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Title: Two Years in the French West Indies

Author: Lafcadio Hearn

Release Date: August, 2004  [EBook #6381]
[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
[This file was first posted on December 3, 2002]

Edition: 10

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, TWO YEARS IN THE FRENCH WEST INDIES ***




Transcribed by: Richard Farris [rf7211@hotmail.com]



TWO YEARS

IN THE 

FRENCH WEST INDIES

By LAFCADIO HEARN

AUTHOR OF "CHITA" ETC.

ILLUSTRATED





"_La façon d'être du pays est si agréable, la température si
bonne, et l'on y vit dans une liberté si honnête, que je n'aye
pas vu un seul homme, ny une seule femme, qui en soient
revenues, en qui je n'aye remarqué une grande passion d'y
retourner._"-LE PÈRE DUTERTRE (1667)



À MON CHER AMI
LEOPOLD ARNOUX
NOTAIRE À SAINT PIERRE, MARTINIQUE
_Souvenir de nos promenades,--de nos voyages,--de nos causeries,-
des sympathies échangées,--de tout le charme d'une amitié
inaltérable et inoubliable,--de tout ce qui parle à
l'âme au doux Pay des Revenants._




PREFACE


During a trip to the Lesser Antilles in the summer of 1887, the 
writer of the following pages, landing at Martinique, fell under 
the influence of that singular spell which the island has always 
exercised upon strangers, and by which it has earned its poetic 
name,--_Le Pays des Revenants_.  Even as many another before him, he 
left its charmed shores only to know himself haunted by that 
irresistible regret,--unlike any other,--which is the 
enchantment of the land upon all who wander away from it.  So he 
returned, intending to remain some months; but the bewitchment 
prevailed, and he remained two years.

Some of the literary results of that sojourn form the bulk of 
the present volume.  Several, or portions of several, papers  
have been published in HARPER'S MAGAZINE; but the majority of the 
sketches now appear in print for the first time.

The introductory paper, entitled "A Midsummer Trip to the  
Tropics," consists for the most part of notes taken upon a  
voyage of nearly three thousand miles, accomplished in less than 
two months.  During such hasty journeying it is scarcely possible 
for a writer to attempt anything more serious than a mere 
reflection of the personal experiences undergone; and, in spite 
of sundry justifiable departures from simple note-making, this 
paper is offered only as an effort to record the visual and 
emotional impressions of the moment.

My thanks are due to Mr. William Lawless, British Consul at St. 
Pierre, for several beautiful photographs, taken by himself, 
which have been used in the preparation of the illustrations.

L. H.
_Philadelphia, 1889._




CONTENTS

PART ONE--A MIDSUMMER TRIP TO THE TROPICS

PART TWO--MARTINIQUE SKETCHES:--

   I. LES PORTEUSES
  II. LA GRANDE ANSE
 III. UN REVENANT
  IV. LA GUIABLESSE
   V. LA VÉRETTE
  VI. LES BLANCHISSEUSES
 VII. LA PELÉE
VIII. 'TI CANOTIÉ
  IX. LA FILLE DE COULEUR
   X. BÊTE-NI-PIÉ
  XI. MA BONNE
 XII. "PA COMBINÉ, CHÈ"
XIII. YÉ
 XIV. LYS

  XV. APPENDIX:--SOME CREOLE MELODIES (not included in this 
  transcription)




ILLUSTRATIONS.

A Martinique Métisse (Frontispiece)
La Place Bertin, St. Pierre, Martinique
Itinerant Pastry-seller
In the Cimetière du Mouillage, St. Pierre
In the Jardin des Plantes, St. Pierre
Cascade in the Jardin des Plantes
Departure of Steamer for Fort-de-France
Statue of Josephine
Inner Basin, Bridgetown, Barbadoes
Trafalgar Square, Bridgetown, Barbadoes
Street in Georgetown, Demerara
Avenue in Georgetown, Demerara
Victoria Regia in the Canal at Georgetown
Demerara Coolie Girl
St. James Avenue, Port-of-Spain, Trinidad
Coolies of Trinidad
Coolie Servant
Coolie Merchant
Church Street, St. George, Grenada
Castries, St. Lucia
'Ti Marie
Fort-de-France, Martinique
Capre in Working Garb
A Confirmation Procession
Manner of Playing the Ka
A Wayside Shrine, or Chapelle
Rue Victor Hugo, St. Pierre
Quarter of the Fort, St. Pierre
Rivière des Blanchisseuses
Foot of La Pellé, behind the Quarter of the Fort
Village of Morne Rouge
Pellé as seen from Grande Anse
Arborescent Ferns on a Mountain Road
'Ti Canot
The Martinique Turban
The Guadeloupe Head-dress
Young Mulattress
Coolie Woman in Martinique Costume
Country Girl-pure Negro Race
Coolie Half-breed
Capresse
The Old Market-place of the Fort, St. Pierre
Bread-fruit Tree
Basse-terre, St. Kitt's





A Trip to the Tropics.





PART ONE--A MIDSUMMER TRIP TO THE TROPICS.




I.



... A long, narrow, graceful steel steamer, with two masts and an 
orange-yellow chimney,--taking on cargo at Pier 49 East River.  
Through her yawning hatchways a mountainous piling up of barrels 
is visible below;--there is much rumbling and rattling of steam-
winches, creaking of derrick-booms, groaning of pulleys as the 
freight is being lowered in.  A breezeless July morning, and a 
dead heat,--87° already.

The saloon-deck gives one suggestion of past and of coming 
voyages.  Under the white awnings long lounge-chairs sprawl here 
and there,--each with an occupant, smoking in silence, or dozing 
with head drooping to one side.  A young man, awaking as I pass 
to my cabin, turns upon me a pair of peculiarly luminous black 
eyes,--creole eyes.  Evidently a West Indian....

The morning is still gray, but the sun is dissolving the haze.  
Gradually the gray vanishes, and a beautiful, pale, vapory blue--
a spiritualized Northern blue--colors water and sky.  A cannon-
shot suddenly shakes the heavy air: it is our farewell to the 
American shore;--we move.  Back floats the wharf, and becomes 
vapory with a bluish tinge.  Diaphanous mists seem to have caught 
the sky color; and even the great red storehouses take a faint 
blue tint as they recede.  The horizon now has a greenish glow, 
Everywhere else the effect is that of looking through very light-
blue glasses....

We steam under the colossal span of the mighty bridge; then for 
a little while Liberty towers above our passing,--seeming first 
to turn towards us, then to turn away from us, the solemn beauty 
of her passionless face of bronze. Tints brighten;--the heaven is 
growing a little bluer, A breeze springs up....

Then the water takes on another hue: pale-green lights play 
through it, It has begun to sound, Little waves lift up their 
heads as though to look at us,--patting the flanks of the vessel, 
and whispering to one another.

Far off the surface begins to show quick white flashes here and 
there, and the steamer begins to swing.... We are nearing 
Atlantic waters, The sun is high up now, almost overhead: there 
are a few thin clouds in the tender-colored sky,--flossy, long-
drawn-out, white things.  The horizon has lost its greenish glow: 
it is a spectral blue.  Masts, spars, rigging,--the white boats 
and the orange chimney,--the bright deck-lines, and the snowy 
rail,--cut against the colored light in almost dazzling relief.  
Though the sun shines hot the wind is cold: its strong irregular 
blowing fans one into drowsiness. Also the somnolent chant of the 
engines--_do-do, hey! do-do, hey!_--lulls to sleep.

..Towards evening the glaucous sea-tint vanishes,--the water 
becomes blue.  It is full of great flashes, as of seams opening 
and reclosing over a white surface.  It spits spray in a 
ceaseless drizzle.  Sometimes it reaches up and slaps the side of 
the steamer with a sound as of a great naked hand, The wind waxes 
boisterous.  Swinging ends of cordage crack like whips.  There 
is an immense humming that drowns speech,--a humming made up of 
many sounds: whining of pulleys, whistling of riggings, flapping 
and fluttering of canvas, roar of nettings in the wind.  And this 
sonorous medley, ever growing louder, has rhythm,--a _crescendo_ 
and _diminuendo_ timed by the steamer's regular swinging: like a 
great Voice crying out, "Whoh-oh-oh! whoh-oh-oh!"  We are nearing 
the life-centres of winds and currents.  One can hardly walk on 
deck against the ever-increasing breath;--yet now the whole world 
is blue,--not the least cloud is visible; and the perfect 
transparency and voidness about us make the immense power of this 
invisible medium seem something ghostly and awful.... The log, at 
every revolution, whines exactly like a little puppy;--one can 
hear it through all the roar fully forty feet away.

...It is nearly sunset.  Across the whole circle of the Day we 
have been steaming south.  Now the horizon is gold green.  All 
about the falling sun, this gold-green light takes vast 
expansion.  ... Right on the edge of the sea is a tall, gracious 
ship, sailing sunsetward.  Catching the vapory fire, she seems to 
become a phantom,--a ship of gold mist: all her spars and sails 
are luminous, and look like things seen in dreams.

Crimsoning more and more, the sun drops to the sea.  The phantom 
ship approaches him,--touches the curve of his glowing face, 
sails right athwart it!  Oh, the spectral splendor of that 
vision!  The whole great ship in full sail instantly makes an 
acute silhouette against the monstrous disk,--rests there in the 
very middle of the vermilion sun.  His face crimsons high above 
her top-masts,--broadens far beyond helm and bowsprit.  Against 
this weird magnificence, her whole shape changes color: hull, 
masts, and sails turn black--a greenish black.

Sun and ship vanish together in another minute.  Violet the 
night comes; and the rigging of the foremast cuts  a cross upon 
the face of the moon.



II.


Morning: the second day.  The sea is an extraordinary blue,--
looks to me something like violet ink. Close by the ship, where 
the foam-clouds are, it is beautifully mottled,--looks like blue 
marble with exquisite veinings and nebulosities.... Tepid wind, 
and cottony white clouds,--cirri climbing up over the edge of the 
sea all around.  The sky is still pale blue, and the horizon is 
full of a whitish haze.

... A nice old French gentleman from Guadeloupe presumes to say 
this is not blue water--he declares it greenish (_verdâtre_).  
Because I cannot discern the green, he tells me I do not yet know 
what blue water is.  _Attendez un peu!_...

... The sky-tone deepens as the sun ascends,--deepens 
deliciously.  The warm wind proves soporific.  I drop asleep with 
the blue light in my face,--the strong bright blue of the noonday 
sky.  As I doze it seems to burn like a cold fire right through 
my eyelids.  Waking up with a start, I fancy that everything is 
turning blue,--myself included.  "Do you not call this the real 
tropical  blue?"  I cry to my French fellow-traveller.  _"Mon 
Dieu! non_," he exclaims, as in astonishment at the question;--
"this is not blue !" ...What can be _his_ idea of blue, I wonder!

Clots of sargasso float by,--light-yellow sea-weed.  We are 
nearing the Sargasso-sea,--entering the path of the trade-winds.  
There is a long ground-swell, the steamer rocks and rolls, and 
the tumbling water always seems to me growing bluer; but my 
friend from Guadeloupe says that this color "which I call blue" 
is only darkness--only the shadow of prodigious depth.

Nothing now but blue sky and what I persist in calling blue sea.  
The clouds have melted away in the bright glow.  There is no sign 
of life in the azure gulf above, nor in the abyss beneath--there 
are no wings or fins to be seen.  Towards evening, under the 
slanting gold light, the color of the sea deepens into 
ultramarine; then the sun sinks down behind a bank of copper-
colored cloud.



III.


Morning of the third day.  Same mild, warm wind. Bright blue 
sky, with some very thin clouds in the horizon,--like puffs of 
steam.  The glow of the, sea-light through the open ports of my 
cabin makes them seem filled with thick blue glass....  It is 
becoming too warm for New York clothing....

Certainly the sea has become much bluer. It gives one the idea 
of liquefied sky: the foam might be formed of cirrus clouds 
compressed,--so extravagantly white it looks to-day, like snow in 
the sun. Nevertheless, the old gentleman from Guadeloupe still 
maintains this is not the true blue of the tropics 

... The sky does not deepen its hue to-day: it brightens it--
the blue glows as if it were taking fire throughout.  Perhaps the 
sea may deepen its hue;--I do not believe it can take more 
luminous color without being set aflame....  I ask the ship's 
doctor whether it is really true that the West Indian waters are 
any bluer than these. He looks a moment at the sea, and replies, 
"_Oh_ yes!" There is such a tone of surprise in his "oh" as might 
indicate that I had asked a very foolish question; and his look 
seems to express doubt whether I am quite in earnest....  I 
think, nevertheless, that this water is  extravagantly, 
nonsensically blue!

... I read for an hour or two; fall asleep in the chair; wake up 
suddenly; look at the sea,--and cry out!  This sea is impossibly 
blue!  The painter who should try to paint it would be denounced 
as a lunatic....  Yet it is transparent; the foam-clouds, as they 
sink down, turn sky-blue,--a sky-blue which now looks white by 
contrast with the strange and violent splendor of the sea color. 
It seems as if one were looking into an immeasurable dyeing vat, 
or as though the whole ocean had been thickened with indigo. To 
say this is a mere reflection of the sky is nonsense!--the sky is 
too pale by a hundred shades for that!  This must be the natural 
color of the water,--a blazing azure,--magnificent, impossible to 
describe.

The French passenger from Guadeloupe observes that the sea is 
"beginning to become blue."



IV.


And the fourth day. One awakens unspeakably lazy;--this must be 
the West Indian languor.  Same sky, with a few more bright clouds 
than yesterday;--always the warm wind blowing.  There is a long 
swell.  Under this trade-breeze, warm like a human breath, the 
ocean seems to pulse,--to rise and fall as with a vast 
inspiration and expiration. Alternately its blue circle lifts and 
falls before us and behind us--we rise very high; we sink very 
low,--but always with a slow long motion. Nevertheless, the water 
looks smooth, perfectly smooth; the billowings which lift us 
cannot be seen;--it is because the summits of these swells are 
mile-broad,--too broad to be discerned from the level of our 
deck.

... Ten A.M.--Under the sun the sea is a flaming, dazzling 
lazulite. My French friend from Guadeloupe kindly confesses this 
is _almost_ the color of tropical water....  Weeds floating by, a 
little below the surface, are azured. But the Guadeloupe 
gentleman says he has seen water still more blue. I am sorry,--I 
cannot believe him.

Mid-day.--The splendor of the sky is weird!  No clouds above--
only blue fire!  Up from the warm deep color of the sea-circle 
the edge of the heaven glows as if bathed in greenish flame.  The 
swaying circle of the resplendent sea seems to flash its jewel-
color to the zenith. Clothing feels now almost too heavy to 
endure; and the warm wind brings a languor with it as of 
temptation.... One feels an irresistible desire to drowse on deck 
--the rushing speech of waves, the long rocking of the ship, the 
lukewarm caress of the wind, urge to slumber--but the light is 
too vast to permit of sleep.  Its blue power compels wakefulness.  
And the brain is wearied at last by this duplicated azure 
splendor of sky and sea.  How gratefully comes the evening to 
us,--with its violet glooms and promises of coolness!

All this sensuous blending of warmth and force in winds and 
waters more and more suggests an idea of the spiritualism of 
elements,--a sense of world-life.  In all these soft sleepy 
swayings, these caresses of wind and sobbing of waters, Nature 
seems to confess some passional mood.  Passengers converse of 
pleasant tempting things,--tropical fruits, tropical beverages, 
tropical mountain-breezes, tropical women It is a time for 
dreams--those day-dreams that come gently as a mist, with 
ghostly realization of hopes, desires, ambitions....  Men sailing 
to the mines of Guiana dream of gold.

The wind seems to grow continually warmer; the spray feels warm 
like blood.  Awnings have to be clewed up, and wind-sails taken 
in;--still, there are no white-caps,--only the enormous swells, 
too broad to see, as the ocean falls and rises like a dreamer's 
breast.... 

The sunset comes with a great burning yellow glow, fading up through 
faint greens to lose itself in violet light;--there is no gloaming.  
The days have already become shorter....  Through the open ports, as 
we lie down to sleep, comes a great whispering,--the whispering of the 
seas: sounds as of articulate speech under the breath,--as, of women 
telling secrets....



V.


Fifth day out.  Trade-winds from the south-east; a huge tumbling 
of mountain-purple waves;--the steamer careens under a full 
spread of canvas.  There is a sense of spring in the wind to-
day,--something that makes one think of the bourgeoning of 
Northern woods, when naked trees first cover themselves with a 
mist of tender green,--something that recalls the first bird-
songs, the first climbings of sap to sun, and gives a sense of 
vital plenitude.

... Evening fills the west with aureate woolly clouds,--the 
wool of the Fleece of Gold.  Then Hesperus beams like another 
moon, and the stars burn very brightly. Still the ship bends 
under the even pressure of the warm wind in her sails; and her 
wake becomes a trail of fire.  Large sparks dash up through it 
continuously, like an effervescence of flame;--and queer broad 
clouds of pale fire swirl by.  Far out, where the water is black 
as pitch, there are no lights: it seems as if the steamer were 
only grinding out sparks with her keel, striking fire with her 
propeller.



VI.


Sixth day out.  Wind tepid and still stronger, but sky very 
clear.  An indigo sea, with beautiful white-caps.  The ocean color 
is deepening: it is very rich now, but I think less wonderful 
than before;--it is an opulent pansy hue.  Close by the ship it 
looks black-blue,--the color that bewitches in certain Celtic 
eyes.

There is a feverishness in the air;--the heat is growing heavy; 
the least exertion provokes perspiration; below-decks the air is 
like the air of an oven.  Above-deck, however, the effect of all 
this light and heat is not altogether disagreeable;-one feels 
that vast elemental powers are near at hand, and that the blood 
is already aware of their approach.

All day the pure sky, the deepening of sea-color, the lukewarm 
wind.  Then comes a superb sunset!  There is a painting in the 
west wrought of cloud-colors,--a dream of high carmine cliffs and 
rocks outlying in a green sea, which lashes their bases with a 
foam of gold....

Even after dark the touch of the wind has the warmth of flesh.  
There is no moon; the sea-circle is black as Acheron; and our 
phosphor wake reappears quivering across it,--seeming to reach 
back to the very horizon.  It is brighter to-night,--looks like 
another _Via Lactea_,--with points breaking through it like stars 
in a nebula.  From our prow ripples rimmed with fire keep fleeing 
away to right and left into the night,--brightening as they run, 
then vanishing suddenly as if they had passed over a precipice.  
Crests of swells seem to burst into showers of sparks, and great 
patches of spume catch flame, smoulder through, and disappear.... 
The Southern Cross is visible,--sloping backward and sidewise, as 
if propped against the vault of the sky: it is not readily 
discovered by the unfamiliarized eye; it is only after it has 
been well pointed out to you that you discern its position.  Then 
you find it is only the _suggestion_ of a cross--four stars set 
almost quadrangularly, some brighter than others.  

For two days there has been little conversation on board.  It 
may be due in part to the somnolent influence of the warm wind,--
in part to the ceaseless booming of waters and roar of rigging, 
which drown men's voices; but I fancy it is much more due to the 
impressions of space and depth and vastness,--the impressions of 
sea and sky, which compel something akin to awe.



VII.


Morning over the Caribbean Sea,--a calm, extremely dark-blue sea.  
There are lands in sight,--high lands, with sharp, peaked, 
unfamiliar outlines.

We passed other lands in the darkness: they no doubt resembled 
the shapes towering up around us now; for these are evidently 
volcanic creations,--jagged, coned, truncated, eccentric.  Far 
off they first looked a very pale gray; now, as the light 
increases, they change hue a little,--showing misty greens and 
smoky blues.  They rise very sharply from the sea to great 
heights,--the highest point always with a cloud upon it;--they 
thrust out singular long spurs, push up mountain shapes that have 
an odd scooped-out look.  Some, extremely far away, seem, as they 
catch the sun, to be made of gold vapor; others have a madderish 
tone: these are colors of cloud. The closer we approach them, the 
more do tints of green make themselves visible.  Purplish or 
bluish masses of coast slowly develop green surfaces; folds and 
wrinkles of land turn brightly verdant.  Still, the color gleams 
as  through a thin fog.

... The first tropical visitor has just boarded our ship: a 
wonderful fly, shaped like a common fly, but at least five times 
larger.  His body is a beautiful shining black; his wings seem 
ribbed and jointed with silver, his head is jewel-green, with 
exquisitely cut emeralds for eyes.

Islands pass and disappear behind us.  The sun has now risen 
well; the sky is a rich blue, and the tardy moon still hangs in 
it.  Lilac tones show through the water.  In the south there are 
a few straggling small white clouds,--like a long flight of 
birds.  A great gray mountain shape looms up before us.  We are 
steaming on Santa Cruz.

The island has a true volcanic outline, sharp and high: the 
cliffs sheer down almost perpendicularly.  The shape is still 
vapory, varying in coloring from purplish to bright gray; but 
wherever peaks and spurs fully catch the sun they edge themselves 
with a beautiful green glow, while interlying ravines seem filled 
with foggy blue.

As we approach, sun lighted surfaces come out still more 
luminously green.  Glens and sheltered valleys still hold blues 
and grays; but points fairly illuminated by the solar glow show 
just such a fiery green as burns in the plumage of certain 
humming-birds.  And just as the lustrous colors of these birds 
shift according to changes of light, so the island shifts colors 
here and there,--from emerald to blue, and blue to gray....  But 
now we are near: it shows us a lovely heaping of high bright 
hills in front,--with a further coast-line very low and long and 
verdant, fringed with a white beach, and tufted with spidery 
palm-crests.  Immediately opposite, other palms are poised; their 
trunks look like pillars of unpolished silver, their leaves 
shimmer like bronze.

... The water of the harbor is transparent and pale green.  One 
can see many fish, and some small sharks. White butterflies are 
fluttering about us in the blue air.  Naked black boys are bathing 
on the beach;--they swim well, but will not venture out far 
because of the sharks.  A boat puts off to bring colored girls on 
board.  They are tall, and not uncomely, although very dark;--
they coax us, with all sorts of endearing words, to purchase bay 
rum, fruits, Florida water....  We go ashore in boats. The water 
of the harbor has a slightly fetid odor.



VIII.


Viewed from the bay, under the green shadow of the hills 
overlooking it, Frederiksted has the appearance of a beautiful 
Spanish town, with its Romanesque piazzas, churches, many arched 
buildings peeping through breaks in a line of mahogany, bread-
fruit, mango, tamarind, and palm trees,--an irregular mass of at 
least fifty different tints, from a fiery emerald to a sombre 
bluish-green. But on entering the streets the illusion of beauty 
passes: you find yourself in a crumbling, decaying town, with 
buildings only two stories high.  The lower part, of arched 
Spanish design, is usually of lava rock or of brick, painted a 
light, warm yellow; the upper stories are most commonly left 
unpainted, and are rudely constructed of light timber.  There are 
many heavy arcades and courts opening on the streets with large 
archways.  Lava blocks have been used in paving as well as in 
building; and more than one of the narrow streets, as it slopes 
up the hill through the great light, is seen to cut its way 
through craggy masses of volcanic stone.

But all the buildings look dilapidated; the stucco and paint is 
falling or peeling everywhere; there are fissures in the walls, 
crumbling façades, tumbling roofs.  The first stories, built with 
solidity worthy of an earthquake region, seem extravagantly heavy 
by contrast with the frail wooden superstructures.  One reason 
may be that the city was burned and sacked during a negro revolt 
in 1878;--the Spanish basements resisted the fire well, and it 
was found necessary to rebuild only the second stories of the 
buildings; but the work was done cheaply and flimsily, not 
massively and enduringly, as by the first colonial builders.

There is great wealth of verdure.  Cabbage and cocoa palms 
overlook all the streets, bending above almost every structure, 
whether hut or public building;--everywhere you see the splitted 
green of banana leaves. In the court-yards you may occasionally 
catch sight of some splendid palm with silver-gray stem so barred 
as to look jointed, like the body of an annelid. 

In the market-place--a broad paved square, crossed by two rows of 
tamarind-trees, and bounded on one side by a Spanish piazza--you 
can study a spectacle of savage picturesqueness.  There are no 
benches, no stalls, no booths; the dealers stand, sit, or squat upon 
the ground under the sun, or upon the steps of the neighboring 
arcade.  Their wares are piled up at their feet, for the most 
part.  Some few have little tables, but as a rule the eatables 
are simply laid on the dusty ground or heaped upon the steps of 
the piazza--reddish-yellow mangoes, that look like great apples 
squeezed out of shape, bunches of bananas, pyramids of bright-
green cocoanuts, immense golden-green oranges, and various other 
fruits and vegetables totally unfamiliar to Northern eyes.... It 
is no use to ask questions--the black dealers speak no dialect 
comprehensible outside of the Antilles: it is a negro-English 
that sounds like some African tongue,--a rolling current of 
vowels and consonants, pouring so rapidly that the inexperienced 
ear cannot detach one intelligible word, A friendly white coming 
up enabled me to learn one phrase: "Massa, youwancocknerfoobuy?" 
(Master, do you want to buy a cocoanut?)

The market is quite crowded,--full of bright color under the 
tremendous noon light.  Buyers and dealers are generally black;
--very few yellow or brown people are visible in the gathering.  
The greater number present are women; they are very simply, 
almost savagely, garbed--only a skirt or petticoat, over which 
is worn a sort of calico short dress, which scarcely descends two 
inches below the hips, and is confined about the waist with a 
belt or a string.  The skirt bells out like the skirt of a 
dancer, leaving the feet and bare legs well exposed; and the head 
is covered with a white handkerchief, twisted so as to look like 
a turban.  Multitudes of these barelegged black women are walking 
past us,--carrying bundles or baskets upon their heads, and 
smoking very long cigars.

They are generally short and thick-set, and walk with surprising 
erectness, and with long, firm steps, carrying the bosom well 
forward.  Their limbs are strong  and finely rounded.  Whether 
walking or standing, their poise is admirable,--might be called 
graceful, were it not for the absence of real grace of form in 
such compact, powerful little figures.  All wear brightly colored 
cottonade stuffs, and the general effect of the costume in a 
large gathering is very agreeable, the dominant hues being pink, 
white, and blue.  Half the women are smoking. All chatter loudly, 
speaking their English jargon with a pitch of voice totally 
unlike the English timbre: it sometimes sounds as if they were 
trying to pronounce English rapidly according to French 
pronunciation and pitch of voice.

These green oranges have a delicious scent and amazing 
juiciness.  Peeling one of them is sufficient to perfume the skin 
of the hands for the rest of the day, however often one may use 
soap and water....  We smoke Porto Rico cigars, and drink West 
Indian lemonades, strongly flavored with rum.  The tobacco has a 
rich, sweet taste; the rum is velvety, sugary, with a pleasant, 
soothing effect: both have a rich aroma.  There is a wholesome 
originality about the flavor of these products, a uniqueness 
which certifies to their naif purity: something as opulent and 
frank as the juices and odors of tropical fruits and flowers.

The streets leading from the plaza glare violently in the strong 
sunlight;--the ground, almost dead-white, dazzles the eyes....  
There are few comely faces visible,--in the streets all are black 
who pass.  But through open shop-doors one occasionally catches 
glimpses of a pretty quadroon face,--with immense black eyes,--a 
face yellow like a ripe banana.

... It is now after mid-day.  Looking up to the hills, or along 
sloping streets towards the shore, wonderful variations of 
foliage-color meet the eye: gold-greens, sap-greens, bluish and 
metallic greens of many tints, reddish-greens, yellowish-greens.  
The cane-fields are broad sheets of beautiful gold-green; and 
nearly as bright are the masses of _pomme-cannelle_ frondescence, 
the groves of lemon and orange; while tamarind and mahoganies are 
heavily sombre. Everywhere palm-crests soar above the wood-lines, 
and tremble with a metallic shimmering in the blue light. Up 
through a ponderous thickness of tamarind rises the spire of the 
church; a skeleton of open stone-work, without glasses or 
lattices or shutters of any sort for its naked apertures: it is 
all open to the winds of heaven; it seems to be gasping with all 
its granite mouths for breath--panting in this azure heat.  In 
the bay the water looks greener than ever: it is so clear that 
the light passes under every boat and ship to the very bottom; 
the vessels only cast very thin green shadows,--so transparent 
that fish can be distinctly seen passing through from sunlight to 
sunlight.

The sunset offers a splendid spectacle of pure color; there is 
only an immense yellow glow in the west,--a lemon-colored blaze; 
but when it melts into the blue there is an exquisite green 
light....  We leave to-morrow.

... Morning: the green hills are looming in a bluish vapor: the 
long faint-yellow slope of beach to the left of the town, under 
the mangoes and tamarinds, is already thronged with bathers,--all 
men or boys, and all naked: black, brown, yellow, and white.  The 
white bathers are Danish soldiers from the barracks; the Northern 
brightness of their skins forms an almost startling contrast with 
the deep colors of the nature about them, and with the dark 
complexions of the natives.  Some very slender, graceful brown 
lads are bathing with them,--lightly built as deer: these are 
probably creoles.  Some of the black bathers are clumsy-looking, 
and have astonishingly long legs....  Then little boys come down, 
leading horses;--they strip, leap naked on the animals' backs, 
and ride into the sea,--yelling, screaming, splashing, in the 
morning light.  Some are a fine brown color, like old bronze. 
Nothing could-be more statuesque than the unconscious attitudes 
of these bronze bodies in leaping, wrestling, running, pitching 
shells.  Their simple grace is in admirable harmony with that of 
Nature's green creations about them,--rhymes faultlessly with the 
perfect self-balance of the palms that poise along the shore....

Boom! and a thunder-rolling of echoes.  We move slowly out of 
the harbor, then swiftly towards the southeast.... The island 
seems to turn slowly half round; then to retreat from us.  Across 
our way appears a long band of green light, reaching over the sea 
like a thin protraction of color from the extended spur of 
verdure in which the western end of the island terminates.  That 
is a sunken reef, and a dangerous one.  Lying high upon it, in 
very sharp relief against the blue light, is a wrecked vessel on 
her beam-ends,--the carcass of a brig.  Her decks have been 
broken in; the roofs of her cabins are gone; her masts are 
splintered off short; her empty hold yawns naked to the sun; all 
her upper parts have taken a yellowish-white color,--the color of 
sun-bleached bone.

Behind us the mountains still float back.  Their shining green 
has changed to a less vivid hue; they are taking bluish tones 
here and there; but their outlines are still sharp, and along 
their high soft slopes there are white specklings, which are 
villages and towns.  These white specks diminish swiftly,--
dwindle to the dimensions of salt-grains,--finally vanish.  Then 
the island grows uniformly bluish; it becomes cloudy, vague as a 
dream of mountains;--it turns at last gray as smoke, and then 
melts into the horizon-light like a mirage.

Another yellow sunset, made weird by extraordinary black, dense, 
fantastic shapes of cloud.  Night darkens, , and again the 
Southern Cross glimmers before our prow, and the two Milky Ways 
reveal themselves,--that of the Cosmos and that ghostlier one 
which stretches over the black deep behind us.  This alternately 
broadens and narrows at regular intervals, concomitantly with the  
rhythmical swing of the steamer, Before us the bows spout: fire; 
behind us there is a flaming and roaring as of  Phlegethon; and 
the voices of wind and sea become so loud that we cannot talk to 
one another,--cannot make our words heard even by shouting.



IX.


Early morning: the eighth day.  Moored in another blue harbor,--
a great semicircular basin, bounded by a high billowing of hills 
all green from the fringe of yellow beach up to their loftiest 
clouded summit.  The land has that up-tossed look which tells a 
volcanic origin. There are curiously scalloped heights, which, 
though emerald from base to crest, still retain all the 
physiognomy of volcanoes: their ribbed sides must be lava under 
that verdure.  Out of sight westward--in successions of bright 
green, pale green, bluish-green, and vapory gray-stretches a long 
chain of crater shapes.  Truncated, jagged, or rounded, all these 
elevations are interunited by their curving hollows of land or by 
filaments--very low valleys.  And as they grade away in varying 
color through distance, these hill-chains take a curious 
segmented, jointed appearance, like insect forms, enormous ant-
bodies.... This is St. Kitt's. 

We row ashore over a tossing dark-blue water, and leaving the long 
wharf, pass under a great arch and over a sort of bridge into the 
town of Basse-Terre, through a concourse of brown and black people.

It is very tropical-looking; but more sombre than Frederiksted.  
There are palms everywhere,--cocoa, fan, and cabbage palms; many 
bread-fruit trees, tamarinds, bananas, Indian fig-trees, mangoes, 
and unfamiliar things the negroes call by incomprehensible 
names,--"sap-saps," "dhool-dhools."  But there is less color, less 
reflection of light than in Santa Cruz; there is less quaintness; 
no Spanish buildings, no canary-colored arcades. All the narrow 
streets are gray or neutral-tinted; the ground has a dark ashen 
tone.  Most of the dwellings are timber, resting on brick props, 
or elevated upon blocks of lava rock.  It seems almost as if some 
breath from the enormous and always clouded mountain overlooking 
the town had begrimed everything, darkening even the colors of 
vegetation.

The population is not picturesque.  The costumes are 
commonplace; the tints of the women's attire are dull. Browns and 
sombre blues and grays are commoner than pinks, yellows, and 
violets.  Occasionally you observe a fine half-breed type--some 
tall brown girl walking by with a swaying grace like that of a 
sloop at sea;--but such spectacles are not frequent.  Most of 
those you meet are black or a blackish brown.  Many stores are 
kept by yellow men with intensely black hair and eyes,--men who 
do not smile.  These are Portuguese.  There are some few fine 
buildings; but the most pleasing sight the little town can offer 
the visitor is the pretty Botanical Garden, with its banyans and 
its palms, its monstrous lilies and extraordinary fruit-trees, 
and its beautiful little mountains.  From some of these trees a 
peculiar tillandsia streams down, much like our Spanish moss,--but 
it is black!

... As we move away southwardly, the receding outlines of the 
island look more and more volcanic.  A chain of hills and cones, 
all very green, and connected by strips of valley-land so low 
that the edge of the sea-circle on the other side of the island 
can be seen through the gaps. We steam past truncated hills, past 
heights that have the look of the stumps of peaks cut half down,
--ancient fire-mouths choked by tropical verdure.

Southward, above and beyond the deep-green chain, tower other 
volcanic forms,--very far away, and so pale-gray as to seem like 
clouds.  Those are the heights of Nevis,--another creation of the 
subterranean fires.

It draws nearer, floats steadily into definition: a great 
mountain flanked by two small ones; three summits; the loftiest, 
with clouds packed high upon it, still seems to smoke;--the 
second highest displays the most symmetrical crater-form I have 
yet seen.  All are still grayish-blue or gray.  Gradually through 
the blues break long high gleams of green.

As we steam closer, the island becomes all verdant from flood to 
sky; the great dead crater shows its immense wreath of perennial 
green.  On the lower slopes little  settlements are sprinkled in 
white, red, and brown: houses, windmills, sugar-factories, high 
chimneys are distinguishable;--cane-plantations unfold gold-
green surfaces.

We pass away.  The island does not seem to sink behind us, but 
to become a ghost.  All its outlines grow shadowy.  For a little 
while it continues green;--but it is a hazy, spectral green, as 
of colored vapor.  The sea today looks almost black: the south-
west wind has filled the day with luminous mist; and the phantom 
of Nevis melts in the vast glow, dissolves utterly.... Once more 
we are out of sight of land,--in the centre of a blue-black 
circle of sea.  The water-line cuts blackly against the immense 
light of the horizon,--a huge white glory that flames up very 
high before it fades and melts into the eternal blue.



X.


Then a high white shape like a cloud appears before us,--on the 
purplish-dark edge of the sea.  The cloud-shape enlarges, 
heightens without changing contour.  It is not a cloud, but an 
island!  Its outlines begin to sharpen,--with faintest pencillings 
of color.  Shadowy valleys appear, spectral hollows, phantom 
slopes of pallid blue or green.  The apparition is so like a 
mirage that it is difficult to persuade oneself one is looking at 
real land,--that it is not a dream.  It seems to have 
shaped itself all suddenly out of the glowing haze. We pass many 
miles beyond it; and it vanishes into mist again.

... Another and a larger ghost; but we steam straight upon it 
until it materializes,--Montserrat.  It bears a family likeness 
to the islands we have already passed--one dominant height, with 
massing of bright crater shapes about it, and ranges of green 
hills linked together by low valleys.  About its highest summit 
also hovers a flock of clouds.  At the foot of the vast hill 
nestles the little white and red town of Plymouth.  The single 
salute of our gun is answered by a stupendous broadside of 
echoes.

