 
 tropical air. Sails of vessels becalmed at the entrance 
 of the bay commenced to flap lazily : they might belly 
 after sundown. 
 
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'Ti Canotii. 297 
 
 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 brigan- 
 tines and brigs and schooners and barkentines. She 
 had lain before the town the whole afternoon, surround- 
 ed 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 cano- 
 tiers ; — 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 mak- 
 ing 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 
 
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298 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 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 St^phane — nicknamed Ti 
 Chabin, because of his bright hair, — a slim little yellow 
 boy of eleven — led the pursuit, crying always, " Ench, 
 Missik, — encb!" . . . 
 
 The £a 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 dis- 
 tinctly 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 St6phane, 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! (a fond ifitt /" 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 'IS fat nou neye .'^-laissi y, Stephane/" he 
 cried. (The fellow wants to drown us. Zaw^— leave 
 it alone.) 
 
 But Stephane had recovered breath, and was evidently 
 resolved to try again. It was gold ! 
 
 — "Mais (a c' est lb!" 
 
 — ''Assez, non /" screamed Maximilien. "Fa plon^e 
 'neb, main ka di ou ! Ah ! foute /" . . . * 
 
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'Zi' Canotid. 299 
 
 St^phane had dived again ! 
 
 . . .And where were the others? "Bon-Dik, gadi oti 
 yo y'e !" 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 ! nioin tt ka di ou laissi y!" cried Maximilien, 
 in anger and alarm. . . . " Gd.dk, gade sang-d, ka couli nans 
 nez ou, — nans bouche ou ! . . . Mi oti lezautt !" 
 
 Lezautt, the rest, were no longer visible. 
 
 — '■'■Et mi oti nou yk /" cried Maximilien again. They 
 had never ventured so far from shore. 
 
 But Stephane answered only," C'est Ih !" For the 
 first time in his life he held a piece of gold in his fin- 
 gers. He tied it up in a little rag attached to the string 
 fastened about his waist, — a purse of his own inven- 
 tion, — and took up his paddles, coughing the while and 
 spitting crimson. 
 
 — "Mi / mi ! — mi oti nou yk !" 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 ad- 
 vance 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 gath- 
 ered, — 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 
 
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200 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 actually moving towards the semicircular cliffs of Fond- 
 Corri ? . . . Maximilien began to cry. The little chabin 
 paddled on,— though the blood was still trickling over 
 his breast. 
 
 Maximilien screamed out to him : — 
 
 — " Oil pa ka pagaye, — anh 1 — ou ni housoin dhmi?" 
 (Thou dost not paddle, eh ?— thou wouldst go to sleep ?) 
 
 —"Si/ rmin ha pagayS,— epi fb .'" (I am paddling, 
 and hard, too !) responded St^phane. . . . 
 
 — "Ou ka pagayk ! — ou ka menti!" (Thou art pad- 
 dling ! — 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 !" 
 
 — " Oufou!" cried St6phane, becoming angry. "Main 
 kapagayi!" (I am paddling.) 
 
 — " Beast ! never may we get home so ! Paddle, thou 
 lazy ; — paddle, thou nasty !" 
 
 — "Macaque thou ! — monkey!" 
 
 — " Chabin I — 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 double i(itf ! . . . There is 
 something queer, Stdphane; there is something queer." . . . 
 
 — "Ah ! you begin to see now, Maximilien ! — it is the 
 current !" 
 
 — "A devil -current, St^phane. . . . We are drifting: 
 we will go to the horizon !" . . . 
 
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'Ti CanotiS. 301 
 
 To the horizon — "«(7« kalle Ihorizoti!" — a phrase of 
 terrible picturesqueness. ... In the Creole tongue, " to 
 the horizon" signifies to the Great Open — into the meas- 
 ureless sea. 
 
 — " C est pa lapeine pagayk atouikment" (It is no use to 
 paddle now), sobbed Maximilien, laying down his palettes. 
 
 — " Sil si!" said Stephane, reversing the motion; 
 "paddle with the current." 
 
 — " With the current ! It runs to La Dominique !" 
 
 — "/'<7«/ii'jj," phlegmatically returned Stephane, — " en- 
 nou I — let us make for La Dominique !" 
 
 — "Thou fool ! — it is more than past forty kilometres. 
 . . . Stkphane, mi! gadi ! — mi qui goubs requ'em !" 
 
 A long black fin cut the water almost beside theni, 
 passed, and vanished, — a requin indeed! But, in his 
 patois, the boy almost re-echoed the name as uttered by 
 quaint Pfere 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 dark- 
 ness were deepening together. 
 
 — " Si lanme ka vini plis fb, (a nou ki fai V (If the 
 sea roughens, what are we to do ?) asked Maximilien. 
 
 — " Maybe we will meet a steamer," answered Ste- 
 phane : " 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." 
 
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302 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 — " I tell thee, they will not see us at 2\\,—piess I piess ! 
 piess!" 
 
 — " Then they will hear us cry out." 
 
 — " No, — we cannot cry so loud. One can hear noth- 
 ing 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 ma- 
 chine. 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 cur- 
 rent ; — 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 I 
 
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'Ti Canotic. 303 
 
 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 f' — hop- 
 ing that some one might be looking for them. . . . The 
 alarm had indeed been given ; and one of the little steam- 
 packets had been serit 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 heav- 
 ing seemed to grow vaster, — '[fau nou kaprie Bon-Die." . . . 
 
 Maximilien answered nothing. 
 
 — "J^auprte Boti-Dii '"' (We must pray to the Bon-Die), 
 repeated Stdphane. 
 
 — "/'a lapeine. It pas pi oui nou atb /" (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-Dii ka cue toutt, ka connaitt 
 toutf (He sees all ; He knows all), cried Stfephane. 
 
 — " Y pa pe one non piess atoueelement, nioin ben sur!" 
 (He cannot see us at all now,- — I am quite sure) irrever- 
 entl)' responded Maximilien. . . . 
 
 — "Thou thinkest the Bon-Die like thyself! — He has 
 not eyes like thou," protested Stephane. '■'■Li pas ka tini 
 couVe ; li pas ka tini zii " (He has not color ; He has not 
 eyes), continued the boy, repeating the text of his cate- 
 chism, — the curious Creole catechism of old Perfe Goux, 
 of Carbet. [Quaint priest and quaint catechism have 
 both passed away.J 
 
 — "Main pa save si li pa ka tini couli " (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 !" 
 
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304 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 — "Why, it is in the Catechism," cried Stephana. . . . 
 "'Bon-Di^, It conm vent: vent tout-patout, et nou pa save 
 oul It; — It ka touchi nou, — li ka boulvhS 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 Maxi- 
 milien, " then pray thou the Wind to stay quiet." 
 
 — "The Bon-Did is not the Wind," cried Ste'phaoe : 
 " He is like the Wind, but He is not the Wind." . . . 
 
 — '■''Ah! soc-soc l—fouinq ! . . . More better past praying 
 to care we be not upset again and eaten by sharks." 
 # * * # # ■ * * 
 
 . . . Whetlier the little chabin prayed either to the Wind 
 or to the Bon-Did, I do not know. But the Wind re- 
 mained 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 St6phane 
 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 i pale 
 grays o'ertopping misty blues. And in the north another 
 lofty shape was towering, — strangely jagged and peaked 
 and beautiful, — the silhouette of Dominica : a sapphire 
 saw ! ... No wandering clouds :— over far Pelde only a 
 shadowy piling of nimbi. . . . Under them the<sea swayed 
 
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'TV Canotii. 305 
 
 dark as purple ink — a token of tremendous depth. . . . 
 Still a dead calm, and no sail in sight. 
 
 — "fa dest la Dominique,'' said Maximilien, — "Ennou 
 pou ouivage-^ I" 
 
 They had lost their little palettes during the night ; — 
 they used their naked hands, and moved swiftly. But Do- 
 minica was many and many a mile away. Which was the 
 nearer island, it was yet difficult to say ; — in the morn- 
 ing 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 /aim," murmured Maximilien. Nei- 
 ther 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 evi- 
 dently 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. 
 24 
 
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2o6 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 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 silhou- 
 ettes. . . . 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, — pro- 
 ducing dull throbbing aches in thighs, hips, and loins 
 
 Then, about mid-day, St^phane 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, Stdphane, awaking suddenly with a par- 
 oxysm 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 
 
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^Ti Canotie. 307 
 
 skill and his utmost strength to get Stdphane out of the 
 water. Evidently Stephana could be of no more assist- 
 ance ; — the boy was so weak he could not even sit up 
 straight. 
 
 — '^A'te/ oil ki jHe nou encb," panted Maximilien, — 
 " metti ou toutt longue." 
 
 St^phane 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. 
 
 — "C« ben maladeV he asked. . . . Stdphane did not 
 seem to hear : his eyes remained closed. 
 
 — " Stdphane !" cried Maximilien, in alarm, — " Std- 
 phane !" 
 
 — " Cest lb, papoute" murmured Stephana, without 
 lifting his eyelids, — " {a {"est lb ! — ou pa janmain oue yon 
 bel piece conm (aV (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 dbmi, Sttphane ?" — queried Maximilien, 
 wondering, — " art asleep ?" 
 
 But St^phane opened his eyes and looked at him so 
 strangely ! Never had he seen Stdphane look that way 
 before. 
 
 — " Qa ou ni, Stkphane ? — what ails thee ? — a'le ! Bon- 
 Dii, Bon-Die!" 
 
 — "Bon-Dii/" — muttered Stkphane, 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 palk (a / /" 
 
 — " He tosses the sea. . . . He has no face ; — He lifts 
 up the dead . . . and the leaves." . . . 
 
 — " Ou /ou /" cried Maximilien, bursting into a wild 
 fit of sobbing, — " Stephane, thou art mad !" 
 
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3o8 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 And all at once he became afraid of St^phane, — 
 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 yel- 
 lowing : 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 con- 
 gre, — of caringue and goutis-zik 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 Maxi- 
 milien cried out: — '^Sucou/ sucou I" St6phane lay mo- 
 tionless and dumb : his feet, touching Maximilien's na- 
 ked hips, felt singularly cold. 
 
 . . . Something knocked suddenly against the bottom 
 of the canoe, — knocked heavily— making a hollow loud 
 sound. It was not Stdphane ; — St6phane lay still as a 
 stone: it was from the depth below. Perhap^'a great 
 fish passing. 
 
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'Ti Canotic. 309 
 
 It came again, — twice, — shaking the canoe like a great 
 blow. Then St6phane 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 Maximil- 
 ien's heart almost stopped beating. . . . Then Stdphane'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-Dii, It conm vent . . . li ka touche nou . . 
 noil 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 be- 
 came aware that a white, strange, bearded face was look- 
 ing at him : the Bon-Die was there, — bending o\-er him 
 with a lantern, — talking to him in a language he did not 
 understand. And the Bon-Did certainly had eyes, — 
 great gray eyes that did not 'look wicked at all. He 
 
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3IO Martinique Sketches. 
 
 tried to tell the Bon-Di^ 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 l^poor 
 little devils !" Then he heard a bell ring; and the Bon- 
 Di^ 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 Ste- 
 phane beside him. ... It was four o'clock in the morn- 
 ing. 
 
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LA FILLE DE COULEUR. 
 
 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 resem- 
 bling them among the populations of the British West 
 Indies ; they belong to Martinique, Guadeloupe, Desi- 
 rade, Marie-Galante, and Cayenne, — in each place differ- 
 ing sufficiently to make the difference interesting, espe- 
 cially in regard to the head-dress. That of Martinique 
 is quite Oriental ; — more attractive, although less fan- 
 tastic 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 abandon- 
 ment in Martinique of the primitive slave-dress,— c/^^ 
 mise 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.* But 
 
 * The brightly colored douillettes are classified by the people ac- 
 
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312 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 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 cel- 
 ebrated 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 {zkpingue 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- 
 
 cording to the designs of the printed calico: — robe-a-bambou, — robe- 
 h-bouquet, — robe-arc-en-ciel, — robe-h-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. 
 