Plymouth is more than half hidden in the rich foliage that 
fringes the wonderfully wrinkled green of the hills at their 
base;--it has a curtain of palms before it. Approaching, you 
discern only one or two façades above the sea-wall, and the long 
wharf projecting through an opening ing in the masonry, over 
which young palms stand thick as canes on a sugar plantation.  
But on reaching the street that descends towards the heavily 
bowldered shore you find yourself in a delightfully drowsy little 
burgh,--a miniature tropical town,--with very narrow paved ways,
--steep, irregular, full of odd curves and angles,--and likewise 
of tiny courts everywhere sending up jets of palm-plumes, or 
displaying above their stone enclosures great candelabra-shapes 
of cacti.  All is old-fashioned and quiet and queer and small.  
Even the palms are diminutive,--slim and delicate; there is a 
something in their poise and slenderness like the charm of young 
girls who have not yet ceased to be children, though soon to 
become women....

There is a glorious sunset,--a fervid orange splendor, shading 
starward into delicate roses and greens.  Then black boatmen come 
astern and quarrel furiously for the privilege of carrying one 
passenger ashore; and as they scream and gesticulate, half naked, 
their silhouettes against the sunset seem forms of great black apes.

... Under steam and sail we are making south again, with a warm 
wind blowing south-east,--a wind very moist, very powerful, and 
soporific.  Facing it, one feels almost cool; but the moment one 
is sheltered from it profuse perspiration bursts out.  The ship 
rocks over immense swells; night falls very black; and there are 
surprising displays of phosphorescence.



XI.


... Morning.  A gold sunrise over an indigo sea. The wind is a 
great warm caress; the sky a spotless blue. We are steaming on 
Dominica,--the loftiest of the lesser Antilles.  While the 
silhouette is yet all violet in distance nothing more solemnly 
beautiful can well be imagined: a vast cathedral shape, whose 
spires are mountain peaks, towering in the horizon, sheer up from 
the sea.

We stay at Roseau only long enough to land the mails, and wonder 
at the loveliness of the island.  A beautifully wrinkled mass of 
green and blue and gray;--a strangely abrupt peaking and heaping 
of the land.  Behind the green heights loom the blues; behind 
these the grays--all pinnacled against the sky-glow-thrusting up 
through gaps or behind promontories.  Indescribably exquisite the 
foldings and hollowings of the emerald coast.  In glen and vale 
the color of cane-fields shines like a pooling of fluid bronze, 
as if the luminous essence of the hill tints had been dripping 
down and clarifying there.  Far to our left, a bright green spur 
pierces into the now turquoise sea; and beyond it, a beautiful 
mountain form, blue and curved like a hip, slopes seaward, 
showing lighted wrinkles here and there, of green.  And from the 
foreground, against the blue of the softly outlined shape, cocoa-
palms are curving,--all sharp and shining in the sun.

... Another hour; and Martinique looms before us. At first it 
appears all gray, a vapory gray; then it becomes bluish-gray; 
then all green.

It is another of the beautiful volcanic family: it owns the same 
hill shapes with which we have already become acquainted; its 
uppermost height is hooded with the familiar cloud; we see the 
same gold-yellow plains, the same wonderful varieties of 
verdancy, the same long green spurs reaching out into the sea,--
doubtless formed by old lava torrents.  But all this is now 
repeated for us more imposingly, more grandiosely;--it is wrought 
upon a larger scale than anything we have yet seen.  The 
semicircular sweep of the harbor, dominated by the eternally 
veiled summit of the Montagne Pelee (misnamed, since it is green 
to the very clouds), from which the land slopes down on either 
hand to the sea by gigantic undulations, is one of the fairest 
sights that human eye can gaze upon.  Thus viewed, the whole 
island shape is a mass of green, with purplish streaks and 
shadowings here and there: glooms of forest-hollows, or moving 
umbrages of cloud.  The city of St. Pierre, on the edge of the 
land, looks as if it had slided down the hill behind it, so 
strangely do the streets come tumbling to the port in cascades of 
masonry,--with a red billowing of tiled roofs over all, and 
enormous palms poking up through it,--higher even than the creamy 
white twin towers of its cathedral.

We anchor in limpid blue water; the cannon-shot is. answered by 
a prolonged thunder-clapping of mountain echo.

Then from the shore a curious flotilla bears down upon us.  
There is one boat, two or three canoes; but the bulk of the craft 
are simply wooden frames,--flat-bottomed structures, made from 
shipping-cases or lard-boxes, with triangular ends.  In these sit 
naked boys,--boys between ten and fourteen years of age,--varying 
in color from a fine clear yellow to a deep reddish-brown or 
chocolate tint.  They row with two little square, flat pieces of
wood for paddles, clutched in each hand; and these lid-shaped 
things are dipped into the water on either side with absolute 
precision, in perfect time,--all the pairs of little naked arms 
seeming moved by a single impulse.  There is much unconscious 
grace in this paddling, as well as skill.  Then all about the 
ship these ridiculous little boats begin to describe circles,
--crossing and intercrossing so closely as almost to bring them 
into collision, yet never touching.  The boys have simply come 
out to dive for coins they expect passengers to fling to them.  
All are chattering creole, laughing and screaming shrilly; every 
eye, quick and bright as a bird's, watches the faces of the 
passengers on deck.  "'Tention-là !" shriek a dozen soprani.  
Some passenger's fingers have entered his vest-pocket, and the 
boys are on the alert.  Through the air, twirling and glittering, 
tumbles an English shilling, and drops into the deep water beyond 
the little fleet.  Instantly all the lads leap, scramble, topple 
head-foremost out of their little tubs, and dive in pursuit.  In 
the blue water their lithe figures look perfectly red,--all but 
the soles of their upturned feet, which show nearly white.  
Almost immediately they all rise again: one holds up at arm's-
length above the water the recovered coin, and then puts it into 
his mouth for safe-keeping; Coin after coin is thrown in, and as 
speedily brought up; a shower of small silver follows, and not a 
piece is lost.  These lads move through the water without 
apparent effort, with the suppleness of fishes.  Most are 
decidedly fine-looking boys, with admirably rounded limbs, 
delicately formed extremities.  The best diver and swiftest 
swimmer, however, is a red lad;--his face is rather commonplace, 
but his slim body has the grace of an antique bronze.

... We are ashore in St. Pierre, the quaintest, queerest, and 
the prettiest withal, among West Indian cities:
all stone-built and stone-flagged, with very narrow streets, 
wooden or zinc awnings, and peaked roofs of red tile, pierced by 
gabled dormers.  Most of the buildings are painted in a clear 
yellow tone, which contrasts delightfully with the burning blue 
ribbon of tropical sky above; and no street is absolutely level; 
nearly all of them climb hills, descend into hollows, curve, 
twist, describe sudden angles.  There is everywhere a loud murmur 
of running water,--pouring through the deep gutters contrived 
between the paved thoroughfare and the absurd little sidewalks, 
varying in width from one to three feet.  The architecture is 
quite old: it is seventeenth century, probably; and it reminds 
one a great deal of that characterizing the antiquated French 
quarter of New Orleans. All the tints, the forms, the vistas, 
would seem to have been especially selected or designed for 
aquarelle studies,--just to please the whim of some extravagant 
artist. The windows are frameless openings without glass; some 
have iron bars; all have heavy wooden shutters with movable 
slats, through which light and air can enter as through Venetian 
blinds.  These are usually painted green or bright bluish-gray.

So steep are the streets descending to the harbor,--by flights 
of old mossy stone steps,--that looking down them to the azure 
water you have the sensation of gazing from a cliff.  From 
certain openings in the main street--the Rue Victor Hugo--you 
can get something like a bird's-eye view of the harbor with its 
shipping.  The roofs of the street below are under your feet, and 
other streets are rising behind you to meet the mountain roads. 
They climb at a very steep angle, occasionally breaking into 
stairs of lava rock, all grass-tufted and moss-lined.

[Illustration: LA PLACE BERTIN (THE SUGAR LANDING), ST. PIERRE, 
MARTINIQUE.]

The town has an aspect of great solidity: it is a creation of 
crag-looks almost as if it had been hewn out of one mountain 
fragment, instead of having been constructed stone by stone.  
Although commonly consisting of two stories and an attic only, 
the dwellings have walls three feet in thickness;--on one street, 
facing the sea, they are even heavier, and slope outward like 
ramparts, so that the perpendicular recesses of windows and doors 
have the appearance of being opened between buttresses. It may 
have been partly as a precaution against earthquakes, and partly 
for the sake of coolness, that the early  colonial architects 
built thus;--giving the city a physiognomy so well worthy of 
its name,--the name of the Saint of the Rock.

And everywhere rushes mountain water,--cool and crystal clear, 
washing the streets;--from time to time you come to some public 
fountain flinging a silvery column to the sun, or showering 
bright spray over a group of black bronze tritons or bronze 
swans.  The Tritons on the Place Bertin you will not readily 
forget;--their curving torsos might have been modelled from the 
forms of those ebon men who toil there tirelessly all day in the 
great heat, rolling hogsheads of sugar or casks of rum. And often 
you will note, in the course of a walk, little drinking-fountains 
contrived at the angle of a building, or in the thick walls 
bordering the bulwarks or enclosing public squares: glittering 
threads of water spurting through lion-lips of stone.  Some 
mountain torrent, skilfully directed and divided, is thus 
perpetually refreshing the city,--supplying its fountains and 
cooling its courts....  This is called the Gouyave water: it is 
not the same stream which sweeps and purifies the streets.

Picturesqueness and color: these are the particular and the 
unrivalled charms of St. Pierre.  As you pursue the Grande Rue, 
or Rue Victor Hugo,--which traverses the town through all its 
length, undulating over hill-slopes and into hollows and over a 
bridge,--you become more and more enchanted by the contrast of 
the yellow-glowing walls to right and left with the jagged strip 
of gentian-blue sky overhead.  Charming also it is to watch
the cross-streets climbing up to the fiery green of the 
mountains behind the town.  On the lower side of the main 
thoroughfare other streets open in wonderful bursts of blue-warm 
blue of horizon and sea.  The steps by which these ways descend 
towards the bay are black with age, and slightly mossed close to 
the wall on either side: they have an alarming steepness,--one 
might easily stumble from the upper into the lower street.  
Looking towards the water through these openings from the Grande 
Rue, you will notice that the sea-line cuts across the blue space 
just at the level of the upper story of the house on the lower 
street-corner.  Sometimes, a hundred feet below, you see a ship 
resting in the azure aperture,--seemingly suspended there in sky-
color, floating in blue light. And everywhere and always, through 
sunshine or shadow, comes to you the scent of the city,--the 
characteristic odor of St. Pierre;--a compound odor suggesting 
the intermingling of sugar and garlic in those strange tropical 
dishes which creoles love....



XII.


... A population fantastic, astonishing,--a population of the 
Arabian Nights.  It is many-colored; but the general dominant 
tint is yellow, like that of the town itself--yellow in the 
interblending of all the hues characterizing _mulâtresse, 
capresse, griffe, quarteronne, métisse, chabine,_--a general 
effect of rich brownish yellow.  You are among a people of half-
breeds,--the finest mixed race of the West Indies.

Straight as palms, and supple and tall, these colored women and 
men impress one powerfully by their dignified carriage and easy 
elegance of movement.  They walk without swinging of the 
shoulders;--the perfectly set torso seems to remain rigid; yet 
the step is a long full stride, and the whole weight is springily 
poised on the very tip of the bare foot.  All, or nearly all, are 
without shoes: the treading of many naked feet over the heated 
pavement makes a continuous whispering sound.

... Perhaps the most novel impression of all is that produced by 
the singularity and brilliancy of certain of the women's 
costumes.  These were developed, at least a hundred years ago, by 
some curious sumptuary law regulating the dress of slaves and 
colored people of free condition,--a law which allowed 
considerable liberty as to material and tint, prescribing chiefly 
form.  But some of these fashions suggest the Orient: they offer 
beautiful audacities of color contrast; and the full-dress 
coiffure, above all, is so strikingly Eastern that one might be 
tempted to believe it was first introduced into the colony by 
some Mohammedan slave.  It is merely an immense Madras 
handkerchief, which is folded about the head with admirable art, 
like a turban;--one bright end pushed through at the top in 
front, being left sticking up like a plume.  Then this turban, 
always full of bright canary-color, is fastened with golden 
brooches,--one in front and one at either side.  As for the 
remainder of the dress, it is simple enough: an embroidered, low-
cut chemise with sleeves; a skirt or _jupe_, very long behind, 
but caught up and fastened in front below the breasts so as to 
bring the hem everywhere to a level with the end of the long 
chemise; and finally a _foulard_, or silken kerchief, thrown over 
the shoulders.  These _jupes_ and _foulards_, however, are 
exquisite in pattern and color: bright crimson, bright yellow, 
bright blue, bright green,--lilac, violet, rose,--sometimes 
mingled in plaidings or checkerings or stripings: black with 
orange, sky-blue with purple.  And whatever be the colors of the 
costume, which vary astonishingly, the coiffure must be yellow-
brilliant, flashing yellow--the turban is certain to have yellow 
stripes or yellow squares.  To this display add the effect of 
costly and curious jewellery: immense earrings, each pendant being 
formed of five gold cylinders joined together (cylinders sometimes 
two inches long, and an inch at least in circumference);--a necklace 
of double, triple, quadruple, or quintuple rows of large hollow gold 
beads (sometimes smooth, but generally ally graven)--the wonderful 
_collier-choux_.  Now, this glowing jewellery is not a mere 
imitation of pure metal: the ear-rings are worth one hundred and 
seventy-five francs a pair; the necklace of a Martinique quadroon 
may cost five hundred or even one thousand francs....  It may be 
the gift of her lover, her _doudoux_, but such articles are 
usually purchased either on time by small payments, or bead by 
bead singly until the requisite number is made up.

But few are thus richly attired: the greater number of the women 
carrying burdens on their heads,--peddling vegetables, cakes, 
fruit, ready-cooked food, from door to door,--are very simply 
dressed in a single plain robe of vivid colors (_douillette_) 
reaching from neck to feet, and made with a train, but generally 
girded well up so as to sit close to the figure and leave the 
lower limbs partly bare and perfectly free.  These women can walk 
all day long up and down hill in the hot sun, without shoes, 
carrying loads of from one hundred to one hundred and fifty 
pounds on their heads; and if their little stock sometimes fails 
to come up to the accustomed weight stones are added to make it 
heavy enough.  Doubtless the habit of carrying everything in this 
way from childhood has much to do with the remarkable vigor and 
erectness of the population....  I have seen a grand-piano 
carried on the heads of four men.  With the women the load is 
very seldom steadied with the hand after having been once placed 
in position.  The head remains almost most motionless; but the 
black, quick, piercing eyes flash into every window and door-way 
to watch for a customer's signal.  And the creole street-cries, 
uttered in a sonorous, far-reaching high key, interblend and 
produce random harmonies very pleasant to hear.

..._"Çe moune-là, ça qui lè bel mango?"_  Her basket of mangoes 
certainly weighs as much as herself.... _"Ça qui lè bel avocat?,"_
The alligator-pear--cuts and tastes like beautiful green cheese...
_"Ça qui lè escargot?"_  Call her, if you like snails.... _"Ca qui lè 
titiri?"_  Minuscule fish, of which a thousand would scarcely 
fill a tea-cup;--one of the most delicate of Martinique 
dishes.... _"Ça qui lè canna?--Ça qui lè charbon?--Ça qui lè di pain 
aubè?"  (Who wants ducks, charcoal, or pretty little loaves 
shaped like cucumbers.)... _"Ça qui lè pain-mi?"_ A sweet maize 
cake in the form of a tiny sugar-loaf, wrapped in a piece of 
banana leaf.... _"Ça qui lè fromassé" (pharmacie) "lapotécai 
créole?"_  She deals in creole roots and herbs, and all the 
leaves that make _tisanes_ or poultices or medicines:  
_matriquin, feuill-corossol, balai-doux, manioc-chapelle, Marie-
Perrine, graine-enba-feuill, bois d'lhomme, zhèbe-gras, bonnet-
carré, zhèbe-codeinne, zhèbe-à-femme, zhèbe-à-châtte, canne-
dleau, poque, fleu-papillon, lateigne,_ and a score of others 
you never saw or heard of before....  _"Ça qui lè dicaments?"_ 
(overalls for laboring-men)....  _"Çé moune-là, si ou pa lè 
acheté canari-à dans lanmain moin, moin ké crazé y."_  The vender 
of red clay cooking-pots;--she has only one left, if you do not 
buy it she will break it!

_"Hé! zenfants-la!--en deho'!"_  Run out to meet her, little 
children, if you like the sweet rice-cakes....  _"Hé! gens pa' 
enho', gens pa' enbas, gens di galtas, moin ni bel gououôs 
poisson!"_  Ho! people up-stairs, people down-stairs, and all ye 
good folks who dwell in the attics,--know that she has very big 
and very beautiful fish to sell!...  _"Hé! ça qui lé mangé 
yonne?"_--those are "akras,"--flat yellow-brown cakes, made of 
pounded codfish, or beans, or both, seasoned with pepper and 
fried in butter.... And then comes the pastry-seller, black as 
ebony, but dressed all in white, and white-aproned and white. 
capped like a French cook, and chanting half in French, half in 
creole, with a voice like a clarinet:

_"C'est louvouier de la pâtisserie qui passe,
Qui té ka veillé pou' gagner son existence, 
Toujours content,
Toujours joyeux. 
Oh, qu'ils sont bons!-- 
Oh, qu'ils sont doux!"_

It is the pastryman passing by, who has been up all night to 
gain his livelihood,--always content,--always happy....  Oh, how 
good they are (the pies)!--Oh, how sweet they are!

... The quaint stores bordering both sides of the street bear no 
names and no signs over their huge arched doors;--you must look 
well inside to know what business is being done.  Even then you 
will scarcely be able to satisfy yourself as to the nature of the 
commerce;--for they are selling gridirons and frying-pans in the 
dry goods stores, holy images and rosaries in the notion stores, 
sweet-cakes and confectionery in the crockery stores, coffee and 
stationery in the millinery stores, cigars and tobacco in the 
china stores, cravats and laces and ribbons in the jewellery 
stores, sugar and guava jelly in the tobacco stores!  But of all 
the objects exposed for sale the most attractive, because the 
most exotic, is a doll,--the Martinique _poupée_.  There are two 
kinds,--the _poupée-capresse_, of which the body is covered with 
smooth reddish-brown leather, to imitate the tint of the capresse 
race; and the _poupée-négresse_, covered with black leather.  When 
dressed, these dolls range in price from eleven to thirty-five 
francs,--some, dressed to order, may cost even more; and a good 
_poupée-négresse_ is a delightful curiosity.  Both varieties of 
dolls are attired in the costume of the people; but the _négresse_
is usually dressed the more simply.  Each doll has a broidered 
chemise, a tastefully arranged _jupe_ of bright hues; a silk _foulard_, 
a _collier-choux_, ear-rings of five cylinders (_zanneaux-à-clous_), 
and a charming little yellow-banded Madras turban.  Such a doll is a 
perfect costume-model,--a perfect miniature of Martinique fashions, to 
the smallest details of material and color: it is almost too artistic 
for a toy.

[Illustration: ITINERANT PASTRY-SELLER. "Tourjours content, 
Toujours joyeux."]

These old costume-colors of Martinique-always relieved by 
brilliant yellow stripings or checkerings, except in the special 
violet dresses worn on certain religious occasions--have an 
indescribable luminosity,--a wonderful power of bringing out the 
fine warm tints of this tropical flesh.  Such are the hues of 
those rich costumes Nature gives to her nearest of kin and her 
dearest,--her honey-lovers--her insects: these are wasp-colors.  
I do not know whether the fact ever occurred to the childish 
fancy of this strange race; but there is a creole expression 
which first suggested it to me;--in the patois, _pouend guêpe_, 
"to catch a wasp," signifies making love to a pretty colored 
girl. ... And the more one observes these costumes, the more one 
feels that only Nature could .have taught such rare comprehension 
of powers and harmonies among colors,--such knowledge of 
chromatic witchcrafts and chromatic laws.

... This evening, as I write, La Pelée is more heavily coiffed 
than is her wont.  Of purple and lilac cloud the coiffure is,--a 
magnificent Madras, yellow-banded by the sinking sun.  La Pelée 
is in _costume de fête_, like a _capresse_ attired for a baptism 
or a ball; and in her phantom turban one great star glimmers for 
a brooch. 



XIII.


Following the Rue Victor Hugo in the direction of the Fort,--
crossing the Rivière Roxelane, or Rivière des Blanchisseuses, 
whose rocky bed is white with unsoaped linen far as the eye can 
reach,--you descend through some tortuous narrow streets into the 
principal marketplace. [1] 

A square--well paved and well shaded--with a fountain in the  
midst.  Here the dealers are seated in rows;--one half of the  
market is devoted to fruits and vegetables; the other to the  
sale of fresh fish and meats.  On first entering you are confused  
by the press and deafened by the storm of creole chatter;--then 
you begin to discern some order in this chaos, and to observe 
curious things.

In the middle of the paved square, about the market fountain, 
are lying boats filled with fish, which have been carried up from 
the water upon men's shoulders,--or, if very heavy, conveyed on 
rollers....  Such fish!--blue, rosy, green, lilac, scarlet, gold: 
no spectral tints these, but luminous and strong like fire.  Here 
also you see heaps of long thin fish looking like piled bars of 
silver,--absolutely dazzling,--of almost equal thickness from 
head to tail;--near by are heaps of flat pink creatures;--beyond 
these, again, a mass of azure backs and golden bellies.  Among 
the stalls you can study the monsters,--twelve or fifteen feet 
long,--the shark, the _vierge_, the sword fish, the _tonne_,--or 
the eccentricities.  Some are very thin round disks, with long, 
brilliant, wormy feelers in lieu of fins, flickering in all 
directions like a moving pendent silver fringe;--others bristle 
with spines;--others, serpent-bodied, are so speckled as to
resemble shapes of red polished granite.  These are _moringues_. 
The _balaou, couliou, macriau, lazard, tcha-tcha, bonnique_, and 
_zorphi_ severally represent almost all possible tints of blue 
and violet.  The _souri_ is rose-color and yellow; the 
_cirurgien_ is black, with yellow and red stripes; the _patate_, 
black and yellow; the _gros-zié_ is vermilion; the _couronné_, 
red and black.  Their names are not less unfamiliar than their 
shapes and tints;-the _aiguille-de-mer_, or sea-needle, long and 
thin as a pencil;-the _Bon-Dié-manié-moin_  ("the Good-God 
handled me"), which has something like finger-marks upon it;--
the _lambi_, a huge sea-snail;--the _pisquette_, the _laline_ 
(the Moon);--the _crapaud-de-mer_, or sea-toad, with a dangerous 
dorsal fin;--the _vermeil_, the _jacquot_, the _chaponne_, and 
fifty others....  As the sun gets higher, banana or balisier 
leaves are laid over the fish.

Even more puzzling, perhaps, are the astonishing varieties of 
green, yellow, and parti-colored vegetables,--and fruits of all 
hues and forms,--out of which display you retain only a confused 
general memory of sweet smells and luscious colors.  But there 
are some oddities which impress the recollection in a particular 
way.  One is a great cylindrical ivory-colored thing,--shaped 
like an elephant's tusk, except that it is not curved: this is 
the head of the cabbage-palm, or palmiste,--the brain of one of 
the noblest trees in the tropics, which must be totally destroyed 
to obtain it.  Raw or cooked, it is eaten in a great variety of 
ways,--in salads, stews, fritters, or _akras_.  Soon after this 
compact cylinder of young germinating leaves has been removed, 
large worms begin to appear in the hollow of the dead tree,--the 
_vers-palmiste_.  You may see these for sale in the market, 
crawling about in bowls or cans: they are said, when fried alive, 
to taste like almonds, and are esteemed as a great luxury.

... Then you begin to look about you at the faces of
the black, brown, and yellow people who are watching at you 
curiously from beneath their Madras turbans, or from under the 
shade of mushroom-shaped hats as large as umbrellas.  And as you 
observe the bare backs, bare shoulders, bare legs and arms and 
feet, you will find that the colors of flesh are even more varied 
and surprising than the colors of fruit.  Nevertheless, it is 
only with fruit-colors that many of these skin-tints can be 
correctly be compared; the only terms of comparison used by the 
colored people themselves being terms of this kind,--such as 
_peau-chapotille_, "sapota-skin."  The _sapota_ or _sapotille_ is 
a juicy brown fruit with a rind satiny like a human cuticle, and 
just the color, when flushed and ripe, of certain half-breed 
skins.  But among the brighter half-breeds, the colors, I think, 
are much more fruit-like;--there are banana-tints, lemon-tones, 
orange-hues, with sometimes such a mingling of ruddiness as in 
the pink ripening of a mango.  Agreeable to the eye the darker 
skins certainly are, and often very remarkable--all clear tones 
of bronze being represented; but the brighter tints are 
absolutely beautiful.  Standing perfectly naked at door-ways, or 
playing naked in the sun, astonishing children may sometimes be 
seen,--banana-colored or gulf orange babies, There is one rare 
race-type, totally unseen like the rest: the skin has a perfect 
gold-tone, an exquisite metallic yellow the eyes are long, and 
have long silky lashes;--the hair is a mass of thick, rich, 
glossy the curls that show blue lights in the sun.  What mingling 
of races produced this beautiful type?--there is some strange 
blood in the blending,--not of coolie, nor of African, nor of 
Chinese, although there are Chinese types here of indubitable 
beauty. [2]

... All this population is vigorous, graceful, healthy: all you 
see passing by are well made--there are no sickly faces, no 
scrawny limbs.  If by some rare chance you encounter a person who 
has lost an arm or a leg, you can be almost certain you are 
looking at a victim of the fer-de-lance,--the serpent whose venom 
putrefies living tissue....  Without fear of exaggerating facts, 
I can venture to say that the muscular development of the 
working-men here is something which must be seen in order to
be believed;--to study fine displays of it, one should watch the 
blacks and half-breeds working naked to the waist,--on the 
landings, in the gas-houses and slaughter-houses or on the 
nearest plantations.  They are not generally large men, perhaps 
not extraordinarily powerful; but they have the aspect of 
sculptural or even of anatomical models; they seem absolutely 
devoid of adipose tissue; their muscles stand out with a saliency 
that astonishes the eye.  At a tanning-yard, while I was watching 
a dozen blacks at work, a young mulatto with the mischievous face 
of a faun walked by, wearing nothing but a clout (_lantcho_) 
about his loins; and never, not even in bronze, did I see so 
beautiful a play of muscles.  A demonstrator of anatomy could 
have used him for a class-model;--a sculptor wishing to shape a 
fine Mercury would have been satisfied to take a cast of such a 
body without thinking of making one modification from neck to 
heel.  "Frugal diet is the cause of this physical condition," a 
young French professor assures me; "all these men," he says, 
"live upon salt codfish and fruit."  But frugal living alone could 
never produce such symmetry and saliency of muscles: race-
crossing, climate, perpetual exercise, healthy labor--many 
conditions must have combined to cause it.  Also it is certain 
that this tropical sun has a tendency to dissolve spare flesh, to 
melt away all superfluous tissue, leaving the muscular fibre 
dense and solid as mahogany.

At the _mouillage_, below a green _morne_, is the bathing- 
place.  A rocky beach rounding away under heights of tropical 
wood;--palms curving out above the sand, or bending half-way 
across it.  Ships at anchor in blue water, against golden-yellow 
horizon.  A vast blue glow. Water clear as diamond, and lukewarm.  

It is about one hour after sunrise; and the high parts of 
Montaigne Pelée are still misty blue.  Under the
palms and among the lava rocks, and also in little cabins 
farther up the slope, bathers are dressing or undressing: the 
water is also dotted with heads of swimmers. Women and girls 
enter it well robed from feet to shoulders;--men go in very 
sparsely clad;--there are lads wearing nothing.  Young boys--
yellow and brown little fellows--run in naked, and swim out to 
pointed rocks that jut up black above the bright water.  They 
climb up one at a time to dive down.  Poised for the leap upon 
the black lava crag, and against the blue light of the sky, each 
lithe figure, gilded by the morning sun, has a statuesqueness and 
a luminosity impossible to paint in words.  These bodies seem to 
radiate color; and the azure light intensifies the hue: it is 
idyllic, incredible;--Coomans used paler colors in his Pompeiian 
studies, and his figures were never so symmetrical.  This flesh 
does not look like flesh, but like fruit-pulp....



XIV.


... Everywhere crosses, little shrines, way-side chapels, 
statues of saints.  You will see crucifixes and statuettes even 
in the forks or hollows of trees shadowing the high-roads.  As 
you ascend these towards the interior you will see, every mile or 
half-mile, some chapel, or a cross erected upon a pedestal of 
masonry, or some little niche contrived in a wall, closed by a 
wire grating, through which the image of a Christ or a Madonna is 
visible. Lamps are kept burning all night before these figures. 
But the village of Morne Rouge--some two thousand feet above the 
sea, and about an hour's drive from St. Pierre--is chiefly 
remarkable for such displays: it is a place of pilgrimage as well 
as a health resort.  Above the village, upon the steep slope of a 
higher morne, one may note a singular succession of little 
edifices ascending to the summit,--fourteen little tabernacles, 
each containing a _relievo_ representing some incident of Christ's 
Passion.  This is called _Le Calvaire_: it requires more than a feeble 
piety to perform the religious exercise of climbing the height, 
and saying a prayer before each little shrine on the way.  From 
the porch of the crowning structure the village of Morne Rouge 
appears so far below that it makes one almost dizzy to look at 
it; but even for the profane one ascent is well worth making, for 
the sake of the beautiful view.  On all the neighboring heights 
around are votive chapels or great crucifixes.

St. Pierre is less peopled with images than Morne Rouge; but it 
has several colossal ones, which may be seen from any part of the 
harbor.  On the heights above the middle quarter, or _Centre_, a 
gigantic Christ overlooks the bay; and from the Morne d'Orange, 
which bounds the city on the south, a great white Virgin-Notre 
Dame de la Garde, patron of mariners--watches above the ships at 
anchor in the mouillage.

... Thrice daily, from the towers of the white cathedral, a 
superb chime of bells rolls its _carillon_ through the town.  On 
great holidays the bells are wonderfully rung;--the ringers are 
African, and something of African feeling is observable in their 
impressive but in cantatory manner of ringing.  The _bourdon_ 
must have cost a fortune.  When it is made to speak, the effect 
is startling: all the city vibrates to a weird sound difficult to 
describe,--an abysmal, quivering moan, producing unfamiliar 
harmonies as the voices of the smaller bells are seized and 
interblended by it.  ...One will not easily forget the ringing of 
a _bel-midi_.

... Behind the cathedral, above the peaked city roofs, and at 
the foot of the wood-clad Morne d'Orange, is the _Cimetière du 
Mouillage_.  ... It is full of beauty,--this strange tropical 
cemetery.  Most of the low tombs are covered with small square 
black and white tiles, set exactly after the fashion of the 
squares on a chess-board; at the foot of each grave stands a black 
cross, bearing on its centre a little white plaque, on which the 
name is graven in delicate and tasteful lettering.  So pretty these 
little tombs are, that you might almost believe yourself in a toy 
cemetery.  Here and there, again, are miniature marble chapels built 
over the dead,--containing white Madonnas and Christs and little 
angels,--while flowering creepers climb and twine about the 
pillars.  Death seems so luminous here that one thinks of it 
unconciously as a soft rising from this soft green earth,--like a 
vapor invisible,--to melt into the prodigious day.  Everything is 
bright and neat and beautiful; the air is sleepy with jasmine 
scent and odor of white lilies; and the palm--emblem of 
immortality--lifts its head a hundred feet into the blue light.  
There are rows of these majestic and symbolic trees;--two 
enormous ones guard the entrance;--the others rise from among the 
tombs,--white-stemmed, out-spreading their huge parasols of 
verdure higher than the cathedral towers.

[Illustration: IN THE CIMETÈRE DU MOUILLAGE, ST. PIERRE.]

Behind all this, the dumb green life of the morne seems striving 
to descend, to invade the rest of the dead. It thrusts green 
hands over the wall,--pushes strong roots underneath;--it attacks 
every joint of the stone-work, patiently, imperceptibly, yet 
almost irresistibly.

... Some day there may be a great change in the little city of 
St. Pierre;--there may be less money and less zeal and less 
remembrance of the lost.  Then from the morne, over the bulwark, 
the green host will move down unopposed;--creepers will prepare 
the way, dislocating the pretty tombs, pulling away the checkered 
tiling;--then will corne the giants, rooting deeper,--feeling 
for the dust of hearts, groping among the bones;--and all that 
love has hidden away shall be restored to Nature,--absorbed into 
the rich juices of her verdure,--revitalized in her bursts of 
color,--resurrected in her upliftings of emerald and gold to the 
great sun....



XV.


Seen from the bay, the little red-white-and-yellow city forms 
but one multicolored streak against the burning green of the 
lofty island.  There is no naked soil, no bare rock: the chains 
of the mountains, rising by successive ridges towards the 
interior, are still covered with forests;--tropical woods ascend 
the peaks to the height of four and five thousand feet.  To 
describe the beauty of these woods--even of those covering the 
mornes in the immediate vicinity of St. Pierre--seems to me 
almost impossible;--there are forms and colors which appear to 
demand the creation of new words to express. Especially is this 
true in regard to hue;--the green of a tropical forest is 
something which one familiar only with the tones of Northern 
vegetation can form no just conception of: it is a color that 
conveys the idea of green fire.

You have only to follow the high-road leading out of St. Pierre 
by way of the Savane du Fort to find yourself, after twenty 
minutes' walk, in front of the Morne Parnasse, and before the 
verge of a high wood,--remnant of the enormous growth once 
covering all the island. What a tropical forest is, as seen from 
without, you will then begin to feel, with a sort of awe, while 
you watch that beautiful upclimbing of green shapes to the height 
of perhaps a thousand feet overhead.  It presents one seemingly 
solid surface of vivid color,--rugose like a cliff.  You do not 
readily distinguish whole trees in the mass;--you only perceive 
suggestions, dreams of trees, Doresqueries.  Shapes that seem to 
be staggering under weight of creepers rise a hundred feet above 
you;--others, equally huge, are towering above these; and still 
higher, a legion of monstrosities are nodding, bending, tossing 
up green arms, pushing out great knees, projecting curves as of 
backs and shoulders, intertwining mockeries of limbs.  No distinct 
head appears except where some palm pushes up its crest in the 
general fight for sun.   All else looks as if under a veil,--hidden 
and half smothered by heavy drooping things.  Blazing green vines 
cover every branch and stem;--they form draperies and tapestries 
and curtains and motionless cascades--pouring down over all projections 
like a thick silent flood: an amazing inundation of parasitic life....  
It is a weird awful beauty that you gaze upon; and yet the 
spectacle is imperfect.  These woods have been decimated; the 
finest trees have been cut down: you see only a ruin of what was.  
To see the true primeval forest, you must ride well into the 
interior.

The absolutism of green does not, however, always prevail in 
these woods.  During a brief season, corresponding to some of our 
winter months, the forests suddenly break into a very 
conflagration of color, caused by blossoming of the lianas--
crimson, canary-yellow, blue and white.  There are other 
flowerings, indeed; but that of the lianas alone has chromatic 
force enough to change the aspect of a landscape.



XVI.


... If it is possible for a West Indian forest to be described 
at all, it could not be described more powerfully than it has 
been by Dr. E. Rufz, a creole of Martinique, one of whose works I 
venture to translate the following remarkable pages:

... "The sea, the sea alone, because it is the most colossal of 
earthly spectacles,--only the sea can afford us any terms of 
comparison for the attempt to describe a _grand-bois_;--but even 
then one must imagine the sea on a day of a storm, suddenly 
immobilized in the expression of its mightiest fury.  For the 
summits of these vast woods repeat all the inequalities of the 
land they cover; and these inequalities are mountains from 4200 
to 4800 feet in height, and valleys of corresponding profundity. 
All this is hidden, blended together, smoothed over by verdure, 
in soft and enormous undulations,--in immense billowings of 
foliage.  Only, instead of a blue line at the horizon, you have a 
green line; instead of flashings of blue, you have flashings of 
green,--and in all the tints, in all the combinations of which 
green is capable: deep green, light green, yellow-green, black-
green.

"When your eyes grow weary--if it indeed be possible for them to 
weary--of contemplating the exterior of these tremendous woods, 
try to penetrate a little into their interior.  What an 
inextricable chaos it is!  The sands of a sea are not more 
closely pressed together than the trees are here: some straight, 
some curved, some upright, some toppling,--fallen, or leaning 
against one another, or heaped high upon each other.  Climbing 
lianas, which cross from one tree to the other, like ropes 
passing from mast to mast, help to fill up all the gaps in this 
treillage; and parasites--not timid parasites like ivy or like 
moss, but parasites which are trees self-grafted upon trees--
dominate the primitive trunks, overwhelm them, usurp the place of 
their foliage, and fall back to the ground, forming factitious 
weeping-willows.  You do not find here, as in the great forests 
of the North, the eternal monotony of birch and fir: this is the 
kingdom of infinite variety;--species the most diverse elbow each 
other, interlace, strangle and devour each other: all ranks and 
orders are confounded, as in a human mob.  The soft and tender 
_balisier_ opens its parasol of leaves beside the _gommier_, 
which is the cedar of the colonies  you see the _acomat_, the 
_courbaril_, the mahogany, the _tedre-à-caillou_, the iron-
wood... but as well enumerate by name all the soldiers of an 
army!  Our oak, the balata, forces the palm to lengthen itself 
prodigiously in order to get a few thin beams of sunlight; for 
it is as difficult here for the poor trees to obtain one glance 
from this King of the world, as for us, subjects of a monarchy, 
to obtain one look from our monarch.  As for the soil, it is needless 
to think of looking at it: it lies as far below us probably as the 
bottom of the sea;--it disappeared, ever so long ago, under the heaping 
of debris,--under a sort of manure that has been accumulating there 
since the creation: you sink into it as into slime; you walk upon 
putrefied trunks, in a dust that has no name!  Here indeed it is 
that one can get some comprehension of what vegetable antiquity 
signifies;--a lurid light (_lurida lux_), greenish, as wan at 
noon as the light of the moon at midnight, confuses forms and 
lends them a vague and fantastic aspect; a mephitic humidity 
exhales from all parts; an odor of death prevails; and a calm 
which is not silence (for the ear fancies it can hear the great 
movement of composition and of decomposition perpetually going 
on) tends to inspire you with that old mysterious horror which 
the ancients felt in the primitive forests of Germany and of 
Gaul:

"'Arboribus suus horror inest.'" *

* "Enquête sur le Serpent de la Martinique (Vipère Fer-de-Lance, 
Bothrops Lancéolé, etc.)"  Par le Docteur E. Rufz. 2 ed. 1859. 
Paris: Germer-Ballière.  pp. 55-57 (note).



XVII.


But the sense of awe inspired by a tropic forest is certainly 
greater than the mystic fear which any wooded wilderness of the 
North could ever have created.  The brilliancy of colors that 
seem almost preternatural; the vastness of the ocean of frondage, 
and the violet blackness of rare gaps, revealing its in conceived 
profundity; and the million mysterious sounds which make up its
perpetual murmur,--compel the idea of a creative force that 
almost terrifies.  Man feels here like an insect,--fears like an 
insect on the alert for merciless enemies; and the fear is not 
unfounded.  To enter these green abysses without a guide were 
folly: even with the best of guides there is peril.  Nature is 
dangerous here: the powers that build are also the powers that 
putrefy; here life and death are perpetually interchanging office 
in the never-ceasing transformation of forces,--melting down and 
reshaping living substance simultaneously within the same vast 
crucible.  There are trees distilling venom, there are plants 
that have fangs, there are perfumes that affect the brain, there 
are cold green creepers whose touch blisters flesh like fire; 
while in all the recesses and the shadows is a swarming of 
unfamiliar life, beautiful or hideous,--insect, reptile, bird,--
inter-warring, devouring, preying....  But the great peril of 
the forest--the danger which deters even the naturalist;--is the 
presence of the terrible _fer-de-lance (trigonocephalus 
lanceolatus,--bothrops lanceolatus,--craspodecephalus_),--
deadliest of the Occidental thanatophidia, and probably one of 
the deadliest serpents of the known world.

... There are no less than eight varieties of it,--the most 
common being the dark gray, speckled with black--precisely the 
color that enables the creature to hide itself among the 
protruding roots of the trees, by simply coiling about them, and 
concealing its triangular head. Sometimes the snake is a clear 
bright yellow: then it is difficult to distinguish it from the 
bunch of bananas among which it conceals itself.  Or the creature 
may be a dark yellow,--or a yellowish brown,--or the color of 
wine-lees, speckled pink and black,--or dead black with a yellow 
belly,--or black with a pink belly: all hues of tropical forest-
mould, of old bark, of decomposing trees. ... The iris of the eye 
is orange,--with red flashes: it glows at night like burning 
charcoal.

And the fer-de-lance reigns absolute king over the mountains and 
the ravines; he is lord of the forest and solitudes by day, and 
by night he extends his dominion over the public roads, the 
familiar paths, the parks, pleasure resorts.  People must remain 
at home after dark, unless they dwell in the city itself: if you 
happen to be out visiting after sunset, only a mile from town, 
your friends will caution you anxiously not to follow the 
boulevard as you go back, and to keep as closely as possible to 
the very centre of the path.  Even in the brightest noon you cannot 
venture to enter the woods without an experienced escort; you 
cannot trust your eyes to detect danger: at any moment a seeming 
branch, a knot of lianas, a pink or gray root, a clump of pendent 
yellow It, may suddenly take life, writhe, stretch, spring, 
strike....  Then you will need aid indeed, and most quickly; for 
within the span of a few heart-beats the wounded flesh chills, 
tumefies, softens.  Soon it changes or, and begins to spot 
violaceously; while an icy coldness creeps through all the blood.  
If the _panseur_ or the physician arrives in time, and no vein 
has been pierced, there is hope; but it more often happens that 
the blow is received directly on a vein of the foot or ankle,--in 
which case nothing can save the victim.  Even when life is saved 
the danger is not over.  Necrosis of the tissues is likely to set 
in: the flesh corrupts, falls from the bone sometimes in tatters; 
and the colors of its putrefaction simuulate the hues of 
vegetable decay,--the ghastly grays and pinks and yellows of 
trunks rotting down into the dark soil which gave them birth.  
The human victim moulders as the trees moulder,--crumbles and 
dissolves as crumbles the substance of the dead palms and 
balatas: the Death-of-the-Woods is upon him.

To-day a fer-de-lance is seldom found exceeding six feet length; 
but the dimensions of the reptile, at least, would seem to have 
been decreased considerably by man's warring upon it since the time 
of Père Labat, who mentions having seen a fer-de-lance nine feet long 
and five inches in diameter.  He also speaks of a _couresse_--a beautiful 
and harmless serpent said to kill the fer-de-lance--over ten feet 
long and thick as a man's leg; but a large couresse is now seldom 
seen.  The negro woodsmen kill both creatures indiscriminately; 
and as the older reptiles are the least likely to escape 
observation, the chances for the survival of extraordinary 
individuals lessen with the yearly decrease of forest-area,

... But it may be doubted whether the number of deadly snakes has 
been greatly lessened since the early colonial period.  Each 
female produces viviparously from forty to sixty young at a 
birth.  The favorite haunts of the fer-de-lance are to a large 
extent either inaccessible or unexplored, and its multiplication 
is prodigious.  It is really only the surplus of its swarming 
that overpours into the cane-fields, and makes the public roads 
dangerous after dark;--yet more than three hundred snakes have 
been killed in twelve months on a single plantation. The 
introduction of the Indian mongoos, or _mangouste_ (ichneumon), 
proved futile as a means of repressing the evil.  The mangouste 
kills the fer-de-lance when it has a chance but it also kills 
fowls and sucks their eggs, which condemns it irrevocably with 
the country negroes, who live to a considerable extent by raising 
and selling  chickens.

[Illustration: IN THE JARDIN DES PLANTES, ST. PIERRE.]

... Domestic animals are generally able to discern the presence 
of their deadly enemy long before a human eye, can perceive it.  
If your horse rears and plunges in the darkness, trembles and 
sweats, do not try to ride on until you are assured the way is 
clear.  Or your dog may come running back, whining, shivering: 
you will do well to accept his warning.  The animals kept about 
country residences usually try to fight for their lives; the hen 
battles for her chickens; the bull endeavors to gore and stamp
the enemy; the pig gives more successful combat; but the 
creature who fears the monster least is the brave cat.  Seeing a 
snake, she at once carries her kittens to a place of safety, then 
boldly advances to the encounter.  She will walk to the very 
limit of the serpent striking range, and begin to feint,--teasing 
him, startling him, trying to draw his blow.  How the emerald and 
the topazine eyes glow then!--they are flames!  A moment more and 
the triangular head, hissing from the coil, flashes swift as if 
moved by wings.  But swifter still the stroke of the armed paw 
that dashes the horror aside, flinging it mangled in the dust.  
Nevertheless, pussy does not yet dare to spring;--the enemy, 
still active, has almost instantly reformed his coil;--but she is 
again in front of him, watching,--vertical pupil against vertical 
pupil.  Again the lashing stroke; again the beautiful 
countering;--again the living death is hurled aside; and now the 
scaled skin is deeply torn,--one eye socket has ceased to flame.  
Once more the stroke of the serpent once more the light, quick, 
cutting blow.  But the trionocephalus is blind, is stupefied;
--before he can attempt to coil pussy has leaped upon him,--nailing 
the horrible flat head fast to the ground with her two sinewy Now 
let him lash, writhe, twine, strive to strangle her!--in vain! he 
will never lift his head: an instant more and he lies still:
--the keen white teeth of the cat have severed the vertebra just 
behind the triangular skull!...



XVIII.


The Jardin des Plantes is not absolutely secure from visits of 
the serpent; for the trigonocephalus goes everywhere,--mounting 
to the very summits of the cocoa-palms, swimming rivers, 
ascending walls, hiding in thatched roofs, breeding in bagasse 
heaps.  But, despite what has been printed to the contrary, this 
reptile fears man and hates light: it rarely shows itself voluntarily 
during the day.  Therefore, if you desire, to obtain some 
conception of the magnificence of Martinique vegetation, without 
incurring the risk of entering the high woods, you can do so by 
visiting the Jardin des Plantes,--only taking care to use your 
eyes well while climbing over fallen trees, or picking your way 
through dead branches.  The garden is less than a mile from the 
city, on the slopes of the Morne Parnasse; and the primitive 
forest itself has been utilized in the formation of it,--so that 
the greater part of the garden is a primitive growth.  Nature has 
accomplished here infinitely more than art of man (though such 
art has done much to lend the place its charm),--and until within 
a very recent time the result might have been deemed, without 
exaggeration, one of the wonders of the world, 

A moment after passing the gate you are in twilight,--though the 
sun may be blinding on the white road without.  All about you is a 
green gloaming, up through which you see immense trunks rising.  
Follow the first path that slopes up on your left as you proceed, 
if you wish to obtain the best general view of the place in the 
shortest possible time.  As you proceed, the garden on your right 
deepens more and more into a sort of ravine;--on your left rises a 
sort of foliage-shrouded cliff; and all this in a beautiful 
crepuscular dimness, made by the foliage of great trees meeting 
overhead.  Palms rooted a hundred feet below you hold their heads 
a hundred feet above you; yet they can barely reach the light.... 
Farther on the ravine widens to frame in two tiny lakes,  dotted 
with artificial islands, which are miniatures of Martinique, 
Guadeloupe, and Dominica: these are covered with tropical plants, 
many of which are total strangers even here: they are natives of 
India, Senegambia,  Algeria, and the most eastern East. Arbores. 
cent ferps of unfammiliar elegance curve up from path-verge 
lake-brink; and the great _arbre-du-voyageur_ outspreads its 
colossal fan.  Giant lianas droop down over the way in loops 
and festoons; tapering green cords, which are creepers descending 
to take root, hang everywhere; and parasites with stems thick as 
cables coil about the trees like boas.  Trunks shooting up out of 
sight, into the green wilderness above, display no bark; you 
cannot guess what sort of trees they are; they are so thickly 
wrapped in creepers as to seem pillars of leaves.  Between you 
and the sky, where everything is fighting for sun, there is an 
almost unbroken vault of leaves, a cloudy green confusion in 
which nothing particular is distinguishable.

You come to breaks now and then in the green steep to your 
left,--openings created for cascades pouring down from one mossed 
basin of brown stone to another,--or gaps occupied by flights of 
stone steps, green with mosses, and chocolate-colored by age.  
These steps lead to loftier paths; and all the stone-work,-the 
grottos, bridges, basins, terraces, steps,--are darkened by time 
and velveted with mossy things....  It is of another century, 
this garden: special ordinances were passed concerning it during 
the French Revolution (_An. II._);--it is very quaint; it 
suggests an art spirit as old as Versailles, or older; but it is 
indescribably beautiful even now.

... At last you near the end, to hear the roar of falling water;--
there is a break in the vault of green above the bed of a river 
below you; and at a sudden turn you in sight of the cascade.  
Before you is the Morne itself; and against the burst of 
descending light you discern a precipice-verge.  Over it, down 
one green furrow in its brow, tumbles the rolling foam of a 
cataract, like falling smoke, to be caught below in a succession 
of moss-covered basins.  The first clear leap of the water is 
nearly seventy feet....  Did Josephine ever rest upon
that shadowed bench near by?...  She knew all these paths by 
heart: surely they must have haunted her dreams in the after-
time!

Returning by another path, you may have a view of other 
cascades-though none so imposing.  But they are beautiful; and 
you will not soon forget the effect of one,--flanked at its 
summit by white-stemmed palms which lift their leaves so high 
into the light that the loftiness of them gives the sensation of 
vertigo....  Dizzy also the magnificence of the great colonnade 
of palmistes and angelins, two hundred feet high, through which: 
you pass if you follow the river-path from the cascade--the 
famed _Allée des duels_....

The vast height, the pillared solemnity of the ancient trees in 
the green dimness, the solitude, the strangeness of shapes but 
half seen,--suggesting fancies of silent aspiration, or triumph, 
or despair,--all combine to produce a singular impression of 
awe....  You are alone; you hear no human voice,--no sounds but 
the rushing of the river over its volcanic rocks, and the 
creeping of millions of lizards and tree-frogs and little toads.  
You see no human face; but you see all around you the labor of 
man being gnawed and devoured by nature,--broken bridges, sliding 
steps, fallen arches, strangled fountains with empty basins;--
and everywhere arises the pungent odor of decay.  This 
omnipresent odor affects one unpleasantly;--it never ceases to 
remind you that where Nature is most puissant to charm, there 
also is she mightiest to destroy.

[Illustration: CASCADE IN THE JARDIN DES PLANTES.]

The beautiful garden is now little more than a wreck of what it 
once was; since the fall of the Empire it has been shamefully 
abused and neglected.  Some _agronome_ sent out to take charge of 
it by the Republic, began its destruction by cutting down acres 
of enormous and magnificent trees,--including a superb alley of 
plants,--for the purpose of experimenting with roses.  But the
rose-trees would not be cultivated there; and the serpents 
avenged the demolition by making the experimental garden unsafe 
to enter;--they always swarm into underbrush and shrubbery after 
forest-trees have been clearedd away....  Subsequently the garden 
was greatly damaged by storms and torrential rains; the mountain 
river overflowed, carrying bridges away and demolishing stone-
work.  No attempt was made to repair these destructions; but 
neglect alone would not have ruined the lovliness of the place;--
barbarism was necessary!  Under the present negro-radical regime 
orders have been given for the wanton destruction of trees older 
than the colony itself;--and marvels that could not be replaced 
in a hundred generations were cut down and converted into 
charcoal for the use of public institutions.



XIX.


How gray seem the words of poets in the presence is Nature!...  
The enormous silent poem of color and light--(you who know only 
the North do not know color, do not know light!)--of sea and sky, 
of the woods and the peaks, so far surpasses imagination as to 
paralyze it--mocking the language of admiration, defying all 
power of expression.  That is before you which never can be 
painted or chanted, because there is no cunning of art or speech 
able to reflect it.  Nature realizes your most hopeless ideals of 
beauty, even as one gives toys to a child.  And the sight of this 
supreme terrestrial expression of creative magic numbs thought.  
In the great centres of civilization we admire and study only the 
results of mind,--the products of human endeavor: here one views 
only the work of Nature,--but Nature in all her primeval power, as 
in the legendary frostless morning of creation.  Man here seems 
to bear scarcely more relation to the green life about him than 
the insect; and the results of human effort seem impotent by 
comparison son with the operation of those vast blind forces which 
clothe the peaks and crown the dead craters with impenetrable forest.  
The air itself seems inimical to thought,--soporific, and yet pregnant 
with activities of dissolution so powerful that the mightiest 
tree begins to melt like wax from the moment it has ceased to 
live.  For man merely to exist is an effort; and doubtless in the 
perpetual struggle of the blood to preserve itself from 
fermentation, there is such an expenditure of vital energy as 
leaves  little surplus for mental exertion.

... Scarcely less than poet or philosopher, the artist, I fancy, 
would feel his helplessness.  In the city he may find wonderful 
picturesqueness to invite his pencil, but when he stands face to 
face alone with Nature he will discover that he has no colors!  
The luminosities of tropic foliage could only be imitated in 
fire.  He who desires to paint a West Indian forest,--a West 
Indian landscape,--must take his view from some great height, 
through which the colors come to his eye softened and subdued by 
distance,--toned with blues or purples by the astonishing 
atmosphere.

... It is sunset as I write these lines, and there are 
witchcrafts of color.  Looking down the narrow, steep street 
opening to the bay, I see the motionless silhouette of the 
steamer on a perfectly green sea,--under a lilac sky,--against a 
prodigious orange light.




XX.


In these tropic latitudes Night does not seem "to fall,"--to 
descend over the many-peaked land: it appears to rise up, like an 
exhalation, from the ground. The coast-lines darken first;--then 
the slopes and the lower hills and valleys become shadowed;--
then, very swiftly, the gloom mounts to the heights, whose very 
loftiest peak may remain glowing like a volcano at its tip for 
several minutes after the rest of the island is veiled in blackness 
and all the stars are out....

[Illustration: DEPARTURE OF STEAMER FOR FORT-DE-FRANCE.]

... Tropical nights have a splendor that seems strange to 
northern eyes.  The sky does not look so high--so far way as in 
the North; but the stars are larger, and the luminosity greater.

With the rising of the moon all the violet of the sky flushes;--
there is almost such a rose-color as heralds northern dawn.

Then the moon appears over the mornes, very large, very bright--
brighter certainly than many a befogged sun one sees in northern 
Novembers; and it seems to have a weird magnetism--this tropical 
moon.  Night-birds, insects, frogs,--everything that can sing,--
all sing very low on the nights of great moons.  Tropical wood- 
life begins with dark: in the immense white light of a full moon 
this nocturnal life seems afraid to cry out as usual.  Also, this 
moon has a singular effect on the nerves.  It is very difficult 
to sleep on such bright nights: you feel such a vague uneasiness 
as the coming of a great storm gives....



XXI.


You reach Fort-de-France, the capital of Martinique, steamer 
from St. Pierre, in about an hour and a ... There is an overland 
route--_La Trace_, but it twenty-five-mile ride, and a weary one 
in such a climate, notwithstanding the indescribable beauty of 
the landscapes which the lofty road commands.

Rebuilt in wood after the almost total destruction by an 
earthquake of its once picturesque streets of stone, Fort-de-
France (formerly Fort-Royal) has little of outward interest by 
comparison with St. Pierre.  It lies in a low, moist plain, and has 
few remarkable buildings: you can walk allover the little town in 
about half an hour.  But the Savane,--the great green public square, 
with its grand tamarinds and _sabliers_,--would be worth the visit 
alone, even were it not made romantic by the marble memory of Josephine.

I went to look at the white dream of her there, a creation of 
master-sculptors....  It seemed to me absolutely lovely.

Sea winds have bitten it; tropical rains have streaked it: some 
microscopic growth has darkened the exquisite hollow of the 
throat.  And yet such is the human charm of the figure that you 
almost fancy you are gazing at a living presence....  Perhaps the 
profile is less artistically real,--statuesque to the point of 
betraying the chisel; but when you look straight up into the 
sweet creole face, you can believe she lives: all the wonderful 
West Indian charm of the woman is there.

She is standing just in the centre of the Savane, robed in the 
fashion of the First Empire, with gracious arms and shoulders 
bare: one hand leans upon a medallion bearing the eagle profile 
of Napoleon....  Seven tall palms stand in a circle around her, 
lifting their comely heads into the blue glory of the tropic day.  
Within their enchanted circle you feel that you tread holy 
ground,--the sacred soil of artist and poet;--here the 
recollections of memoir-writers vanish away; the gossip of 
history is hushed for you; you no longer care to know how rumor 
has it that she spoke or smiled or wept: only the bewitchment of 
her lives under the thin, soft, swaying shadows of those feminine 
palms....  Over violet space of summer sea; through the vast 
splendor of azure light, she is looking back to the place of her 

birth, back to beautiful drowsy Trois-Islets,--and always with 
the same half-dreaming, half-plaintive smile,--unutterably 
touching....

[Illustration: STATUE OF JOSEPHINE.]



XXII.


One leaves Martinique with regret, even after so brief a stay: 
the old colonial life itself, not less than the revelation of 
tropic nature, having in this island a quality of uniqueness, a 
special charm, unlike anything previously seen....  We steam 
directly for Barbadoes;--the vessel will touch at the intervening 
islands only on her homeward route.

... Against a hot wind south,--under a sky always deepening in 
beauty. Towards evening dark clouds begin to rise before us; and 
by nightfall they spread into one pitch-blackness over all the 
sky.  Then comes a wind in immense sweeps, lifting the water,--
but a wind that is still strangely warm.  The ship rolls heavily 
in the dark for an hour or more;--then torrents of tepid rain 
make the sea smooth again; the clouds pass, and the viole 
transparency of tropical night reappears,--ablaze with stars.

At early morning a long low land appears on the horizon,--totally 
unlike the others we have seen; it has no visable volcanic forms.  
That is Barbadoes,--a level burning coral coast,--a streak of 
green, white-edged, on the verge of the sea.  But hours pass 
before the green line begins to show outlines of foliage.

... As we approach the harbor an overhanging black cloud 
suddenly bursts down in illuminated rain,--through which the 
shapes of moored ships seem magnified as through a golden fog.  
It ceases as suddenly as it begun; the cloud vanishes utterly; 
and the azure is revealed unflecked, dazzling, wondrous....  It 
is a sight worth the whole journey,--the splendor of this noon 
sky at Barbadoes;--the horizon glow is almost blinding, the 
sea;line sharp as a razor-edge; and motionless upon the sapphire 
water nearly a hundred ships lie,--masts, spars, booms, cordage, 
cutting against the amazing magnificence of blue....  Mean while 
the island coast has clearly brought out all its beauties: first 
you note the long white winding thread-line of beach-coral and 
bright sand;--then the deep green fringe of vegetation through 
which roofs and spires project here and there, and quivering feathery 
heads of palms with white trunks.  The general tone of this verdure 
is sombre green, though it is full of lustre: there is a glimmer in 
it as of metal. Beyond all this coast-front long undulations of misty 
pale, green are visible,--far slopes of low hill and plain the highest 
curving line, the ridge of the island, bears a row of cocoa-palms, They 
are so far that their stems diminish almost to invisibility: only 
the crests are clearly distinguishable,--like spiders hanging 
between land and sky.  But there are no forests: the land is a 
naked unshadowed green far as the eye can reach beyond the coast-
line.  There is no waste space in Barbadoes: it is perhaps one of 
the most densely-peopled places on the globe--(one thousand and 
thirty-five inhabitants to the square mile)--.and it sends black 
laborers by thousands to the other British colonies every year,--
the surplus of its population.

... The city of Bridgetown disappoints the stranger who expects 
to find any exotic features of architecture or custom,--
disappoints more, perhaps, than any other tropical port in this 
respect.  Its principal streets give you the impression of 
walking through an English town,--not an old-time town, but a 
new one, plain almost to commonplaceness, in spite of Nelson's 
monument.  Even the palms are powerless to lend the place a 
really tropical look;--the streets are narrow without being 
picturesque, white as lime roads and full of glare;--the manners, 
the costumes, the style of living, the system of business are 
thoroughly English;--the population lacks visible originality; 
and its extraordinary activity, so oddly at variance with the 
quiet indolence of other West Indian peoples, seems almost unnatural.  
Pressure of numbers has largely contributed to this characteristic; 
but Barbadoes would be in any event, by reason of position alone, a 
busy colony.  As the most windward of the West Indies it has naturally 
become not only the chief port, but also the chief emporium of the 
Antilles.  It has railroads, telephones, street-cars, fire and life 
insurance companies, good hotels, libraries and reading-rooms, 
and excellent public schools.  Its annual export trade figures 
for nearly $6,000,000.

[Illustration: INNER BASIN, BRIDGETOWN, BARBADOES.]

The fact which seems most curious to the stranger, on his first 
acquaintance with the city, is that most of this business 
activity is represented by black men--black merchants, 
shopkeepers, clerks.  Indeed, the Barbadian population, as a 
mass, strikes one as the darkest in the West Indies.  Black 
regiments march through the street to the sound of English 
music,--uniformed as Zouaves; black police, in white helmets and 
white duck uniforms, maintain order; black postmen distribute the 
mails; black cabmen wait for customers at a shilling an hour. It 
is by no means an attractive population, physically,--rather the 
reverse, and frankly brutal as well--different as possible from 
the colored race of Martinique; but it has immense energy, and 
speaks excellent English.  One is almost startled on hearing 
Barbadian negroes speaking English with a strong Old Country 
accent Without seeing the speaker, you could scarcely believe 
such English uttered by black lips; and the commonest negro 
laborer about the port pronounces as well as a Londoner.  The 
purity of Barbadian English is partly due, no doubt, to the fact 
that, unlike most of the other islands, Barbadoes has always 
remained in the possession of Great Britain. Even as far back as 
1676 Barbadoes was in a very different condition of prosperity 
from that of the other colonies, and offered a totally different 
social aspect--having a white population of 50,000.  At that time 
the island could muster 20,000 infantry and 3000 horse; there were 
80,000 slaves; there were 1500 houses in Bridgetown and an immense 
number of shops; and not less than two hundred ships were 
required to export the annual sugar crop alone.

But Barbadoes differs also from most of the Antilles 
geologically; and there can be no question that the nature of its 
soil has considerably influenced the physical character of its 
inhabitants.  Although Barbadoes is now known to be also of 
volcanic origin,--a fact which its low undulating surface could 
enable no unscientific observer to suppose,--it is superficially 
a calcareous formation; and the remarkable effect of limestone 
soil upon the bodily development of a people is not less marked 
in this latitude than elsewhere.  In most of the Antilles the 
white race degenerates and dwarfs under the influence of climate 
and environment; but the Barbadian creole--tall, muscular, large 
of bone--preserves and perpetuates in the tropics the strength 
and sturdiness of his English forefathers.



XXIII.


... Night: steaming for British Guiana;--we shall touch at no 
port before reaching Demerara....  A strong warm gale, that 
compels the taking in of every awning and wind-sail.  Driving 
tepid rain; and an intense darkness, broken only by the 
phosphorescence of the sea, which to-night displays extraordinary 
radiance.

[Illustration: TRAFALGAR SQUARE, BRIDGETOWN, BARBADOES.]

The steamer's wake is a great broad, seething river of fire,--
white like strong moonshine: the glow is bright enough to read 
by.  At its centre the trail is brightest;--towards either edge 
it pales off cloudily,--curling like smoke of phosphorus.  Great 
sharp lights burst up momentarily through it like meteors.  
Weirder than this strange wake are the long slow fires that keep 
burning at a distance, out in the dark.  Nebulous incandescences mount 
up from the depths, change form, and pass;--serpentine flames 
wriggle by;--there are long billowing crests of fire.  These seem 
to be formed of millions of tiny sparks, that light up all at the 
same time, glow for a while, disappear, reappear, and swirl away 
in a prolonged smouldering.

There are warm gales and heavy rain each night,--it is the 
hurricane season;--and it seems these become more violent the 
farther south we sail.  But we are nearing those equinoctial 
regions where the calm of nature is never disturbed by storms.

... Morning: still steaming south, through a vast blue day.  The 
azure of the heaven always seems to be growing deeper.  There is 
a bluish-white glow in the horizon,--almost too bright to look 
at.  An indigo sea.... There are no clouds; and the splendor 
endures until sunset.

Then another night, very luminous and calm.  The Southern 
constellations burn whitely....  We are nearing the great 
shallows of the South American coast.



XXIV.


... It is the morning of the third day since we left Barbadoes, 
and for the first time since entering tropic waters all things 
seem changed.  The atmosphere is heavy with strange mists; and 
the light of an orange-colored sun, immensely magnified by 
vapors, illuminates a greenish-yellow sea,--foul and opaque, as 
if stagnant....  I remember just such a sunrise over the Louisiana 
gulf-coast.

We are in the shallows, moving very slowly.  The line-caster 
keeps calling, at regular intervals:  "Quarter less five, sir!" 
"And a half four, sir!" ... There is little variation in his 
soundings--a quarter of a fathom or half a fathom difference.  
The warm air has a sickly heaviness, like the air of a swamp; 
the water shows olive and ochreous tones alternately;--the foam 
is yellow in our wake. These might be the colors of a fresh-water 
inundation....

A fellow-traveller tells me, as we lean over the rail, that this 
same viscous, glaucous sea washes the great penal colony of 
Cayenne--which he visited.  When a convict dies there, the 
corpse, sewn up in a sack, is borne to the water, and a great 
bell tolled.  Then the still surface is suddenly broken by fins 
innumerable--black fins of sharks rushing to the hideous 
funeral: they know the Bell!...

There is land in sight--very low land,--a thin dark line 
suggesting marshiness; and the nauseous color of the water always 
deepens.

As the land draws near, it reveals a beautiful tropical 
appearance.  The sombre green line brightens color, I sharpens 
into a splendid fringe of fantastic evergreen fronds, bristling 
with palm crests.  Then a mossy sea-wall comes into sight--dull 
gray stone--work, green-lined at all its joints.  There is a 
fort.  The steamer's whistle is exactly mocked by a queer echo, 
and the cannon-shot once reverberated--only once: there are no 
mountains here to multiply a sound.  And all the while the water 
becomes a thicker and more turbid green; the wake looks more and 
more ochreous, the foam ropier and yellower. Vessels becalmed 
everywhere speck the glass-level of the sea, like insects 
sticking upon a mirror.  It begins, all of a sudden, to rain 
torrentially; and through the white storm of falling drops 
nothing is discernible.



XXV.


At Georgetown, steamers entering the river can lie close to the 
wharf;--we can enter the Government warehouses without getting 
wet.  In fifteen minutes the shower ceases; and we leave the 
warehouses to find ourselves in a broad, palm-bordered street 
illuminated by the most prodigious day that yet shone upon our 
voyage. The rain has cleared the air and dissolved the mists; and 
the light is wondrous.

[Illustration: STREET IN GEORGETOWN, DEMERARA.]

My own memory of Demerara will always be a memory of enormous 
light.  The radiance has an indescribable dazzling force that 
conveys the idea of electric fire;--the horizon blinds like a 
motionless sheet of lightning; and you dare not look at the 
zenith....  The brightest summer-day in the North is a gloaming to 
this.  Men walk only under umbrellas, or with their eyes down--
and the pavements, already dry, flare almost unbearably.

... Georgetown has an exotic aspect peculiar to itself,--
different from that of any West Indian city we have seen; and 
this is chiefly due to the presence of palm-trees.  For the 
edifices, the plan, the general idea of the town, are modern; the 
white streets, laid out very broad to the sweep of the sea-
breeze, and drained by canals running through their centres, with 
bridges at cross-streets, display the value of nineteenth-century 
knowledge regarding house-building with a view to coolness as 
well as to beauty.  The architecture might be described as a 
tropicalized Swiss style--Swiss eaves are developed into veranda 
roofs, and Swiss porches prolonged and lengthened into beautiful 
piazzas and balconies. The men who devised these large cool 
halls, these admirably ventilated rooms, these latticed windows 
opening to the ceiling, may have lived in India; but the 
physiognomy of the town also reveals a fine sense of beauty in 
the designers: all that is strange and beautiful in the 
vegetation of the tropics has had a place contrived for it, a 
home prepared for it.  Each dwelling has its garden; each garden 
blazes with singular and lovely color; but everywhere and always 
tower the palms. There are colonnades of palms, clumps of palms, 
groves of palms-sago and cabbage and cocoa and fan palms. You can 
see that the palm is cherished here, is loved for its beauty, 
like a woman.  Everywhere you find palms, in all stages of 
development, from the first sheaf of tender green plumes rising 
above the soil to the wonderful colossus that holds its head a 
hundred feet above the roofs; palms border the garden walks in 
colonnades; they are grouped in exquisite poise about the basins 
of fountains; they stand like magnificent pillars at either side 
of gates; they look into the highest windows of public buildings 
and hotels.

... For miles and miles and miles we drive along avenues of 
palms--avenues leading to opulent cane-fields, traversing queer 
coolie villages.  Rising on either side of the road to the same 
level, the palms present the vista of a long unbroken double 
colonnade of dead-silver trunks, shining tall pillars with deep 
green plume-tufted summits, almost touching, almost forming 
something like the dream of an interminable Moresque arcade.  
Sometimes for a full mile the trees are only about thirty or 
forty feet high; then, turning into an older alley, we drive for 
half a league between giants nearly a hundred feet in altitude.  
The double perspective lines of their crests, meeting before us 
and behind us in a bronze-green darkness, betray only at long 
intervals any variation of color, where some dead leaf droops 
like an immense yellow feather.



XXVI.


In the marvellous light, which brings out all the rings of their 
bark, these palms sometimes produce a singular impression of 
subtle, fleshy, sentient life,--seem to move with a slowly 
stealthy motion as you ride or drive past them.  The longer you 
watch them, the stronger this idea becomes,--the more they seem 
alive,--the more their long silver-gray articulated bodies seem 
to poise, undulate, stretch....  Certainly the palms of a 
Demerara country-road evoke no such real emotion as that 
produced by the stupendous palms of the Jardin des Plantes in 
Martinique.  That beautiful, solemn, silent life up-reaching 
through tropical forest to the sun for warmth, for color, for 
power,--filled me, I remember, with a sensation of awe different 
from anything which I had ever experienced....  But even here in 
Guiana, standing alone under the sky, the palm still seems a 
creature rather than a tree,--gives you the idea of personality;-
-you could almost believe each lithe shape animated by a thinking 
force,--believe that all are watching you with such passionless 
calm as legend lends to beings super-natural....  And I wonder 
if some kindred fancy might not have inspired the name given by 
the French colonists to the male palmiste,--_angelin_....

[Illustration: AVENUE IN GEORGETOWN, DEMERARA.]

Very wonderful is the botanical garden here.  It is new; and 
there are no groves, no heavy timber, no shade; but the finely 
laid-out grounds,--alternations of lawn and flower-bed,--offer 
everywhere surprising sights.  You observe curious orange-colored 
shrubs; plants speckled with four different colors; plants that 
look like wigs of green hair; plants with enormous broad leaves 
that seem made of colored crystal; plants that do not look like 
natural growths, but like idealizations of plants,--those 
beautiful fantasticalities imagined by sculptors.  All these we 
see in glimpses from a carriage-window,--yellow, indigo, black, 
and crimson plants....  We draw rein only to observe in the ponds 
the green navies of the Victoria Regia,--the monster among water-
lilies.  It covers all the ponds and many of the canals.  Close 
to shore the leaves are not extraordinarily large; but they 
increase in breadth as they float farther out, as if gaining bulk 
proportionately to the depth of water.  A few yards off, they are 
large as soup-plates; farther out, they are broad as dinner-
trays; in the centre of the pond or canal they have surface large 
as tea-tables.  And all have an up-turned edge, a perpendicular 
rim.  Here and there you see the imperial flower,--towering above 
the leaves.... Perhaps, if your hired driver be a good guide, he 
will show you the snake-nut,--the fruit of an extraordinary tree 
native to the Guiana forests.  This swart nut--shaped almost 
like a clam-shell, and halving in the same way along its sharp 
edges--encloses something almost incredible.  There is a pale 
envelope about the kernel; remove it, and you find between your 
fingers a little viper, triangular-headed, coiled thrice upon 
itself, perfect in every detail of form from head to tail.  Was 
this marvellous mockery evolved for a protective end? It is no 
eccentricity: in every nut the serpent-kernel lies coiled the 
same.

... Yet in spite of a hundred such novel impressions, what a 
delight it is to turn again cityward through the avenues of 
palms, and to feel once more the sensation of being watched, 
without love or hate, by all those lithe, tall, silent, gracious 
shapes!



XXVII.


Hindoos; coolies; men, women, and children-standing, walking, 
or sitting in the sun, under the shadowing of the palms.  Men 
squatting, with hands clasped over their black knees, are 
watching us from under their white turbans-very steadily, with a 
slight scowl.  All these Indian faces have the same set, stern 
expression, the same knitting of the brows; and the keen gaze is 
not altogether pleasant.  It borders upon hostility; it is the 
look of measurement--measurement physical and moral.  In the 
mighty swarming of India these have learned the full meaning and 
force of life's law as we Occidentals rarely learn it.  Under the 
dark fixed frown eye glitters like a serpent's.

[Illustration: VICTORIA REGIA IN THE CANAL AT GEORGETOWN]

Nearly all wear the same Indian dress; the thickly folded 
turban, usually white, white drawers reaching but half-way down 
the thigh, leaving the knees and the legs bare, and white jacket.  
A few don long blue robes, and wear a colored head-dress: these 
are babagees-priests. Most of the men look tall; they are slender 
and small-boned, but the limbs are well turned.  They are grave--
talk in low tones, and seldom smile.  Those you see heavy black 
beards are probably Mussulmans: I am told they have their mosques 
here, and that the muezzein's call to prayer is chanted three 
times daily on many plantations.  Others shave, but the 
Mohammedans allow all the beard to grow....  Very comely some of 
the women are in their close-clinging soft brief robes and 
tantalizing veils--a costume leaving shoulders, arms, and ankles 
bare.  The dark arm is always tapered and rounded; the silver-
circled ankle always elegantly knit to the light straight foot.  
Many slim girls, whether standing or walking or in repose, offer 
remarkable studies of grace; their attitude when erect always 
suggests lightness and suppleness, like the poise of a dancer.