 Rose. 
 Mulatresse (according to shade) \ Blue. 
 
 Green. 
 
 N^gresse \ ^^i'^- 
 
 ( Scarlet, 
 
 or any violent color. 
 
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La Fille de Couleur. 
 
 313 
 
 choux); the ear-rings, immense but light as egg-shells 
 {zanneaux-d,- clous or zanneaux- chenilles); the bracelets 
 (J>ortes-bonheur) ; the studs (boutons-a-clous) ; the brooch- 
 es, not only for the turban, but for the chemise, below 
 the folds of the showy silken foulard or shoulder-scarf, — 
 
 THE MARTINIQUE TURBAN, OR "MADRAS CALENDE. 
 
 would sometimes represent over five thousand francs 
 expenditure. This gorgeous attire is becoming less visi- 
 ble every year : it is now rarely worn except on very 
 solemn occasions, — weddings, baptisms, first commun- 
 ions, confirmations, The da (nurse) or "porteuse-de- 
 
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314 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 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 i 
 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 1 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 folk- 
 lore, — adapted to the environment, and to local idealism : 
 Cinderella, for example, is changed to a beautiful mdtisse, 
 wearing a quadruple collier- choux, zipingues tremblants, 
 and all the ornaments of a da.* Recalling the impres- 
 
 * . . " Vouela Cendrillon evec — " There was Cendrillon with 
 
 yon bel r6be velou grande lakhe. " beautiful long trailing robe of 
 
 . . . ga te ka bail ou mal zi6. Li velvet on her! .. .-It was enough 
 
 , . ^ , to hurt one s eyes to look at her. 
 
 tetmi bel zanneau dans wreilUi, she had beautiful rings, in her 
 
 quate-tou-chou, bouoche, brace- ears, and a collier-choux of four 
 
 let, tremblant, — toutt s6te bel rows, brooches, ^remWaw^j, brace- 
 
 baggaie conm 5a.". . .-IConte 1^V%7^'"''^/ r-^/"^f *'''^°"-" 
 ^ , ■„ „ , ^ . , n — [Stoiy of Cinderella in Turi- 
 
 Cendrillon—d aprh TiinauU.^ cult's Creole Gramm&. 
 
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THE GUADELOUPE HEAD-DRESS. 
 
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La Fille de Couleur. 3 1 5 
 
 sion of that dazzling da, I can even now feel the pict- 
 uresque justice of the fabulist's description of Cinder- 
 ella's Creole costume : Qa U ka bailie ou mal zill — (it 
 would have given you a pain in your eyes to look at 
 her !) 
 
 . . . Even the every-day Martinique costume is slowly 
 changing. Year by year the " calendeuses " — the women 
 who paint and fold the turbans — have less work to do ; — 
 the colors of the douillette are becoming less vivid ; — 
 while more and more young colored girls are being 
 elevkes en chapeau (" brought up in a hat ") — /. 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 them- 
 selves : 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 ampli- 
 tude of limb and particular cambering of the torso pe- 
 culiar to the half-breed race, with its large bulk and stat- 
 ure. 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 ex- 
 cepted ; — 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 
 
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3i6 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 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 fash- 
 ions of Guadeloupe, Martinique, and Cayenne were pat- 
 terned after modes still worn in parts of the mother- 
 country. The old-time garb of the afffanchie — 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 ^hte.^ 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 search- 
 ing various West Indian authors and historians for in- 
 formation, 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 inter- 
 est, between love and law, between prejudice and pas- 
 sion, which forms the evolutional history of the mixed 
 race. * 
 
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La Fille de Couleur. 
 
 317 
 
 II. 
 
 Considering only the French peasant colonist and 
 the West African slave as the original factors of that 
 physical evolution visible in the modern fiUe-de-couleur, 
 
 YOUNG MULATTKESS. 
 
 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 
 
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3i8 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 in their lineage to a surprising degree by conditions Of 
 climate and environment. 
 
 The precise time of the first introduction of slaves 
 into Martinique is not now possible to ascertain, — no 
 record exists on the subject ; but it is probable that the 
 establishment of slavery was coincident with the settle- 
 ment of the island. Most likely the first hundred colo- 
 nists 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 
 Pfere 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. Accord- 
 ing to the Dominican missionary, the Africans then in 
 the colony were decidedly repulsive ; he describes the 
 women as " hideous " \hideuses). There is no good rea- 
 son to charge Dutertre with prejudice in his pictures of 
 them. No writer of the century was more keenly sensi- 
 tive 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 ap- 
 pear to us in an illusive, almost ideal aspect. Neverthe- 
 less, 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 favoted,_or^fflicted, as the case might 
 be, were of the finer types of negresses ; for he notes 
 remarkable differences among the slaves prdcured from 
 
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^cit^==^-«t;L- "'^ 
 
 PLANTATION COOLIE WOMAN IN MARTINIQUE COSTUME." 
 
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La Fille de Couleur. 319 
 
 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 oth- 
 ers* 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 sup- 
 position, — still we find their offspring worthy in his eyes 
 of no higher sentiment than pity. He writes in his- chap- 
 ter entitled "De la naissance honteuse des mulastres": — 
 
 — "They have something of their Father and some- 
 thing of their Mother, — in the same wise that Mules par- 
 take 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 de- 
 scribed : in less than two centuries and a half the physi- 
 cal characteristics of the race have been totally changed. 
 What most surprises is the rapidity of the transforma- 
 tion. After the time of Pbre 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 progeni- 
 
 * 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, P4re Labat declares having seen freshly 
 disembarked blacks handsome enough to inspire an artist: — " J'en ai 
 vu des deux sexes fails iJ peindre, et beaux par merveille " (vol. iv. , 
 chap. vii.). He adds that their skin was extremely fine, and of vel- 
 vety softness ; — " /e velours nest pas plus doux". . , Among the 
 30,000 blacks yearly shipped to the French colonies, there were- 
 doubtless many representatives of the finer African races. 
 
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220 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 tors;* the mulatto began to give evidence of those qual- 
 ities of physical and mental power which were after- 
 wards 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 eilect- 
 ed with a quickness that 
 astounds by its revela- 
 tion of the natural forces 
 at work. 
 
 — " Under the sun of 
 the tropics," writes Dr. 
 Rufz, of Martinique, 
 "the African race, as 
 well as the European, 
 becomes greatly modi- 
 fied 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 char- 
 acteristics 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, ho- 
 mogeneous, 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 origi- 
 
 COOLIE HALF-BREED. 
 
 * " Leur sueur n'est pas fetide comme celle des n^res de la Gui- 
 nee," writes the traveller Dauxion-Lavaysse, in 1813. 
 
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La Fille de Couleur. 
 
 321 
 
 nal source. . . . The transformation is absolute. All that 
 can 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 uncertain- 
 ty 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. . . . 
 ..." 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 melan- 
 choly eye, better adapted 
 to express the emotions. 
 . . . Rarely can you dis- 
 cover in him the sombre 
 fury of the African, rare- 
 ly a surly and savage 
 mien : he is brave, chat- 
 ty, boastful. His skin 
 has not the same tint as 
 his father's, — it has be- 
 come more satiny; his 
 hair remains woolly, but 
 it is a finer wool ; ... all 
 his outlines are more 
 rounded ; — one may per- 
 ceive that the cellular 
 tissue predominates, as 
 in cultivated plants, of which the ligneous and savage 
 fibre has become transformed." . . .* 
 
 * Dr. E. Rufz: " Etudes historiques et statistiques sur la popula- 
 tion de la Martinique." St. Pierre: 1850. Vol. i., pp. 148-50. 
 It has been generally imagined that the physical constitution of 
 
 COUNTRY-GIRI, — PURE NEGRO 
 RACE. 
 
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322 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 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 con- 
 sequences in Martinique and elsewhere seemed to have 
 evoked the curious Article 9 of the Code Noir of 1665, — 
 enacting, first, that free men who should have one or 
 two children by slave women, as well as the slave-owners 
 permitting the same, should be each condemned to pay 
 two thousand pounds of sugar; secondly, that if the 
 violator of the ordinance should be himself the owner of 
 the mother and father of her children, the mother and the 
 children should be confiscated for the profit of the Hos- 
 pital, and deprived for their lives of the right to enfran- 
 chisement. 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 en- 
 franchised, and her children "rendered free and legiti- 
 mate." 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 es- 
 
 the black race was proof against the deadly climate of the West In- 
 dies. 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 ;f20 sterling) during the same period was ;^i, 600,000 
 ($8,000,000). (Burck's " History of European Colopies," vol. ii., 
 p. 141; French edition of 1767.) 
 
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La Fille de Couleur. 323 
 
 cape the penalty by those means offered in the pro- 
 vision. The facts, however, proved the reverse. Mis- 
 cegenation continued; and Labat notices two cases of 
 marriage between whites and blacks, — describing the 
 offspring of one union as " very handsome little mulat- 
 toes." These legitimate unions were certainly excep- 
 tional, — 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 rein- 
 forced 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 previ- 
 ous 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 antici- 
 pated by legislators. Scarcely a century had elapsed 
 since the colonization of the island ; but in that time 
 climate and civilization had transfigured the black wom- 
 an. "After one or two generations,'' writes the histori- 
 an 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)."* Travellers 
 of the eighteenth century were confounded by the luxury 
 of dress and of jewellery displayed by swarthy beau- 
 ties 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 privi- 
 leges than silken robes and necklaces of gold beads : 
 she sought to obtain, not merely liberty for herself, but 
 
 * Rufz: "Etudes," vol. i. , p. 236. 
 
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324 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 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 maxi- 
 mum (15,000),* and colonial luxury had arrived at its 
 greatest height, the question of voluntary enfranchise- 
 ment 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 irre- 
 sistible — made them formidable rivals to the daughters of 
 the dominant race, were no doubt physically superior 
 to the modern fllles-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 institu- 
 tions 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 neces- 
 sary to avert the already visible peril. Special laws 
 were passed by the Home-Government to check en- 
 franchisement, to limit its reasons or motives ; and the 
 power of the slave woman was so well comprehended 
 by the Mdtropole that an extraordinary enactment was 
 
 * I am assured it has now fallen to a figure not exceeding 5000. 
 
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La Fille de Couleur. 325 
 
 made against it. It was decreed that whosoever should 
 free a woman of color would have to pay to the Govern- 
 ment three times her value as a stave I 
 
 Thus heavily weighted, emancipation advanced much 
 more slowly than before, but it still continued to a 
 considerable extent. The poorer Creole planter or mer- 
 chant 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 bad grown wealthy; and 
 although the acquisition of wealth may not evoke gener- 
 osity 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 eigh- 
 teenth century, when hospitality had been cultivated as 
 a gentleman's duty to fantastical extremes, — when lib- 
 erality was the rule throughout society, — when a notary 
 summoned to draw up a deed, or a priest invited to cele- 
 brate a marriage, might receive for fee five thousand 
 francs in gold, — there were certainly many emancipa- 
 tions. ..." Even though interest and public opinion in 
 the colonies," says a historian,* " were adverse to en- 
 franchisement, the private feeling of each man com- 
 bated that opinion; — Nature resumed her sway in the 
 secret places of hearts ; — and as local custom permit- 
 ted a sort of polygamy, the rich man naturally felt him- 
 self 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 hus- 
 bands, — becoming their godmothers (/en /aire les mar- 
 raines)." . . . Nature seemed to laugh all these laws to 
 scorn, and the prejudices of race ! In vain did the wis- 
 dom of legislators attempt to render the condition of the 
 enfranchised more humble, — enacting extravagant penal- 
 
 * Rufz: "Etudes," vol. ii., pp. 311, 312. 
 
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.326 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 ties for the blow by which a mulatto might avenge the in- 
 sult 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."* 
 
 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 so- 
 cially deranged colonial life. The fiUe-de-couleur, inher- 
 iting 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 in- 
 fluences. Certain ethical principles thought essential 
 to social integrity elsewhere have always been largely 
 relaxed in the tropics ; and — excepting, perhaps, Santo 
 Domingo — the moral standard in Martinique was not 
 higher than in the other French colonies. Outward de- 
 corum 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 " nat- 
 ural " 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 pre- 
 
 * Rufz: " Etudes,'' vol. i., p. 237. • 
 
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La Fille de Couleur. 327 
 
 tended 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 sev- 
 enty-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, i (one birth 
 announced); enfants natur els, 2 1,. 
 
 In speaking of the ftUe-de-couleur it is necessary also 
 to speak" of the extraordinary social stratification of the 
 community to which she belongs. The official state- 
 ment 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 de- 
 scent really exists ; yet when a white Creole speaks of 
 the gens-cie-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, allow- 
 ing the proportions of mixed blood to be nearly equal, 
 the white would have the dominant influence in situa- 
 tions more natural than existing politics. And in speak- 
 ing of \ht. 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 
 
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328 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 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 Cre- 
 ole 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 wom- 
 en of the entire tropical world.) As there is an almost 
 infinite gradation from the true black up to the brightest 
 sang-melt, it is impossible to establish any color-classifica- 
 tion 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 ac- 
 cept the local Creole definition oi fille-de-coukur as signi- 
 fying, 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 emancipa- 
 tion. 
 
 Physically, the typical fllle-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."* She has inherited not only the finer bodily char- 
 acteristics of either parent race, but a something else be- 
 longing originally to neither, and created by special cli- 
 matic and physical conditions, — a grace, a suppleness of 
 form, a delicacy of extremities (so that all the lines de- 
 scribed by the bending of limbs or fingers are parts of 
 
 * La race de sang-m^U, issue des blancs et des noirs, est ^mine- 
 ment civilizable. Comnie types physiques, elle fournit dans heaucoup 
 d'individus, dans ses femmes en gM&al, les plus beaux specimens de 
 la race humaine. — " Le Pr^juge de Race aux Antilles Fran9aises." 
 ParG. Souquet-Basi^ge. . St. Pierre, Martinique: 1883. '{jp. 661-62. 
 
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La Fille de Couleur. 329 
 
 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 ul- 
 timate consequence, because it is impossible to safely 
 predict what new influences may yet be brought to affect 
 its social development. Before the present era of colo- 
 nial 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 h€m%, 
 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 be- 
 ing 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-nCamise, or 
 zhebe-manmzelle, whose leaves close at the touch of a hair. 
 Such human manifestations, nevertheless, are apt to at- 
 tract 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 re- 
 vealed the whole character of the fille-de-couleur to the 
 stranger, equally charmed and surprised : the Creole com- 
 prehended her better, and probably treated her with even 
 
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330 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 more real kindness. The truth was that centuries of dep- 
 rivation of natural rights and hopes had given to her 
 race— itself fathered by passion unrestrained and moth- 
 ered by subjection unlimited — an inherent scepticism in 
 the duration of love, and a marvellous capacity for ac- 
 cepting 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 arti- 
 ficially 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 Jier. She bore him 
 children — such beautiful children ! — whom he rarely ac- 
 knowledged, 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 chil- 
 dren's father. If deceived in all things, — if absolutely 
 ill-treated and left destitute, she did not lose faith in hu- 
 man nature : she seemed a born optimist, believing most 
 men good ; — she would make a home for another and 
 serve him better than any slave. . . . " Nte de V amour" 
 says a Creole writer, " la fille-de-couleur vit d' amour, de 
 rires, et d'oublis." * . . . 
 
 * Turiault : "Etude sur le langage Creole de la Martinigue." 
 Brest: 1874. ... On page 136 he cites the following pretty verses 
 in speaking of the fille-de-couleur: — 
 
 ~I^' Amour prit soin de la former 
 
 Tendre, naive, et caressante, 
 
 Faite pour plaire, encore plus pour aimer, 
 
 Portant tons les traits precieux 
 
 Du caractfere d'une amante, 
 
 Le plaisir sur sa bouche et I'amour dans'ses yeux. 
 
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La Fille dc Couteur. 331 
 
 Then came the general colonial crash ! . . .You cannot 
 see its results without feeling touched by them. Every- 
 where the weird beauty, the immense melancholy of 
 tropic ruin. Magnificent terraces, once golden with cane, 
 now abandoned to weeds and serpents ; — deserted plan- 
 tation-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, bru- 
 tally 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 par- 
 adise 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 posi- 
 tion. The almost extreme physical refinement and del- 
 icacy, bequeathed to her by the freedwomen of the old 
 regime, are passing away : like a conservatory plant de- 
 prived 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-couIeur never had at any 
 time capacity to bestow that quality of affection imag- 
 26 
 
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333 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 ined 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 un- 
 reasonable 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 luxuri- 
 ous 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 devoted- 
 ness to strangers or to children whom she has an oppor- 
 tunity to care for. Indeed, her natural kindness is so 
 strikingly in contrast with the harder and subtler char- 
 acter 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 tourloiiroux:* 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 un- 
 derstand this, one must bear in mind the difference in 
 the colonial history of both sexes ; and a citation from 
 General Romanet,t 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 sort of land-crab ; — the female is selected for food, and, prop- 
 erly cooked, makes a delicious dish; — the male is almost worthless. 
 
 t" Voyage i la Martinique." Par J. R., General de Brigade. 
 Paris: An. XII., 1804. Page 106. • 
 
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La Fille de Couleur, 333 
 
 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 in- 
 terest manifested by the master. It can be readily un- 
 derstood 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 pur- 
 chases 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 de- 
 pended 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 af- 
 fection. In the survival and perpetuation of the fittest 
 of both sexes these widely different characteristics would 
 obtain more and more definition with successive genera- 
 tions. 
 
 I find in the " Bulletin des Actes Administratifs de la 
 Martinique" for 183 1 (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 Lau' 
 rencin, the betrayer of a conspiracy. The rest are young 
 girls, or young mothers and children ; — plenty of those 
 
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334 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 singular and pretty names in vogue among the Creole 
 population, — Acdlie, Avrillette, Mdie, Robertine, Cdli- 
 anne, Francillette, Adde, Catharinette, Sidollie, Celine, 
 Coraline ; — and the ages given are from sixteen to twen- 
 ty-one, with few exceptions. Yet these liberties were 
 asked for and granted at a time when Louis PhiUppe had 
 abolished the tax on manumissions. . . . The same " Bul- 
 letin " 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 his- 
 torian 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 con- 
 ception. They have much vivacity, but are given to 
 their pleasures, fickle, proud, deceitful (cachh), wicked, 
 and capable of the greatest crimes." A San Domingo 
 historian, far more prejudiced than Pfere 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 Pfere Labat, the his- 
 torian Borde observes : — "The wickedness spoken of by 
 Pfere 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 — i coup s^r, 
 les meilleures et les plus douces personnes qu'il y ait au 
 monde." — (" Histoire de ITle 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 torn Sisters 
 
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La Fille de Couleur. 335 
 
 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 Pfere 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 man- 
 age 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 emanci- 
 pation. 
 
 . . . To-day it cannot be truly said of the fiUe-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 im- 
 prove 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 ap- 
 pears 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 sum- 
 med up in the daily-repeated cry : "CV.f/ un pays perdu/" 
 
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336 
 
 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 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 will- 
 ing 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 lit- 
 tle improvisations, — a song very popular in both Marti- 
 nique 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 labouWa, 
 Li ka mennein 
 Doudoux-4-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 ! 
 Retide li." 
 
 [He answers kindly in French : the bikis 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 ch^re enfant 
 II est trop tard, 
 Les connaissements 
 Sont d^ja signes, 
 Le batiment 
 Est deji sur la bou^e; 
 Dans une heure d'i9i, 
 lis vont appveiller." 
 
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La Fille de Couleur. 
 
 337 
 
 — "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 ! 
 
 "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 !" 
 
 — ' ' Foulard rive, 
 Moin te toujou tini ; 
 Madras rive, 
 Moin te toujou tini ; 
 Dezindes rive, 
 Moin te toujou tini. 
 — Capitaine sougonde 
 Cast yon boa gafon ! 
 
 "Toutt moune tini 
 Yon moune yo aime ; 
 Toutt moune tini 
 Von moune yo cheri ; 
 Toutt moune tini 
 Yon doudoux a yo. 
 Jusse moin tou sile 
 Pa tini 5a, — moin !" 
 
 . . . On the eve of the Fete Dieu, or Corpus Christi fes- 
 tival, 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 rest- 
 ing-places for the Host. These are called reposoirs ; in 
 Creole patois, '■'■ reposoue Bon-Du." 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 fort- 
 une of the fille-de-couleur : — Fortune milatresse c'est repo- 
 soue Bon-Die. (The luck of the mulattress is the resting- 
 place of the Good-God). 
 
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BETE-NI-PIE. 
 
 I. 
 
 St. Pierre is in one respect fortunate beyond many 
 tropical cities; — she has scarcely any mosquitoes, al- 
 though 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 pe- 
 culiar 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; — th.& fourmi fou (mad 
 ant), a little speckled yellowish creature whose move- 
 ments 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 ap- 
 pear 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 
 
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BHe-ni-Pii. 339 
 
 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 deso- 
 lated by fire. Underneath the ground in certain places, 
 layers of their eggs two inches deep were found extend- 
 ing 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 enter- 
 ing 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 in- 
 terior 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, its feet are supposed to have the 
 
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340 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 power of leaving certain livid and ineffaceable marks 
 upon the skin of the person to whom it attaches it- 
 self : — (a ka ba ou lota, say the colored people. Never- 
 theless, 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 gut- 
 ters, the crevices of fountain-basins and bathing-basins, 
 the spaces between floor and ground, shelter centipedes. 
 And the Mte-cL-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 aver- 
 age 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 up- 
 per-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 up- 
 stairs, and make himself at home in parlors and bed- 
 rooms. He has a provoking habit of nestling in your 
 Moresques or your ckinoises, — those wide light garments 
 you put on before taking your siesta or retiring for the 
 night. He also likes to get into your umbrdla, — an ar- 
 
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Bite-ni-PU. 341 
 
 tide 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 le- 
 pismce, 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 otie, nearly a foot long, remaining 
 in a silk parasol for more than four months, and emerg- 
 ing unexpectedly one day, with aggressiveness undimin- 
 ished, 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 
 
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342 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 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 re- 
 sults 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-Iance by the tail, whirl it round and round, and 
 then flip it as you would crack a whip, — whereupon the 
 terrible head ilies ofiE ; but I never heard of any one 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. Con- 
 sequently, people are glad of any chance to kill centi- 
 pedes, — usually taking a heavy stone or some iron uten- 
 sil for the work ; — a wooden stick is not a good weapon. 
 There is always a little excitement when a Mte-ni-pik (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 address- 
 ing a human enemy: — "QuittS main tchouk ou, maudi! — 
 quitte main tchoui ou, scelerat! — quitte moin tchou'e ou, Sa- 
 tan 1 — quitte moin tchoue ou, abonocio f" etc. (Let me kill 
 you, accursed ! scoundrel ! Satan ! abomination !) 
 