... A coolie mother passes, carrying at her hip a very pretty 
naked baby.  It has exquisite delicacy of limb: its tiny ankles 
are circled by thin bright silver rings; it looks like a little 
bronze statuette, a statuette of Kama, the Indian Eros.  The 
mother's arms are covered from elbow to wrist with silver 
bracelets,--some flat and decorated; others coarse, round, 
smooth, with ends hammered into the form of viper-heads.  She has 
large flowers of gold in her ears, a small gold flower in her 
very delicate little nose.  This nose ornament does not seem 
absurd; on these dark skins the effect is almost as pleasing as 
it is bizarre.  This jewellery is pure metal;--it is thus the 
coolies carry their savings,--melting down silver or gold coin, 
and recasting it into bracelets, ear-rings, and nose ornaments.

[Illustration: DEMERARA COOLIE GIRL.]

... Evening is brief: all this time the days have been growing 
shorter: it will be black at 6 P.M.  One does not regret it;--the 
glory of such a tropical day as this is almost too much to endure 
for twelve hours.  The sun is already low, and yellow with a 
tinge of orange: as he falls between the palms his stare colors 
the world with a strange hue--such a phantasmal light as might be 
given by a nearly burnt-out sun.  The air is full of unfamiliar 
odors.  We pass a flame-colored bush; and an extraordinary 
perfume--strange, rich, sweet--envelops us like a caress: the 
soul of a red jasmine....


... What a tropical sunset is this-within two days' steam-
journey of the equator!  Almost to the zenith the sky flames up 
from the sea,--one tremendous orange incandescence, rapidly 
deepening to vermilion as the sun dips.  The indescribable 
intensity of this mighty burning makes one totally unprepared for 
the spectacle of its sudden passing: a seeming drawing down 
behind the sea of the whole vast flare of light....  Instantly 
the world becomes indigo.  The air grows humid, weighty with 
vapor; frogs commence to make a queer bubbling noise; and some 
unknown creature begins in the trees a singular music, not 
trilling, like the note of our cricket, but one continuous shrill 
tone, high, keen, as of a thin jet of steam leaking through a 
valve.  Strong vegetal scents, aromatic and novel, rise up.  
Under the trees of our hotel I hear a continuous dripping sound; 
the drops fall heavily, like bodies of clumsy insects.  But it is 
not dew, nor insects; it is a thick, transparent jelly--a fleshy 
liquor that falls in immense drops....  The night grows chill 
with dews, with vegetable breath; and we sleep with windows 
nearly closed.



XXVIII.


... Another sunset like the conflagration of a world, as we 
steam away from Guiana;--another unclouded night; and morning 
brings back to us that bright blue in the sea-water which we 
missed for the first time on our approach to the main-land.  
There is a long swell all day, and tepid winds.  But towards 
evening the water once more shifts its hue--takes olive tint--the 
mighty flood of the Orinoco is near.

Over the rim of the sea rise shapes faint pink, faint gray-misty 
shapes that grow and lengthen as we advance. We are nearing 
Trinidad.

It first takes definite form as a prolonged, undulating, pale 
gray mountain chain,--the outline of a sierra.   Approaching 
nearer, we discern other hill summits rounding up and shouldering 
away behind the chain itself. Then the nearest heights begin to 
turn faint green--very slowly.  Right before the outermost spur 
of cliff, fantastic shapes of rock are rising sheer from the 
water: partly green, partly reddish-gray where the surface 
remains unclothed by creepers and shrubs.  Between them the sea 
leaps and whitens.

... And we begin to steam along a magnificent tropical coast,--
before a billowing of hills wrapped in forest from sea to 
summit,--astonishing forest, dense, sombre, impervious to sun--
every gap a blackness as of ink. Giant palms here and there 
overtop the denser foliage; and queer monster trees rise above 
the forest-level against the blue,--spreading out huge flat 
crests from which masses of lianas stream down.  This forest-
front has the apparent solidity of a wall, and forty-five miles 
of it undulate uninterruptedly by us-rising by terraces, or 
projecting like turret-lines, or shooting up into semblance of 
cathedral forms or suggestions of castellated architecture....  
But the secrets of these woods have not been unexplored;--one of 
the noblest writers of our time has so beautifully and fully 
written of them as to leave little for anyone else to say.  He 
who knows Charles Kingsley's "At Last" probably knows the woods 
of Trinidad far better than many who pass them daily.

Even as observed from the steamer's deck, the mountains and 
forests of Trinidad have an aspect very different from those of 
the other Antilles.  The heights are less lofty,--less jagged and 
abrupt,--with rounded summits; the peaks of Martinique or 
Dominica rise fully two thousand feet higher.  The land itself is 
a totally different formation,--anciently being a portion of the 
continent; and its flora and fauna are of South America.

... There comes a great cool whiff of wind,--another and 
another;--then a mighty breath begins to blow steadily upon us,--
the breath of the Orinoco....  It grows dark before we pass 
through the Ape's Mouth, to anchor in one of the calmest harbors 
in the world,--never disturbed by hurricanes.  Over unruffled 
water the lights of Port-of-Spain shoot long still yellow beams. 
The night grows chill;--the air is made frigid by the breath of 
the enormous river and the vapors of the great woods.



XXIX.


... Sunrise: a morning of supernal beauty,--the sky of a fairy 
tale,--the sea of a love-poem.

Under a heaven of exquisitely tender blue, the whole smooth sea 
has a perfect luminous dove-color,--the horizon being filled to a 
great height with greenish-golden haze,--a mist of unspeakably 
sweet tint, a hue that, imitated in any aquarelle, would be cried 
out against as an impossiblity. As yet the hills are nearly all 
gray, the forests also inwrapping them are gray and ghostly, for 
the sun has but just risen above them, and vapors hang like a 
veil between.  Then, over the glassy level of the flood, winds of 
purple and violet and pale blue and fluid gold begin to shoot and 
quiver and broaden; these are the currents of the morning, 
catching varying color with the deepening of the day and the 
lifting of the tide.

Then, as the sun rises higher, green masses begin to glimmer 
among the grays; the outlines of the forest summits commence to 
define themselves through the vapory light, to left and right of 
the great glow.  Only the city still remains invisible; it lies 
exactly between us and the downpour of solar splendor, and the 
mists there have caught such radiance that the place seems hidden 
by a fog of fire.  Gradually the gold-green of the horizon 
changes to a pure yellow; the hills take soft, rich, sensuous 
colors.  One of the more remote has turned a marvellous tone--a 
seemingly diaphanous aureate color, the very ghost of gold.  But 
at last all of them sharpen bluely, show bright folds and 
ribbings of green through their haze.  The valleys remain awhile 
clouded, as if filled with something like blue smoke; but the 
projecting masses of cliff and slope swiftly change their misty 
green to a warmer hue.  All these tints and colors have a 
spectral charm, a preternatural loveliness; everything seems 
subdued, softened, semi-vaporized,--the only very sharply defined 
silhouettes being those of the little becalmed ships sprinkling 
the western water, all spreading colored wings to catch the 
morning breeze.

The more the sun ascends, the more rapid the development of the 
landscape out of vapory blue; the hills all become green-faced, 
reveal the details of frondage.  The wind fills the waiting 
sails--white, red, yellow,--ripples the water, and turns it 
green.  Little fish begin to leap; they spring and fall in 
glittering showers like opalescent blown spray.  And at last, 
through the fading vapor, dew-glittering red-tiled roofs reveal 
themselves: the city is unveiled-a city full of color, somewhat 
quaint, somewhat Spanish-looking--a little like St. Pierre, a little 
like New Orleans in the old quarter; everywhere fine tall palms.



XXX.


Ashore, through a black swarming and a great hum of creole 
chatter....  Warm yellow narrow streets under a burning blue 
day;--a confused impression of long vistas, of low pretty houses 
and cottages, more or less quaint, bathed in sun and yellow-
wash,--and avenues of shade-trees,--and low garden-walls 
overtopped by waving banana leaves and fronds of palms....  A 
general sensation of drowsy warmth and vast light and exotic 
vegetation,--coupled with some vague disappointment a the absence 
of that picturesque humanity that delighted us in the streets of 
St. Pierre, Martinique.  The bright costumes of the French 
colonies are not visible here: there is nothing like them in any 
of the English islands. Nevertheless, this wonderful Trinidad is 
as unique ethnologically as it is otherwise remarkable among all 
the other Antilles.  It has three distinct creole populations,--
English, Spanish, and French,--besides its German and Madeiran 
settlers.  There is also a special black or half-breed element, 
corresponding to each creole race, and speaking the language of 
each; there are fifty thousand Hindoo coolies, and a numerous 
body of Chinese.  Still, this extraordinary diversity of race 
elements does not make itself at once apparent to the stranger.  
Your first impressions, as you pass through the black crowd upon 
the wharf, is that of being among a population as nearly African 
as that of Barbadoes; and indeed the black element dominates to 
such an extent that upon the streets white faces look strange by 
contrast.  When a white face does appear, it is usually under the 
shadow of an Indian helmet, and heavily bearded, and austere: the 
physiognomy of one used to command.  Against the fantastic ethnic 
background of a11 this colonial life, this strong, bearded 
English visage takes something of heroic relief;--one feels, in a 
totally novel way, the dignity of a white skin.

[Illustration: ST. JAMES AVENUE, PORT-OF-SPAIN, TRINIDAD.]

... I hire a carriage to take me to the nearest coolie village;
--a delightful drive....  Sometimes the smooth white road curves 
round the slope of a forest-covered mountain;--sometimes 
overlooks a valley shining with twenty different shades of 
surface green;--sometimes traverses marvellous natural arcades 
formed by the interweaving and intercrossing of bamboos fifty 
feet high.  Rising in vast clumps, and spreading out sheafwise 
from the soil towards the sky, the curves of their beautiful 
jointed stems meet at such perfect angles above the way, and on 
either side of it, as to imitate almost exactly the elaborate 
Gothic arch-work of old abbey cloisters.  Above the road, 
shadowing the slopes of lofty hills, forests beetle in dizzy 
precipices of verdure.  They are green--burning, flashing green--
covered with parasitic green creepers and vines; they show 
enormous forms, or rather dreams of form, fetichistic and 
startling.  Banana leaves flicker and flutter along the way-side; 
palms shoot up to vast altitudes, like pillars of white metal; 
and there is a perpetual shifting of foliage color, from yellow-
green to orange, from reddish-green to purple, from emerald-green 
to black-green. But the background color, the dominant tone, is 
like the plumage of a green parrot.

... We drive into the coolie village, along a narrower way, 
lined with plantain-trees, bananas, flamboyants, and unfamiliar 
shrubs with large broad leaves.  Here and there are cocoa-palms.  
Beyond the little ditches on either side, occupying openings in 
the natural hedge, are the dwellings--wooden cabins, widely 
separated from each other.  The narrow lanes that enter the road 
are also lined with habitations, half hidden by banana-trees.  
There is a prodigious glare, an intense heat. Around, above the 
trees and the roofs, rise the far hill shapes, some brightly 
verdant, some cloudy blue, some gray.  The road and the lanes are 
almost deserted; there is little shade; only at intervals some 
slender brown girl or naked baby appears at a door-way. The 
carriage halts before a shed built against a wall--a simple roof 
of palm thatch supported upon jointed posts of bamboo.

It is a little coolie temple. A few weary Indian laborers 
slumber in its shadow; pretty naked children, with silver rings 
round their ankles, are playing there with a white dog.  Painted 
over the wall surface, in red, yellow, brown, blue, and green 
designs upon a white ground, are extraordinary figures of gods 
and goddesses.  They have several pairs of arms, brandishing 
mysterious things,--they seem to dance, gesticulate, threaten; 
but they are all very naïf;--remind one of the first efforts of a 
child with the first box of paints.  While I am looking at these 
things, one coolie after another wakes up (these men sleep 
lightly) and begins to observe me almost as curiously, and I fear 
much less kindly, than I have been observing the gods.  "Where is 
your babagee?" I inquire.  No one seems to comprehend my question; 
the gravity of each dark face remains unrelaxed.  Yet I would 
have liked to make an offering unto Siva.

... Outside the Indian goldsmith's cabin, palm shadows are 
crawling slowly to and fro in the white glare, like shapes of 
tarantulas.  Inside, the heat is augmented by the tiny charcoal 
furnace which glows beside a ridiculous little anvil set into a 
wooden block buried level with the soil.  Through a rear door 
come odors of unknown known flowers and the cool brilliant green 
of banana leaves....  A minute of waiting in the hot silence;--
then, noiselessly as a phantom, the nude-limbed smith enters by a 
rear door,--squats down, without a word, on his little mat beside 
his little anvil,--and turns towards me, inquiringly, a face half 
veiled by a black beard,--a turbaned Indian face, sharp, severe, 
and slightly unpleasant in expression. "_Vlé béras!_" explains my 
creole driver, pointing to his client.  The smith opens his lips 
to utter in the tone of a call the single syllable "_Ra_!"  then 
folds his arms.

[Illustration: COOLIES OF TRINIDAD.]

Almost immediately a young Hindoo woman enters, squats down on 
the earthen floor at the end of the bench which forms the only 
furniture of the shop, and turns upon me a pair of the finest 
black eyes I have ever seen,--like the eyes of a fawn.  She is 
very simply clad, in a coolie robe leaving arms and ankles bare, 
and clinging about the figure in gracious folds; her color is a 
clear bright brown-new bronze; her face a fine oval, and 
charmingly aquiline. I perceive a little silver ring, in the form 
of a twisted snake, upon the slender second toe of each bare 
foot; upon each arm she has at least ten heavy silver rings; 
there are also large silver rings about her ankles; a gold flower 
is fixed by a little hook in one nostril, and two immense silver 
circles, shaped like new moons, shimmer in her ears.   The smith 
mutters something to her in his Indian tongue.  She rises, and 
seating herself on the bench beside me, in an attitude of perfect 
grace, holds out one beautiful brown arm to me that I may choose 
a ring.  

The arm is much more worthy of attention than the rings: it has 
the tint, the smoothness, the symmetry, of a fine statuary's work 
in metal;--the upper arm, tattooed with a bluish circle of 
arabesques, is otherwise unadorned; all the bracelets are on the 
fore-arm. Very clumsy and coarse they prove to be on closer 
examination: it was the fine dark skin which by color contrast 
made them look so pretty.  I choose the outer one, a round ring 
with terminations shaped like viper heads;--the smith inserts a 
pair of tongs between these ends, presses outward slowly and 
strongly, and the ring is off. It has a faint musky odor, not 
unpleasant, the perfume of the tropical flesh it clung to.  I 
would have taken it thus; but the smith snatches it from me, 
heats it red in his little charcoal furnace, hammers it into a 
nearly perfect circle again, slakes it, and burnishes it.

Then I ask for children's _béras_, or bracelets; and the young 
mother brings in her own baby girl,--a little darling just able 
to walk.  She has extraordinary eyes;--the mother's eyes 
magnified (the father's are small and fierce).  I bargain for the 
single pair of thin rings on her little wrists;--while the smith 
is taking them off, the child keeps her wonderful gaze fixed on 
my face. Then I observe that the peculiarity of the eye is the 
size of the iris rather than the size of the ball.  These eyes 
are not soft like the mother's, after all; they are ungentle, 
beautiful as they are; they have the dark and splendid flame of 
the eyes of a great bird--a bird of prey.

... She will grow up, this little maid, into a slender, graceful 
woman, very beautiful, no doubt; perhaps a little dangerous.  She 
will marry, of course: probably she is betrothed even now, 
according to Indian custom,--pledged to some brown boy, the son 
of a friend.  It will not be so many years before the day of 
their noisy wedding: girls shoot up under this sun with as swift 
a growth as those broad-leaved beautiful shapes which fill the 
open door-way with quivering emerald.  And she will know the 
witchcraft of those eyes, will feel the temptation to use them,--
perhaps to smile one of those smiles which have power over life 
and death.

[Illustration: COOLIE SERVANT.]

And then the old coolie story!  One day, in the yellowing cane-
fields, among the swarm of veiled and turbaned workers, a word is 
overheard, a side glance intercepted;--there is the swirling 
flash of a cutlass blade; a shrieking gathering of women about a 
headless corpse in the sun; and passing cityward, between armed 
and helmeted men, the vision of an Indian prisoner, blood-
crimsoned, walking very steadily, very erect, with the solemnity 
of a judge, the dry bright gaze of an idol....



XXXI.


... We steam very slowly into the harbor of St. George, Grenada, 
in dead silence.  No cannon-signal allowed here....  Some one 
suggests that the violence of the echoes in this harbor renders 
the firing of cannon dangerous; somebody else says the town is in 
so ruinous a condition that the report of a gun would shake it 
down.

... There are heavy damp smells in the warm air as of mould, or 
of wet clay freshly upturned.

This harbor is a deep clear basin, surrounded and shadowed by 
immense volcanic hills, all green.  The opening by which we 
entered is cut off from sight by a promontory, and hill shapes 
beyond the promontory;--we seem to be in the innermost ring of a 
double crater. There is a continuous shimmering and plashing of 
leaping fish in the shadow of the loftiest height, which reaches 
half across the water.

As it climbs up the base of the huge hill at a precipitous 
angle, the city can be seen from the steamer's deck almost as in 
a bird's-eye view.  A senescent city; mostly antiquated Spanish 
architecture,--ponderous archways and earthquake-proof walls.  
The yellow buildings fronting us beyond the wharf seem half 
decayed; they are strangely streaked with green, look as if they 
had been long under water.  We row ashore, land in a crowd of 
lazy-looking, silent blacks.

... What a quaint, dawdling, sleepy place it is !  All these 
narrow streets are falling into ruin; everywhere the same green 
stains upon the walls, as of slime left by a flood; everywhere 
disjointed brickwork, crumbling roofs, pungent odors of mould.  
Yet this Spanish architecture was built to endure; those yellow, 
blue, or green walls were constructed with the solidity of 
fortress-work; the very stairs are stone; the balustrades and the 
railings were made of good wrought iron.  In a Northern clime 
such edifices would resist the wear and tear of five hundred 
years.  But here the powers of disintegration are extraordinary, 
and the very air would seem to have the devouring force of an 
acid.  All surfaces and angles are yielding to the attacks of 
time, weather, and microscopic organisms; paint peels, stucco 
falls, tiles tumble, stones slip out of place, and in every chink 
tiny green things nestle, propagating themselves through the 
jointures and dislocating the masonry.  There is an appalling 
mouldiness, an exaggerated mossiness--the mystery and the 
melancholy of a city deserted.  Old warehouses without signs, 
huge and void, are opened regularly every day for so many hours; 
yet the business of the aged merchants within seems to be a 
problem;--you might fancy those gray men were always waiting for 
ships that sailed away a generation ago, and will never return.  
You see no customers entering the stores, but only a black 
mendicant from time to time.  And high above all this, 
overlooking streets too steep for any vehicle, slope the red 
walls of the mouldering fort, patched with the viridescence of 
ruin.

[Illustration: COOLIE MERCHANT.]

By a road leading up beyond the city, you reach the cemetery.  
The staggering iron gates by which you enter it are almost rusted 
from their hinges, and the low wall enclosing it is nearly all 
verdant.  Within, you see a wilderness of strange weeds, vines, 
creepers, fantastic shrubs run mad, with a few palms mounting 
above the green confusion;--only here and there a gleam of slabs 
with inscriptions half erased.  Such as you can read are 
epitaphs of seamen, dating back to the years 1800, 1802, 1812.  
Over these lizards are running; undulations in the weeds warn you 
to beware of snakes; toads leap away as you proceed; and you 
observe everywhere crickets perched--grass-colored creatures with 
two ruby specks for eyes.  They make a sound shrill as the scream 
of machinery beveling marble.  At the farther end of the cemetery 
is a heavy ruin that would seem to have once been part of a 
church: it is so covered with creeping weeds now that you only 
distinguish the masonry on close approach, and high trees are 
growing within it. There is something in tropical ruin peculiarly 
and terribly impressive: this luxuriant, evergreen, ever-splendid 
Nature consumes the results of human endeavor so swiftly, buries 
memories so profoundly, distorts the labors of generations so 
grotesquely, that one feels here, as nowhere else, how ephemeral 
man is, how intense and how tireless the effort necessary to 
preserve his frail creations even a little while from the vast 
unconscious forces antagonistic to all stability, to all 
factitious equilibrium.

... A gloomy road winds high around one cliff overlooking the 
hollow of the bay, Following it, you pass under extraordinarily 
dark shadows of foliage, and over a blackish soil strewn with 
pretty bright green fruit that has fallen from above.  Do not 
touch them even with the tip of your finger!  Those are manchineel 
apples; with their milky juice the old Caribs were wont to poison 
the barbs of their parrot-feathered arrows.  Over the mould, 
swarming among the venomous fruit, innumerable crabs make a sound 
almost like the murmuring of water.  Some are very large, with 
prodigious stalked eyes, and claws white as ivory, and a red 
cuirass; others, very small and very swift in their movements, 
are raspberry-colored; others, again, are apple-green, with queer 
mottlings of black and white.  There is an unpleasant odor of 
decay in the air--vegetable decay.

Emerging from the shadow of the manchineel-trees, you may follow 
the road up, up, up, under beetling cliffs of plutonian rock that 
seem about to topple down upon the path-way.  The rock is naked 
and black near the road; higher, it is veiled by a heavy green 
drapery of lianas, curling creepers, unfamiliar vines.  All 
around you are sounds of crawling, dull echoes of dropping; the 
thick growths far up waver in the breathless air as if something 
were moving sinuously through them.  And always the odor of humid 
decomposition.  Farther on, the road looks wilder, sloping 
between black rocks, through strange vaultings of foliage and 
night-black shadows. Its lonesomeness oppresses; one returns 
without regret, by rusting gate-ways and tottering walls, back to 
the old West Indian city rotting in the sun.

... Yet Grenada, despite the dilapidation of her capital and the 
seeming desolation of its environs, is not the least prosperous 
of the Antilles.  Other islands have been less fortunate: the era 
of depression has almost passed for Grenada; through the rapid 
development of her secondary cultures--coffee and cocoa--she 
hopes with good reason to repair some of the vast losses involved 
by the decay of the sugar industry.

Still, in this silence of mouldering streets, this melancholy of 
abandoned dwellings, this invasion of vegetation, there is a 
suggestion of what any West Indian port might become when the 
resources of the island had been exhausted, and its commerce 
ruined.  After all persons of means and energy enough to seek 
other fields of industry and enterprise had taken their 
departure, and the plantations had been abandoned, and the 
warehouses closed up forever, and the voiceless wharves left to 
rot down into the green water, Nature would soon so veil the 
place as to obliterate every outward visible sign of the past.  
In scarcely more than a generation from the time that the last 
merchant steamer had taken her departure some traveller might 
look for the once populous and busy mart in vain: vegetation 
would have devoured it.

... In the mixed English and creole speech of the black 
population one can discern evidence of a linguistic transition.  
The original French _patois_ is being rapidly forgotten or 
transformed irrecognizably.

Now, in almost every island the negro idiom is different. So 
often have some of the Antilles changed owners, moreover, that in 
them the negro has never been able to form a true _patois_.  He had 
scarcely acquired some idea of the language of his first masters, 
when other rulers and another tongue were thrust upon him,--and 
this may have occurred three or four times!  The result is a 
totally incoherent agglomeration of speech-forms--a baragouin 
fantastic and unintelligible beyond the power of anyone to 
imagine who has not heard it....



XXXII.


... A beautiful fantastic shape floats to us through the morning 
light; first cloudy gold like the horizon, then pearly gray, then 
varying blue, with growing green lights;--Saint Lucia.  Most 
strangely formed of all this volcanic family;--everywhere 
mountainings sharp as broken crystals.  Far off the Pitons--twin 
peaks of the high coast-show softer contours, like two black 
breasts pointing against the sky....

... As we enter the harbor of Castries, the lines of the land 
seem no less exquisitely odd, in spite of their rich verdure, 
than when viewed afar off;--they have a particular pitch of 
angle....  Other of these islands show more or less family 
resemblance;--you might readily mistake one silhouette for 
another as seen at a distance, even after several West Indian 
journeys.  But Saint Lucia at once impresses you by its 
eccentricity. 

[Illustration: CHURCH STREET, ST. GEORGE, GRENADA.]

Castries, drowsing under palm leaves at the edge of its curving 
harbor,--perhaps an ancient crater,--seems more of a village than 
a town: streets of low cottages and little tropic gardens.  
It has a handsome half-breed population: the old French 
colonial manners have been less changed here by English influence 
than in Saint Kitt's and elsewhere;--the creole _patois_ is still 
spoken, though the costumes have changed....  A more beautiful 
situation could scarcely be imagined,--even in this tropic world.  
In the massing of green heights about the little town are gaps 
showing groves of palm beyond; but the peak summits catch the 
clouds.  Behind us the harbor mouth seems spanned by steel-blue 
bars: these are lines of currents.  Away, on either hand, 
volcanic hills are billowing to vapory distance; and in their 
nearer hollows are beautiful deepenings of color: ponded shades 
of diaphanous blue or purplish tone....  I first remarked this 
extraordinary coloring of shadows in Martinique, where it exists 
to a degree that tempts one to believe the island has a special 
atmosphere of its own....  A friend tells me the phenomenon is 
probably due to inorganic substances floating in the air--each 
substance in diffusion having its own index of refraction. 
Substances so held in suspension by vapors would vary according 
to the nature of soil in different islands, and might thus 
produce special local effects of atmospheric tinting.

... We remain but half an hour at Castries; then steam along 
the coast to take in freight at another port. Always the same 
delicious color-effects as we proceed, with new and surprising 
visions of hills.  The near slopes descending to the sea are a 
radiant green, with streaks and specklings of darker verdure;--
the farther-rising hills faint blue, with green saliencies 
catching the sun;--and beyond these are upheavals of luminous 
gray--pearl-gray--sharpened in the silver glow of the horizon.... 
The general impression of the whole landscape is one of motion 
suddenly petrified,--of an earthquake surging and tossing 
suddenly arrested and fixed: a raging of cones and peaks and 
monstrous truncated shapes....  We approach the Pitons.

Seen afar off, they first appeared twin mammiform peaks,--naked 
and dark against the sky; but now they begin to brighten a little 
and show color,--also to change form.  They take a lilaceous hue, 
broken by gray and green lights; and as we draw yet nearer they 
prove dissimilar both in shape and tint....  Now they separate 
before us, throwing long pyramidal shadows across the steamer's 
path.  Then, as they open to our coming, between them a sea bay 
is revealed--a very lovely curving bay, bounded by hollow cliffs 
of fiery green.  At either side of the gap the Pitons rise like 
monster pylones.  And a charming little settlement, a beautiful 
sugar-plantation, is nestling there between them, on the very 
edge of the bay. 

Out of a bright sea of verdure, speckled with oases of darker foliage,
these Pitons from the land side tower in sombre vegetation.  Very high 
up, on the nearer one, amid the wooded slopes, you can see houses 
perched; and there are bright breaks in the color there--tiny 
mountain pastures that look like patches of green silk velvet.

... We pass the Pitons, and enter another little craterine 
harbor, to cast anchor before the village of Choi-seul. It lies 
on a ledge above the beach and under high hills: we land through 
a surf, running the boat high up on soft yellowish sand.  A 
delicious saline scent of sea-weed.

It is disappointing, the village: it is merely one cross of 
brief streets, lined with blackening wooden dwellings there are 
no buildings worth looking at, except the queer old French 
church, steep-roofed and bristling with points that look like 
extinguishers.  Over broad reaches of lava rock a shallow river 
flows by the village to the sea, gurgling under shadows of 
tamarind foliage.  It passes beside the market-place--a market-
place without stalls, benches, sheds, or pavements: meats, 
fruits, and vegetables are simply fastened to the trees.  Women 
are washing and naked children bathing in the stream; they are 
bronze-skinned, a fine dark color with a faint tint of red in 
it....  There is little else to look at: steep wooded hills cut 
off the view towards the interior. 

But over the verge of the sea there is something strange growing 
visible, looming up like a beautiful yellow cloud. It is an island, 
so lofty, so luminous, so phantom-like, that it seems a vision of 
the Island of the Seven Cities. It is only the form of St. Vincent, 
bathed in vapory gold by the sun.

... Evening at La Soufrière: still another semicircular bay in 
a hollow of green hills.  Glens hold bluish shadows ows.  The 
color of the heights is very tender; but there are long streaks 
and patches of dark green, marking watercourses and very abrupt 
surfaces.  From the western side immense shadows are pitched 
brokenly across the valley and over half the roofs of the palmy 
town.  There is a little river flowing down to the bay on the 
left; and west of it a walled cemetery is visible, out of which 
one monumental palm rises to a sublime height: its crest still 
bathes in the sun, above the invading shadow. Night approaches; 
the shade of the hills inundates all the landscape, rises even 
over the palm-crest.  Then, black-towering into the golden glow 
of sunset, the land loses all its color, all its charm; forms of 
frondage, variations of tint, become invisible.  Saint Lucia is 
only a monstrous silhouette; all its billowing hills, its 
volcanic bays, its amphitheatrical valleys, turn black as ebony. 

And you behold before you a geological dream, a vision of the 
primeval sea: the apparition of the land as first brought forth, 
all peak-tossed and fissured and naked and grim, in the 
tremendous birth of an archipelago.



XXXIII.


Homeward bound.

Again the enormous poem of azure and emerald unrolls before us, 
but in order inverse; again is the island--Litany of the Saints 
repeated for us, but now backward. All the bright familiar 
harbors once more open to receive us;--each lovely Shape floats 
to us again, first golden yellow, then vapory gray, then ghostly 
blue, but always sharply radiant at last, symmetrically 
exquisite, as if chiselled out of amethyst and emerald and 
sapphire. We review the same wondrous wrinkling of volcanic 
hills, the cities that sit in extinct craters, the woods that 
tower to heaven, the peaks perpetually wearing that luminous 
cloud which seems the breathing of each island-life,--its vital 
manifestation....

[Illustration: CASTRIES, ST. LUCIA.]

... Only now do the long succession of exotic and unfamiliar 
impressions received begin to group and blend, to form 
homogeneous results,--general ideas or convictions.  Strongest 
among these is the belief that the white race is disappearing 
from these islands, acquired and held at so vast a cost of blood 
and treasure. Reasons almost beyond enumeration have been 
advanced--economical, climatic, ethnical, political--all of which 
contain truth, yet no single one of which can wholly explain the 
fact.  Already the white West Indian populations are diminishing 
at a rate that almost staggers credibility.  In the island 
paradise of Martinique in 1848 there were 12,000 whites; now, 
against more than 160,000 blacks and half-breeds, there are 
perhaps 5000 whites left to maintain the ethnic struggle, and the 
number of these latter is annually growing less.  Many of the 
British islands have been almost deserted by their former 
cultivators: St. Vincent is becoming desolate: Tobago is a ruin; 
St. Martin lies half abandoned; St. Christopher is crumbling; 
Grenada has lost more than half her whites; St. Thomas, once the 
most prosperous, the most active, the most cosmopolitan of West 
Indian ports, is in full decadence.  And while the white element 
is disappearing, the dark races are multiplying as never before;-
-the increase of the negro and half-breed populations has been 
everywhere one of the startling results of emancipation.  The 
general belief among the creole whites of the Lesser Antilles 
would seem to confirm the old prediction that the slave races of 
the past must become the masters of the future.  Here and there 
the struggle may be greatly prolonged, but everywhere the 
ultimate result must be the same, unless the present conditions 
of commerce and production become marvellously changed.   The 
exterminated Indian peoples of the Antilles have already been 
replaced by populations equally fitted to cope with the forces of 
the nature about them,--that splendid and terrible Nature of the 
tropics which consumes the energies of the races of the North, 
which devours all that has been accomplished by their heroism or 
their crimes,--effacing their cities, rejecting their  
civilization.  To those peoples physiologically in harmony with 
this Nature belong all the chances of victory in the contest--
already begun--for racial supremacy.

But with the disappearance of the white populations the ethnical 
problem would be still unsettled.  Between the black and mixed 
peoples prevail hatreds more enduring and more intense than any 
race prejudices between whites and freedmen in the past;--a new 
struggle for supremacy could not fail to begin, with the 
perpetual augmentation of numbers, the ever-increasing 
competition for existence.  And the true black element, more 
numerically powerful, more fertile, more cunning, better adapted 
to pyrogenic climate and tropical environment, would surely win.  
All these mixed races, all these beautiful fruit-colored 
populations, seem doomed to extinction: the future tendency must 
be to universal blackness,  if existing conditions continue--
perhaps to universal savagery.  Everywhere the sins of the past 
have borne the same fruit, have furnished the colonies with 
social enigmas that mock the wisdom of legislators, a dragon-crop 
of problems that no modern political science has yet proved 
competent to deal with.  Can it even be hoped that future 
sociologists will be able to answer them, after Nature--who never 
forgives--shall have exacted the utmost possible retribution for 
all the crimes and follies of three hundred years?









Part Two - Martinique Sketches.




CHAPTER I.
LES PORTEUSES.



I.


When you find yourself for the first time, upon some unshadowed 
day, in the delightful West Indian city of St. Pierre,--supposing 
that you own the sense of poetry, the recollections of a 
student,--there is apt to steal upon your fancy an impression of 
having seen it all before, ever so long ago,--you cannot tell 
where.  The sensation of some happy dream you cannot wholly 
recall might be compared to this feeling.  In the simplicity and 
solidity of the quaint architecture,--in the eccentricity of 
bright narrow streets, all aglow with warm coloring,--in the 
tints of roof and wall, antiquated by streakings and patchings of 
mould greens and grays,--in the startling absence of window-
sashes, glass, gas lamps, and chimneys,--in the blossom-
tenderness of the blue heaven, the splendor of tropic light, and 
the warmth of the tropic wind,--you find less the impression of a 
scene of to-day than the sensation of something that was and is 
not.  Slowly this feeling strengthens with your pleasure in the 
colorific radiance of costume,--the semi-nudity of passing 
figures,--the puissant shapeliness of torsos ruddily swart like 
statue metal,--the rounded outline of limbs yellow as tropic 
fruit,--the grace of attitudes,--the unconscious harmony of 
groupings,--the gathering and folding and falling of light robes 
that oscillate with swaying of free hips,--the sculptural symmetry
of unshod feet.  You look up and down the lemon-tinted streets,
--down to the dazzling azure brightness of meeting sky and sea; up 
to the perpetual verdure of mountain woods--wondering at the 
mellowness of tones, the sharpness of lines in the light, the 
diaphaneity of colored shadows; always asking memory: "When?...  
where did I see all this... long ago?".... 

Then, perhaps, your gaze is suddenly riveted by the vast and solemn 
beauty of the verdant violet-shaded mass of the dead Volcano,--
high-towering above the town, visible from all its ways, and umbraged, 
maybe, with thinnest curlings of cloud,--like spectres of its ancient 
smoking to heaven.  And all at once the secret of your dream is 
revealed, with the rising of many a luminous memory,--dreams of 
the Idyllists, flowers of old Sicilian song, fancies limned upon 
Pompeiian walls. For a moment the illusion is delicious: you 
comprehend as never before the charm of a vanished world,--the 
antique life, the story of terra-cottas and graven stones and 
gracious things exhumed: even the sun is not of to-day, but of 
twenty centuries gone;--thus, and under such a light, walked the 
women of the elder world.  You know the fancy absurd;--that the 
power of the orb has visibly abated nothing in all the eras of 
man,--that millions are the ages of his almighty glory; but for 
one instant of reverie he seemeth larger,--even that sun 
impossible who coloreth the words, coloreth the works of artist-
lovers of the past, with the gold light of dreams.

Too soon the hallucination is broken by modern sounds, 
dissipated by modern sights,--rough trolling of sailors 
descending to their boats,--the heavy boom of a packet's signal-
gun,--the passing of an American buggy. Instantly you become 
aware that the melodious tongue spoken by the passing throng is 
neither Hellenic nor Roman: only the beautiful childish speech of 
French slaves.



II.


But what slaves were the fathers of this free generation? Your 
anthropologists, your ethnologists, seem at fault here: the 
African traits have become transformed; the African 
characteristics have been so modified within little more than two 
hundred years--by inter-blending of blood, by habit, by soil and 
sun and all those natural powers which shape the mould of races, 
--that you may look in vain for verification of ethnological 
assertions....  No: the heel does _not_ protrude;--the foot is _not_ 
flat, but finely arched;--the extremities are not large;--all the 
limbs taper, all the muscles are developed; and prognathism has 
become so rare that months of research may not yield a single 
striking case of it....  No: this is a special race, peculiar to 
the island as are the shapes of its peaks,--a mountain race; and 
mountain races are comely....  Compare it with the population of 
black Barbadoes, where the apish grossness of African coast types 
has been perpetuated unchanged;--and the contrast may well 
astonish!...