 The patois term for the centipede is not a mere cor- 
 ruption of the French Mte-d,-mille-paties. Among a pop- 
 ulation of slaves, unable to read or write,* there were 
 only the vaguest conceptions of numerical values ; and 
 the French term bete-k-mille-pattes was not one which 
 could appeal to negro imagination. The slaves them- 
 selves invented an equally vivid name, bete-anni-pii (the 
 
 * According to the Martinique "Annuaire" for 1887, there were 
 even then, out of a total population of 173,182, no less than 125,366 
 unable to read and write. * 
 
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Bete-ni-PiS. 343 
 
 Beast-which-is-all-f eet) ; annim 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," arid 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 cen- 
 tipede ? ... It is but very faintly related to our knowl- 
 edge 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 ele- 
 gance of form as well as attractions of metallic tint- 
 ing; — the tarantula, or the matoutou-falaise, have geo- 
 metrical 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 repulsive- 
 ness, — 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 cen- 
 tipede 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 ser- 
 pent would annoy and disgust you less. And it is not 
 
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344 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 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, — mul- 
 tiple 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 perpetu- 
 ally about to disappear, and because you know that to 
 lose sight of it for one moment involves the very un- 
 pleasant chance of iinding it upon you the next, — per- 
 haps 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 pur- 
 suit, — whether retreating or attacking, in hiding or flee- 
 ing, — it displays a something which seems more than in- 
 stinct : 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 
 
 HI. 
 
 I AM about to leave my room after breakfast, when 
 little Victoire who carries the meals up-stairs in a wood- 
 en tray, screams out : — "Gadi,Missii! ni bete-ni-pit assous 
 dos oul" 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 upon the 
 
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Bete-ni-PiL 345 
 
 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 get- 
 ting bitten. Immediately the centipede becomes invisi- 
 ble. 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 manoeuvre. 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 ra- 
 pidity, — 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 seem- 
 ed 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 him- 
 self, — dilating the disgust of his shape at will : he inva- 
 riably amplifies himself to face attack. . . . 
 
 It seems very difficult to dislodge him ; he displays 
 astonishing activity and cunning at finding wrinkles and 
 
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346 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 folds to hide in. Even at the risk of damaging various 
 things in the pockets, I s^amp 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 an- 
 gle 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 
 
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Betc-ni-Pie. 347 
 
 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 dis- 
 gust. 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 rose- 
 wood 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 de- 
 voured 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 re- 
 mains always perfect. 
 
 Negroes call it the coco-macaque. 
 
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MA BONNE. 
 
 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 tinne some day or other ; — I am certain that she 
 never will. "Missie," she says, " lizhe pa dien pou main : 
 dest minitt kafoute main 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 coros- 
 sol 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\ Missis. Coument ou passi lanuittf — 
 "Thanks, my daughter, I slept well." — "The weather is 
 beautiful : if Missid 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 there- 
 about ; but after an early sea-bath, one is apt to feel a 
 little hollow during the morning, unless one take some 
 sort ef 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 ^o open a 
 
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Ma Bonne. 349 
 
 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 efEervescence with her baton -Itlt. The 
 baton -liU is an indispensable 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 morn- 
 ing 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 cin- 
 chona bark. 
 
 The bavaroise is fresh milk, sugar, and a little Holland 
 gin or rum, — mixed with the baton-ldl6 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, — consid- 
 ering 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. Qa 
 qui le doudoux? is the cry of the corossole-seller. If a 
 negro asks at a grocery store {graisserte) for sigue in- 
 stead 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 en- 
 
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350 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 ters into domestic consumption in quite remarkable ways. 
 People put sugar into fresh milk, English porter, beer, 
 and cheap wine ; — they cook various vegetables with sug- 
 ar, 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 cin- 
 namon. The stranger gets accustomed to all this sweet- 
 ness without evil results. In a northern climate the con- 
 sequence would probably be at least a bilious attack ; 
 but in the tropics, where salt fish and fruits are popu- 
 larly preferred to meat, the prodigal use of sugar or sug- 
 ar-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, CyriUia; — I want to know 
 what people eat in this country." She always does her 
 best to please me in this respect, — almost daily intro- 
 duces 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-Crhle ; and I can venture to write 
 something about it after a year's observation. By man- 
 g'eCriok 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 lo- 
 cal interest :— I might observe, however, that the fashion 
 of cooking is rather Provengal than Parisian ;— rather of 
 southern than of northern France. 
 
 Meat, whether fresh or salt, enters little into the nour- 
 ishment 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 6r daube;— 
 
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Ma Bonne. 351 
 
 probably salt meats are more popular ; and native vege- 
 tables 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 spupe-d' habitant, or 
 "country soup." It is made of yams, carrots, bananas, 
 turnips, choux-cara'tbes, 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 " [firoce) ; and it is not at all un- 
 palatable. The codfish is simply fried, and served with 
 vinegar, oil, pimento; — manioc flour and avocados be- 
 ing considered indispensable adjuncts. As manioc flour 
 forms a part of almost every Creole meal, a word of in- 
 formation 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 desic- 
 cation before the flour can be made. Good manioc flour 
 has an appearance like very coarse oatmeal ; and is prob- 
 ably 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 " i^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 :* merely 
 
 * There is record of an attempt to manufacture bread with one 
 
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552 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 poured into a plate, with a little water and stirred with a 
 spoon into a thick paste or mush,— the thicker the h^X- 
 t,Qr;—dleaupassifarine{mor&^aX.e.x than manioc flour) is 
 a saying which describes the condition of a very destitute 
 person. When not served with fish, the flour is occasion- 
 ally mixed with water and refined molasses {sirof-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 matett ; children 
 are very fond of it. Both of these names, cousscaye and 
 matUi, are alleged to be of Carib origin : the art of pre- 
 paring the flour itself from manioc root is certainly an in- 
 heritance 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 
 
 part manioc flour to three of wheat flour. The result was excellent ; 
 but no serious effort was ever made to put the manio<5,bread on the 
 market. 
 
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Ma Bonne. 
 
 353 
 
 the various kinds I can mention only the piment-cafi, or 
 " coffee-pepper," larger but about the same shape as a 
 grain of Liberian coffee, violet-red at one end ; the pi- 
 ment-zouheau, or bird-pepper, small and long and scar- 
 let; — 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. 
 
 III. 
 
 ZHISTOUfc 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-li 
 mange. Y te ka leve bon matin- 
 la sans yon sou : y pa sa 5a y te 
 doue fai,^ — la y te ke baill latete. 
 Y alle lacai'e macoumi-y, raconte 
 lapeine-y. Macoum^ baill y toua 
 chopine farine- manioc. Y alle 
 lacaill lautt macoumi, qui baill y 
 yon grand trai piment. Macou- 
 me-1^ di y venne trai-piment-a, 
 epi y te p^ achete lamori, — pisse 
 y ja te ni farine. Madame-14 di ; 
 " Meji, macoum^;" — y di y bon- 
 jou'; ^pi y alle lacai'e-y. 
 
 Lhe y rive acai'e y lim^ dif ^ : y 
 mette canari epi dleau assous dife- 
 i; epi y casse toutt piment-li et 
 mette yo adans canari-^ assous 
 dife. 
 
 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 fe- 
 male friend, who gave her a big 
 trayful of pimentos. The friend 
 told her to sell that tray of pi- 
 mentos : then she could buy some 
 codfish, — since she already had 
 some manioc flour. The good- 
 wife said : ' ' Thank you, macou- 
 mk," — 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. 
 
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354 
 
 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 Lh4 y ou4 canari-i ka boul, y 
 pouend baton-UU, epi y lele pi- 
 ment-a: aloss y ka fai yonne cala- 
 lou-piment. Lhe calalou-piment- 
 \k te tchouitt, y pouend chaque 
 zassiett yche-li ; y mette calalou 
 yo fou^te dans zassiett-la; y mette i 
 ta-mari fou^te, assou, epi ta-y. 
 Epi Ih^ calalou-la te bien fou^te, 
 y mette farine nans chaque zassi- 
 ett-la. Epi y crie toutt moune 
 vini mange. Toutt moune vini 
 mette yo 4-tabe. 
 
 Pouemie bouchee mari-a pou- 
 end, y rete, — y crie : "Ai'e! ouaill! 
 mafenm !" Fenm - la reponne 
 mariy: " Ouaill! monmari!" Ces 
 ti manmalUe-la crie: "Ouaill! 
 manman !" Manman-4 repon- 
 ne: — "Ouaill! yches-moin !". . . 
 Yo toutt pouend couri, quitte 
 cai'e-la sele, — ^pi yo toutt tombe 
 larivife a touempe bouche yo. Ces 
 ti manmaille-lA bou^ dleau sitel- 
 lement jusse temps yo toutt neye; 
 t^ ka rete anni manman-la epi 
 papa-li. Yo te U, bo larivi^, qui 
 te ka pleire. IVloin te ka passe a 
 Ih^-a ; — moin ka mande yo : " Qa 
 zautt ni?" 
 
 Nhomme-la leve : y baill moin 
 yon s41e coup d'pi^, y voy^ moin 
 lautt b6 larivi^ — ououfe moin vini 
 pou cont^ 9a ba ou. 
 
 As soon as she saw the canari 
 boiling, she took her baton-UU, 
 and beat up all those pimentos: 
 then she made s. pimento-calalou. 
 When the pimento-calalou was 
 well cooked, she took each one 
 of the children's plates, and pour- 
 ed 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 hus- 
 band took he stopped and scream- 
 ed : — "Ate! ouaill! my wife!" 
 The woman answered her hus- 
 band : "Ouaill! my husband!" 
 The little children all screamed: 
 ' ' Ouaill ! mamma !" Their mam- 
 ma answered: "Ouaill! my chil- 
 dren!". . . They all ran out, left 
 the house empty ; and they tum- 
 bled 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 mam- 
 ma 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 de- 
 tailed description of the fish Cyrillia brings me day after 
 
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Ma Bonne. 355 
 
 day from the Place du Fort : the variety seems to be in- 
 finite. I have learned, however, one curious fact which 
 is worth noting : that, as a general rule, the more beau- 
 tifully 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 Goubs-zie ; the rosy sade ; the red Bon-Di'e- 
 fnanii-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 zorphi, 
 which has exquisite changing lights of nacreous green 
 and purple. It is said, however, that the zorphi is some- 
 times poisonous, like the bkcunne ; and there are many 
 fish which, although not venomous by nature, have al- 
 ways been considered dangerous. In the time of Pfere 
 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 occasion- 
 ally poisonous by eating the barnacles attached to cop- 
 per-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 de- 
 velop a mysterious poison. A singular phenomenon 
 regarding the poisoning occasionally produced by the 
 bdcunne and dorade is that the skin peels from the 
 hands and feet of those lucky enough to survive the ter- 
 rible colics, burnings, itchings, and delirium, which are 
 early symptoms. Happily these accidents are very rare, 
 
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356 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 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 interiot; and only the inhabi- 
 tants of the coast can. indulge in fresh fish, — at least 
 sea-fish. 
 
 Naturally, among the labdring class the question of 
 quality is less important thah that of quantity and sub- 
 stance, 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 Iambi, 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 com- 
 monly at two cents a pound. Large sharks are not 
 edible ; the flesh is too hard ; but a young shark is 
 very good eating indeed. Cyrillia cooked me a slice 
 one morning: it was quite delicate, tasted almost like 
 veal. 
 
 The quantity 0% 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 
 
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Ala Bonne. 
 
 357 
 
 greater quantity — enough for four or five individuals. 
 The scidines 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 gar- 
 lic ; but without oil or butter. Experience has demon- 
 strated 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* 
 
 The manicou 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 fteld-rat. In the market a manicou sells for two 
 francs and a half at cheapest : it is generally salted be- 
 fore being cooked. 
 
 The great worm, or caterpillar, called ver-palmiste is 
 found in the heads of cabbage-palms, — especially after 
 
 * 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 be- 
 come 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 ki ni sept grands picMs 
 effaci. 
 