III.


The erect carriage and steady swift walk of the women who bear 
burdens is especially likely to impress the artistic observer: it 
is the sight of such passers-by which gives, above all, the 
antique tone and color to his first sensations;--and the larger 
part of the female population of mixed race are practised 
carriers.  Nearly all the transportation of light merchandise, as 
well as of meats, fruits, vegetables, and food stuffs,--to and 
from the interior,--is effected upon human heads.  At some of the 
ports the regular local packets are loaded and unloaded by women 
and girls,--able to carry any trunk or box to its destination.  
At Fort-de-France the great steamers of the Compagnie Générale 
Transatlantique, are entirely coaled by women, who carry the coal 
on their heads, singing as they come and go in processions of 
hundreds; and the work is done with incredible rapidity.  Now, 
the creole _porteuse_, or female carrier, is certainly one of 
the most remarkable physical types in the world; and whatever 
artistic enthusiasm her graceful port, lithe walk, or half-savage 
beauty may inspire you with, you can form no idea, if a total 
stranger, what a really wonderful being she is....  Let me tell 
you something about that highest type of professional female carrier, 
which is to the _charbonnière_, or coaling-girl, what the thorough-bred 
racer is to the draught-horse,--the type of porteuse selected for 
swiftness and endurance to distribute goods in the interior parishes, 
or to sell on commission at long distances.  To the same class naturally 
belong those country carriers able to act as porteuses of plantation 
produce, fruits, or vegetables,--between the nearer ports and 
their own interior parishes....  Those who believe that great 
physical endurance and physical energy cannot exist in the 
tropics do not know the creole carrier-girl.



IV.


At a very early age--perhaps at five years--she learns to carry 
small articles upon her head,--a bowl of rice,--a dobanne, or 
red earthen decanter, full of water,--even an orange on a plate; 
and before long she is able to balance these perfectly without 
using her hands to steady them.  (I have often seen children 
actually run with cans of water upon their heads, and never spill 
a drop.)  At nine or ten she is able to carry thus a tolerably 
heavy basket, or a _trait_ (a wooden tray with deep outward sloping 
sides) containing a weight of from twenty to thirty pounds; and 
is able to accompany her mother, sister, or cousin on long 
peddling journeys,--walking barefoot twelve and fifteen miles a day.  
At sixteen or seventeen she is a tall robust girl,--lithe, vigorous, 
tough,--all of tendon and hard flesh;--she carries a tray or a basket 
of the largest size, and a burden of one hundred and twenty to one 
hundred and fifty pounds weight;--she can now earn about thirty 
francs (about six dollars) a month, _by walking fifty miles a day_, 
as an itinerant seller.  Among her class there are figures to make 
you dream of Atalanta;--and all, whether ugly or attractive as to 
feature, are finely shapen as to body and limb.  Brought into existence 
by extraordinary necessities of environment, the type is a 
peculiarly local one,--a type of human thorough-bred representing 
the true secret of grace: economy of force.  There are no 
corpulent porteuses for the long interior routes; all are built 
lightly and firmly as those racers.  There are no old porteuses;
--to do the work even at forty signifies a constitution of 
astounding solidity. After the full force of youth and health is 
spent, the poor carrier must seek lighter labor;--she can no 
longer compete with the girls.  For in this calling the young 
body is taxed to its utmost capacity of strength, endurance, and 
rapid motion.

As a general rule, the weight is such that no well-freighted 
porteuse can, unassisted, either "load" or "unload" (_châgé_ or 
_déchâgé_, in creole phrase); the effort to do so would burst a 
blood-vessel, wrench a nerve, rupture a muscle.  She cannot even 
sit down under her burden without risk of breaking her neck: 
absolute perfection of the balance is necessary for self-
preservation.  A case came under my own observation of a woman 
rupturing a muscle in her arm through careless haste in the mere 
act of aiding another to unload.

And no one not a brute will ever refuse to aid a woman to lift 
or to relieve herself of her burden;--you may see the wealthiest 
merchant, the proudest planter, gladly do it;--the meanness of 
refusing, or of making any conditions for the performance of this 
little kindness has only been imagined in those strange Stories of 
Devils wherewith the oral and uncollected literature of the creole 
abounds. [3]



V.


Preparing for her journey, the young _màchanne_ (marchande) puts 
on the poorest and briefest chemise in her possession, and the 
most worn of her light calico robes. These are all she wears.  
The robe is drawn upward and forward, so as to reach a little 
below the knee, and is confined thus by a waist-string, or a long 
kerchief bound tightly round the loins.  Instead of a Madras or 
painted turban-kerchief, she binds a plain _mouchoir_ neatly and
closely about her head; and if her hair be long, it is combed 
back and gathered into a loop behind.  Then, with a second 
mouchoir of coarser quality she makes a pad, or, as she calls it, 
_tòche_, by winding the kerchief round her fingers as you would 
coil up a piece of string;--and the soft mass, flattened with a 
patting of the hand, is placed upon her head, over the coiffure.  
On this the great loaded trait is poised.

[Illustration: 'TI MARIE (On the Route from St. Pierre
to Basse-Pointe.)]

She wears no shoes!  To wear shoes and do her work swiftly and 
well in such a land of mountains would be impossible.  She must 
climb thousands and descend thousands of feet every day,--march 
up and down slopes so steep that the horses of the country all 
break down after a few years of similar journeying.  The girl 
invariably outlasts the horse,--though carrying an equal weight.  
Shoes, unless extraordinarily well made, would shift place a 
little with every change from ascent to descent, or the reverse, 
during the march,--would yield and loosen with the ever-varying 
strain,--would compress the toes,--produce corns, bunions, raw 
places by rubbing, and soon cripple the porteuse.  Remember, she 
has to walk perhaps fifty miles between dawn and dark, under a 
sun to which a single hour's exposure, without the protection of 
an umbrella, is perilous to any European or American--the 
terrible sun of the tropics!  Sandals are the only conceivable 
foot-gear suited to such a calling as hers; but she needs no 
sandals: the soles of her feet are toughened so as to feel no 
asperities, and present to sharp pebbles a surface at once 
yielding and resisting, like a cushion of solid caoutchouc.

Besides her load, she carries only a canvas purse tied to her 
girdle on the right side, and on the left a very small bottle of 
rum, or white _tafia_,--usually the latter, because it is so 
cheap....  For she may not always find the Gouyave Water to 
drink,--the cold clear pure stream conveyed to the fountains of 
St. Pierre from the highest mountains by a beautiful and marvellous 
plan of hydraulic engineering: she will have to drink betimes the 
common spring-water of the bamboo-fountains on the remoter high-roads; 
and this may cause dysentery if swallowed without a spoonful of 
spirits.  Therefore she never travels without a little liquor.



VI.


... So!--She is ready: "_Châgé moin, souplè, chè!_"  She bends to 
lift the end of the heavy trait: some one takes the other,--_yon!-
dé!--toua!_--it is on her head. Perhaps she winces an instant;--
the weight is not perfectly balanced; she settles it with her 
hands,--gets it in the exact place.  Then, all steady,--lithe, 
light, half naked,--away she moves with a long springy step.  So 
even her walk that the burden never sways; yet so rapid her motion 
that however good a walker you may fancy yourself to be you will 
tire out after a sustained effort of fifteen minutes to follow 
her uphill.  Fifteen minutes;--and she can keep up that pace 
without slackening--save for a minute to eat and drink at mid-
day,--for at least twelve hours and fifty-six minutes, the 
extreme length of a West Indian day.  She starts before dawn; 
tries to reach her resting-place by sunset: after dark, like all 
her people, she is afraid of meeting _zombis_.

Let me give you some idea of her average speed under an average 
weight of one hundred and twenty-five pounds,--estimates based 
partly upon my own observations, partly upon the declarations of 
the trustworthy merchants who employ her, and partly on the assertion of 
habitants of the burghs or cities named--all of which statements 
perfectly agree.  From St. Pierre to Basse-Pointe, by the 
national road, the distance is a trifle less than twenty-seven 
kilometres and three-quarters.  She makes the transit easily in 
three hours and a half; and returns in the afternoon, after an absence 
of scarcely more than eight hours.  From St. Pierre to Morne Rouge--
two thousand feet up in the mountains (an ascent so abrupt that no 
one able to pay carriage-fare dreams of attempting to walk it)--
the distance is seven kilometres and three-quarters.  She makes 
it in little more than an hour.  But this represents only the 
beginning of her journey.  She passes on to Grande Anse, twenty-
one and three-quarter kilometres away. But she does not rest 
there: she returns at the same pace, and reaches St. Pierre 
before dark.  From St. Pierre to Gros-Morne the distance to be 
twice traversed by her is more than thirty-two kilometres.  A 
journey of sixty-four kilometres,--daily, perhaps,--forty miles!  
And there are many màchannes who make yet longer trips,--trips of 
three or four days' duration;--these rest at villages upon their 
route.



VII.


Such travel in such a country would be impossible but for the 
excellent national roads,--limestone highways, solid, broad, 
faultlessly graded,--that wind from town to town, from hamlet to 
hamlet, over mountains, over ravines; ascending by zigzags to 
heights of twenty-five hundred feet; traversing the primeval 
forests of the interior; now skirting the dizziest precipices, 
now descending into the loveliest valleys.  There are thirty-one 
of these magnificent routes, with a total length of 488,052 
metres (more than 303 miles), whereof the construction required 
engineering talent of the highest order,--the building of 
bridges beyond counting, and devices the most ingenious to 
provide against dangers of storms, floods, and land-slips.  Most 
have drinking-fountains along their course at almost regular 
intervals,--generally made by the negroes, who have a simple but 
excellent plan for turning the water of a spring through bamboo 
pipes to the road-way.  Each road is also furnished with mile-
stones, or rather kilometre-stones; and the drainage is perfect 
enough to assure of the highway becoming dry within fifteen 
minutes after the heaviest rain, so long as the surface is 
maintained in tolerably good condition.  Well-kept embankments of 
earth (usually covered with a rich growth of mosses, vines, and 
ferns), or even solid walls of masonry, line the side that 
overhangs a dangerous depth.  And all these highways pass through 
landscapes of amazing beauty,--visions of mountains so many-
tinted and so singular of outline that they would almost seem to 
have been created for the express purpose of compelling 
astonishment. This tropic Nature appears to call into being 
nothing ordinary: the shapes which she evokes are always either 
gracious or odd,--and her eccentricities, her extravagances, have 
a fantastic charm, a grotesqueness as of artistic whim.  Even 
where the landscape-view is cut off by high woods the forms of 
ancient trees--the infinite interwreathing of vine growths all on 
fire with violence of blossom-color,--the enormous green 
outbursts of balisiers, with leaves ten to thirteen feet long,--
the columnar solemnity of great palmistes,--the pliant quivering 
exqisiteness of bamboo,--the furious splendor of roses run mad
--more than atone for the loss of the horizon.  Sometimes you 
approach a steep covered with a growth of what, at first glance, 
looks precisely like fine green fur: it is a first-growth of 
young bamboo.  Or you see a hill-side covered with huge green 
feathers, all shelving down and overlapping as in the tail of 
some unutterable bird: these are baby ferns. And where the road 
leaps some deep ravine with a double or triple bridge of white 
stone, note well what delicious shapes spring up into sunshine 
from the black profundity on either hand!  Palmiform you might 
hastily term them,--but no palm was ever so gracile; no
palm ever bore so dainty a head of green plumes light as lace!  
These likewise are ferns (rare survivors, maybe, of that period 
of monstrous vegetation which preceded the apparition of man), 
beautiful tree-ferns, whose every young plume, unrolling in a 
spiral from the bud, at first assumes the shape of a crozier,--a 
crozier of emerald!  Therefore are some of this species called 
"archbishop-trees," no doubt....  But one might write for a 
hundred years of the sights to be seen upon such a mountain road.



VIII.


In every season, in almost every weather, the porteuse makes her 
journey,--never heeding rain;--her goods being protected by 
double and triple water-proof coverings well bound down over her 
trait.  Yet these tropical rains, coming suddenly with a cold 
wind upon her heated and almost naked body, are to be feared.  To 
any European or un-acclimated white such a wetting, while the 
pores are all open during a profuse perspiration, would probably 
prove fatal: even for white natives the result is always a 
serious and protracted illness.  But the porteuse seldom suffers 
in consequences: she seems proof against fevers, rheumatisms, and 
ordinary colds.  When she does break down, however, the malady is 
a frightful one,--a pneumonia that carries off the victim within 
forty-eight hours.  Happily, among her class, these fatalities 
are very rare.

And scarcely less rare than such sudden deaths are instances of 
failure to appear on time.  In one case, the employer, a St. 
Pierre shopkeeper, on finding his _marchande_ more than an hour 
late, felt so certain something very extraordinary must have 
happened that he sent out messengers in all directions to make 
inquiries.  It was found that the woman had become a mother when 
only half-way upon her journey home.  The child lived and
thrived;--she is now a pretty chocolate-colored girl of eight, 
who follows her mother every day from their mountain ajoupa down 
to the city, and back again,--bearing a little trait upon her 
head.

Murder for purposes of robbery is not an unknown crime in 
Martinique; but I am told the porteuses are never molested.  And 
yet some of these girls carry merchandise to the value of 
hundreds of francs; and all carry money,--the money received for 
goods sold, often a considerable sum.  This immunity may be 
partly owing to the fact that they travel during the greater part 
of the year only by day,--and usually in company.  A very pretty 
girl is seldom suffered to journey unprotected: she has either a 
male escort or several experienced and powerful women with her.  
In the cacao season-when carriers start from Grande Anse as early 
as two o'clock in the morning, so as to reach St. Pierre by dawn
--they travel in strong companies of twenty or twenty-five, 
singing on the way.  As a general rule the younger girls at all 
times go two together,--keeping step perfectly as a pair of 
blooded fillies; only the veterans, or women selected for special 
work by reason of extraordinary physical capabilities, go alone.  
To the latter class belong certain girls employed by the great 
bakeries of Fort-de-France and St. Pierre: these are veritable 
caryatides. They are probably the heaviest-laden of all, carrying 
baskets of astounding size far up into the mountains before 
daylight, so as to furnish country families with fresh bread at 
an early hour; and for this labor they receive about four dollars 
(twenty francs) a month and one loaf of bread per diem....  While 
stopping at a friend's house among the hills, some two miles from 
Fort-de-France, I saw the local bread-carrier halt before our 
porch one morning, and a finer type of the race it would be 
difficult for a sculptor to imagine.  Six feet tall,--strength 
and grace united throughout her whole figure from neck to heel; 
with that clear black skin which is beautiful to any but ignorant 
or prejudiced eyes; and the smooth, pleasing, solemn features of a 
sphinx,--she looked to me, as she towered there in the gold 
light, a symbolic statue of Africa.  Seeing me smoking one of 
those long thin Martinique cigars called _bouts_, she begged one; 
and, not happening to have another, I gave her the price of a 
bunch of twenty,--ten sous.  She took it without a smile, and 
went her way.  About an hour and a half later she came back and 
asked for me,--to present me with the finest and largest mango I 
had ever seen, a monster mango.  She said she wanted to see me 
eat it, and sat down on the ground to look on.  While eating it, 
I learned that she had walked a whole mile out of her way under 
that sky of fire, just to bring her little gift of gratitude.

[Illustration: FORT-DE-FRANCE, MARTINIQUE--(FORMERLY FORT
ROYAL.)]



IX.


Forty to fifty miles a day, always under a weight of more than a 
hundred pounds,--for when the trait has been emptied she puts in 
stones for ballast;--carrying her employer's merchandise and 
money over the mountain ain ranges, beyond the peaks, across the 
ravines, through the tropical forest, sometimes through by-ways 
haunted by the fer-de-lance,--and this in summer or winter, the 
deason of rains or the season of heat, the time of fevers or the 
time of hurricanes, at a franc a day!... How does she live upon 
it?

There are twenty sous to the franc.  The girl leaves St. Pierre 
with her load at early morning.  At the second village, Morne 
Rouge, she halts to buy one, two, or three biscuits at a sou 
apiece; and reaching Ajoupa-Bouillon later in the forenoon, 
she may buy another biscuit or two.  Altogether she may be 
expected to eat five Sous of biscuit or bread before reaching 
Grande Anse, where she probably has a meal waiting for her.  
This ought to cost her ten sous,--especially if there be meat in 
her ragoût: which represents a total expense of fifteen sous for 
eatables.  Then there is the additional cost of the cheap liquor, 
which she must mix with her drinking-water, as it would be more than 
dangerous to swallow pure cold water in her heated condition; two 
or three sous more.  This almost makes the franc.  But such a 
hasty and really erroneous estimate does not include expenses of 
lodging and clothing;--she may sleep on the bare floor sometimes, 
and twenty francs a year may keep her in clothes; but she must 
rent the floor and pay for the clothes out of that franc.  As a 
matter of fact she not only does all this upon her twenty sous a 
day, but can even economize something which will enable her, when 
her youth and force decline, to start in business for herself.  
And her economy will not seem so wonderful when I assure you that 
thousands of men here--huge men muscled like bulls and lions--
live upon an average expenditure of five sous a day.  One sou of 
bread, two sous of manioc flour, one sou of dried codfish, one 
sou of tafia: such is their meal. 

There are women carriers who earn more than a franc a day,--women 
with a particular talent for selling, who are paid on commission--from 
ten to fifteen per cent. These eventually make themselves independent 
in many instances;--they continue to sell and bargain in person, but hire 
a young girl to carry the goods.



X.


... "_Ou 'lè màchanne!_" rings out a rich alto, resonant as the 
tone of a gong, from behind the balisiers that shut in our 
garden.  There are two of them--no, three--Maiyotte, Chéchelle, 
and Rina.  Maiyotte and Chéchelle have just arrived from St. 
Pierre;--Rina come from Gros-Morne with fruits and vegetables.  
Suppose we call them all in, and see what they have got.  
Maiyotte and Chéchelle sell on commission; Rina sells for her mother, 
who has a little garden at Gros-Morne.

... "_Bonjou', Maiyotte;--bonjou', Chéchelle! coument ou 
kallé, Rina, chè!_"... Throw open the folding-doors to let 
the great trays pass.... Now all three are unloaded by old 
Théréza and by young Adou;--all the packs are on the floor, and 
the water-proof wrappings are being un-corded, while Ah-
Manmzell, the adopted child, brings the rum and water for the 
tall walkers. ...  "Oh, what a medley, Maiyotte!"...  Inkstands 
and wooden cows; purses and paper dogs and cats; dolls and 
cosmetics; pins and needles and soap and tooth-brushes; candied 
fruits and smoking-caps; _pelotes_ of thread, and tapes, and 
ribbons, and laces, and Madeira wine; cuffs, and collars, and 
dancing-shoes, and tobacco _sachets_.... But what is in that 
little flat bundle? Presents for your _guêpe_, if you have one....  
_Fesis-Maïa!_--the pretty foulards!  Azure and yellow in 
checkerings; orange and crimson in stripes; rose and scarlet in 
plaidings; and bronze tints, and beetle-tints of black and green.

"Chéchelle, what a _bloucoutoum_ if you should ever let that tray 
fall--_aïe yaïe yaïe!_"  Here is a whole shop of crockeries and 
porcelains;--plates, dishes, cups,--earthen-ware _canaris_ and 
_dobannes_, and gift-mugs and cups bearing creole girls' names,--
all names that end in _ine_.  "Micheline," "Honorine," 
"Prospérine" [you will never sell that, Chéchelle: there is not a 
Prospérine this side of St. Pierre], "Azaline," "Leontine," 
"Zéphyrine,"  "Albertine," "Chrysaline," "Florine," "Coralline," 
"Alexandrine."  ...And knives and forks, and cheap spoons, and 
tin coffee-pots, and tin rattles for babies, and tin flutes for 
horrid little boys,--and pencils and note-paper and envelopes!...

... "Oh, Rina, what superb oranges!--fully twelve inches round-! 

... and these, which look something like our mandarins, what do 
you call them ?" "Zorange-macaque!" (monkey-oranges).  And here 
are avocados--beauties!--guavas of three different kinds,--
tropical cherries (which have four seeds instead of one),--
tropical raspberries, whereof the entire eatable portion comes 
off in one elastic piece, lined with something like white 
silk....  Here are fresh nutmegs: the thick green case splits in 
equal halves at a touch; and see the beautiful heart within,--
deep dark glossy red, all wrapped in a bright net-work of flat 
blood-colored fibre, spun over it like branching veins....  This 
big heavy red-and-yellow thing is a _pomme-cythère_: the smooth 
cuticle, bitter as gall, covers a sweet juicy pulp, interwoven 
with something that seems like cotton thread....  Here is a 
_pomme-cannelle_: inside its scaly covering is the most delicious 
yellow custard conceivable, with little black seeds floating in 
it.  This larger _corossol_ has almost as delicate an interior, 
only the custard is white instead of yellow.... Here are 
_christophines_,--great pear-shaped things, white and green, 
according to kind, with a peel prickly and knobby as the skin of 
a horned toad; but they stew exquisitely.  And _mélongènes_, or 
egg-plants; and palmiste-pith, and _chadèques_, and _pommes-d' 
Haïti_,--and roots that at first sight look all alike, but they are 
not: there are _camanioc_, and _couscous_, and _choux-caraïbes_, and 
_zignames_, and various kinds of _patates_ among them.  Old Théréza's 
magic will transform these shapeless muddy things, before 
evening, into pyramids of smoking gold,--into odorous porridges 
that will look like messes of molten amber and liquid pearl;--for 
Rina makes a good sale.

Then Chéchelle manages to dispose of a tin coffee-pot and a big 
canari....  And Maiyotte makes the best sale of all; for the 
sight of a funny _biscuit_ doll has made Ah-Manmzell cry and smile 
so at the same time that I should feel unhappy for the rest of my 
life if I did not buy it for her.  I know I ought to get some change 
out of that six francs;--and Maiyotte, who is black but comely as the 
tents of Kedar, as the curtains of Solomon, seems to be aware of the 
fact.  

Oh, Maiyotte, how plaintive that pretty sphinx face of yours, 
now turned in profile;--as if you knew you looked beautiful 
thus,--with the great gold circlets of your ears glittering and 
swaying as you bend!  And why are you so long, so long untying 
that poor little canvas purse?--fumbling and fingering it?--is 
it because you want me to think of the weight of that trait and 
the sixty kilometres you must walk, and the heat, and the dust, 
and all the disappointments?  Ah, you are cunning, Maiyotte!  No, 
I do not want the change!



XI.


... Travelling together, the porteuses often walk in silence 
for hours at a time;--this is when they feel weary. Sometimes 
they sing,--most often when approaching their destination;--and 
when they chat, it is in a key so high-pitched that their voices 
can be heard to a great distance in this land of echoes and 
elevations. But she who travels alone is rarely silent: she talks 
to herself or to inanimate things;--you may hear her talking to 
the trees, to the flowers,--talking to the high clouds and the 
far peaks of changing color,--talking to the setting sun!

Over the miles of the morning she sees, perchance, the mighty 
Piton Gélé, a cone of amethyst in the light; and she talks to 
it: "_0u jojoll, oui!--moin ni envie monté assou ou, pou 
moin ouè bien, bien!_" (Thou art pretty, pretty, aye!--I would 
I might climb thee, to see far, far off!) By a great grove of 
palms she passes;--so thickly mustered they are that against the 
sun their intermingled heads form one unbroken awning of green.  
Many rise straight as masts; some bend at beautiful angles, seeming 
to intercross their long pale single limbs in a fantastic dance; 
others curve like bows: there is one that undulates from foot to 
crest, like a monster serpent poised upon its tail.  She loves to 
look at that one--"_joli pié-bois-là!_--talks to it as she goes by,
--bids it good-day. 

Or, looking back as she ascends, she sees the huge blue dream of 
the sea,--the eternal haunter, that ever becomes larger as she 
mounts the road; and she talks to it: "_Mi lanmé ka gaudé moin!_"
(There is the great sea looking at me!) "_Màché toujou deïé moin,
lanmè!_" (Walk after me, 0 Sea!)

Or she views the clouds of Pelée, spreading gray from the 
invisible summit, to shadow against the sun; and she fears the 
rain, and she talks to it: "_Pas mouillé moin, laplie-à! 
Quitté moin rivé avant mouillé moin!_" (Do not wet me, 0 Rain! 
Let me get there before thou wettest me!) 

Sometimes a dog barks at her, menaces her bare limbs; and she talks 
to the dog: "_Chien-a, pas mòdé moin, chien--anh! Moin pa fé ou arien,
chien, pou ou mòdé moin!_" (Do not bite me, 0 Dog!  Never did I anything 
to thee that thou shouldst bite me, 0 Dog!  Do not bite me, dear!  Do 
not bite me, _doudoux_!)

Sometimes she meets a laden sister travelling the opposite 
way....  "_Coument ou yé, chè?_" she cries.  (How art thou, dear?) 
And the other makes answer, "_Toutt douce, chè,--et ou?_" (All 
sweetly, dear,--and thou?)  And each passes on without pausing: 
they have no time! 

... It is perhaps the last human voice she will hear for many a mile.  
After that only the whisper of the grasses--_graïe-gras, graïe-gras!_
--and the gossip of the canes-- _chououa, chououa!_--and the husky 
speech of the _pois-Angole, ka babillé conm yon vié fenme_,--that 
babbles like an old woman;--and the murmur of the _filao_-trees, like 
the murmur of the River of the Washerwomen.



XII.


... Sundown approaches: the light has turned a rich yellow;--
long black shapes lie across the curving road, shadows of 
balisier and palm, shadows of tamarind and Indian-reed, shadows 
of ceiba and giant-fern.  And the porteuses are coming down 
through the lights and darknesses of the way from far Grande 
Anse, to halt a moment in this little village.  They are going to 
sit down on the road-side here, before the house of the baker; 
and there is his great black workman, Jean-Marie, looking for 
them from the door-way, waiting to relieve them of their 
loads....  Jean-Marie is the strongest man in all the Champ-
Flore: see what a torso,--as he stands there naked to the 
waist!...  His day's work is done; but he likes to wait for the 
girls, though he is old now, and has sons as tall as himself.  It 
is a habit: some say that he had a daughter once,--a porteuse 
like those coming, and used to wait for her thus at that very 
door-way until one evening that she failed to appear, and never 
returned till he carried her home in his arms dead,--stricken by 
a serpent in some mountain path where there was none to aid....  
The roads were not as good then as now.

... Here they come, the girls--yellow, red, black.  See the 
flash of the yellow feet where they touch the light!  And what 
impossible tint the red limbs take in the changing glow!...  
Finotte, Pauline, Médelle,-all together, as usual,--with Ti-
Clê trotting behind, very tired....  Never mind, Ti-Clê!--you 
will outwalk your cousins when you are a few years older,--pretty 
Ti-Clê.... Here come Cyrillia and Zabette, and Fêfê and Dodotte 
and Fevriette.  And behind them are coming the two _chabines_,--
golden girls: the twin-sisters who sell silks and threads and 
foulards; always together, always wearing robes and kerchiefs of 
similar color,--so that you can never tell which is Lorrainie 
and which Édoualise.

And all smile to see Jean-Marie waiting for them, and to hear his 
deep kind voice calling, "_Coument ou yé, chè? coument ou kallé?_ 
...(How art thou, dear?--how goes it with thee?)

And they mostly make answer, _"Toutt douce, chè,--et ou?_" (All 
sweetly, dear,--and thou?) But some, over-weary, cry to him, 
"_Ah! déchâgé moin vite, chè! moin lasse, lasse!_" (Unload me 
quickly, dear; for I am very, very weary.)  Then he takes off 
their burdens, and fetches bread for them, and says foolish 
little things to make them laugh.  And they are pleased, and 
laugh, just like children, as they sit right down on the road 
there to munch their dry bread.

... So often have I watched that scene! ... Let me but close my 
eyes one moment, and it will come back to me,--through all the 
thousand miles,--over the graves of the days....

Again I see the mountain road in the yellow glow, banded with 
umbrages of palm.  Again I watch the light feet coming,--now in 
shadow, now in sun,--soundlessly as falling leaves.  Still I can 
hear the voices crying, "_Ah! déchâgé moin vite, chè! moin lasse!_"
--and see the mighty arms outreach to take the burdens away. 
... Only, there is a change',--I know not what!...  All vapory 
the road is, and the fronds, and the comely coming feet of the 
bearers, and even this light of sunset,--sunset that is ever 
larger and nearer to us than dawn, even as death than birth.  And 
the weird way appeareth a way whose dust is the dust of 
generations;--and the Shape that waits is never Jean-Marie, but 
one darker; and stronger;--and these are surely voices of tired 
souls. I who cry to Thee, thou dear black Giver of the perpetual 
rest, "_Ah! déchâgé moin vite, chè! moin lasse!_"




CHAPTER II.
LA GRANDE ANSE.



I.


In the village of Morne Rouge, I was frequently impressed by the 
singular beauty of young girls from the north-east coast--all 
porteuses, who passed almost daily on their way from Grande Anse 
to St. Pierre and back again--a total trip of thirty-five 
miles....  I knew they were from Grande Anse, because the village 
baker, at whose shop they were wont to make brief halts, told me 
a good deal about them: he knew each one by name.  Whenever a 
remarkably attractive girl appeared, and I would inquire whence 
she came, the invariable reply (generally preceded by that 
peculiarly intoned French "Ah!" signifying, "Why, you certainly 
ought to know!") was "Grand Anse."  ..._Ah! c'est de Grande Anse, 
ça!_  And if any commonplace, uninteresting type showed itself it 
would be signalled as from somewhere else--Gros-Morne, Capote, 
Marigot, perhaps,--but never from Grand Anse.  The Grande Anse 
girls were distinguished by their clear yellow or brown skins, 
lithe light figures and a particular grace in their way of 
dressing.  Their short robes were always of bright and pleasing 
colors, perectly contrasting with the ripe fruit-tint of nude 
limbs and faces: I could discern a partiality for white stuffs 
with apricot-yellow stripes, for plaidings of blue and violet, 
and various patterns of pink and mauve.  They had a graceful way 
of walking under their trays, with hands clasped behind their 
heads, and arms uplifted in the manner of caryatides.  An artist 
would have been wild with delight for the chance to sketch some of 
them....  On the whole, they conveyed the impression that they belonged 
to a particular race, very different from that of the chief city or 
its environs. 

"Are they all banana-colored at Grande Anse?" I asked,--" and all 
as pretty as these?"

"I was never at Grande Anse," the little baker answered, 
"although I have been forty years in Martinique; but I know there 
is a fine class of young girls there: _il y a une belle jeunesse 
là, mon cher!_"  

Then I wondered why the youth of Grande Anse should be any finer than 
the youth of other places; and it seemed to me that the baker's own 
statement of his never having been there might possibly furnish a clew.... 
Out of the thirty-five thousand inhabitants of St. Pierre and its suburbs, 
there are at least twenty thousand who never have been there, and most 
probably never will be.  Few dwellers of the west coast visit the 
east coast: in fact, except among the white creoles, who 
represent but a small percentage of the total population, there 
are few persons to be met with who are familiar with all parts of 
their native island.  It is so mountainous, and travelling is so 
wearisome, that populations may live and die in adjacent valleys 
without climbing the intervening ranges to look at one another.  
Grande Anse is only about twenty miles from the principal city; 
but it requires some considerable inducement to make the journey 
on horseback; and only the professional carrier-girls, plantation 
messengers, and colored people of peculiarly tough constitution 
attempt it on foot.  Except for the transportation of sugar and 
rum, there is practically no communication by sea between the 
west and the north-east coast--the sea is too dangerous--and thus 
the populations on either side of the island are more or less 
isolated from each other, besides being further subdivided and 
segregated by the lesser mountain chains crossing their respective 
territories....  In view of all these things I wondered whether a 
community so secluded might not assume special characteristics 
within two hundred years--might not develop into a population of 
some yellow, red, or brown type, according to the predominant 
element of the original race-crossing.



II.


I had long been anxious to see the city of the Porteuses, when 
the opportunity afforded itself to make the trip with a friend 
obliged to go thither on some important business;--I do not think 
I should have ever felt resigned to undertake it alone.  With a 
level road the distance might be covered very quickly, but over 
mountains the journey is slow and wearisome in the perpetual 
tropic heat.  Whether made on horseback or in a carriage, it 
takes between four and five hours to go from St. Pierre to Grand 
Anse, and it requires a longer time to return, as the road is 
then nearly all uphill.  The young porteuse travels almost as 
rapidly; and the bare-footed black postman, who carries the 
mails in a square box at the end of a pole, is timed on leaving 
Morne Rouge at 4 A.M.  to reach Ajoupa-Bouillon a little after 
six, and leaving Ajoupa-Bouillon at half-past six to reach Grande 
Anse at half-past eight, including many stoppages and delays on 
the way.

Going to Grande Anse from the chief city, one can either hire a 
horse or carriage at St. Pierre, or ascend to Morne Rouge by the 
public conveyance, and there procure a vehicle or animal, which 
latter is the cheaper and easier plan.  About a mile beyond Morne 
Rouge, where the old Calebasse road enters the public highway, 
you reach the highest point of the journey,--the top of the 
enormous ridge dividing the north-east from the western
coast, and cutting off the trade-winds from sultry St. Pierre.  
By climbing the little hill, with a tall stone cross on its 
summit, overlooking the Champ-Flore just here, you can perceive 
the sea on both sides of the island at once--_lapis lazuli_ blue.  
From this elevation the road descends by a hundred windings and 
lessening undulations to the eastern shore.  It sinks between 
mornes wooded to their summits,--bridges a host of torrents and 
ravines,--passes gorges from whence colossal trees tower far 
overhead, through heavy streaming of lianas, to mingle their 
green crowns in magnificent gloom.  Now and then you hear a low 
long sweet sound like the deepest tone of a silver flute,--a 
bird-call, the cry of the _siffleur-de-montagne_; then all is 
stillness.  You are not likely to see a white face again for 
hours, but at intervals a porteuse passes, walking very swiftly, 
or a field-hand heavily laden; and these salute you either by 
speech or a lifting of the hand to the head....  And it is very 
pleasant to hear the greetings and to see the smiles of those who 
thus pass,--the fine brown girls bearing trays, the dark laborers 
bowed under great burdens of bamboo-grass,--_Bonjou', Missié!_  Then 
you should reply, if the speaker be a woman and pretty, "Good-
day, dear" (_bonjou', chè_), or, "Good-day, my daughter" (_mafi_) 
even if she be old; while if the passer-by be a man, your 
proper reply is, "Good-day, my son" (_monfi_)....  They are less 
often uttered now than in other years, these kindly greetings, 
but they still form part of the good and true creole manners.

[Illustration: A CREOLE CAPRE IN WORKING GARB.]

The feathery beauty of the tree-ferns shadowing each brook, the 
grace of bamboo and arborescent grasses, seem to decrease as the 
road descends,--but the palms grow taller.  Often the way skirts 
a precipice dominating some marvellous valley prospect; again it 
is walled in by high green banks or shrubby slopes which cut off 
the view; and always it serpentines so that you cannot see more 
than a few hundred feet of the white track before you.
About the fifteenth kilometre a glorious landscape opens to the 
right, reaching to the Atlantic;--the road still winds very high; 
forests are billowing hundreds of yards below it, and rising 
miles away up the slopes of mornes, beyond which, here and there, 
loom strange shapes of mountain,--shading off from misty green to 
violet and faintest gray.  And through one grand opening in this 
multicolored surging of hills and peaks you perceive the gold-
yellow of cane-fields touching the sky-colored sea. Grande Anse 
lies somewhere in that direction....  At the eighteenth kilometre 
you pass a cluster of little country cottages, a church, and one 
or two large buildings framed in shade-trees--the hamlet of 
Ajoupa-Bouillon.  Yet a little farther, and you find you have left 
all the woods behind you.  But the road continues its bewildering 
curves around and between low mornes covered with cane or cocoa 
plants: it dips down very low, rises again, dips once more;--and 
you perceive the soil is changing color; it is taking a red tint 
like that of the land of the American cotton-belt.  Then you pass 
the Rivière Falaise (marked _Filasse_ upon old maps),--with its 
shallow crystal torrent flowing through a very deep and rocky 
channel,--and the Capote and other streams; and over the yellow 
rim of cane-hills the long blue bar of the sea appears, edged 
landward with a dazzling fringe of foam.  The heights you have 
passed are no longer verqant, but purplish or gray,--with Pelée's 
cloud-wrapped enormity overtopping all.  A very strong warm wind 
is blowing upon you--the trade-wind, always driving the clouds 
west: this is the sunny side of Martinique, where gray days and 
heavy rains are less frequent.  Once or twice more the sea 
disappears and reappears, always over canes; and then, after 
passing a bridge and turning a last curve, the road suddenly 
drops down to the shore and into the burgh of Grande Anse.