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358 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 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 appella- 
 tion, I'efant: 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 fan- 
 cy ; 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 through- 
 out 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. 
 
 '&\i\. potilekpi-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 ques- 
 tion : — '" Qa ou le ^ncb^poule-'epi-diri V (What more do 
 you want, great heavens ! — chicken-and-rice ?) Naughty 
 children are bribed into absolute goodness by the prom- 
 ise of poule-^pi-diri : — 
 
 — ^^A'ie! chh^ bh doudoux ! 
 
 Doudoux ba ou poule-^pi-diri ; 
 Aie ! chi, bh doudoux!". . . 
 
 (Ate, dear ! kiss doudoux / — doudoux has rice-and-chicken 
 for you ! — aie, dear ! kiss doudoux f) 
 
 How far rice enters into the success of the dish above 
 mentioned I cannot say ; but rice ranks in favor gener- 
 
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Ma Bonne. 
 
 359 
 
 ally 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 bana- 
 na 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-cardibes, little black peas 
 {poix-zii-noue, "black-eyed peas"), or of crawfish {akra- 
 crMche). 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-cardibes, 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 ap- 
 pearance 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 
 
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360 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 are usually served with the migan. There is a particu- 
 lar fondness for the little rosy crab called tourlouroux, 
 in patois touloiclou. 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 fieu-fouitt-a-pain, or "bread-fruit flow- 
 er " — 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 ba- 
 nanas are eaten than vegetables ; and more banana-trees 
 are yearly being cultivated. The negro seems to recog- 
 nize 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 call- 
 ed 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-cardibe), or the top of the cabbage-palm ; yac- 
 quot 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-Fouance (French- figs) : otherwise nobody will un- 
 
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Ma Bonne. 361 
 
 derstand him. There are many kinds of bananas here 
 called ^^?/«/ — the four most popular are the figues-bana- 
 nes, which are plantains, I think ; the figues-makouenga, 
 which grow wild, and have a red skin ; Xht. figues-pommes 
 (apple-bananas), which are large and yellow ; and the ti- 
 flgues-dessi (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 sapodilla, 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 re- 
 quires some skill to remove entire this little skin, or pel- 
 licle, without breaking it : to do so is said to be a test o! 
 affection. Perhaps this bit of folk-lore was suggested b) 
 the shape of the pellicle, which is that of a heart. The 
 pretty fille-de-couleur asks her doudoux : — "Ess ou ain- 
 mein moin 1 — pouloss tirk ti lapeau-ld, sans cassk-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 circum- 
 ference, and has a sweet pink pulp ; and there is the 
 " forbidden-fruit " {fouitt-dkfendu), a sort of cross between 
 28 
 
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362 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 the orange and the chadfeque, 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 ga minm 
 quifai moune kafaiyche conm (a atouUement ! The f ouitt- 
 ddfendu is wonderful, indeed, in its way ; but the fruit 
 which most surprised me on my first acquaintance with 
 it was the zabricdt. 
 
 — "Ou le yon zabricdt?" (Would you like an apricot?) 
 Cyrillia asked me one day. I replied that I liked apri- 
 cots very much, — wanted more than one. Cyrillia looked 
 astonished, but said nothing until she returned from mar- 
 ket, and put on the table two apricots, with the observa- 
 tion : — "Qa ke fai ou malade mangi toutt fa !" (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 aro- 
 matic as well as sweet to the taste : the price varies from 
 one to four cents each, according to size. The tree is 
 indigenous to the West Indies ; the aborigines of Hayti 
 had a strange belief regarding it. They alleged that its 
 fruits formed the nourishment of the dead ; and however 
 pressed by hunger, an Indian in the woods would rather 
 remain without food than strip one of these trees, lest he 
 should deprive the ghosts of their sustenance. ... No 
 trace of this belief seems to exist among the colored 
 people of Martinique. 
 
 Among the poor such fruits are luxuries: they eat 
 more mangoes than any other fruits excepting bananas. 
 It is rather slobbery work eating a common mango, in 
 which every particle of pulp is threaded fast to the 
 kernel : one prefers to gnaw it when alone. But there 
 are cultivated mangoes with finer and thicker flesh which 
 can be sliced off, so that the greater part of the fruit 
 may be eaten without smearing and sucking. Among . 
 
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BREAD-FRUIT TREE, 
 
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Ala Bonne. 363 
 
 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- B as signac , — mango-pkhe (or peach- 
 mango); — maiigo-vert (green mango), very large and ob- 
 long; — tnango-grejffi ; — mangotine, quite round and small; 
 — mango-quifiette, very small also, almost egg-shaped ; — 
 mango-ZSze, 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-AmHie (or Queen Amelia), a great 
 yellow fruit which retails even in Martinique at five cents 
 apiece. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 . . . "Oil c'est bonhomme caton 1 — ou c'est zimage, non ?" 
 (Am I a pasteboard man, or an image, that I do not 
 eat ?) C3n-illia 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-Criole 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-rapt) of which a stranger be- 
 comes 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 
 
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364 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 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 hy- 
 giene always terminate with the refrain : "Yo pa fai 
 (a ip" — (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 : "fa ke tchou'e Untie zii 
 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 travel- 
 lers 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-Gokyave which filled it to 
 the hxvca.,— toutt vivant, as Cyi&llia says, "all alive"! 
 There was a sudden scream, — the water -pitcher was 
 snatched from my hands by Cyrillia with the question : 
 "Ess ou le tchoui cb-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 expres- 
 sion 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 re- 
 
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Ma Bonne. 365 
 
 suit of a cold drink while heated is a profuse and icy 
 perspiration, during which currents of air are really dan- 
 gerous. 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 com- 
 mitting 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 al- 
 ways seems to have time. Her kitchen apparatus is of 
 the simplest kind : a charcoal furnace constructed of 
 bricks, a few earthenware pots (canari), 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 win- 
 dows 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 ex- 
 istence is almost timed by the rising and setting of the 
 sun. . . . The only pleasure left for the stranger of even- 
 ings is a quiet smoke on his balcony or before his door : 
 reading is out of the question, partly because books are 
 
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366 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 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 Cyrlllia and the kitten come to keep me com- 
 pany before bedtime. The kitten climbs on my knees; 
 Cyrillia sits right down upon the balcony. 
 
 One bright evening, C)rrillia 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 jolt, — anhl" (Is not the work of 
 the Good-God pretty ?) she said at last. ..." There was 
 Madame Remy, who used to sell the fm&sX. 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 rain- 
 bow, she would make a drawing of it in color at once ; 
 and then she would send that to France to hsve 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 tele- 
 scope, Cyrillia ?" I asked. " Let me get it for you." 
 
 — " Oh no, no !" she answered, as if shocked. 
 
 — " Why ?" 
 
 — "Ah ! f ant pa gade bagga:ie Bon-Die conm fa!" (It 
 is not right to look at the things of the Good-God that 
 way.) 
 
 I did not insist. After a little silence, Cyrillia re- 
 sumed : — 
 
 — "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 
 
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Ma Bonne. 367 
 
 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 
 Pel^e ; — 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 1" 
 
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368 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 — " 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 Godd-God." 
 
 — "Well, I am neither a Protestant nor a Catholic, 
 Cyrillia." 
 
 — " Oh ! you do not mean that ; you cannot be a 
 maudi, an accursed. Therfe ate 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 Protes- 
 tant. 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 ?" 
 
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Ala Bonne. 369 
 
 — " Because, if you had not been baptized you would 
 see zombis all the time, even in broad day. All chil- 
 dren who are not baptized see zombis." . . . 
 
 Cyrillia's solicitude for me extends beyond the com- 
 monplaces 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 (soa'es), or zombis. Especially zombis. C3n-illia's 
 belief in zombis has a solidity that renders argument 
 out of the question. This belief is part of her inner nat- 
 ure, — something hereditary, racial, ancient as Africa, as 
 characteristic of her people as the love of rhythms and 
 melodies totally different from our own musical concep- 
 tions, but possessing, even for the civilized, an inexplica- 
 ble emotional charm. 
 
 Zombi I — 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 be- 
 longing to the mind of another race and another era, — 
 unspeakably old. Perhaps the word in our own lan- 
 guage 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 in- 
 distinguishable, — that region of the supernatural which 
 is most primitive and most vague ; and the closest rela- 
 tion between the savage and the ciwlized 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 va- 
 rious primitive races — ^would seem to have been sug- 
 gested by nightmare. — that form of nightmare in which 
 familiar persons become slowly and hideously trans- 
 
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370 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 formed 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 ki nana ou " (the zombi will gob- 
 ble thee up) is generally an effectual menace in the coun- 
 try 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 : — 
 
 — "Dfezhfe, toua-zhe- matin : c'est Ihh zombi. Yo ka 
 soti dhzhh, toua zhb: c'est Ihe yo. A quattrhfe yo ka ren- 
 trd ; — angelus ka sound." (At four o'clock they go back 
 where they came from, before the Atigelus 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 li moune oui zaffai 
 yd). 
 
 Cyrillia also says one must not look out of the win- 
 dow 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, 'C« tropp quiriese quittk cabane ou pou 
 gadk 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 M coqui zii 
 ou, — make you blind." 
 
 — " But, Cyrillia," I aske4 one day, " did you ever see 
 any zombis ?" ' 
 
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Ma Bonne. 371 
 
 — " 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 t — 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 burns 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 usu- 
 ally 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 supernatu- 
 ral Things. It is popularly believed that certain winged 
 creatures which circle about candles at night may be 
 engagks or envoyts — wicked people having the power of 
 transformation, or even zombis "sent" by witches or 
 wizards to do harm. "There was a woman at Trico- 
 
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372 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 lore," 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 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, ^ga ou ni dans 
 guible-ou V And the other answered, very angrily, ' Ou 
 ni toupet mandS moin (a moin ni dans guible moin ! — et dtk 
 ou qui tk brili guible 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, open- 
 ing 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 manchi- 
 neel apples at the river-mouths. Cyrillia uttered a cry of 
 dismay on seeing that crab ; then I heard her talking to 
 herself : — "/ touch it ? — never ! it can go about its busi- 
 ness. How do I know it is not an arranged crab {yon 
 crabe rang^), or an envoyii — 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 consterna- 
 tion ; nobody dared to touch it ; women cried out at it, 
 "Miserabef — envoyS Satan f^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 
 
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Ma Bonne. 373 
 
 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 ob- 
 served : " 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 Mar- 
 tinique life, I could understand the source and justifica- 
 tion of many similar superstitions in simple and unedu- 
 cated 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 diaboli- 
 cal 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 la- 
 borer discharged from a plantation vows vengeance ; and 
 the next morning the whole force of hands — the entire 
 atelier— zx^ totally disabled from work. Every man and 
 woman on the place is unable to walk ; everybody has 
 one or both legs frightfully swollen. Yo tk ka pile mali- 
 flce: they have trodden on a "malifice." What is the 
 "maliiice"? 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. 
 
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374 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 XL 
 
 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 Marti- 
 niquaises 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 (a ou ka pclli-aV' 
 
 But she would always answer : — '^Moin ka pali anni cb 
 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 zaffdi- 
 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 ques- 
 tion : — 
 
 —"Missii ?"— timidly. 
 
 —"Eh?" 
 
 — "Di moin, chi, ti manmaille dans pays ou, toutt piti, 
 piti, — ess (a pd,li Anglais V (Do the little children in 
 my country — the very, very little children — talk Eng- 
 lish ?) 
 
 — " Why, certainly, Cyrillia." 
 
 — " Toutt piti, piti V — with growing surprise. 
 
 — " Why, of course !" • 
 
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Ma Bonne. 375 
 
 — "C'est dr^k, ga ! " (It is queer, that !) She cannot 
 understand it. 
 