III.


Leaving Morne Rouge at about eight in the morning, my friend and 
I reached Grande Anse at half-past eleven.  Everything had been 
arranged to make us comfortable, I was delighted with the airy 
corner room, commanding at once a view of the main street and of 
the sea--a very high room, all open to the trade-winds--which had 
been prepared to receive me.  But after a long carriage ride in 
the heat of a tropical June day, one always feels the necessity 
of a little physical exercise.  I lingered only a minute or two 
in the house, and went out to look at the little town and its 
surroundings.

As seen from the high-road, the burgh of Grande Anse makes a 
long patch of darkness between the green of the coast and the 
azure of the water: it is almost wholly black and gray--suited to 
inspire an etching, High slopes of cane and meadow rise behind it 
and on either side, undulating up and away to purple and gray 
tips of mountain ranges.  North and south, to left and right, the 
land reaches out in two high promontories, mostly green, and 
about a mile apart--the Pointe du Rochet and the Pointe de 
Séguinau, or Croche-Mort, which latter name preserves the legend 
of an insurgent slave, a man of color, shot dead upon the cliff.  
These promontories form the semicircular bay of Grande Anse. All 
this Grande Anse, or "Great Creek," valley is an immense basin of 
basalt; and narrow as it is, no less than five streams water it, 
including the Riviere de la Grande Anse.

There are only three short streets in the town.  The principal, 
or Grande Rue, is simply a continuation of the national road; 
there is a narrower one below, which used to be called the Rue de 
la Paille, because the cottages lining it were formerly all 
thatched with cane straw; and there is one above it, edging the 
cane-fields that billow away to the meeting of morne and sky. There 
is nothing of architectural interest, and all is sombre,--walls and 
roofs and pavements.  But after you pass through the city and 
follow the southern route that ascends the Séguinau promontory, 
you can obtain some lovely landscape views a grand surging of 
rounded mornes, with farther violet peaks, truncated or horned, 
pushing up their heads in the horizon above the highest 
flutterings of cane; and looking back above the town, you may see 
Pelée all unclouded,--not as you see it from the other coast, but 
an enormous ghostly silhouette, with steep sides and almost 
square summit, so pale as to seem transparent.  Then if you cross 
the promontory southward, the same road will lead you into 
another very beautiful valley, watered by a broad rocky torrent,
--the Valley of the Rivière du Lorrain.  This clear stream rushes 
to the sea through a lofty opening in the hills; and looking 
westward between them, you will be charmed by the exquisite vista 
of green shapes piling and pushing up one behind another to reach 
a high blue ridge which forms the background--a vision of tooth-
shaped and fantastical mountains,--part of the great central 
chain running south and north through nearly the whole island.  
It is over those blue summits that the wonderful road called _La 
Trace_ winds between primeval forest walls.

But the more you become familiar with the face of the little 
town itself, the more you are impressed by the strange swarthy 
tone it preserves in all this splendid expanse of radiant 
tinting.  There are only two points of visible color in it,--the 
church and hospital, built of stone, which have been painted 
yellow: as a mass in the landscape, lying between the dead-gold 
of the cane-clad hills and the delicious azure of the sea, it 
remains almost black under the prodigious blaze of light.  The 
foundations of volcanic rock, three or four feet high, on
which the frames of the wooden dwellings rest, are black; and 
the sea-wind appears to have the power of blackening all timber-
work here through any coat of paint.  Roofs and façades look as 
if they had been long exposed to coal-smoke, although probably no 
one in Grande Anse ever saw coal; and the pavements of pebbles 
and cement are of a deep ash-color, full of micaceous 
scintillation, and so hard as to feel disagreeable even to feet 
protected by good thick shoes.  By-and-by you notice walls of 
black stone, bridges of black stone, and perceive that black 
forms an element of all the landscape about you.  On the roads 
leading from the town you note from time to time masses of jagged 
rock or great bowlders protruding through the green of the 
slopes, and dark as ink.  These black surfaces also sparkle.  The 
beds of all the neighboring rivers are filled with dark gray 
stones; and many of these, broken by those violent floods which 
dash rocks together,--deluging the valleys, and strewing the 
soil of the bottom-lands (_fonds_) with dead serpents,--display 
black cores. Bare crags projecting from the green cliffs here and 
there are soot-colored, and the outlying rocks of the coast offer 
a similar aspect.  And the sand of the beach is funereally black--
looks almost like powdered charcoal; and as you walk over it, 
sinking three or four inches every step, you are amazed by the 
multitude and brilliancy of minute flashes in it, like a subtle 
silver effervescence.

This extraordinary sand contains ninety per cent of natural 
steel, and efforts have been made to utilize it industrially.  
Some years ago a company was formed, and a machine invented to 
separate the metal from the pure sand,--an immense revolving 
magnet, which, being set in motion under a sand shower, caught 
the ore upon it. When the covering thus formed by the adhesion of 
the steel became of a certain thickness, the simple interruption
of an electric current precipitated the metal into appropriate 
receptacles.  Fine bars were made from this volcanic steel, and 
excellent cutting tools manufactured from it: French 
metallurgists pronounced the product of peculiar excellence, and 
nevertheless the project of the company was abandoned.  Political 
disorganization consequent upon the establishment of universal 
suffrage frightened capitalists who might have aided the undertaking 
under a better condition of affairs; and the lack of large 
means, coupled with the cost of freight to remote markets, 
ultimately baffled this creditable attempt to found a native 
industry.

Sometimes after great storms bright brown sand is flung up from 
the sea-depths; but the heavy black sand always reappears again
to make the universal color of the beach.



IV.


Behind the roomy wooden house in which I occupied an apartment 
there was a small garden-plot surrounded with a hedge 
strengthened by bamboo fencing, and radiant with flowers of the 
_loseille-bois_,--the creole name for a sort of begonia, whose 
closed bud exactly resembles a pink and white dainty bivalve 
shell, and whose open blossom imitates the form of a butterfly.  
Here and there, on the grass, were nets drying, and _nasses_--
curious fish-traps made of split bamboos interwoven and held in 
place with _mibi_ stalks (the mibi is a liana heavy and tough as 
copper wire); and immediately behind the garden hedge appeared 
the white flashing of the surf.  The most vivid recollection 
connected with my trip to Grande Anse is that of the first time 
that I went to the end of that garden, opened the little bamboo 
gate, and found myself overlooking the beach--an immense breadth 
of soot-black sand, with pale green patches and stripings here 
and there upon it--refuse of cane thatch,decomposing rubbish spread 
out by old tides.  The one solitary boat owned in the community lay 
there before me, high and dry.  It was the hot period of the afternoon; 
the town slept; there was no living creature in sight; and the booming 
of the surf drowned all other sounds; the scent of the warm strong 
sea-wind annihilated all other odors.  Then, very suddenly, there came 
to me a sensation absolutely weird, while watching the strange wild 
sea roaring over its beach of black sand,--the sensation of 
seeing something unreal, looking at something that had no more 
tangible existence than a memory!  Whether suggested by the first 
white vision of the surf over the bamboo hedge,--or by those old 
green tide-lines on the desolation of the black beach,--or by 
some tone of the speaking of the sea,--or something indefinable 
in the living touch of the wind,--or by all of these, I cannot 
say;--but slowly there became defined within me the thought of 
having beheld just such a coast very long ago, I could not tell 
where,--in those child-years of which the recollections gradually 
become indistinguishable from dreams.

Soon as darkness comes upon Grande Anse the face of the clock in 
the church-tower is always lighted: you see it suddenly burst 
into yellow glow above the roofs and the cocoa-palms,--just like 
a pharos.  In my room I could not keep the candle lighted because 
of the sea-wind; but it never occurred to me to close the 
shutters of the great broad windows,--sashless, of course, like 
all the glassless windows of Martinique;--the breeze was too 
delicious.  It seemed full of something vitalizing that made 
one's blood warmer, and rendered one full of contentment--full of 
eagerness to believe life all sweetness.  Likewise, I found it 
soporific--this pure, dry, warm wind.  And I thought there could 
be no greater delight in existence than to lie down at night, 
with all the windows open,--and the Cross of the South visible from 
my pillow,--and the sea-wind pouring over the bed,--and the 
tumultuous whispering and muttering of the surf in one's ears,--
to dream of that strange sapphire sea white-bursting over its 
beach of black sand.



V.


Considering that Grande Anse lies almost opposite to St. Pierre, 
at a distance of less than twenty miles even by the complicated 
windings of the national road, the differences existing in the 
natural conditions of both places are remarkable enough.  Nobody 
in St. Pierre sees the sun rise, because the mountains 
immediately behind the city continue to shadow its roofs long 
after the eastern coast is deluged with light and heat.  At 
Grande Anse, on the other hand, those tremendous sunsets which 
delight west coast dwellers are not visible at all; and during 
the briefer West Indian days Grande Anse is all wrapped in 
darkness as early as half-past four,--or nearly an hour before 
the orange light has ceased to flare up the streets of St. Pierre 
from the sea;--since the great mountain range topped by Pelée 
cuts off all the slanting light from the east valleys.  And early 
as folks rise in St. Pierre, they rise still earlier at Grande 
Anse--before the sun emerges from the rim of the Atlantic: about 
half-past four, doors are being opened and coffee is ready.  At 
St. Pierre one can enjoy a sea bath till seven or half-past seven 
o'clock, even during the time of the sun's earliest rising, 
because the shadow of the mornes still reaches out upon the bay;
--but bathers leave the black beach of Grande Anse by six o'clock; 
for once the sun's face is up, the light, levelled straight at 
the eyes, becomes blinding.  Again, at St. Pierre it rains almost 
every twenty-four hours for a brief while, during at least the 
greater part of the year; at Grande Anse it rains more moderately and 
less often.  The atmosphere at St. Pierre is always more or less 
impregnated with vapor, and usually an enervating heat prevails, which 
makes exertion unpleasant; at Grande Anse the warm wind keeps the skin 
comparatively dry, in spite of considerable exercise.  It is 
quite rare to see a heavy surf at St, Pierre, but it is much 
rarer not to see it at Grande Anse....  A curious fact concerning 
custom is that few white creoles care to bathe in front of the 
town, notwithstanding the superb beach and magnificent surf, both 
so inviting to one accustomed to the deep still water and rough 
pebbly shore of St, Pierre.  The creoles really prefer their 
rivers as bathing-places; and when willing to take a sea bath, 
they will walk up and down hill for kilometres in order to reach 
some river mouth, so as to wash off in the fresh-water 
afterwards.  They say that the effect of sea-salt upon the skin 
gives _bouton chauds_ (what we call "prickly heat").  Friends took 
me all the way to the mouth of the Lorrain one morning that I 
might have the experience of such a double bath; but after 
leaving the tepid sea, I must confess the plunge into the river 
was something terrible--an icy shock which cured me of all 
further desire for river baths.  My willingness to let the sea-
water dry upon me was regarded as an eccentricity.



VI.


It may be said that on all this coast the ocean, perpetually 
moved by the blowing of the trade-winds, never rests--never 
hushes its roar, Even in the streets of Grande Anse, one must in 
breezy weather lift one's voice above the natural pitch to be 
heard; and then the breakers come in lines more than a mile long, 
between the Pointe du Rochet and the Pointe de Séguinau,--every 
unfurling thunder-clap.  There is no travelling by sea.
All large vessels keep well away from the dangerous coast.  There 
is scarcely any fishing; and although the sea is thick with fish, 
fresh fish at Grande Anse is a rare luxury.  Communication with 
St. Pierre is chiefly by way of the national road, winding over 
mountain ridges two thousand feet high; and the larger portion of 
merchandise is transported from the chief city on the heads of 
young women.  The steepness of the route soon kills draught-
horses and ruins the toughest mules.  At one time the managers of 
a large estate at Grande Anse attempted the experiment of sending 
their sugar to St. Pierre in iron carts, drawn by five mules; but 
the animals could not endure the work.  Cocoa can be carried to 
St. Pierre by the porteuses, but sugar and rum must go by sea, or 
not at all; and the risk and difficulties of shipping these 
seriously affect the prosperity of all the north and north-east 
coast.  Planters have actually been ruined by inability to send 
their products to market during a protracted spell of rough 
weather.  A railroad has been proposed and planned: in a more 
prosperous era it might be constructed, with the result of 
greatly developing all the Atlantic side of the island, and 
converting obscure villages into thriving towns.

Sugar is very difficult to ship; rum and tafia can be handled 
with less risk.  It is nothing less than exciting to watch a 
shipment of tafia from Grande Anse to St. Pierre.

A little vessel approaches the coast with extreme caution, and 
anchors in the bay some hundred yards beyond the breakers.  She 
is what they call a _pirogue_ here, but not at all what is called a 
pirogue in the United States: she has a long narrow hull, two 
masts, no deck; she has usually a crew of five, and can carry 
thirty barrels of tafia.  One of the pirogue men puts a great 
shell to his lips and sounds a call, very mellow and deep, that 
can be heard over the roar of the waves far up among the
hills.  The shell is one of those great spiral shells, weighing 
seven or eight pounds--rolled like a scroll, fluted and scalloped 
about the edges, and pink-pearled inside,--such as are sold in 
America for mantle-piece ornaments,--the shell of a _lambi_.  
Here you can often see the lambi crawling about with its nacreous 
house upon its back: an enormous sea-snail with a yellowish back 
and rose-colored belly, with big horns and eyes in the tip of 
each horn--very pretty yes, having a golden iris. This creature 
is a common article of food; but Its thick white flesh is almost 
compact as cartilage, and must be pounded before being cooked. [4]

At the sound of the blowing of the lambi-shell, wagons descend to 
the beach, accompanied by young colored men running beside the 
mules.  Each wagon discharges a certain number of barrels of 
tafia, and simultaneously the young men strip.  They are slight, 
well built, and generally well muscled.  Each man takes a barrel 
of tafia, pushes it before him into the surf, and then begins to 
swim to the pirogue,--impelling the barrel before him. I have 
never seen a swimmer attempt to convey more than one barrel at a 
time; but I am told there are experts who manage as many as three 
barrels together,--pushing them forward in line, with the head 
of one against the bottom of the next.  It really requires much 
dexterity and practice to handle even one barrel or cask. As the 
swimmer advances he keeps close as possible to his charge,--so as 
to be able to push it forward with all his force against each 
breaker in succession,--making it dive through.  If it once glide 
well out of his reach while he is in the breakers, it becomes an 
enemy, and he must take care to keep out of its way,--for if a 
wave throws it at him, or rolls it over him, he may be seriously 
injured; but the expert seldom abandons a barrel.  Under the most 
favorable conditions, man and barrel will both disappear a score 
of times before the clear swells are reached, after which the 
rest of the journey is not difficult.  Men lower ropes from the 
pirogue, the swimmer passes them under his barrel, and it is 
hoisted aboard.

... Wonderful surf-swimmers these men are;--they will go far out 
for mere sport in the roughest kind of a sea, when the waves, 
abnormally swollen by the peculiar conformation of the bay, come 
rolling in thirty and forty feet high.  Sometimes, with the swift 
impulse of ascending a swell, the swimmer seems suspended in air 
as it passes beneath him, before he plunges into the trough 
beyond.  The best swimmer is a young capre who cannot weigh more 
than a hundred and twenty pounds.  Few of the Grande Anse men are 
heavily built; they do not compare for stature and thew with 
those longshoremen at St. Pierre who can be seen any busy 
afternoon on the landing, lifting heavy barrels at almost the 
full reach of their swarthy arms.

... There is but one boat owned in the whole parish of Grande 
Anse,--a fact due to the continual roughness of the sea.  It has 
a little mast and sail, and can hold only three men.  When the 
water is somewhat less angry than usual, a colored crew take it 
out for a fishing expedition. There is always much interest in 
this event; a crowd gathers on the beach; and the professional 
swimmers help to bring the little craft beyond the breakers. When 
the boat returns after a disappearance of several hours, 
everybody runs down from the village to meet it. Young colored 
women twist their robes up about their hips, and wade out to 
welcome it: there is a display of limbs of all colors on such 
occasions, which is not without grace, that untaught grace which 
tempts an artistic pencil. Every _bonne_ and every house-keeper 
struggles for the first chance to buy the fish;--young girls and 
children dance in the water for delight, all screaming, "_Rhalé 
bois-canot!_"...  Then as the boat is pulled through the surf 
and hauled up on the sand, the pushing and screaming and crying 
become irritating and deafening; the fishermen lose patience and 
say terrible things.  But nobody heeds them in the general 
clamoring and haggling and furious bidding for the _pouèsson-
ououge_, the _dorades_, the _volants_ (beautiful purple-backed 
flying-fish with silver bellies, and fins all transparent, like 
the wings of dragon-flies).  There is great bargaining even for 
a young shark,--which makes very nice eating cooked after the 
creole fashion.  So seldom can the fishermen venture out that 
each trip makes a memorable event for the village.

The St. Pierre fishermen very seldom approach the bay, but they 
do much fishing a few miles beyond it, almost in front of the 
Pointe du Rochet and the Roche à Bourgaut.  There the best 
flying-fish are caught,--and besides edible creatures, many queer 
things are often brought up by the nets: monstrosities such as 
the _coffre_-fish, shaped almost like a box, of which the lid is 
represented by an extraordinary conformation of the jaws;--and 
the _barrique-de-vin_ ("wine cask"), with round boneless body, 
secreting in a curious vesicle a liquor precisely resembling wine 
lees;--and the "needle-fish" (_aiguille de mer_), less thick than 
a Faber lead-pencil, but more than twice as long;--and huge 
cuttle-fish and prodigious eels.  One conger secured off this 
coast measured over twenty feet in length, and weighed two 
hundred and fifty pounds--a veritable sea-serpent....  But even 
the fresh-water inhabitants of Grande Anse are amazing.  I have 
seen crawfish by actual measurement fifty centimetres long, but 
these were not considered remarkable.  Many are said to much 
exceed two feet from the tail to the tip of the claws and horns.  
They are of an iron-black color, and have formidable pincers with 
serrated edges and tip-points inwardly converging, which cannot 
crush like the weapons of a lobster, but which will cut the flesh 
and make a small ugly wound.  At first sight one not familiar 
with the crawfish of these regions can hardly believe he is not 
viewing some variety of gigantic lobster instead of the common 
fresh-water crawfish of the east coast. When the head, tail, 
legs, and cuirass have all been removed, after boiling, the 
curved trunk has still the size and weight of a large pork 
sausage.

These creatures are trapped by lantern-light.  Pieces of manioc 
root tied fast to large bowlders sunk in the river are the only 
bait;--the crawfish will flock to eat it upon any dark night, and 
then they are caught with scoop-nets and dropped into covered 
baskets.



VII.


One whose ideas of the people of Grande Anse had I been formed 
only by observing the young porteuses of the region on their way 
to the other side of the Island, might expect on reaching this 
little town to find its population yellow as that of a Chinese 
city.  But the dominant hue is much darker, although the mixed 
element is everywhere visible; and I was at first surprised by 
the scarcity of those clear bright skins I supposed to be so 
numerous. Some pretty children--notably a pair of twin-sisters, 
and perhaps a dozen school-girls from eight to ten years of age--
displayed the same characteristics I have noted in the adult 
porteuses of Grande Anse; but within the town itself this 
brighter element is in the minority.  The predominating race 
element of the whole commune is certainly colored (Grande Anse is 
even memorable because of the revolt of its _hommes de couleur_ 
some fifty years ago);--but the colored population is not 
concentrated in the town; it be1ongs rather to the valleys and 
the heights surrounding the _chef-lieu_.  Most of the porteuses 
are country girls, and I found that even those living in the 
village are seldom visible on the streets except when departing 
upon a trip or returning from one.  An artist wishing to study 
the type might, however, pass a day at the bridge of the Rivière 
Falaise to advantage, as all the carrier-girls pass it at certain 
hours of the morning and evening.

But the best possible occasion on which to observe what my 
friend the baker called _la belle jeunesse_, is a confirmation 
day,--when the bishop drives to Grande Anse over the mountains, 
and all the population turns out in holiday garb, and the bells 
are tapped like tam-tams, and triumphal arches--most awry to 
behold!--span the road-way, bearing in clumsiest lettering the 
welcome, _Vive Monseigneur_.  On that event, the long procession 
of young girls to be confirmed--all in white robes, white veils, 
and white satin slippers--is a numerical surprise. It is a moral 
surprise also,--to the stranger at least; for it reveals the 
struggle of a poverty extraordinary with the self-imposed 
obligations of a costly ceremonia1ism.

No white children ever appear in these processions: there are 
not half a dozen white families in the who1e urban population of 
about seven thousand souls; and those send their sons and 
daughters to St. Pierre or Morne Rouge for their religious 
training and education. But many of the colored children look 
very charming in their costume of confirmation;--you could not 
easily recognize one of them as the same little _bonne_ who 
brings your morning cup of coffee, or another as the daughter of 
a plantation _commandeur_ (overseer's assistant),--a brown slip 
of a girl who will probably never wear shoes again.  And many of 
those white shoes and white veils have been obtained only by the 
hardest physical labor and self-denial of poor parents and 
relatives: fathers, brothers, and mothers working with cutlass 
and hoe in the snake-swarming cane-fields;--sisters walking bare-
footed every day to St. Pierre and back to earn a few francs a 
month.

[Illustration: A CONFIRMATION PROCESSION.]

... While watching such a procession it seemed to me that I could 
discern in the features and figures of the young confirmants 
something of a prevailing type and tint, and I asked an old 
planter beside me if he thought my impression correct.

"Partly," he answered; "there is certainly a tendency towards an 
attractive physical type here, but the tendency itself is less 
stable than you imagine; it has been changed during the last 
twenty years within my own recollection.  In different parts of 
the island particular types appear and disappear with a 
generation.  There is a sort of race-fermentation going on, which 
gives no fixed result of a positive sort for any great length of 
time.  It is true that certain elements continue to dominate in 
certain communes, but the particular characteristics come and 
vanish in the most mysterious way.  As to color, I doubt if any 
correct classification can be made, especially by a stranger.  
Your eyes give you general ideas about a red type, a yellow type, 
a brown type; but to the more experienced eyes of a creole, 
accustomed to live in the country districts, every individual of 
mixed race appears to have a particular color of his own. Take, 
for instance, the so-called capre type, which furnishes the 
finest physical examples of all,--you, a stranger, are at once 
impressed by the general red tint of the variety; but you do not 
notice the differences of that tint in different persons, which 
are more difficult to observe than shade-differences of yellow or 
brown.  Now, to me, every capre or capresse has an individual 
color; and I do not believe that in all Martinique there are two 
half-breeds--not having had the same father and mother--in whom 
the tint is precisely the same."



VIII.


I thought Grande Anse the most sleepy place I had ever visited.  
I suspect it is one of the sleepiest in the whole world.  The 
wind, which tans even a creole of St. Pierre to an unnatural 
brown within forty-eight hours of his sojourn in the village, has 
also a peculiarly somnolent effect.  The moment one has nothing 
particular to do, and ventures to sit down idly with the breeze 
in one's face, slumber comes; and everybody who can spare the 
time takes a long nap in the afternoon, and little naps from hour 
to hour.  For all that, the heat of the east coast is not 
enervating, like that of St. Pierre; one can take a great deal of 
exercise in the sun without feeling much the worse.  Hunting 
excursions, river fishing parties, surf-bathing, and visits to 
neighboring plantations are the only amusements; but these are 
enough to make existence very pleasant at Grande Anse.  The most 
interesting of my own experiences were those of a day passed by 
invitation at one of the old colonial estates on the hills near 
the village.

It is not easy to describe the charm of a creole interior, 
whether in the city or the country.  The cool shadowy court, with 
its wonderful plants and fountain of sparkling mountain water, or 
the lawn, with its ancestral trees,--the delicious welcome of the 
host, whose fraternal easy manner immediately makes you feel at 
home,--the coming of the children to greet you, each holding up a 
velvety brown cheek to be kissed, after the old-time custom,--the 
romance of the unconventional chat, over a cool drink, under the 
palms and the ceibas,--the visible earnestness of all to please 
the guest, to inwrap him in a very atmosphere of quiet 
happiness,--combine to make a memory which you will never 
forget. And maybe you enjoy all this upon some exquisite site, 
some volcanic summit, overlooking slopes of a hundred greens,--
mountains far winding in blue and pearly shadowing,--rivers 
singing seaward behind curtains of arborescent reeds and 
bamboos,--and, perhaps, Pelee, in the horizon, dreaming violet 
dreams under her foulard of vapors,--and, encircling all, the 
still sweep of the ocean's azure bending to the verge of day.

... My host showed or explained to me all that he thought might 
interest a stranger.  He had brought to me a nest of the 
_carouge_, a bird which suspends its home, hammock-fashion, under 
the leaves of the banana-tree;--showed me a little fer-de-lance, 
freshly killed by one of his field hands; and a field lizard 
(_zanoli tè_ in creole), not green like the lizards which haunt 
the roofs of St. Pierre, but of a beautiful brown bronze, with 
shifting tints; and eggs of the _zanoli_, little soft oval things 
from which the young lizards will perhaps run out alive as fast 
as you open the shells; and the _matoutou falaise_, or spider of 
the cliffs, of two varieties, red or almost black when adult, and 
bluish silvery tint when young,--less in size than the tarantula, 
but equally hairy and venomous; and the _crabe-c'est-ma-faute_ 
(the "Through-my-fault Crab"), having one very small and one very 
large claw, which latter it carries folded up against its body, 
so as to have suggested the idea of a penitent striking his 
bosom, and uttering the sacramental words of the Catholic 
confession, "Through my fault, through my fault, through my most 
grievous fault."...  Indeed I cannot recollect one-half of the 
queer birds, queer insects, queer reptiles, and queer plants to 
which my attention was called.  But speaking of plants, I was 
impressed by the profusion of the _zhèbe-moin-misé_--a little 
sensitive-plant I had rarely observed on the west coast.  On the 
hill-sides of Grande Anse it prevails to such an extent as to 
give certain slopes its own peculiar greenish-brown color.  It 
has many-branching leaves, only one inch and a half to two inches 
long, but which recall the form of certain common ferns; these 
lie almost flat upon the ground.  They fold together upward from 
the central stem at the least touch, and the plant thus makes 
itself almost imperceptible;--it seems to live so, that you feel 
guilty of murder if you break off a leaf.  It is called _Zhèbe-
moin-misé_, or "Plant-did-I-amuse-myself," because it is supposed 
to tell naughty little children who play truant, or who delay 
much longer than is necessary in delivering a message, whether 
they deserve a whipping or not.  The guilty child touches the 
plant, and asks, "_Ess moin amisé moin?_" (Did I amuse myself?); 
and if the plant instantly shuts its leaves up, that means, "Yes, 
you did."  Of course the leaves invariably close; but I suspect 
they invariably tell the truth, for all colored children, in 
Grande Anse at least, are much more inclined to play than work.

The kind old planter likewise conducted me over the estate.  He 
took me through the sugar-mill, and showed me, among other more 
recent inventions, some machinery devised nearly two centuries 
ago by the ingenious and terrible Père Labat, and still quite 
serviceable, in spite of all modern improvements in sugar-
making;--took me through the _rhummerie_, or distillery, and made 
me taste some colorless rum which had the aroma and something of 
the taste of the most delicate gin;--and finally took me into the 
_cases-à-vent_, or "wind-houses,"--built as places of refuge 
during hurricanes.  Hurricanes are rare, and more rare in this 
century by far than during the previous one; but this part of the 
island is particularly exposed to such visitations, and almost 
every old plantation used to have one or two cases-à-vent.  They 
were always built in a hollow, either natural or artificial, 
below the land-level,--with walls of rock several feet thick, 
and very strong doors, but no windows.  My host told me about the 
experiences of his family in some case-à-vent during a hurricane 
which he recollected.  It was found necessary to secure the door 
within by means of strong ropes; and the mere task of holding it 
taxed the strength of a dozen powerful men: it would bulge in 
under the pressure of the awful wind,--swelling like the side of 
a barrel; and had not its planks been made of a wood tough as 
hickory, they would have been blown into splinters.

I had long desired to examine a plantation drum, and see it 
played upon under conditions more favorable than the excitement 
of a holiday _caleinda_ in the villages, where the amusement is 
too often terminated by a _voum_ (general row) or a _goumage_ (a 
serious fight);--and when I mentioned this wish to the planter he 
at once sent word to his commandeur, the best drummer in the 
settlement, to come up to the house and bring his instrument with 
him. I was thus enabled to make the observations necessary, and 
also to take an instantaneous photograph of the drummer in the 
very act of playing.

The old African dances, the _caleinda_ and the _bélé_ (which 
latter is accompanied by chanted improvisation) are danced on 
Sundays to the sound of the drum on almost every plantation in 
the island.  The drum, indeed, is an instrument to which the 
country-folk are so much attached that they swear by it,--
_Tambou!_ being the oath uttered upon all ordinary occasions of 
surprise or vexation. But the instrument is quite as often called 
_ka_, because made out of a quarter-barrel, or _quart_,--in the 
patois "ka."  Both ends of the barrel having been removed, a wet 
hide, well wrapped about a couple of hoops, is driven on, and in 
drying the stretched skin obtains still further tension.  The 
other end of the ka is always left open.  Across the face of the 
skin a string is tightly stretched, to which are attached, at 
intervals of about an inch apart, very short thin fragments of 
bamboo or cut feather stems.  These lend a certain vibration to 
the tones.

In the time of Père Labat the negro drums had a somewhat 
different form.  There were then two kinds of drums--a big 
tamtam and a little one, which used to be played together.  Both 
consisted of skins tightly stretched over one end of a wooden 
cylinder, or a section of hollow tree trunk.  The larger was from 
three to four feet long with a diameter of fifteen to sixteen 
inches; the smaller, called _baboula_, [5] was of the same length, 
but only eight or nine inches in diameter.  

Père Labat also speaks, in his West Indian travels, of another 
musical instrument, very popular among the Martinique slaves of 
his time--"a sort of guitar" made out of a half-calabash or 
_couï_, covered with some kind of skin.  It had four strings of 
silk or catgut, and a very long neck.  The tradition or this 
African instrument is said to survive in the modern "_banza_" 
(_banza nèg Guinée_).

The skilful player (_bel tambouyé_) straddles his ka stripped to 
the waist, and plays upon it with the finger-tips of both hands 
simultaneously,--taking care that the vibrating string occupies a 
horizontal position.  Occasionally the heel of the naked foot is 
pressed lightly or vigorously against the skin, so as to produce 
changes of tone.  This is called "giving heel" to the drum--
_baill y talon_.   Meanwhile a boy keeps striking the drum at the 
uncovered end with a stick, so as to produce a dry clattering 
accompaniment.  The sound of the drum itself, well played, has a 
wild power that makes and masters all the excitement of the 
dance--a complicated double roll, with a peculiar billowy rising 
and falling.  The creole onomatopes, _b'lip-b'lib-b'lib-b'lip_, 
do not fully render the roll;--for each _b'lip_ or _b'lib_ stands 
really for a series of sounds too rapidly filliped out to be 
imitated by articulate speech.  The tapping of a ka can be heard 
at surprising distances; and experienced players often play for 
hours at a time without exhibiting wearisomeness, or in the least 
diminishing the volume of sound produced.

It seems there are many ways of playing--different measures 
familiar to all these colored people, but not easily 
distinguished by anybody else; and there are great matches 
sometimes between celebrated _tambouyé_.  The same _commandè_ 
whose portrait I took while playing told me that he once figured 
in a contest of this kind, his rival being a drummer from the 
neighboring burgh of Marigot....  "_Aïe, aïe, yaïe! mon chè!--y 
fai tambou-à pàlé!_" said the commandè, describing the execution 
of his antagonist;--"my dear, he just made that drum talk!  I 
thought I was going to be beaten for sure; I was trembling all 
the time--_aïe, aïe, yaïe!_  Then he got off that ka. mounted it; 
I thought a moment; then I struck up the 'River-of-the-Lizard,'--
_mais, mon chè, yon larivie-Léza toutt pi!_--such a River-of-the-
Lizard, ah! just perfectly pure!   I gave heel to that ka; I 
worried that ka;--I made it mad--I made it crazy;--I made it 
talk;--I won!"

During some dances a sort of chant accompanies the music--a long 
sonorous cry, uttered at intervals of seven eight seconds, which 
perfectly times a particular measure in the drum roll.  It may be 
the burden of a song: a mere improvisation:

"Oh! yoïe-yoïe!" 
(Drum roll.) 
"Oh! missié-à!" 
(Drum roll.) 
"Y bel tambouyé!" 
(Drum roll.) 
"Aie, ya, yaie!" 
(Drum roll.) 
"Joli tambouyé!" 
(Drum roll.) 
"Chauffé tambou-à!" 
(Drum roll.) 
"Géné tambou-à!" 
(Drum roll.) 
"Crazé tambou-à!" etc., etc.

... The _crieur_, or chanter, is also the leader of the dance.  
The caleinda is danced by men only, all stripped to the waist, 
and twirling heavy sticks in a mock fight, Sometimes, however--
especially at the great village gatherings, when the blood 
becomes oyerheated by tafia--the mock fight may become a real 
one; and then even cutlasses are brought into play.

But in the old days, those improvisations which gave one form of 
dance its name, _bélé_ (from the French _bel air_), were often 
remarkable rhymeless poems, uttered with natural simple emotion, 
and full of picturesque imagery. I cite part of one, taken down 
from the dictation of a common field-hand near Fort-de-France.  I 
offer a few lines of the creole first, to indicate the form of 
the improvisation. There is a dancing pause at the end of each 
line during the performance:

Toutt fois lanmou vini lacase moin 
Pou pàlé moin, moin ka reponne: 
"Khé moin deja placé," 
Moin ka crié, "Secou! les voisinages!" 
Moin ka crié, "Secou! la gàde royale!" 
Moin ka crié, "Secou! la gendàmerie! 
Lanmou pouend yon poignâ pou poignadé moin!"

The best part of the composition, which is quite long, might be 
rendered as follows:

Each time that Love comes to my cabin 
To speak to me of love I make answer, 
"My heart is already placed," 
I cry out, "Help, neighbors! help!" 
I cry out, "Help, _la Garde Royale!_" 
I cry out, "Help, help, gendarmes! 
Love takes a poniard to stab me; 
How can Love have a heart so hard 
To thus rob me of my health!" 
When the officer of police comes to me 
To hear me tell him the truth, 
To have him arrest my Love;-- 
When I see the Garde Royale 
Coming to arrest my sweet heart, 
I fall down at the feet of the Garde Royale,-- 
I pray for mercy and forgiveness. 
"Arrest me instead, but let my dear Love go!" 
How, alas! with this tender heart of mine, 
Can I bear to see such an arrest made! 
No, no! I would rather die! 
Dost not remember, when our pillows lay close together, 
How we told each to the other all that our hearts thought?... etc.

[Illustration: MANNER OF PLAYING THE KA]

The stars were all out when I bid my host good-bye;--he sent his 
lack servant along with me to carry a lantern and keep a sharp 
watch for snakes along the mountain road.



IX.


... Assuredly the city of St. Pierre never could have seemed more 
quaintly beautiful than as I saw it on the evening of my return, 
while the shadows were reaching their longest, and sea and sky 
were turning lilac. Palm-heads were trembling and masts swaying 
slowly against an enormous orange sunset,--yet the beauty of the 
sight did not touch me!  The deep level and luminous flood of the 
bay seemed to me for the first time a dead water;--I found myself 
wondering whether it could form a part of that living tide by 
which I had been dwelling, full of foam-lightnings and perpetual 
thunder. I wondered whether the air about me--heavy and hot and 
full of faint leafy smells--could ever have been touched by the 
vast pure sweet breath of the wind from the sunrising.  And I 
became conscious of a profound, unreasoning, absurd regret for 
the somnolent little black village of that bare east coast,--
where there are no woods, no ships, no sunsets,...only the ocean 
roaring forever over its beach of black sand.




CHAPTER III.
UN REVENANT




I.


He who first gave to Martinique its poetical name, _Le Pays des 
Revenants_, thought of his wonderful island only as "The Country 
of Comers-back," where Nature's unspeakable spell bewitches 
wandering souls like the caress of a Circe,--never as the Land of 
Ghosts.  Yet either translation of the name holds equal truth: a 
land of ghosts it is, this marvellous Martinique!.  Almost every 
plantation has its familiar spirits,--its phantoms: some may be 
unknown beyond the particular district in which fancy first gave 
them being;--but some belong to popular song and story,--to the 
imaginative life of the whole people.  Almost every promontory 
and peak,  every village and valley along the coast, has its 
special folk-lore, its particular tradition.  The legend of 
Thomasseau of Perinnelle, whose body was taken out of the coffin 
and carried away by the devil through a certain window of the 
plantation-house, which cannot be closed up by human power;--the 
Demarche legend of the spectral horseman who rides up the hill on 
bright hot days to seek a friend buried more than a hundred years 
ago;--the legend of the _Habitation Dillon_, whose proprietor 
was one night mysteriously summoned from a banquet to disappear 
forever;--the legend of l'Abbé Piot, who cursed the sea with the 
curse of perpetual unrest;--the legend of Aimeé Derivry of 
Robert, captured by Barbary pirates, and sold to become a 
Sultana-Validé-(she never existed, though you can find an alleged 
portrait in M. Sidney Daney's history of Martinique): these and 
many similar tales might be told to you even on a journey from 
St. Pierre to Fort-de-France, or from Lamentin to La Trinité, 
according as a rising of some peak into view, or the sudden 
opening of an _anse_ before the vessel's approach, recalls them 
to a creole companion.