 — " And the little manmaille in Martinique, Cyrillia — 
 toutt piti, piti, — don't they talk Creole?" 
 
 — '■'■Out; mats toutt moune ka p&le nigiie : (a 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 dom,estic ani- 
 mal. One thin mattress covered with a sheet, and ele- 
 vated 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 shav- 
 ings, and placed end to end. Cyrillia has a good pillow, 
 however,— ^(?«rri ipi fliches-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. Fast- 
 ened 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 bite-d-ciseau, a species of lepisma, which destroys books 
 and papers, and ever)rthing it can find exposed. On a 
 shelf are two bottles, — one filled with holy water ; anoth- 
 er with tafia camphrie (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 
 29 
 
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376 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 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 Marchfe du Fort. There 
 are always old women sitting there who sell nothing else 
 but bouquets for the Virgin, — and who cry out to pass- 
 ers-by : — "Gagni ti bouquet pou Viege-ou, che ! . . . Buy a 
 nosegay, dear, for your Virgin ; — she is asking you for 
 one ; — give her a little one, chi 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 sup- 
 posed 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 lim'e lampe oupoufai la- 
 Viege passe dans ca:ie-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 hSr, between 
 
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Ma Bonne. 377 
 
 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 chapeUes 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 dis- 
 covery 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. 
 
 — "J/aw non, Missik" she answered, smiling, " main 
 aimein ti Viege moin, pa le gagnin dautt. I love my lit- 
 tle 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 Missid want to 
 buy me a chapelle 1 — 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 Missis . . . but — " 
 —"Tell me what it is, Cyrillia." 
 She remained silent a moment, then said : — 
 — " Missis makes photographs. . . ." 
 — " You want a photograph of yourself, Cyrillia ?" 
 — " Oh ! no, Missid, 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 am- 
 
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378 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 ateur suggested this request to Cyrillia. I could not at- 
 tempt such work successfully ; but I gave her a note to a 
 photographer of much skill ; and a few days later the por- 
 trait was sent to the house. Cyrillia's daughter was cer- 
 tainly 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 move- 
 ment ; and neither of these can be rendered by photog- 
 raphy. 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 ! Missid, you watch me; — ouguetti 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 : — 
 
 — '■'Poukiyo pa ka fai phtrai phlk — anhi . . . pisse yo ka 
 tirk y toutt samm ou: (fest ou-menm/. . . Yd doui fai y Pali 
 
 Hour 
 
 (Why do they not make a portrait talk,— tell me ? For 
 
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Ma Bonne. 379 
 
 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. Cest yon bel moiene moin fai — y bel, jolt moitne! 
 . . . 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 af- 
 fection 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-cursdd 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 un- 
 likeness 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 re- 
 appear 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 ! . . . 
 
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PA COMBINE, CHE!" 
 
 . . . 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 in- 
 tense pleasure sometimes gives, and which is felt most 
 often and most strongly in childhood, when the imagina- 
 tion 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 transfig- 
 uration 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 spir- 
 ings of gem-tinted coast from the ocean, — the iris-col- 
 ors and astounding shapes of the hills, — the unimagina- 
 ble 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 luminou% yellow fa- 
 
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" Pa combing , chi r 381 
 
 gades 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 : — "fa qui Ih 
 doudouxf . . . 
 
 How often in some passing figure does one discern an 
 ideal almost realized, and forbear to follow it with un- 
 tired 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 beau- 
 ty. .. . Even in your room everything interests you, be- 
 cause 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 
 
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382 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 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,^(//^a« 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 Vir- 
 gins 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 experi- 
 ence 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 one- 
 self 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 col- 
 ored child, tapping at your door before sunrise, — "Bon- 
 Jou', Missie," — as she brings your cup of black hot cof- 
 fee 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, tread- 
 ing quite silently with her pretty bare feet;— the pleas- 
 
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"Pa combine, chi!" 383 
 
 ant manners of the mhchanne 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 peo- 
 ple 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 gath- 
 er strange plants by the light of a lantern. Natural joy- 
 ousness, natural kindliness, heart -felt desire to please, 
 childish capacity of being delighted with trifles, — seem 
 characteristic of all this colored population. It is turn- 
 ing 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 con- 
 triving 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 
 
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384 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 extended, in a semi-poetical way, even to inanimate ob- 
 jects. 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 sin- 
 cere because unreasoning. As the flames climbed the 
 rigging, and the masts fell, the cro.wd moaned as though 
 looking upon some human tragedy ; and everywhere one 
 could hear such strange cries of pity as, ^^Fauv' mal- 
 h'ere !" (poor unfortunate), "pauv' diabe!" . . . "Toutt 
 baggdie-y pou allk, casst!" (All its things-to-go-with are 
 broken !) sobbed a girl, with tears streaming down her 
 cheeks. . . . She seemed to believe it ^as 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 col- 
 or — bewitches you more. Already the anticipated ne- 
 cessity 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 beau- 
 ty 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 
 
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"Pa combinS, chi!" 385 
 
 ruling the zones of color and of light. Within their pri- 
 meval 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 yearn- 
 ings of man first exiled from his heritage, — a dream 
 born of the great nostalgia of races migrating to people 
 thepalhd 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 sci- 
 entific knowledge extraordinary, your anticipations are 
 likely to be at fault. Perhaps you had pictured to your- 
 self the effect of perpetual summer as a physical de- 
 light, — something like an indefinite prolongation of the 
 fairest summer weather ever enjoyed at home. Proba- 
 bly you had heard of fevers, risks of acclimatization, in- 
 tense 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 pleas- 
 ant languor, — a painless disinclination to effort in a 
 country where physical effort is less needed than else- 
 where, — 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 be- 
 lieve that the intellectual powers can be stimulated and 
 strengthened by tropical influences : — you suppose that 
 enervation will reveal itself only as a beatific indolence 
 
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386 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 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 
 yon 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 mountain- 
 ings. Never, you imagine, never could one tire of wan- 
 dering 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.* Or, standing alone, in some 
 aisle of colossal palms, where humming-birds are flashing 
 
 * Rufz remarks that the first effect of this climate of the Antilles 
 is a sort of general physical excitement, an exaltation, a sense of un- 
 accustomed 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 he^tation." — 
 Etudes. 
 
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"Pa combing, chi!" 387 
 
 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, ven- 
 omous 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 con- 
 stitution bears the test even better) may resist the de- 
 bilitating climate : perhaps the stranger will flatter him- 
 self 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 be- 
 come accustomed, without losing his strength, to the 
 continuous draining of the pores, to the exhausting force 
 
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388 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 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 liv- 
 ing which served him well in a temperate climate, he 
 will not be likely to abandon them among his new sur- 
 roundings ; and they will help him, no doubt, — particu- 
 larly 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 be- 
 comes slowly conscious of changes extraordinary going 
 on within him, — in especial, a continual sensation of 
 weight in the brain, daily growing, and compelling fre- 
 quent repose ; — also a curious heightening of nervous 
 sensibility to atmospheric changes, to tastes and odors, 
 to pleasure and pain. Total loss of appetite soon teach- 
 es 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-consump- 
 tion 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 phys- 
 ical 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 be- 
 tween 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 spar- 
 ingly, — ^for, strangely enough, wine is found to be injuri- 
 ous in a country where stronger liquors are considered 
 among the prime necessaries of existence. 
 
 And he expected, at the worst, to feel laEy, to lose 
 
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"Pa combiiU, cht!" 389 
 
 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 muscu- 
 lar overstrain ; — the lightest attire feels' almost insup- 
 portable ; — the idea of sleeping even under a sheet is 
 torture, for the weight of a silken handkerchief is dis- 
 comfort. 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 diffi- 
 culty 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 forth- 
 with 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 char- 
 acters of races within a couple of generations, — chang- 
 ing the shape of the skeleton, — deepening the cavities of 
 the orbits to protect the eye from the flood of light, — trans- 
 forming 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 correspond- 
 ing loss of mental activity and strength. The whole 
 range of thought diminishes, contracts, — shrinks to that 
 narrowest of circles which surrounds the physical self, 
 the inner ring of merely material sensation : the memory 
 weakens appallingly ; — the mind operates faintly, slow- 
 ly, incoherently, — almost as in dreams. Serious reading, 
 vigorous thinking, become impossible. You doze over 
 
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390 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 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 mem- 
 ory and enchants the will. Against the set resolve to 
 think, to act, to study, there is a hostile rush of unfa- 
 miliar pain to the temples, to the eyes, to the nerve cen- 
 tres of the brain ; and a great weight is somewhere in 
 the head, always growing heavier : then comes a drowsi- 
 ness 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 morn- 
 ing 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. . . . 
 
 It might be stated, I think, with safety, that for a cer- 
 tain class of invalids the effect of the climate is like a 
 powerful stimulant, — a tonic medicine which may pro- 
 duce astonishing results within a fixed time, — but which 
 if taken beyond that time will prove dangerous. After 
 
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"Pa combini, cht!" ^91 
 
 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 men- 
 tally ; — 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 sev- 
 en o'clock dinner, every one 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 sym- 
 pathetic 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. Natu- 
 rally, 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 
 30 
 
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392 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 wait months for its coming. And this mental starvation 
 gnaws at the brain more and more as one feels less in- 
 clination 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 tropi- 
 cal Nature,— becomes more difficult to indulge. When 
 lethargy has totally mastered habit and purpose, and 
 you must at last confess yourself resigned to view Nat- 
 ure from your chamber, or at best from a carriage win- 
 dow, — 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 jnan to lift to his shoulder; — the same journey 
 on horseback would now weary you for days. You won- 
 der of what flesh and blood can these people be made, — 
 what wonderful vitality lies in those slender woman-bod- 
 ies, which, under the terrible sun, and despite their as- 
 tounding expenditure of force, remain cool to the sight 
 and touch as bodies of lizards and serpents ! And con- 
 trasting 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 hab- 
 its 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 en- 
 dured; and fevers must thin the blood, soften the mus- 
 cles, 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 fou- 
 
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"Pa combing, chi!" 393 
 
 lards, — and eat, drink, sleep, perspire. You will under* 
 stand 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 it- 
 self 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 un- 
 dreamed 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 pos- 
 session. 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 maide impenetrable by lianas and vines 
 and serpents. You will weary even of the tepid sea, be- 
 cause 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 
 
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394 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 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 sud- 
 den 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 cruci- 
 ble-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 noth- 
 ing, you find yourself in bed, — with an insupportable 
 sense of weight at the back of the head, — a pulse beat- 
 ing 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 conscious- 
 ness, 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 deli- 
 cious to die of cold ; — ^you shiver even with all the win- 
 
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"Pa combine, chi!" 395 
 
 dows 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 col- 
 ored 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 ut- 
 terly self-sacrificing these women-natures are ! Patient- 
 ly, 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, with- 
 out 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 with- 
 out 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 tim- 
 bre 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 ; — 'Csxe^ frisson 
 of delight returns ; the joy of it thrills through all your 
 
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396 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 blood, — making a great fulness at your heart as of unut- 
 terable 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 wel- 
 come, — 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 trop- 
 ics he yellows to his death. Lilac tones slowly spread 
 through sea and heaven from the west ; — mornes fac- 
 ing 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 intarchanging 
 
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'' Pa combiiu<, clti^ r 397 
 
 through vapor of gold. . . . Such the colors of the ca- 
 rafigiic, when the beautiful tropic fish is turned in the 
 light, and its gem-greens shift to ricli azure and prism- 
 purple. 
 