And new legends are even now being made; for in this remote 
colony, to which white immigration has long ceased,--a country so 
mountainous that people are born (and buried in the same valley 
without ever seeing towns but a few hours' journey beyond their 
native hills, and that distinct racial types are forming within 
three leagues of each other,--the memory of an event or of a name 
which has had influence enough to send one echo through all the 
forty-nine miles of peaks and craters is apt to create legend 
within a single generation.  Nowhere in the world, perhaps, is 
popular imagination more oddly naive and superstitious; nowhere 
are facts more readily exaggerated or distorted into 
unrecognizability; and the forms of any legend thus originated 
become furthermore specialized in each separate locality where it 
obtains a habitat.  On tracing back such a legend or tradition to 
its primal source, one feels amazed at the variety of the 
metamorphoses which the simplest fact may rapidly assume in the 
childish fancy of this people.

I was first incited to make an effort in this direction by 
hearing the remarkable story of "Missié Bon."  No legendary 
expression is more wide-spread throughout the country than _temps 
coudvent Missié Bon_ (in the time of the big wind of Monsieur 
Bon).  Whenever a hurricane threatens, you will hear colored 
folks expressing the hope that it may not be like the _coudvent 
Missié Bon_. And some years ago, in all the creole police-courts, 
old colored witnesses who could not tell their age would 
invariably try to give the magistrate some idea of it by 
referring to the never-to-be-forgotten _temps coudvent Missié 
Bon_.

... "_Temps coudvent Missié Bon, moin té ka tété encò_" (I was a 
child at the breast in the time of the big wind of Missié Bon); 
or "_Temps coudvent Missié Bon, moin té toutt piti manmaill,--
moin ka souvini y pouend caiie manman moin pòté allé." (I was a 
very, very little child in the time of the big wind of Missié 
Bon,--but I remember it blew mamma's cabin away.) The magistrates 
of those days knew the exact date of the _coudvent_.

But all could learn about Missié Bon among the country-folk was 
this: Missié Bon used to be a great slave-owner and a cruel 
master.  He was a very wicked man.  And he treated his slaves so 
terribly that at last the Good-God (_Bon-Dié_) one day sent a 
great wind which blew away Missié Bon and Missié Bon's house and 
everybody in it, so that nothing was ever heard of them again.

It was not without considerable research that I suceeded at last 
in finding some one able to give me the true facts in the case of 
Monsieur Bon.  My informant was a charming old gentleman, who 
represents a New York company in the city of St. Pierre, and who 
takes more interest in the history of his native island than 
creoles usually do.  He laughed at the legend I had found, but 
informed me that I could trace it, with slight variations, 
through nearly every canton of Martinique.

"And now" he continued "I can tell you the real history of 
'Missié Bon'--for he was an old friend of my grandfather; and my 
grandfather related it to me.

"It may have been in 1809--I can give you the exact date by 
reference to some old papers if necessary--Monsieur Bon was 
Collector of Customs at St.  Pierre: and my grandfather was doing 
business in the Grande Rue. A certain captain, whose vessel had 
been consigned to my grandfather, invited him and the collector 
to breakfast in his cabin.  My grandfather was so busy he could 
not accept the invitation;--but Monsieur Bon went with the 
captain on board the bark.

... "It was a morning like this; the sea was just as blue and 
the sky as clear.  All of a sudden, while they were at breakfast, 
the sea began to break heavily without a wind, and clouds came 
up, with every sign of a hurricane.  The captain was obliged to 
sacrifice his anchor; there was no time to land his guest: he 
hoisted a little jib and top-gallant, and made for open water, 
taking Monsieur Bon with him.  Then the hurricane came; and from 
that day to this nothing has ever been heard of the bark nor of 
the captain nor of Monsieur Bon." [6]

"But did Monsieur Bon ever do anything to deserve the reputation 
he has left among the people ?" I asked.

"_Ah! le pauvre vieux corps_! ... A kind old soul who never 
uttered a harsh word to human being;--timid,--good-natured,--
old-fashioned even for those old-fashioned days....  Never had a 
slave in his life!"



II.


The legend of "Missié Bon" had prepared me to hear without 
surprise the details of a still more singular tradition,--that 
of Father Labat....  I was returning from a mountain ramble with 
my guide, by way of the Ajoupa-Bouillon road;--the sun had gone 
down; there remained only a blood-red glow in the west, against 
which the silhouettes of the hills took a velvety blackness 
indescribably soft; the stars were beginning to twinkle out 
everywhere through the violet.  Suddenly I noticed on the flank 
of a neighboring morne--which I remembered by day as an 
apparently uninhabitable wilderness of bamboos, tree-ferns, and 
balisiers--a swiftly moving point of yellow light.  My guide had 
observed it simultaneously;--he crossed himself, and exclaimed:

"_Moin ka couè c'est fanal Pè Labatt!_" (I believe it is the 
lantern of Perè Labat.)

"Does he live there?" I innocently inquired.

"Live there?--why he has been dead hundreds of years! ... 
_Ouill!_ you never heard of Pè Labatt?"...

"Not the same who wrote a book about Martinique?"

"Yes,--himself.... They say he comes back at night. Ask mother 
about him;--she knows."...

...I questioned old Théréza as soon as we reached home; and she 
told me all she knew about "Pè Labatt."  I found that the father 
had left a reputation far more wide-spread than the recollection 
of "Missié Bon,"--that his memory had created, in fact, the most 
impressive legend in all Martinique folk-lore.

"Whether you really saw Pè Labatt's lantern," said old Thereza, 
"I do not know;--there are a great many queer lights to be seen 
after nightfall among these mornes. Some are zombi-fires; and 
some are lanterns carried by living men; and some are lights 
burning in ajoupas so high up that you can only see a gleam 
coming through the trees now and then.  It is not everybody who 
sees the lantern of Pè Labatt; and it is not good-luck to see it.

"Pè Labatt was a priest who lived here hundreds of years ago; and 
he wrote a book about what he saw. He was the first person to 
introduce slavery into Martinique; and it is thought that is why 
he comes back at night.  It is his penance for having established 
slavery here.

"They used to say, before 1848, that when slavery should be 
abolished, Pè Labatt's light would not be seen any more.  But I 
can remember very well when slavery was abolished; and I saw the 
light many a time after. It used to move up the Morne d'Orange 
every clear night;--I could see it very well from my window when 
I lived in St. Pierre.  You knew it was Pè Labatt, because the 
light passed up places where no man could walk.  But since the 
statue of Notre Dame de la Garde was placed on the Morne 
d'Orange, people tell me that the light is not seen there any 
more.

"But it is seen elsewhere; and it is not good-luck to see it.  
Everybody is afraid of seeing it....  And mothers tell their 
children, when the little ones are naughty: '_Mi! moin ké fai Pè 
Labatt vini pouend ou,--oui!_' (I will make Pè Labatt come and 
take you away.)"....

What old Théréza stated regarding the establishment of slavery in 
Martinique by Père Labat, I knew required no investigation,--
inasmuch as slavery was a flourishing institution in the time of 
Père Dutertre, another Dominican missionary and historian, who 
wrote his book,--a queer book in old French, [7] --before Labat was 
born.

But it did not take me long to find out that such was the 
general belief about Père Labat's sin and penance, and to 
ascertain that his name is indeed used to frighten naughty 
children.  _Eh! ti manmaille-là, moin ké fai Pè Labatt vini 
pouend ou!_--is an exclamation often heard in the vicinity of 
ajoupas just about the hour when all found a good little children 
ought to be in bed and asleep.

... The first variation of the legend I heard was on a 
plantation in the neighborhood of Ajoupa-Bouillon. There I was 
informed that Père Labat had come to his death by the bite of a 
snake,--the hugest snake that  ever was seen in Martinique.  Perè 
Labat had believed it possible to exterminate the fer-de-lance, 
and had adopted extraordinary measures for its destruction.  On 
receiving his death-wound he exclaimed, "_C'est pè toutt sépent 
qui té ka mòdé moin_" (It is the Father of all Snakes that has 
bitten me); and he vowed that he would come back to destroy the 
brood, and would haunt the island until there should be not one 
snake left.  And the light that moves about the peaks at night is 
the lantern of Père Labat still hunting for snakes.

"_Ou pa pè suive ti limié-là piess!_" continued my informant.  
"You cannot follow that little light at all;--when you first see 
it, it is perhaps only a kilometre away; the next moment it is 
two, three, or four kilometres away."

I was also told that the light is frequently seen near Grande 
Anse, on the other side of the island,--and on the heights of La 
Caravelle, the long fantastic promontory that reaches three 
leagues into the sea south of the harbor of La Trinité. [8] 

And on my return to St. Pierre I found a totally different 
version of the legend;--my informant being one Manm-Robert, a 
kind old soul who kept a little _boutique-lapacotte_ (a little 
booth where cooked food is sold) near the precipitous Street of 
the Friendships.

... "_Ah! Pè Labatt, oui!_" she exclaimed, at my first 
question,--"Pè Labatt was a good priest who lived here very long 
ago.  And they did him a great wrong here;--they gave him a 
wicked _coup d'langue_ (tongue wound); and the hurt given by an 
evil tongue is worse than a serpent's bite.  They lied about him; 
they slandered him until they got him sent away from the country.  
But before the Government 'embarked' him, when he got to that 
quay, he took off his shoe and he shook the dust of his shoe upon 
that quay, and he said: 'I curse you, 0 Martinique!--I curse you! 
There will be food for nothing, and your people will not even be 
able to buy it!  There will be clothing material for nothing, and 
your people will not be able to get so much as one dress!  And the 
children will beat their mothers!... You banish me;--but I will 
come back again.'" [9]

"And then what happened, Manm-Robert ?"

"_Eh! fouinq! chè_, all that Pè Labatt said has come true.  There 
is food for almost nothing, and people are starving here in St. 
Pierre; there is clothing for almost nothing, and poor girls 
cannot earn enough to buy a dress.  The pretty printed calicoes 
(_indiennes_) that used to be two francs and a half the metre, 
now sell at twelve sous the metre; but nobody has any money.  And 
if you read our papers,--_Les Colonies, La Defense Coloniale_,-- 
you will find that there are sons wicked enough to beat their 
mothers: _oui! yche ka batt manman!_ It is the malediction of Pè 
Labatt."

This was all that Manm-Robert could tell me.  Who had related 
the story to her?  Her mother.  Whence had her mother obtained 
it?  From her grandmother.... Subsequently I found many persons 
to confirm the tradition of the curse,--precisely as Manm-Robert 
had related it.

Only a brief while after this little interview I was invited to 
pass an afternoon at the home of a gentleman residing upon the 
Morne d' Orange,--the locality supposed to be especially haunted 
by Père Labat.  The house of Monsieur M-- stands on the side of 
the hill, fully five hundred feet up, and in a grove of trees: an 
antiquated dwelling, with foundations massive as the walls of a 
fortress, and huge broad balconies of stone. From one of these 
balconies there is a view of the city, the harbor1 and Pelée, 
which I believe even those who have seen Naples would confess to 
be one of the fairest sights in the world....  Towards evening I 
obtained a chance to ask my kind host some questions about the 
legend of his neighborhood.

... "Ever since I was a child," observed Monsieur M--, "I heard 
it said that Père Labat haunted this mountain, and I often saw 
what was alleged to be his light.  It looked very much like a 
lantern swinging in the hand of some one climbing the hill.  A 
queer fact was that it used to come from the direction of Carbet, 
skirt the Morne d'Orange a few hundred feet above the road, and 
then move up the face of what seemed a sheer precipice.  Of 
course somebody carried that light,--probably a negro; and 
perhaps the cliff is not so inaccessible as it looks: still, we 
could never discover who the individual was, nor could we imagine 
what his purpose might have been....  But the light has not been 
seen here now for years."



III.


And who was Père Labat,--this strange priest whose memory, 
weirdly disguised by legend, thus lingers in the oral literature 
of the colored people? Various encyclopedias answer the question, 
but far less fully and less interestingly than Dr. Rufz, the 
Martinique historian, whose article upon him in the _Etudes 
Statistiques et Historiques_ has that charm of sympathetic 
comprehension by which a master-biographer sometimes reveals 
himself a sort of necromancer,--making us feel a vanished 
personality with the power of a living presence.  Yet even the 
colorless data given by dictionaries of biography should suffice 
to convince most readers that Jean-Baptiste Labat must be ranked 
among the extraordinary men of his century.

Nearly two hundred years ago--24th August, 1693--a traveller 
wearing the white habit of the Dominican order, partly covered by 
a black camlet overcoat, entered the city of Rochelle.  He was 
very tall and robust, with one of those faces, at once grave and 
keen, which bespeak great energy and quick discernment.  This was 
the Père Labat, a native of Paris, then in his thirtieth year.  
Half priest, half layman, one might have been tempted to surmise 
from his attire; and such a judgement would not have been unjust.  
Labat's character was too large for his calling,--expanded 
naturally beyond the fixed limits of the ecclesiastical life; and 
throughout the whole active part of his strange career we find in 
him this dual character of layman and monk. He had come to 
Rochelle to take passage for Martinique.  Previously he had been 
professor of philosophy and mathematics at Nancy.  While watching 
a sunset one evening from the window of his study, some one 
placed in his hands a circular issued by the Dominicans of the 
French West Indies, calling for volunteers.  Death had made many 
wide gaps in their ranks; and various misfortunes had reduced 
their finances to such an extent that ruin threatened all their 
West Indian establishments. Labat, with the quick decision of a 
mind suffering from the restraints of a life too narrow for it, 
had at once resigned his professorship, and engaged himself for 
the missions.

... In those days, communication with the West Indies was slow, 
irregular, and difficult.  Labat had to wait at Rochelle six 
whole months for a ship.  In the convent at Rochelle, where he 
stayed, there were others waiting for the same chance,--including 
several Jesuits and Capuchins as well as Dominicans.  These 
unanimously elected him their leader,--a significant fact 
considering the mutual jealousy of the various religious orders 
of that period, There was something in the energy and frankness 
of Labat's character which seems to have naturally gained him the 
confidence and ready submission of others.

... They sailed in November; and Labat still found himself in 
the position of a chief on board.  His account of the voyage is 
amusing;--in almost everything except practical navigation, he 
would appear to have regulated the life of passengers and crew.  
He taught the captain mathematics; and invented amusements of all 
kinds to relieve the monotony of a two months' voyage.

... As the ship approached Martinique from the north, Labat 
first beheld the very grimmest part of the lofty coast,--the 
region of Macouba; and the impression it made upon him was not 
pleasing.  "The island," he writes, "appeared to me all one 
frightful mountain, broken everywhere by precipices: nothing 
about it pleased me except the verdure which everywhere met the 
eye, and which seemed to me both novel and agreeable, considering 
the time of the year."

Almost immediately after his arrival he was sent by the Superior 
of the convent to Macouba, for acclimation; Macouba then being 
considered the healthiest part of the island.  Whoever makes the 
journey on horseback thither from St. Pierre to-day can testify 
to the exactitude of Labat's delightful narrative of the trip. So 
little has that part of the island changed since two centuries 
that scarcely a line of the father's description would need 
correction to adopt it bodily for an account of a ride to Macouba 
in 1889.

At Macouba everybody welcomes him, pets him,--finally becomes 
enthusiastic about him.  He fascinates and dominates the little 
community almost at first sight. "There is an inexpressible 
charm," says Rufz,--commenting upon this portion of Labat's 
narrative,--"in the novelty of relations between men: no one has 
yet been offended, no envy has yet been excited;--it is scarcely 
possible even to guess whence that ill-will you must sooner or 
later provoke is going to come from;--there are no rivals;--there 
are no enemies.  You are everybody's friend; and many are hoping 
you will continue to be only theirs."  ... Labat knew how to take 
legitimate advantage of this good-will;--he persuaded his 
admirers to rebuild the church at Macouba, according to designs 
made by himself.  

At Macouba, however, he was not permitted to sojourn as long as the 
good people of the little burgh would have deemed even reasonable: 
he had shown certain aptitudes which made his presence more than desirable 
at Saint-Jacques, the great plantation of the order on the Capesterre, 
or Windward coast.  It was in debt for 700,000 pounds of sugar,--an 
appalling condition in those days,--and seemed doomed to get more heavily 
in debt every successive season.  Labat inspected everything, and set to 
work for the plantation, not merely as general director, but as 
engineer, architect, machinist, inventor.  He did really 
wonderful things.  You can see them for yourself if you ever go 
to Martinique; for the old Dominican plantation-now Government 
property, and leased at an annual rent of 50,000 francs--remains 
one of the most valuable in the colonies because of Labat's work 
upon it.  The watercourses directed by him still excite the 
admiration of modern professors of hydraulics; the mills he built 
or invented are still good;--the treatise he wrote on sugar-
making remained for a hundred and fifty years the best of its 
kind, and the manual of French planters.  In less than two years 
Labat had not only rescued the plantation from bankruptcy, but 
had made it rich; and if the monks deemed him veritably inspired, 
the test of time throws no ridicule on their astonishment at the 
capacities of the man. ... Even now the advice he formulated as 
far back as 1720--about secondary cultures,--about manufactories 
to establish,--about imports, exports, and special commercial 
methods--has lost little of its value.

Such talents could not fail to excite wide-spread admiration,--
nor to win for him a reputation in the colonies beyond precedent.  
He was wanted everywhere.... Auger, the Governor of Guadeloupe, 
sent for him to help the colonists in fortifying and defending 
the island against the English; and we find the missionary quite 
as much at home in this new role-building bastions, scarps, 
counterterscarps, ravelins, etc.--as he seemed to be upon the 
plantation of Saint-Jacques.  We find him even taking part in an 
engagement;--himself conducting an artillery duel,--loading, 
pointing, and firing no less than twelve times after the other 
French gunners had been killed or driven from their posts.  After 
a tremendous English volley, one of the enemy cries out to him in 
French: "White Father, have they told ?" (_Père Blanc, ont-ils 
porté?_) He replies only after returning the fire with, a better-
directed aim, and then repeats the mocking question: "Have they 
told?"  "Yes, they have," confesses the Englishman, in surprised 
dismay; "but we will pay you back for that!"...

... Returning to Martinique with new titles to distinction, 
Labat was made Superior of the order in that island, and likewise 
Vicar-Apostolic.  After building the Convent of the Mouillage, at 
St. Pierre, and many other edifices, he undertook that series of 
voyages in the interests of the Dominicans whereof the narration 
fills six ample volumes.  As a traveller Père Labat has had few 
rivals in his own field;--no one, indeed, seems to have been able 
to repeat some of his feats.  All the French and several of the 
English colonies were not merely visited by him, but were studied 
in their every geographical detail.  Travel in the West Indies is 
difficult to a degree of which strangers have little idea; but in 
the time of Père Labat there were few roads,--and a far greater 
variety of obstacles.  I do not believe there are half a dozen 
whites in Martinique who thoroughly know their own island,--who 
have even travelled upon all its roads; but Labat knew it as he 
knew the palm of his hand, and travelled where roads had never 
been made.  Equally well he knew Guadeloupe and other islands; 
and he learned all that it was possible to learn in those years 
about the productions and resources of the other colonies. He 
travelled with the fearlessness and examined with the 
thoroughness of a Humboldt,--so far as his limited science 
permitted: had he possessed the knowledge of modern naturalists 
and geologists he would probably have left little for others to 
discover after him.  Even at the present time West Indian 
travellers are glad to consult him for information.

These duties involved prodigious physical and mental exertion, 
in a climate deadly to Europeans.  They also involved much 
voyaging in waters haunted by filibusters and buccaneers.  But 
nothing appears to daunt Labat. As for the filibusters, he 
becomes their comrade and personal friend;--he even becomes their 
chaplain, and does not scruple to make excursions with them.  He 
figures in several sea-fights;--on one occasion he aids in the 
capture of two English vessels,--and then occupies himself in 
making the prisoners, among whom are several ladies, enjoy the 
event like a holiday.  On another voyage Labat's vessel is 
captured by a Spanish ship.  At one moment sabres are raised 
above his head, and loaded muskets levelled at his breast;--the 
next, every Spaniard is on his knees, appalled by a cross that 
Labat holds before the eyes of the captors,--the cross worn by 
officers of the Inquisition,--the terrible symbol of the Holy 
Office.  "It did not belong to me," he says, "but to one of our 
brethren who had left it by accident among my effects."  He seems 
always prepared in some way to meet any possible emergency.  No 
humble and timid monk this: he has the frame and temper of those 
medieval abbots who could don with equal indifference the helmet 
or the cowl.  He is apparently even more of a soldier than a 
priest.  When English corsairs attempt a descent on the 
Martinique coast at Sainte-Marie they find Père Labat waiting for 
them with all the negroes of the Saint-Jacques plantation, to 
drive them back to their ships.

For other dangers he exhibits absolute unconcern. He studies the 
phenomena of hurricanes with almost pleasurable interest, while 
his comrades on the ship abandon hope.  When seized with 
yellow-fever, then known as the Siamese Sickness (_mal de Siam_), 
he refuses to stay in bed the prescribed time, and rises to say 
his mass. He faints at the altar; yet a few days later we hear of 
him on horseback again, travelling over the mountains in the 
worst and hottest season of the year....

... Labat was thirty years old when he went to the Antilles;--he 
was only forty-two when his work was done. In less than twelve 
years he made his order the most powerful and wealthy of any in 
the West Indies,--lifted their property out of bankruptcy to 
rebuild it upon a foundation of extraordinary prosperity.  As 
Rufz observes without exaggeration, the career of Père Labat in 
the Antilles seems to more than realize the antique legend of the 
labors of Hercules.  Whithersoever he went,--except in the 
English colonies,--his passage was memorialized by the rising of 
churches, convents, and schools,--as well as mills, forts, and 
refineries.  Even cities claim him as their founder.  The 
solidity of his architectural creations is no less remarkable 
than their excellence of design;--much of what he erected still 
remains; what has vanished was removed by human agency, and not 
by decay; and when the old Dominican church at St. Pierre had to 
be pulled down to make room for a larger edifice, the workmen 
complained that the stones could not be separated,--that the 
walls seemed single masses of rock.  There can be no doubt, 
moreover, that he largely influenced the life of the colonies 
during those years, and expanded their industrial and commercial 
capacities.

He was sent on a mission to Rome after these things had been 
done, and never returned from Europe.  There he travelled more or 
less in after-years; but finally settled at Paris, where he 
prepared and published the voluminous narrative of his own 
voyages, and other curious books;--manifesting as a writer the 
same tireless energy he had shown in so many other capacities.  
He does not, however, appear to have been happy.  Again and again 
he prayed to be sent back to his beloved Antilles, and for some 
unknown cause the prayer was always refused. To such a character, 
the restraint of the cloister must have proved a slow agony; but 
he had to endure it for many long years.  He died at Paris in 
1738, aged seventy-five.  

... It was inevitable that such a man should make bitter 
enemies: his preferences, his position, his activity, his 
business shrewdness, his necessary self-assertion, yet must have 
created secret hate and jealousy even when open malevolence might 
not dare to show itself.  And to the these natural results of 
personal antagonism or opposition were afterwards superadded 
various resentments--irrational, perhaps, but extremely 
violent,--caused by the father's cynical frankness as a writer.  
He spoke freely about the family origin and personal failings of 
various colonists considered high personages in their own small 
world; and to this day his book has an evil reputation undeserved 
in those old creole communities, but where any public mention of 
a family scandal is never just forgiven or forgotten....  But 
probably even before his work appeared it had been secretly 
resolved that he should never be permitted to return to 
Martinique or Guadeloupe after his European mission.  The exact 
purpose of the Government in this policy remains a mystery,--
whatever ingenious writers may have alleged to the contrary.  We 
only know that M.  Adrien Dessalles,--the trustworthy historian 
of Martinique,--while searching among the old _Archives de la 
Marine_, found there a ministerial letter to the Intendant de 
Vaucresson in which this statement occurs;--

... "Le Père Labat shall never be suffered to return to the 
colonies, whatever efforts he may make to obtain permission."



IV.


One rises from the perusal of the "Nouveau Voyage aux Isles de 
l'Amêrique" with a feeling approaching regret; for although the 
six pursy little volumes composing it--full of quaint drawings, 
plans, and odd attempts at topographical maps--reveal a prolix 
writer, Père Labat is always able to interest.  He reminds you of 
one of those slow, precise, old-fashioned conversationalists who 
measure the weight of every word and never leave anything to the 
imagination of the audience, yet who invariably reward the 
patience of their listeners sooner or later by reflections of 
surprising profundity or theories of a totally novel description.  
But what particularly impresses the reader of these volumes is 
not so much the recital of singular incidents and facts as the 
revelation of the author's personality.  Reading him, you divine 
a character of enormous force,--gifted but unevenly balanced; 
singularly shrewd in worldly affairs, and surprisingly credulous 
in other respects; superstitious and yet cynical; unsympathetic 
by his positivism, but agreeable through natural desire to give 
pleasure; just by nature, yet capable of merciless severity; 
profoundly devout, but withal tolerant for his calling and his 
time.  He is sufficiently free from petty bigotry to make fun of 
the scruples of his brethren in the matter of employing heretics; 
and his account of the manner in which he secured the services of 
a first-class refiner for the Martinique plantation at the Fond 
Saint-Jacques is not the least amusing page in the book.  He 
writes: "The religious who had been appointed Superior in 
Guadeloupe wrote me that he would find it difficult to employ 
this refiner because the man was a Lutheran.  This scruple gave 
me pleasure, as I had long wanted to have have him upon our 
plantation in the Fond Saint-Jacques, but did not know how I 
would be able to manage it!  I wrote to the Superior at once that 
all he had to do was to send the man to me, because it was a 
matter of indifference to me whether the sugar he might make were 
Catholic or Lutheran sugar, provided it were very white." [10] 

He displays equal frankness in confessing an error or a 
discomfiture.  He acknowledges that while Professor of 
Mathematics and Philosophy, he used to teach that there were no 
tides in the tropics; and in a discussion as to whether the 
_diablotin_ (a now almost extinct species of West Indian 
nocturnal bird) were fish flesh, and might or might not be eaten 
in Lent, he tells us that he was fairly worsted,--(although he 
could cite the celebrated myth of the "barnacle-geese" as a 
"fact" in justification of one's right to doubt the nature of 
diablotins).

One has reason to suspect that Père Labat, notwithstanding his 
references to the decision of the Church that diablotins were not 
birds, felt quite well assured within himself that they were.  
There is a sly humor in his story of these controversies, which 
would appear to imply that while well pleased at the decision 
referred to,  he knew all about diablotins.  Moreover, the father 
betrays certain tendencies to gormandize not altogether in 
harmony with the profession of an ascetic....  There were parrots 
in nearly all of the French Antilles in those days [11]
and Père Labat does not attempt to conceal his fondness for
cooked parrots.  (He does not appear to have cared much for them 
as pets: if they could not talk well, he condemned them forthwith 
to the pot.) "They all live upon fruits and seeds," he writes, 
"and their flesh contracts the odor and color of that particular 
fruit or seed they feed upon.  They become exceedingly fat in the 
season when the guavas are ripe; and when they eat the seeds of 
the _Bois d'Inde_ they have an odor of nutmeg and cloves which is 
delightful (_une odeur de muscade et de girofle qui fait 
plaisir_)."  He recommends four superior ways of preparing them, 
as well as other fowls, for the table, of which the first and the 
best way is "to pluck them alive, then to make them swallow 
vinegar, and then to strangle them while they have the vinegar 
still in their throats by twisting their necks"; and the fourth 
way is "to skin them alive" (de les écorcher tout en vie_).... 
"It is certain," he continues, "that these ways are excellent, 
and that fowls that have to be cooked in a hurry thereby obtain 
an admirable tenderness (_une tendreté admirable_)." Then he 
makes a brief apology to his readers, not for the inhumanity of 
his recipes, but for a display of culinary knowledge scarcely 
becoming a monk, and acquired only through those peculiar 
necessities which colonial life in the tropics imposed upon all 
alike.  The touch of cruelty here revealed produces an impression 
which there is little in the entire work capable of modifying.  
Labat seems to have possessed but a very small quantity of 
altruism; his cynicism on the subject of animal suffering is not 
offset by any visible sympathy with human pain;--he never 
compassionates: you may seek in vain through all his pages for 
one gleam of the goodness of gentle Père Du Tertre, who, filled 
with intense pity for the condition of the blacks, prays masters 
to be merciful and just to their slaves for the love of God.  
Labat suggests, on the other hand, that slavery is a good means 
of redeeming negroes from superstition and saving their souls 
from hell: he selects and purchases them himself for the Saint-
Jacques plantation, never makes a mistake or a bad bargain, and 
never appears to feel a particle of commiseration for their lot. 
In fact, the emotional feeling displayed by Père Du Tertre (whom 
he mocks slyly betimes) must have seemed to him rather 
condemnable than praiseworthy; for Labat regarded the negro as a 
natural child of the devil,--a born sorcerer,--an evil being 
wielding occult power.

Perhaps the chapters on negro sorcery are the most astonishing 
in the book, displaying on the part of this otherwise hard and 
practical nature a credulity almost without limit.  After having 
related how he had a certain negro sent out of the country "who 
predicted the arrival of vessels and other things to come,--in so 
far, at least, as the devil himself was able to know and reveal 
these matters to him," he plainly states his own belief in magic 
as follows:

"I know there are many people who consider as pure imagination, 
and as silly stories, or positive false-hoods, all that is 
related about sorcerers and their compacts with the devil.  I was 
myself for a long time of this opinion.  Moreover, I am aware 
that what is said on this subject is frequently exaggerated; but 
I am now convinced it must be acknowledged that all which has 
been related is not entirely false, although perhaps it may not 
be entirely true."...

Therewith he begins to relate stories upon what may have seemed 
unimpeachable authority in those days. The first incident 
narrated took place, he assures us, in the Martinique Dominican 
convent, shortly before his arrival in the colony.  One of the 
fathers, Père Fraise,  had had brought to Martinique, "from the 
kingdom of Juda (?) in Guinea," a little negro about nine or ten 
years old.  Not long afterwards there was a serious drought, and 
the monks prayed vainly for rain.  Then the negro child, who had 
begun to understand and speak a little French, told his masters 
that he was a Rain-maker, that he could obtain them all the rain 
they wanted.  "This proposition," says Père Labat, "greatly 
astonished the fathers: they consulted together, and at last, 
curiosity overcoming reason, they gave their consent that this 
unbaptized child should make some rain fall on their garden."  The 
unbaptized child asked them if they wanted "a big or a little 
rain"; they answered that a moderate rain would satisfy them.  
Thereupon the little negro got three oranges, and placed them on 
the ground in a line at a short distance from one another, and 
bowed down before each of them in turn, muttering words in an
unknown tongue.  Then he got three small orange-branches, stuck a 
branch in each orange, and repeated his prostrations and 
mutterings;--after which he took one of the branches, stood up, 
and watched the horizon.  A small cloud appeared, and he pointed 
the branch at it.  It approached swiftly, rested above the 
garden, and sent down a copious shower of rain.  Then the boy 
made a hole in the ground, and buried the oranges and the 
branches. The fathers were amazed to find that not a single drop 
of rain had fallen outside their garden.  They asked the boy who 
had taught him this sorcery, and he answered them that among the 
blacks on board the slave-ship which had brought him over there 
were some Rain-makers who had taught him.  Père Labat declares 
there is no question as to the truth of the occurrence: he cites 
the names of Père Fraise, Père Rosié", Père Temple, and Père 
Bournot,--all members of his own order,--as trust-worthy 
witnesses of this incident.

Père Labat displays equal credulity in his recital of a still 
more extravagant story told him by Madame la Comtesse du Gênes.  
M. le Comte du Gênes, husband of the lady in question, and 
commander of a French squadron, captured the English fort of 
Gorea in 1696, and made prisoners of all the English slaves in 
the service of the factory there established.  But the vessel on 
which these were embarked was unable to leave the coast, in spite 
of a good breeze: she seemed bewitched.  Some of the the slaves 
finally told the captain there was a negress on board who had 
enchanted the ship, and who had the power to "dry up the hearts" 
of all who refused to obey her.  A number of deaths taking place 
among the blacks, the captain ordered autopsies made, and it was 
found that the hearts of the dead negroes were desiccated. The 
negress was taken on deck, tied to a gun and whipped, but uttered 
no cry;--the ship's surgeon, angered at her stoicism, took a hand 
in the punishment, and flogged her "with all his force." 
Thereupon she told him that inasmuch as he had abused her without 
reason, his heart also should be "dried up."  He died next day; 
and his heart was found in the condition predicted.  All this 
time the ship could not be made to move in any direction; and the 
negress told the captain that until he should put her and her 
companions on shore he would never be able to sail.  To convince 
him of her power she further asked him to place three fresh 
melons in a chest, to lock the chest and put a guard over it; 
when she should tell him to unlock it, there would be no melons 
there.  The capttain made the experiment.  When the chest was 
opened, the melons appeared to be there; but on touching them it 
was found that only the outer rind remained: the interior had 
been dried up,--like the surgeon's heart. Thereupon the captain 
put the witch and her friends all ashore, and sailed away without 
further trouble.

Another story of African sorcery for the truth of which  Père 
Labat earnestly vouches is the following:

A negro was sentenced to be burned alive for witchcraft at St. 
Thomas in 1701;--his principal crime was "having made a little 
figure of baked clay to speak."  A certain creole, meeting the 
negro on his way to the place of execution, jeeringly observed, 
"Well, you cannot make your little figure talk any more now;--it 
has been broken."  "If the gentleman allow me," replied the 
prisoner," I will make the cane he carries in his hand speak."  
The creole's curiosity was strongly aroused: he prevailed upon 
the guards to halt a few minutes, and permit the prisoner to make 
the experiment.  The negro then took the cane, stuck it into the 
ground in the middle of the road, whispered something to it, and 
asked the gentleman what he wished to know.  "I, would like to 
know," answered the latter, "whether the ship has yet sailed from 
Europe, and when she will arrive."  "Put your ear to the head of 
the cane," said the negro.  On doing so the creole distinctly 
heard a thin voice which informed him that the vessel in question 
had left a certain French port on such a date; that she would 
reach St. Thomas within three days; that she had been delayed on 
her voyage by a storm which had carried away her foretop and her 
mizzen sail; that she had such and such passengers on board 
(mentioning the names), all in good health....  After this 
incident the negro was burned alive; but within three days the 
vessel arrived in port, and the prediction or divination was 
found to have been absolutely correct in every particular.

... Père Labat in no way disapproves the atrocious sentence 
inflicted upon the wretched negro: in his opinion such 
predictions were made by the power and with the personal aid of 
the devil; and for those who knowingly maintained relations with 
the devil, he could not have regarded any punishment too severe.  
That he could be harsh enough himself is amply shown in various 
accounts of his own personal experience with alleged sorcerers, 
and especially in the narration of his dealings with one-- 
apparently a sort of African doctor--who was a slave on a 
neighboring plantation, but used to visit the Saint-Jacques 
quarters by stealth to practise his art.  One of the slaves of 
the order, a negress, falling very sick, the wizard was sent for; 
and he came with all his paraphernalia--little earthen pots and 
fetiches, etc.--during the night.  He began to practise his 
incantations, without the least suspicion that Père Labat was 
watching him through a chink; and, after having consulted his 
fetiches, he told the woman she would die within four days.  At 
this juncture the priest suddenly burst.in the door and entered, 
followed by several powerful slaves.  He dashed to pieces the 
soothsayer's articles, and attempted to reassure the frightened 
negress, by declaring the prediction a lie inspired by the devil.  
Then he had the sorcerer stripped and flogged in his presence.

"I had him given," he calmly observes, "about (_environ_) three 
hundred lashes, which flayed him (_l'écorchait_) from his 
shoulders to his knees.  He screamed like a madman.  All the 
negroes trembled, and assured me that the devil would cause my 
death.... Then I had the wizard put in irons, after having had 
him well washed with a _pimentade_,--that is to say, with brine 
in which pimentos and small lemons have been crushed.  This 
causes a horrible pain to those skinned by the whip; but it is a 
certain remedy against gangrene."...