 Reclining in our chairs, we watched the strange splen- 
 dor from the veranda of the little cottage, — saw tlie 
 peaked land slowly steep itself in the aureate glow, — 
 the changing color of the verdured momes, 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 re- 
 mained 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-liinmo, — 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 butter- 
 fhes. 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-mag- 
 nifying splendor before us had been mesmerizing our 
 senses, — slowly overpowering our wills with the amaze- 
 ment of its beauty. Then, as the sun's disk — enor- 
 mous, — blinding gold — ^touched the lilac flood, and the 
 stupendous orange glow flamed up to the verj- zenith, 
 we feund ourselves awed at last into silence. 
 
 The orange in the west deepened into vermilion. 
 
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398 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 Softly and very swiftly night rose like an indigo exha- 
 lation 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 chir- 
 ruping of tree-frogs, and the ki-i-i-i-i-i-i of crickets. Im- 
 mense trembling sparks began to rise and fall among 
 the shadows, — twinkling out and disappearing all mys- 
 teriously : 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 proces- 
 sionally 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 re- 
 turn 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 still- 
 ness, — pleading : — 
 
 — "Pa combine^ eke!— pa comhini conm fa I" (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. Missis," 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." 
 
 II 
 
 Combini in Creole signifies to think intently, and there 
 
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"Pa combing, chk!" 399 
 
 fore to be unhappy, — because, with this artless race, as 
 with children, to think intensely about anything is pos-. 
 sible only under great stress of suffering. 
 
 — ''Fa cotnbini, — non, ch}" 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. 
 
 — ''Doudotix" 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!" . . . 
 
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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 rne 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 in- 
 evitable 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 obtain- 
 ing many curiosities of oral literature, — representing a 
 group of stories whioh, whatever their primal origin, have 
 
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r/. 401 
 
 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 nar- 
 rator 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 Y^ and the Devil. The whole story of Y^ 
 would form a large book, — so numerous the list of his 
 adventures ; and this adventure seems to me the most 
 characteristic of all. Y^ is the most curious figure in 
 Martinique folk-l(ire. 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-Bacotik, and feet like an ape, 
 and fire in his throat. Y ka sam yon goubs, goubs ma- 
 caqui, . , . 
 
 II. 
 
 f« qui pa ti connaitt VS? . . . Who is there in all Mar- 
 tinique who nevef heard of Y6 ? Everybody used to 
 know the old rascal. He had every fault under the 
 sun ■ — he was the laziest negro in the whole island ; he 
 was the biggest glutton in the whole world. He had an 
 amazing number* of children; and they were most of 
 the time all half dead for hunger. 
 
 Well, one day Y^ went out to th£ 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, — 
 
 * In the patois, "yon rafale yche" — a " whirlwind of children." 
 
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4P2 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 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 Y6 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 Y6 took a good long look at him. After Y^ 
 had watched him for a while. Yd found out that the old 
 Devil was quite blind. 
 
 The Devil had a big calabash in his hand full of ^- 
 roce, — that is to say, boiled salt codfish and manioc flour, 
 with ever so many pimentos (epi en pile pitnent), — just 
 what negroes like Y6 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 Y6 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, Y6 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 Y6 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. Y6 put out his hand to take it, — and all 
 of a sudden the Devil made a grab at Yd's hand and 
 caught it ! Y€ was so frightened he could not even cry 
 out, Aie-ydie I The Devil finished the last morsel, threw 
 down the calabash, and said to Ye in a terrible voice : — 
 "Aib, saff! — pu c'est ta main !" (I've got you now, you 
 
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Yl 
 
 403 
 
 glutton ; — you belong to me !) Then he jumped on Ye's 
 back, like a great ape, and twisted his legs round Y6'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 rigime 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 chil- 
 dren began to look at him. 
 
 But at breakfast-time, when the poor mother had man- 
 aged 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 nib .'—papa nib ! — toutt yche nib!" (Mam- 
 ma 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 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 Ye and all the family, 
 and muttered : — 
 
 — "Toutt moune UvU" (Everybody get up !) 
 
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404 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 Then they all got up. Then he pointed to all the 
 plates and dishes full of dirt, and said to them : — * 
 
 — "Gobe-moin (a!" 
 
 And they had to gobble it all up, as, he told them. 
 
 After that it was no use trying to eat anything. Ev- 
 ery 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- 
 Di6 [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 Montague Pe- 
 16e. He climbed and walked, and walked and climbed', 
 until he got at last to the top of the Morne de la Croix.t 
 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 ! — (a ou ni, YS? fa ou lef 
 
 When Ye had recounted his troubles, the Good-God 
 said : — 
 
 — "Pauv ma pauv ! I knew it all before you came, 
 Yi. 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 glut- 
 tony is going to be the ruin of you, poor Y6 ! 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 
 
 * In the orfginal: — " Y te ka monte assous tabe-li, epi y te ka fai 
 caca adans toutt plats-4, adans toutt zassiett-la." 
 
 f A peaklet rising above the verge of the ancient crater now filled 
 with water. 
 
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Y^. 405 
 
 home. Then when your wife has the children's dinner 
 ready, and you see the Devil getting up, you must cry 
 out : — ' Tarn ni pou tarn ni be !' Then the Devil will 
 drop down dead. Don't forget not to eat anything — ou 
 tanne f . . . 
 
 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-Did {i>ien convi y fauf), and started. All the 
 way he kept repeating the words the Good-God had told 
 him : "Tarn ni pou tam ni bt t — tain ni pou tarn ni bi!" — 
 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 Yd was 
 hungry! He did all he could to resist the temptation, 
 but it proved too much for him. He broke all his prom- 
 ises 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. Yd was really 
 in no condition to do anything. The moment the sup- 
 per was ready, the Devil got up from his corner as usual, 
 and approached the table. Then Yk tried to speak; 
 but his teeth were so on edge that instead of. say- 
 ing, — '■'■Tam ni pou tam ni bi," he could only stammer 
 out: — 
 
 — '■'■Anni toqui Diabe-ld, 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 
 
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4o6 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 dishes with filth, awoke Y^ and his family, and ordered 
 them as usual : — 
 
 — " Gobe-moin (a!" And they had to gobble it up, — 
 
 every bit of it. 
 
 * 
 
 The family nearly died of hunger and disgust. Twice 
 more Y6 climbed the Montagne Pelee ; twice more he 
 climbed the Morne de la Croix ; twice more he disturbed 
 the poor Bon-Di6, 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 pot 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, — * a boy called Ti Fonte (little Impu- 
 dent), who bore his name well. When he saw his moth- 
 er 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 
 Yd 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 Font6 
 saw his father getting ready to go, he ]\xm-p&A Jloup / into 
 one of the pockets and hid himself there. Yd 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 Yd's pocket, — so as to hear 
 everything the Good-God would say. 
 
 * The great field-rat of Martinique is, in Martinique folk-lore, the 
 symbol of all cunning, and probably merits its reputation. 
 
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Ye'. 
 
 407 
 
 This time he was very angry, — the Bon-Did : 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 : — "Turn ni pou tarn nibe.". . . 
 And this time the Bon-Die was not talking to no pur- 
 pose : 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 oxA^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 ton- 
 ton-banaiie, a maiite-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 : — 
 
 — ^^ Tarn ni pou tarn 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, Y6, like the old fool he was, kept trying 
 to say what the Bon-Die had told him, and could only 
 mumble : — 
 31 
 
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4o8 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 — ^^Anni toquk 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 de- 
 serve it. And they all ate and ate, and kept on eating 
 and filling themselves until Aayhieak—pauv piti / 
 
 But during this time the Devil had begun to smell 
 
 badly, and he had become swollen so big that Yd 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— _)/(? ti plein 
 
 lafhce; and Y6 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 Yi 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. 
 
 Foiling I 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 Yd, 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. 
 
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K/. 
 
 409 
 
 Yd could scarcely walk for the weight of his nose ; but 
 he had to go and see the Bon-Did again. The Bon-Did 
 said to him : — 
 
 — "Ah ! Yd, my poor Y6, yoy/ 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 ^11 the bushes well, and drive 
 all the birds to the Roche de la Caravelle. Then you 
 must tell them that I, the Bon-Did, 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 your- 
 self out of the heap of bills there." 
 
 Poor Yd 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 re- 
 finery-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. 
 
 III. 
 
 . . . Poor Yd ! — you still live for me only too vividly 
 outside of those strange folk-tales of eating and of drink- 
 ing 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 plan- 
 tation to plantation with your cutlass in your hand, watch- 
 ing for snakes as you wander to look for work, when 
 
 * 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 conin yon coulivicou, ' ' thin as a cou- 
 livicou," is a popular comparison for the appearance of anybody 
 much reduced by sickness. 
 
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410 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 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 Y6 ! — and you have still your swarm of 
 children, — yoxir 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-Di6 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. Merciless- 
 ly moral, the will of this enlightened century has abol- 
 ished 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 inno- 
 cent as a child of the law of the struggle for life. But 
 you feel that law now ; — you are a citizen of the Repub- 
 lic ! 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 ! 
 
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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 sud- 
 den 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. Al- 
 most 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 look- 
 ing-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 ? . . . 
 
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412 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 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 curi- 
 osities 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 con- 
 tinually interrupted by friends and acquaintances com- 
 ing 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 go- 
 ing to make her poukmii communion. So I kiss her, ac- 
 cording 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-passen- 
 gers. Quite a pleasing presence : slight graceful fig- 
 ure, — a face not precisely pretty, but delicate and sensi- 
 
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Lys. ■ 413 
 
 tive, with the odd charm of violet eyes under black eye- 
 brows. . . . 
 
 A friend who comes to see me off tells me all about 
 her. Madeinoiselle 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 
 end), che ; — Bon-Die kk 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 par- 
 rots ; — 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 de- 
 liver 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 
 
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414 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 as never before the beauty of that tropic Nature, and 
 the simple charm of the life to which I am bidding fare- 
 well, — 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, per- 
 haps, there may be brighter ones. . . . 
 
 . . . Nowhere on this earth, Violet- Eyes! — nowhere be- 
 neath 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 vege- 
 tal odors thick, sappy, savage-sweet ! — and the wild high 
 winds that run ruffling and crumpling through the cane 
 of the mountain slopes in storms of papery sound ! — 
 
 And the mighty dreaming of the woods, — green- 
 drenched with silent pouring of creepers, — dashed with 
 the lilac and yellow and rosy foam of liana flowers ! — 
 
 And the eternal azure apparition of the all -circling 
 sea, — that as you mount the heights ever appears to rise 
 perpendicularly behind you, — that seems, as you descend, 
 to sink and flatten before you ! — 
 
 And the violet velvet distances of evening ; — and the 
 swaying of palms against the orange-burning, — when all 
 the heaven seems filled with vapors of a molten sun ! . . . 
 
 IV. 
 
 How beautiful the mornes and azure-shadowed hol- 
 lows 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 aixd white-of- 
 
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Lys. 415 
 
 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 stat- 
 ues — the black Christ on his white cross, and the White 
 Lady of the Morne d'Orange — among upcurving 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 try- 
 ing 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, thai 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 !" . . . 
 
 ... 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 
 
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41 6 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 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 descend- 
 ing the Morne Parnasse by the steep winding road ; I 
 have the sense of windy heights behind me, and forest 
 on either hand, and before me the blended azure of sky 
 and sea with one bamboo-spray swaying across it at the 
 level of my eyes. Nor is this all ; — I have the every 
 sensation of the very moment,— the vegetal odors, the 
 mighty tropic light, the warmth, the intensity of irrepro- 
 ducible 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 anch- 
 or ; 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 try- 
 ing 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 wav- 
 ing 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 wftirl becomes 
 
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Lys. 
 
 417 
 
 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 fa- 
 cades, — 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 
 
 BASSE-TERRE, ST. KITT S. 
 
 fair palms, — and the statues of the hills, — all veer, 
 change place, and begin to float away . . . steadily, very 
 swiftly. 
 
 Farewell, fair city, — sun-kissed city, — many-fountained 
 city ! — dear yellow-glimmering streets, — white pavements 
 learned by heart, — and faces ever looked for, — and 
 voices ever loved ! Farewell, white towers with your 
 golden-throated bells! — farewell, green steeps, bathed 
 in the light of summer everlasting !— craters with your 
 coronets of forest! — bright mountain paths upwinding 
 'neath pomp of fern and angelin and feathery bamboo ! 
 — and gracious palms that drowse above the dead! 
 
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41 8 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 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 gibbosi- 
 ties 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 mount- 
 ains, — hunched and horned and mammiform : Guade- 
 loupe begins to show her double profile. But Marti- 
 nique is still visible ; — Pelde still peers high over the 
 rim of the south. . . . Day wanes; — the shadow of 
 the ship lengthens over the flower-blue water. Pelde 
 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 gra- 
 
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Lys. 419 
 
 cious 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 "Yel- 
 low 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 Pele'e ; 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. 
 
 viir. 
 
 And ever through tepid nights and azure days the 
 Guadeloupe rushes on, — her wake a river of snow be- 
 neath the sun, a torrent of fire beneath the stars, — 
 steaming straight for the North. 
 
 Under the peaking of Montserrat we steam, — beauti- 
 ful Montserrat, all softly wrinkled like a robe of green- 
 est 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. Christo- 
 pher'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 ;— 
 
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420 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 Past Santa Cniz, the '• Island of the Holv Cross,"' — 
 all radiant with verdure though wellnig^ 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 Si. Thomas on the 
 rig^t, — old Sl 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 weird- 
 ly 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 aU fleckless. save at evening. Then, with sunset 
 comes a light gold-drift of iinle featherv cloudlets into 
 the West — stippling it as with a snow of fire. 
 
 The sea . no flower-tint mav now make anv compari- 
 son 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 cyan- 
 <^n 
 
 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 lin- 
 gering 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 httle further away— 
 alwa\-s heightening, yet also more shadowy, *as if its col- 
 
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Lys. 42 1 
 
 or, recedinjj, 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 tliink, she may thank her eyes 1 
 
 X. 
 
 A DIM morning and chill ;— blank sky and sunless 
 waters : the sombre heaven of the North with colorless 
 horizon rounding ina blind grey sea. . . . What a sud- 
 den weight comes to the heart with the touch of tiie 
 cold mist, with the spectral melancholy of the dawn I — 
 and then what foolish though irrepressible yearning for 
 the vanished azure left behind 1 
 
 . . . The little monkeys twitter plaintively, trembling 
 in the chilly air. The parrots have nothini; to say : they 
 look benumbed, and sit on their perches with eyes 
 closed. 
 
 ... A vaf;ueness begins to shape itself along the verf;;e 
 of the sea, far 10 port: that long heavy clouding which 
 indicates the approach of land. And from it now floats 
 to us sonietliing 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 
 liii,u/r/oii/<,- be^nns 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 while 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 enor- 
 
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422 Martinique Sketches. 
 
 mous steamer rushes, towering like a hill — passes so 
 close that we can see faces, and disappears again, leav- 
 ing 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 sympa- 
 thy ; — 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 ; al- 
 ways 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 1 — but thine are the lightnings of Thought 
 illuminating for human eyes the interspaces between 
 sun and sun. Thine the generations of might, — the 
 striverSjthe battlers, — the men who make Nature tame ! — 
 
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Lys. 423 
 
 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 Some- 
 thing which is Self, yet also infinitely more than Self, — 
 incomprehensibly multiple, — the complex total of sensa- 
 tions, 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 va- 
 por-veiled, — the mighty perspective of New York har- 
 bor! .. . 
 
 Thou knowest it not, this gloom about us, little maid- 
 en; — 'tis only a magical dusk we are entering, — only that 
 mystic dimness in which miracles must be wrought 1 . . . 
 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 say- 
 est ? — Ay, 'tis twilight, verily, by contrast with that glory 
 out of which thou earnest, Lys— twilight only,— but the 
 Twilight of the Gods 1 . . . Adit, chh 1—Bon-Dik ki bSni 
 oul . , . 
 
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APPENDIX. 
 
 SOME CREOLE MELODIES. 
 
 More than a hundred years ago Thibault de Chanvallon expressed 
 his astonishment at the charm and wonderful sense of musical rhythm 
 characterizing the slave-songs and slave-dances of Martinique. The 
 rhythmical sense of the negroes especially impressed him. " I have 
 seen," he writes, " seven or eight hundred negroes accompanying a 
 wedding-party to the sound of song ; they would all leap up in the 
 air and come down together ; — the movement was so exact and gen- 
 eral that the noise of their fall made but a single sound." 
 
 An almost similar phenomenon may be witnessed any Carnival 
 season in St. Pierre, — while the Devil makes his nightly round, fol- 
 lowed by many hundred boys clapping hands and leaping in chorus. 
 It may also be observed in the popular malicious custom of the 
 pillard, or, in Creole, piya. Some person whom it is deemed justi- 
 fiable and safe to annoy, may suddenly find himself followed in the 
 street by a singing chorus of several hundred, all clapping hands and 
 dancing or running in perfect time, so that all the bare feet strike 
 the ground together. Or the pillard-chorus may even take up tts 
 position before the residence of the party disliked, and then proceed 
 with its performance. An example of such a pillard is given further 
 on, in the song entitled Lodma tomhd. The improvisation by a 
 single voice begins ^s pillard, — which in English might be rendered 
 as follows :— 
 
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Appendix. 425 
 
 {Single voice) You little children there! — you who were by the 
 river-side ! 
 Tell me truly this : — Did you see Loema fall ? 
 Tell me truly this — 
 {Chorus, opening) Did you see Loema fall? 
 
 {Single voice) . Tell me truly this — 
 
 {Chorus) Did you see Loema fall? 
 
 {Single voice, more rapidly) Tell me truly this — 
 {Chorus, more quickly) Lo^ma fall ! 
 
 {Single voice) Tell me truly this — 
 
 {Chorus) Loema fall! 
 
 {Single voice) Tell me truly this — 
 
 {Chorus, always more quickly, and more loudly, all the hands clap- 
 ping together like a fire of musketry) Loema fall! etc. 
 
 The same rhythmic element characterizes many of the games and 
 round dances of Martinique children; — but, as a rule, 1 think it is 
 perceptible that the sense of time is less developed in the colored 
 children than in the black. 
 
 The other melodies which are given as specimens of Martinique 
 music show less of the African element, — the nearest approach to it 
 being in Tant sirop; but all are probably creations of the mixed 
 race. Marie-CUmence is a Carnival satire composed not more than 
 four years ago. To-to-to is very old — dates back, perhaps, to the 
 time of the belles-affranchies. It is seldom sung now except by sur- 
 vivors of the old regime: the sincerity and tenderness of the emo- 
 tion that inspired it — the old sweetness of heart and simplicity of 
 thought, — are passing forever away. 
 
 To my friend, Henry Edward Krehbiel, the musical lecturer and 
 critic, — at once historian and folklorist in the study of race-music, — 
 and to Mr. Frank van der Stucken, the New York musical com- 
 poser, I owe the preparation of these four melodies for voice and 
 piano-forte. The arrangements of To-to-to and Loima tomM are 
 Mr. Van der Stucken's. 
 
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426 
 
 Appendix. 
 
 "TO-TO-TO." 
 
 (Creole words.) 
 Foeo lento. Allegretto. 
 
 To, to, to I "ga qui la?" 
 
 n^- 
 
 L— •=^2 ^p-- 
 
 ^^ 
 
 " C'est moin 
 
 ^m 
 
 
 ^ ^^^ ^f=^=nr=t^ ^^ 
 
 '^^^ 
 
 Poco lento. 
 
 ^^m 
 
 ^ 
 
 =r=ft^^ 
 
 =p 
 
 1- 
 
 menm lan-moa, Oa -v6 la - pote ba moin." To, to, to 1 
 
 ASegretto. 
 
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Appendix. 
 
 427 
 
 MARIE-CLEMENCE. 
 {Creole words.) 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 t=fc: 
 
 l ^^' Mj.j 
 
 I I»< <ifn«. 
 
 =>g= 
 
 
 i^ i^* 'J- 
 
 man-di, CoUier-clioax 11 man- dl, Toatt baggale 11 mau-dl. 
 
 fSP-^'^m^^^i^^^H 
 
 ^^a 
 
 ^^ 
 
 .T- •- 
 
 -t=:-'!>7. 
 
 I Uh 
 
 z*=*: 
 
 — ' rilard. 
 
 Toatt baggale 11 maa-dl. Alel... La-ga£inoin, laguSmom, 
 
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428 
 
 Appendix. 
 
 ^^=^ ^^^^^^^ 
 
 P^ 
 
 ■ Ia-gu6 moin I MoinkS n€-y€ cd moin, Moin k€ ti&-j6 
 
 S -=r ^=- ^ ■ 
 
 fii ail lib. 
 
 ^^^mm 
 
 ^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 :ta=^ 
 
 Pedr 
 
 r.I>-C.al^ 
 
 TANT SIROP EST DOUX. 
 
 (Negro-French.) 
 
 Allegro Hsdluto. 
 
 ^^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 ^'F^^-i^-: 
 
 Tant si - rop est doux, Ma- de - lein - e ! Tant si - rop - 1& 
 
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Appendix. 
 
 429 
 
 rsE v_, 2<*. 
 
 -j. — k ' ^ k U - 
 
 donz! donx! Ne fiii pastant de bruit, Ma- de-lelne,Ne 
 
 mist 
 
 -s. j4-^^j ^=3: 
 
 ^ a 
 
 =N=^ 
 
 Bfc 
 
 g ^" ^ n 
 
 ^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 ^^ 
 
 &i pas tant de bmit, Ma-de-leine, la. mai - son n'est pas % 
 
 , Ma - de-leine, La mai - boq n'cet pas %, nous. 
 
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430 
 
 Appendix. 
 
 LOEMA TOMBE. 
 [Creole words ^ 
 
 1^ 
 
 AUegro moderato. 
 
 B^^e*^; 
 
 ^^^ 
 
 ^^_ 
 
 ^ 
 
 -r 
 C6 ti manmaille-U ! Zaott t4 l)d - la - ri - vl6, — On'a dl moin 
 
 J 1- 
 
 5: T ^ S: ^ 
 
 H^rt 
 
 S 
 
 ^--S-i-^-S^r-p 
 
 :*=*:= 
 
 J^ 
 
 -I 1- 
 
 3^- 
 
 * r — F~ 
 
 ■^ 5t 
 
 5^= 
 
 I 
 
 £i9^. conUtmed ad lib. 
 
 =t=l= 
 
 -1 — n-=S=S=S=^s:3: 
 g — H J J J ^ 
 
 ^^Ei^^ 
 
 -r— I - 
 
 «itzT3t: 
 
 conm'^a: Si one Lo - € - ma tom-b6I On'a di moin coDm^ 9a: 
 
 growing more and more rapid. 
 
 * s s 
 
 Lo-6-ma tom-b#! On'a di moin conm* 9a: Lo-6-ma tom- 
 
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Appendix. 
 
 431 
 
 ^^^^^^E^^«?Zj_^=i^ 
 
 b§ ! Ou'a dl moln conm' fa: Lo-6-ma torn - 1>€! 
 
 THE END. 
 
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■ liiiiii^^ 
 
 mm 
 
 liiillllll 11 
 
 iiiiiiimiliihi-'ii-'i 
 
 "liiiliilif 
 
 .iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii i 
 
 Ml I I ir:i:il''i''il 
 
 1 I !!!■ 
 
 
 ilii:-!:!i , 'lillilillMi!^.. :.