And then he sent the poor wretch back to his master with a note 
requesting the latter to repeat the punishment,--a demand that 
seems to have been approved, as the owner of the negro was "a man 
who feared God."  Yet Père Labat is obliged to confess that in 
spite of all his efforts, the sick negress died on the fourth 
day,--as the sorcerer had predicted.  This fact must have 
strongly confirmed his belief that the devil was at the bottom of 
the whole affair, and caused him to doubt whether even a flogging 
of about three hundred lashes, followed  by a pimentade, were 
sufficient chastisement for the miserable black.  Perhaps the 
tradition of this frightful whipping may have had something to do 
with the terror which still attaches to the name of the Dominican 
in Martinique. The legal extreme punishment was twenty-nine 
lashes.


Père Labat also avers that in his time the negroes were in the 
habit of carrying sticks which had the power of imparting to any 
portion of the human body touched by them a most severe chronic 
pain.  He at first believed, he says, that these pains were 
merely rheumatic; but after all known remedies for rheumatism had 
been fruitlessly applied, he became convinced there was something 
occult and diabolical in the manner of using and preparing these 
sticks....  A fact worthy of note is that this belief is still 
prevalent in Martinique!

One hardly ever meets in the country a negro who does not carry 
either a stick or a cutlass, or both.  The cutlass is 
indispensable to those who work in the woods or upon plantations; 
the stick is carried both as a protection against snakes and as a 
weapon of offence and defence in village quarrels, for unless a 
negro be extraordinarily drunk he will not strike his fellow with 
a cutlass. The sticks are usually made of a strong dense wood: 
those most sought after of a material termed _moudongue_, [12] almost 
as tough, but much lighter than, our hickory.  

On  inquiring whether any of the sticks thus carried were held 
to possess magic powers, I was assured by many country people 
that there were men who knew a peculiar method of "arranging" 
sticks so that to touch any person with them even lightly, _and 
through any thickness of clothing_, would produce terrible and 
continuous pain.

Believing in these things, and withal unable to decide whether 
the sun revolved about the earth, or the earth about the sun, [13] 
Père Labat was, nevertheless, no more credulous and no more 
ignorant than the average missionary of his time: it is only by 
contrast with his practical perspicacity in other matters, his 
worldly rationalism and executive shrewdness, that this 
superstitious naïveté impresses one as odd.  And how singular 
sometimes is the irony of Time!  All the wonderful work the 
Dominican accomplished has been forgotten by the people; while 
all the witchcrafts that he warred against survive and flourish 
openly; and his very name is seldom uttered but in connection 
with superstitions,--has been, in fact, preserved among the 
blacks by the power of superstition alone, by the belief in 
zombis and goblins.... "_Mi! ti manmaille-là, moin ké fai Pè 
Labatt vini pouend ou!_"...



V.


Few habitants of St. Pierre now remember that the beautiful park 
behind the cathedral used to be called the Savanna of the White 
Fathers,--and the long shadowed meadow beside the Roxelane, the 
Savanna of the Black Fathers: the Jesuits.  All the great 
religious orders have long since disappeared from the colony: 
their edifices have been either converted to other uses or 
demolished; their estates have passed into other hands....  Were 
their labors, then, productive of merely ephemeral results?--was 
the colossal work of a Père Labat all in vain, so far as the 
future is concerned?  The question is not easily answered; but it 
is worth considering.

Of course the material prosperity which such men toiled to 
obtain for their order represented nothing more, even to their 
eyes, than the means of self-maintenance, and the accumulation of 
force necessary for the future missionary labors of the monastic 
community.  The real ultimate purpose was, not the acquisition of 
power for the order, but for the Church, of which the orders 
represented only a portion of the force militant; and this 
purpose did not fail of accomplishment.  The orders passed away 
only when their labors had been completed,--when Martinique had 
become (exteriorly, at least) more Catholic than Rome itself,--
after the missionaries had done all that religious zeal could do 
in moulding and remoulding the human material under their 
control. These men could scarcely have anticipated those social 
and political changes which the future reserved for the colonies, 
and which no ecclesiastical sagacity could, in any event, have 
provided against.  It is in the existing religious condition of 
these communities that one may observe and estimate the 
character and the probable duration of the real work accomplished 
by the missions.

... Even after a prolonged residence in Martinique, its visible 
religious condition continues to impress one as somethmg 
phenomenal.  A stranger, who has no opportunity to penetrate into 
the home life of the people, will not, perhaps, discern the full 
extent of the religious sentiment; but, nevertheless, however 
brief his stay, he will observe enough of the extravagant 
symbolism of the cult to fill him with surprise.  Wherever he may 
choose to ride or to walk, he is certain to encounter shrines, 
statues of saints, or immense crucifixes.  Should he climb up to 
the clouds of the peaks, he will find them all along the way;--he 
will perceive them waiting for him, looming through the mists of 
the heights; and passing through the loveliest ravines, he will 
see niches hollowed out in the volcanic rocks, above and below 
him, or contrived in the trunks of trees bending over precipices, 
often in places so difficult of access that he wonders how the 
work could have been accomplished.  All this has been done by the 
various property-owners throughout the country: it is the 
traditional custom to do it--brings good-luck!  After a longer 
stay in the island, one discovers also that in almost every room 
of every dwelling--stone residence, wooden cottage, or palm-
thatched ajoupa--there is a _chapelle_: that is, a sort of large 
bracket fastened to the wall, on which crosses or images are 
placed, with vases of flowers, and lamps or wax-tapers to be 
burned at night. Sometimes, moreover, statues are placed in 
windows, or above door-ways;--and all passers-by take off their 
hats to these.  Over the porch.  of the cottage in a mountain 
village, where I lived for some weeks, there was an absurd 
little window contrived,--a sort of purely ornamental dormer,--
and in this a Virgin about five inches high had been placed.  At 
a little distance it looked like a toy,--a child's doll 
forgotten there; and a doll I always supposed it to be, 
until one day that I saw a long procession of black laborers 
passing before the house, every , one of whom took off his hat to 
it....  My bedchamber in the same cottage resembled a religious 
museum.  On the chapelle there were no less than eight Virgins, 
varying in height from one to sixteen inches,--a St. Joseph,--a 
St. John,--a crucifix,--and a host of little objects in the shape 
of hearts or crosses, each having some special religious 
significance;--while the walls were covered with framed 
certificates of baptism, "first-communion," confirmation, and 
other documents commemorating the whole church life of the family 
for two generations.

[Illustration: A WAYSIDE SHRINE, OR CHAPELLE.]

... Certainly the first impression created by this perpetual 
display of crosses, statues, and miniature chapels is not 
pleasing,--particularly as the work is often inartistic to a 
degree bordering upon the grotesque, and nothing resembling art 
is anywhere visible.  Millions of francs must have been consumed 
in these creations, which have the rudeness of mediaevalism 
without its emotional sincerity, and which--amid the loveliness 
of tropic nature, the grace of palms, the many-colored fire of 
liana blossoms--jar on the aesthetic sense with an almost brutal 
violence.  Yet there is a veiled poetry in these silent 
populations of plaster and wood and stone. They represent 
something older than the Middle Ages, older than Christianity,--
something strangely distorted and transformed, it is true, but 
recognizably conserved by the Latin race from those antique years 
when every home had its beloved ghosts, when every wood or hill 
or spring had its gracious divinity, and the boundaries of all 
fields were marked and guarded by statues of gods.

Instances of iconoclasm are of course highly rare in a country 
of which no native--rich or poor, white or half-breed--fails to 
doff his hat before every shrine, cross, or image he may happen 
to pass.  Those merchants of St. Pierre or of Fort-de-France 
living only a few miles out of the city must certainly perform a 
vast number of reverences on their way to or from business;--I 
saw one old gentleman uncover his white head about twenty times 
in the course of a fifteen minutes' walk.  I never heard of but 
one image-breaker in Martinique; and his act was the result of 
superstition, not of any hostility to popular faith or custom: it 
was prompted by the same childish feeling which moves Italian 
fishermen sometimes to curse St. Antony or to give his image a 
ducking in bad weather.  This Martinique iconoclast was a negro 
cattle-driver who one day, feeling badly in need of a glass of 
tafia, perhaps, left the animals intrusted to him in care of a 
plaster image of the Virgin, with this menace (the phrase is on 
record):--

"_Moin ka quitté bef-la ba ou pou gàdé ba moin.  Quand moin 
vini, si moin pa trouvé compte-moin, moin ké fouté ou vingt-nèf 
coudfouètt!_" (I leave these cattle with you to take care of for 
me.  When I come back, if I don't find them all here, I'll give 
you twenty-nine lashes.)

Returning about half an hour later, he was greatly enraged to 
find his animals scattered in every direction;--and, rushing at 
the statue, he broke it from the pedestal, flung it upon the 
ground, and gave it twenty-nine lashes with his bull-whip.  For 
this he was arrested, tried, and sentenced to imprisonment, with 
hard labor, for life!  In those days there were no colored 
magistrates;--the judges were all _békés_.

"Rather a severe sentence," I remarked to my informant, a 
planter who conducted me to the scene of the alleged sacrilege.

"Severe, yes," he answered;--"and I suppose the act would seem 
to you more idiotic than criminal.  But here, in Martinique, 
there were large questions involved by such an offence.  Relying, 
as we have always done to some extent, upon religious influence 
as a factor in the maintenance of social order, the negro's act 
seemed a dangerous example."...

That the Church remains still rich and prosperous in Martinique 
there can be no question; but whether it continues to wield any 
powerful influence in the maintenance of social order is more 
than doubtful.  A Polynesian laxity of morals among the black and 
colored population, and the history of race-hatreds and 
revolutions inspired by race-hate, would indicate that neither in 
ethics nor in politics does it possess any preponderant 
authority.  By expelling various religious orders; by 
establishing lay schools, lycées, and other educational 
institutions where the teaching is largely characterized by 
aggressive antagonism to Catholic ideas;--by the removal of 
crucifixes and images from public buildings, French Radicalism 
did not inflict any great blow upon Church interests.  So far as 
the white, and, one may say, the wealthy, population is 
concerned, the Church triumphs in her hostility to the 
Government schools; and to the same extent she holds an 
educational monopoly. No white creole would dream of sending his 
children to a lay school or a lycée--notwithstanding the 
unquestionable superiority of the educational system in the 
latter institutions;--and, although obliged, as the chief tax-
paying class, to bear the burden of maintaining these 
establishments, the whites hold them in such horror that the 
Government professors are socially ostracized. No doubt the 
prejudice or pride which abhors mixed schools aids the Church in 
this respect; she herself recognizes race-feeling, keeps her 
schools unmixed, and even in her convents, it is said, obliges 
the colored nuns to serve the white!  For more than two centuries 
every white generation has been religiously moulded in the 
seminaries and convents; and among the native whites one never 
hears an overt declaration of free-thought opinion.  Except 
among the colored men educated in the Government schools, or 
their foreign professors, there are no avowed free-thinkers;--and 
this, not because the creole whites, many of whom have been 
educated in Paris, are naturally narrow-minded, or incapable of 
sympathy with the mental expansion of the age, but because the 
religious question at Martinique has become so intimately 
complicated with the social and political one, concerning which 
there can be no compromise whatever, that to divorce the former 
from the latter is impossible.  Roman Catholicism is an element 
of the cement which holds creole society together; and it is 
noteworthy that other creeds are not represented. I knew only of 
one Episcopalian and one Methodist in the island,--and heard a 
sort of legend about a solitary Jew whose whereabouts I never 
could discover;--but these were strangers.

It was only through the establishment of universal suffrage, 
which placed the white population at the mercy of its former 
slaves, that the Roman Church sustained any serious injury.  All 
local positions are filled by blacks or men of color; no white 
creole can obtain a public office or take part in legislation; 
and the whole power of the black vote is ungenerously used 
against the interests of the class thus politically disinherited.  
The Church suffers in consequence: her power depended upon her 
intimate union with the wealthy and dominant class; and she will 
never be forgiven by those now in power for her sympathetic 
support of that class in other years.  Politics yearly intensify 
this hostility; and as the only hope for the restoration of the 
whites to power, and of the Church to its old position, lies in 
the possibility of another empire or a revival of the monarchy, 
the white creoles and their Church are forced into hostility 
against republicanism and the republic.  And political newspapers 
continually attack Roman Catholicism,--mock its tenets and 
teachings,--ridicule its dogmas and ceremonies,--satirize its 
priests.

In the cities and towns the Church indeed appears to retain a 
large place in the affection of the poorer classes;--her 
ceremonies are always well attended; money pours into her 
coffers; and one can still wittness the curious annual procession 
of the "converted,"--aged women of color and negresses going to 
communion for the first time, all wearing snow-white turbans in 
honor of the event.  But among the country people, where the 
dangerous forces of revolution exist, Christian feeling is  
almost stifled by ghastly beliefs of African origin;--the images 
and crucifixes still command respect, but this respect is 
inspired by a feeling purely fetichistic.  With the political 
dispossession of the whites, certain dark powers, previously 
concealed or repressed, have obtained , formidable development.  
The old enemy of Père Labat, the wizard (the _quimboiseur_), 
already wields more authority than the priest, exercises more 
terror than the magistrate, commands more confidence than the 
physician. The educated mulatto class may affect to despise him;
--but he is preparing their overthrow in the dark.  Astonishing 
is the persistence with which the African has clung to these 
beliefs and practices, so zealously warred upon by the Church and 
so mercilessly punished by the courts for centuries.  He still 
goes to mass, and sends his children to the priest; but he goes 
more often to the quimboiseur and the "_magnetise_."  He finds 
use for both beliefs, but gives large preference to the savage 
one,--just as he prefers the pattering of his tam tam to the 
music of the military band at the _Savane du Fort_....  And 
should it come to pass that Martinique be ever totally abandoned 
by its white population,--an event by no means improbable in the 
present order of things,--the fate of the ecclesiastical fabric 
so toilsomely reared by the monastic orders is not difficult to 
surmise.



VI.


From my window in the old Rue du Bois-Morin,--which climbs the 
foot of Morne Labelle by successions of high stone steps,--all 
the southern end of the city is visible as in a bird's-eye view.  
Under me is a long peaking of red-scaled roofs,--gables and 
dormer-windows,--with clouds of bright green here and there,-- 
foliage of tamarind and corossolier;--westward purples and flames 
the great circle of the Caribbean Sea;--east and south, towering 
to the violet sky, curve the volcanic hills, green-clad from base 
to summit;--and right before me the beautiful Morne d'Orange, all 
palm-plumed and wood-wrapped, trends seaward and southward.  And 
every night, after the stars come out, I see moving lights 
there,--lantern fires guiding the mountain-dwellers home; but I 
look in vain for the light of Père Labat.

And nevertheless,--although no believer in ghosts,--I see thee 
very plainly sometimes, thou quaint White Father, moving through 
winter-mists in the narrower Paris of another century; musing 
upon the churches that arose at thy bidding under tropic skies; 
dreaming of the primeval valleys changed by thy will to green-
gold seas of cane,--and the strong mill that will bear thy name 
for two hundred years (it stands solid unto this day),--and the 
habitations made for thy brethren in pleasant palmy places,--and 
the luminous peace of thy Martinique convent,--and odor of 
roasting parrots fattened upon _grains de bois d'Inde_ and 
guavas,--"_l'odeur de muscade et de girofle qui fait 
plaisir_."...

Eh, Père Labat_!--what changes there have been since thy day!  
The White Fathers have no place here now; and the Black Fathers, 
too, have been driven from the land, leaving only as a memory of 
them the perfect and ponderous architecture of the Perinnelle 
plantation-buildings, and the appellation of the river still 
known as the Rivière des Pères.  Also the Ursulines are gone, 
leaving only their name on the corner of a crumbling street. And 
there are no more slaves; and there are new races and colors thou 
wouldst deem scandalous though beautiful; and there are no more 
parrots; and there are no more diablotins.  And the grand woods 
thou sawest in their primitive and inviolate beauty, as if fresh 
from the Creator's touch in the morning of the world, are passing 
away; the secular trees are being converted into charcoal, or 
sawn into timber for the boat-builders: thou shouldst see two 
hundred men pulling some forest giant down to the sea upon the 
two-wheeled screaming thing they call a "devil" (_yon diabe_),--
cric-crac!--cric-crac!--all chanting together;--

"_Soh-soh!--yaïe-yah! 
Rhâlé bois-canot!_"

And all that ephemeral man has had power to change has been 
changed,--ideas, morals, beliefs, the whole social fabric.  But 
the eternal summer remains,--and the Hesperian magnificence of 
azure sky and violet sea,--and the jewel-colors of the perpetual 
hills;--the same tepid winds that rippled thy cane-fields two 
hundred years ago still blow over Sainte-Marie;--the same purple 
shadows lengthen and dwindle and turn with the wheeling of the 
sun.  God's witchery still fills this land; and the heart of the 
stranger is even yet snared by the beauty of it; and the dreams 
of him that forsakes it will surely be haunted--even as were 
thine own, Père Labat--by memories of its Eden-summer: the sudden 
leap of the light over a thousand peaks in the glory of tropic 
dawn,--the perfumed peace of enormous azure noons,--and shapes of 
palm wind-rocked in the burning of colossal sunsets,--and the 
silent flickering of the great fire-flies through the lukewarm 
darkness, when mothers call their children home...  "_Mi fanal Pè 
Labatt!--mi Pè Labatt ka vini pouend ou!_"




CHAPTER IV.
LA GUIABLESSE.




I.

Night in all countries brings with it vaguenesses and illusions 
which terrify certain imaginations;--but in the tropics it 
produces effects peculiarly impressive and peculiarly sinister.  
Shapes of vegetation that startle even while the sun shines upon 
them assume, after his setting, a grimness,--a grotesquery,--a 
suggestiveness for which there is no name....  In the North a 
tree is simply a tree;--here it is a personality that makes 
itself felt; it has a vague physiognomy, an indefinable _Me_: it 
is an Individual (with a capital I); it is a Being (with a 
capital B).

From the high woods, as the moon mounts, fantastic darknesses 
descend into the roads,--black distortions, mockeries, bad 
dreams,--an endless procession of goblins. Least startling are 
the shadows flung down by the various forms of palm, because 
instantly recognizable;--yet these take the semblance of giant 
fingers opening and closing over the way, or a black crawling of 
unutterable spiders....

Nevertheless, these phasma seldom alarm the solitary and belated 
Bitaco: the darknesses that creep stealthily along the path have 
no frightful signification for him,--do not appeal to his 
imagination;--if he suddenly starts and stops and stares, it is 
not because of such shapes, but because he has perceived two 
specks of orange light, and is not yet sure whether they are only 
fire-flies, or the eyes of a trigonocephalus.  The spectres of 
his fancy have nothing in common with those indistinct and 
monstrous umbrages: what he most fears, next to the deadly 
serpent, are human witchcrafts.  A white rag, an old bone lying 
in the path, might be a _malefice_ which, if trodden upon, would 
cause his leg to blacken and swell up to the size of the limb of 
an elephant;--an unopened bundle of plantain leaves or of bamboo 
strippings, dropped by the way-side, might contain the skin of a 
_Soucouyan._ But the ghastly being who doffs or dons his skin at 
will--and the Zombi--and the _Moun-Mò_--may be quelled or 
exorcised by prayer; and the lights of shrines, the white 
gleaming of crosses, continually remind the traveller of his duty 
to the Powers that save.  All along the way there are shrines at 
intervals, not very far apart: while standing in the radiance of 
one niche-lamp, you may perhaps discern the glow of the next, if 
the road be level and straight.  They are almost everywhere,--
shining along the skirts of the woods, at the entrance of 
ravines, by the verges of precipices;--there is a cross even upon 
the summit of the loftiest peak in the island.  And the night-
walker removes his hat each time his bare feet touch the soft 
stream of yellow light outpoured from the illuminated shrine of a 
white Virgin or a white Christ. These are good ghostly company 
for him;--he salutes them, talks to them, tells them his pains or 
fears: their blanched faces seem to him full of sympathy;--they 
appear to cheer him voicelessly as he strides from gloom to 
gloom, under the goblinry of those woods which tower black as 
ebony under the stars....  And he has other companionship.  One 
of the greatest terrors of darkness in other lands does not exist 
here after the setting of the sun,--the terror of _Silence_....  
Tropical night is full of voices;--extraordinary populations of 
crickets are trilling; nations of tree-frogs are chanting; the 
_Cabri-des-bois_, [14] or _cra-cra_, almost deafens you with the 
wheezy bleating sound by which it earned its creole name; birds 
pipe: everything that bells, ululates, drones, clacks, guggles, 
joins the enormous chorus; and you fancy you see all the shadows 
vibrating to the force of this vocal storm.  The true life of 
Nature in the tropics begins with the darkness, ends with the light.

And it is partly, perhaps, because of these conditions that the 
coming of the dawn does not dissipate all fears of the 
supernatural.  _I ni pè zombi mênm gran'-jou_ (he is afraid of 
ghosts even in broad daylight) is a phrase which does not sound 
exaggerated in these latitudes,--not, at least, to anyone knowing 
something of the conditions that nourish or inspire weird 
beliefs.  In the awful peace of tropical day, in the hush of the 
woods, the solemn silence of the hills (broken only by torrent 
voices that cannot make themselves heard at night), even in the 
amazing luminosity, there is a something apparitional and weird,
--something that seems to weigh upon the world like a measureless 
haunting.  So still all Nature's chambers are that a loud 
utterance jars upon the ear brutally, like a burst of laughter in 
a sanctuary.  With all its luxuriance of color, with all its 
violence of light, this tropical day has its ghostliness and its 
ghosts.  Among the people of color there are many who believe 
that even at noon--when the boulevards behind the city are most 
deserted--the zombis will show themselves to solitary loiterers.



II.


... Here a doubt occurs to me,--a doubt regarding the precise 
nature of a word, which I call upon Adou to explain.  Adou is the 
daughter of the kind old capresse from whom I rent my room in 
this little mountain cottage. The mother is almost precisely the 
color of cinnamon; the daughter's complexion is brighter,--the 
ripe tint of an orange....  Adou tells me creole stories and 
_tim-tim_.  Adou knows all about ghosts, and believes in them.  
So does Adou's extraordinarily tall brother, Yébé,--my guide 
among the mountains.

--"Adou," I ask, "what is a zombi?"

The smile that showed Adou's beautiful white teeth has instantly 
disappeared; and she answers, very seriously, that she has never 
seen a zombi, and does not want to see one.

--"_Moin pa té janmain ouè zombi,--pa 'lè ouè ça, moin!_"

--"But, Adou, child, I did not ask you whether you ever saw It;
--I asked you only to tell me what It is like?"...

Adou hesitates a little, and answers:

--"_Zombi? Mais ça fai désòde lanuitt, zombi!_"

Ah! it is Something which "makes disorder at night." Still, that 
is not a satisfactory explanation.  "Is it the spectre of a dead 
person, Adou? Is it _one who comes back?_"

--"_Non, Missié,--non; çé pa ca._"

--"Not that?... Then what was it you said the other night when 
you were afraid to pass the cemetery on an errand,--_ça ou té ka 
di_, Adou ?"

--"Moin té ka di: 'Moin pa lé k'allé bò cimétiè-là pa ouappò 
moun-mò;--moun-mò ké barré moin: moin pa sé pè vini enco.'" (_I 
said, "I do not want to go by that cemetery because of the dead 
folk,--the dead folk will bar the way, and I cannot get back 
again._")

--"And you believe that, Adou ?"

--"Yes, that is what they say...  And if you go into the 
cemetery at night you cannot come out again: the dead folk will 
stop you--_moun-mò ké barré ou._"...

--"But are the dead folk zombis, Adou?"

--"No; the moun-mò are not zombis.  The zombis go everywhere: 
the dead folk remain in the graveyard.... Except on the Night of 
All Souls: then they go to the houses of their people 
everywhere."

--"Adou, if after the doors and windows were locked and barred 
you were to see entering your room in the middle of the nIght, a 
Woman fourteen feet high?"...

--"_Ah! pa pàlé ça!!_"...

--"No! tell me, Adou?"

--"Why, yes: that would be a zombi.  It is the zombis who make 
all those noises at night one cannot understand....  Or, again, 
if I were to see a dog that high [she holds her hand about five 
feet above the floor] coming into our house at night, I would 
scream: "_Mi Zombi!_"

... Then it suddenly occurs to Adou that her mother knows 
something about zombis.

--"_Ou Manman!_"

--"_Eti!_" answers old Théréza's voice from the little out-
building where the evening meal is being prepared over a charcoal 
furnace, in an earthen canari.

--"_Missié-là ka mandé save ça ça yé yonne zombi;--vini ti 
bouin!_"...  The mother laughs, abandons her canari, and comes in 
to tell me all she knows about the weird word.

"_I ni pè zombi_"--I find from old Thereza's explanations--is a 
phrase indefinite as our own vague expressions, "afraid of 
ghosts," "afraid of the dark." But the word "Zombi" also has 
special strange meanings.... "Ou passé nans grand chimin lanuitt, 
épi ou ka ouè gouôs difé, épi plis ou ka vini assou difé-à pli ou 
ka ouè difé-à ka màché: çé zombi ka fai ça....  Encò, chouval ka 
passé,--chouval ka ni anni toua patt: ça zombi." (You pass along 
the high-road at night, and you see a great fire, and the more 
you walk to get to it the more it moves away: it is the zombi 
makes that....  Or a horse _with only three legs_ passes you: 
that is a zombi.)

--"How big is the fire that the zombi makes ?" I ask.

--"It fills the whole road," answers Théréza: "_li ka rempli 
toutt chimin-là_.  Folk call those fires the Evil Fires,--_mauvai 
difé_;--and if you follow them they will lead you into chasms,--
_ou ké tombé adans labîme_."...

And then she tells me this:

--"Baidaux was a mad man of color who used to live at St. Pierre, 
in the Street of the Precipice.  He was not dangerous,--never did 
any harm;--his sister used to take care of him.  And what I am 
going to relate is true,--_çe zhistouè veritabe!_

"One day Baidaux said to his sister: 'Moin ni yonne yche, va!--ou 
pa connaitt li!' [I have a child, ah!--you never saw it!] His 
sister paid no attention to what he said that day; but the next 
day he said it again, and the next, and the next, and every day 
after,--so that his sister at last became much annoyed by it, and 
used to cry out: 'Ah! mais pé guiole ou, Baidaux! ou fou pou 
embeté moin conm ça!--ou bien fou!'...  But he tormented her that 
way for months and for years.

"One evening he went out, and only came home at midnight leading 
a child by the hand,--a black child he had found in the street; 
and he said to his sister:--

"'Mi yche-là moin mené ba ou! Tou léjou moin té ka di ou moin 
tini yonne yche: ou pa té 'lè couè,--eh, ben! MI Y!' [Look at the 
child I have brought you!  Every day I have been telling you I had 
a child: you would not believe me,--very well, LOOK AT HIM!]

"The sister gave one look, and cried out: 'Baidaux, oti ou 
pouend yche-là?'...  For the child was growing taller and taller 
every moment....  And Baidaux,--because he was mad,--kept 
saying: 'Çé yche-moin! çé yche moin!' [It is my child!]

"And the sister threw open the shutters and screamed to all the 
neighbors,--'_Sécou, sécou, sécou! Vini oué ça Baidaux mené ba 
moin!_' [Help! help! Come see what Baidaux has brought in here!] 
And the child said to Baidaux: '_Ou ni bonhè ou fou!' [You are 
lucky that you are mad!]...  Then all the neighbors came running 
in; but they could not see anything: the Zombi was gone."...



III.


... As I was saying, the hours of vastest light have their 
weirdness here;--and it is of a Something which walketh abroad 
under the eye of the sun, even at high noontide, that I desire to 
speak, while the impressions of a morning journey to the scene of 
Its last alleged apparition yet remains vivid in my recollection.

You follow the mountain road leading from Calebasse over long 
meadowed levels two thousand feet above the ocean, into the woods 
of La Couresse, where it begins to descend slowly, through deep 
green shadowing, by great zigzags.  Then, at a turn, you find 
yourself unexpectedly looking down upon a planted valley, through 
plumy fronds of arborescent fern.  The surface below seems almost 
like a lake of gold-green water,--especially when long breaths of 
mountain-wind set the miles of ripening cane a-ripple from verge 
to verge: the illusion is marred only by the road, fringed with 
young cocoa-palms, which serpentines across the luminous plain. 
East, west, and north the horizon is almost wholly hidden by 
surging of hills: those nearest are softly shaped and exquisitely 
green; above them loftier undulations take hazier verdancy and 
darker shadows; farther yet rise silhouettes of blue or violet 
tone, with one beautiful breast-shaped peak thrusting up in the 
midst;--while, westward, over all, topping even the Piton, is a 
vapory huddling of prodigious shapes--wrinkled, fissured, horned, 
fantastically tall....  Such at least are the tints of the 
morning....  Here and there, between gaps in the volcanic chain, 
the land hollows into gorges, slopes down into ravines;--and the 
sea's vast disk of turquoise flames up through the interval.  
Southwardly those deep woods, through which the way winds down, 
shut in the view....  You do not see the plantation buildings 
till you have advanced some distance into the valley;--they are 
hidden by a fold of the land, and stand in a little hollow where 
the road turns: a great quadrangle of low gray antiquated 
edifices, heavily walled and buttressed, and roofed with red 
tiles.  The court they form opens upon the main route by an 
immense archway.  Farther along ajoupas begin to line the way,--
the dwellings of the field hands,--tiny cottages built with 
trunks of the arborescent fern or with stems of bamboo, and 
thatched with cane-straw: each in a little garden planted with 
bananas, yams, couscous, camanioc, choux-caraibes, or other 
things,--and hedged about with roseaux d'Inde and various 
flowering shrubs.

Thereafter, only the high whispering wildernesses of cane on 
either hand,--the white silent road winding between its swaying 
cocoa-trees,--and the tips of hills that seem to glide on before 
you as you walk, and that take, with the deepening of the 
afternoon light, such amethystine color as if they were going to 
become transparent.



IV.


... It is a breezeless and cloudless noon.  Under the dazzling 
downpour of light the hills seem to smoke blue: something like a 
thin yellow fog haloes the leagues of ripening cane,--a vast 
reflection.  There is no stir in all the green mysterious front 
of the vine-veiled woods. The palms of the roads keep their heads 
quite still, as if listening.  The canes do not utter a single 
susurration. Rarely is there such absolute stillness among them: 
on the calmest days there are usually rustlings audible, thin 
cracklings, faint creepings: sounds that betray the passing of 
some little animal or reptile--a rat or a wa manicou, or a zanoli 
or couresse,--more often, however, no harmless lizard or snake, 
but the deadly _fer-de-lance_. To-day, all these seem to sleep; 
and there are no workers among the cane to clear away the weeds,
--to uproot the pié-treffe, pié-poule, pié-balai, zhèbe-en-mè: it 
is the hour of rest.

A woman is coming along the road,--young, very swarthy, very 
tall, and barefooted, and black-robed: she wears a high white 
turban with dark stripes, and a white foulard is thrown about her 
fine shoulders; she bears no burden, and walks very swiftly and 
noiselessly....  Soundless as shadow the motion of all these 
naked-footed people is.  On any quiet mountain-way, full of 
curves, where you fancy yourself alone, you may often be startled 
by something you _feel_, rather than hear, behind you,--surd 
steps, the springy movement of a long lithe body, dumb 
oscillations of raiment;--and ere you can turn to look, the 
haunter swiftly passes with creole greeting of "bon-jou'" or 
"bonsouè, Missié." This sudden "becoming aware" in broad daylight 
of a living presence unseen is even more disquieting than that 
sensation which, in absolute darkness, makes one halt all 
breathlessly before great solid objects, whose proximity has been 
revealed by some mute blind emanation of force alone.  But it is 
very seldom, indeed, that the negro or half-breed is thus 
surprised: he seems to divine an advent by some specialized 
sense,--like an animal,--and to become conscious of a look 
directed upon him from any distance or from behind any covert;--
to pass within the range of his keen vision unnoticed is almost 
impossible....   And the approach of this woman has been already 
observed by the habitants of the ajoupas;--dark faces peer out 
from windows and door-ways;--one half-nude laborer even strolls 
out to the road-side under the sun to her coming.He looks a 
moment,turns to the hut and calls:--

--"Ou-ou! Fafa!"

--"Étí! Gabou!"

--"Vini ti bouin!--mi bel negresse!"

Out rushes Fafa, with his huge straw hat in his hand: "Oti, 
Gabou?"

--"Mi!"

--"'Ah! quimbé moin!" cries black Fafa, enthusiastically; 
"fouinq! li bel!--Jésis-Maïa! li doux!"...Neither ever saw that 
woman before; and both feel as if they could watch her forever.

There is something superb in the port of a tall young mountain-
griffone, or negress, who is comely and knows that she is comely: 
it is a black poem of artless dignity, primitive grace, savage 
exultation of movement....  "Ou marché tête enlai conm couresse 
qui ka passélariviè" (_You walk with your head in the air, like 
the couresse-serpent swimming a river_) is a creole comparison 
which pictures perfectly the poise of her neck and chin.  And in 
her walk there is also a serpentine elegance, a sinuous charm: 
the shoulders do not swing; the cambered torso seems immobile;--
but alternately from waist to heel, and from heel to waist, with 
each long full stride, an indescribable undulation seems to pass; 
while the folds of her loose robe oscillate to right and left 
behind her, in perfect libration, with the free swaying of the 
hips.  With us, only a finely trained dancer could attempt such a 
walk;--with the Martinique woman of color it is natural as the 
tint of her skin; and this allurement of motion unrestrained is 
most marked in those who have never worn shoes, and are clad 
lightly as the women of antiquity,--in two very thin and simple 
garments;--chemise and _robe--d'indienne_.... But whence is she?-
-of what canton?  Not from Vauclin, nor  from Lamentin, nor from 
Marigot,--from Case-Pilote or from Case-Navire: Fafa knows all 
the people there.  Never of Sainte-Anne, nor of Sainte-Luce, nor 
of Sainte-Marie, nor of Diamant, nor of Gros-Morne, nor of 
Carbet,--the birthplace of Gabou.  Neither is she of the village 
of the Abysms, which is in the Parish of the Preacher,--nor yet 
of Ducos nor of François, which are in the Commune of the Holy 
Ghost....



V.


... She approaches the ajoupa: both men remove their big straw 
hats; and both salute her with a simultaneous "Bonjou', Manzell."

--"Bonjou', Missié," she responds, in a sonorous alto, without 
appearing to notice Gabou,--but smiling upon Fafa as she passes, 
with her great eyes turned full upon his face....  All the 
libertine blood of the man flames under that look;--he feels as 
if momentarily wrapped in a blaze of black lightning.

--"Ça ka fai moin pè," exclaims Gabou, turning his face towards 
the ajoupa.  Something indefinable in the gaze of the stranger 
has terrified him.

--"_Pa ka fai moin pè--fouinq!_" (She does not make me afraid) 
laughs Fafa, boldly following her with a smiling swagger.

--"Fafa!" cries Gabou, in alarm.  "_Fafa, pa fai ça!_" But Fafa 
does not heed.  The strange woman has slackened her pace, as if 
inviting pursuit;--another moment and he is at her side.

--"Oti ou ka rêté, che?" he demands, with the boldness of one 
who knows himself a fine specimen of his race.

--"Zaffai cabritt pa zaffai lapin," she answers, mockingly.

--"Mais pouki au rhabillé toutt nouè conm ça."

--"Moin pòté deil pou name main mò."

--"Aïe ya yaïe!... Non, vouè!--ça ou kallé atouèlement?"

--"Lanmou pàti: moin pàti deïé lanmou."

--"Ho!--on ni guêpe, anh?"

--"Zanoli bail yon bal; épi maboya rentré ladans."

--"Di moin oti ou kallé, doudoux?"

--"Jouq lariviè Lezà."

--"Fouinq!--ni plis passé trente kilomett!"

--"Eh ben?--ess ou 'lè vini épi moin?" [15]

And as she puts the question she stands still and gazes at him;--
her voice is no longer mocking: it has taken another tone,--a 
tone soft as the long golden note of the little brown bird they 
call the _siffleur-de-montagne_, the mountain-whistler....  Yet 
Fafa hesitates.  He hears the clear clang of the plantation bell 
recalling him to duty;--he sees far down the road--(_Ouill!_ how 
fast they have been walking!)--a white and black speck in the 
sun: Gabou, uttering through his joined hollowed hands, as 
through a horn, the _ouklé_, the rally call.  For an instant he 
thinks of the overseer's anger,--of the distance,--of the white 
road glaring in the dead heat: then he looks again into the black 
eyes of the strange woman, and answers:

--"Oui;--moin ké vini épi ou."

With a burst of mischievous laughter, in which Fafa joins, she 
walks on,--Fafa striding at her side....  And Gabou, far off, 
watches them go,--and wonders that, for the first time since ever 
they worked together, his comrade failed to answer his _ouklé_,

--"Coument yo ka crié ou, chè" asks Fafa, curious to know her 
name.

--"Châché nom moin ou-menm, duviné,"

But Fafa never was a good guesser,--never could guess the 
simplest of tim-tim.

--"Ess Cendrine?"

--"Non, çe pa ça."

--"Ess Vitaline?"

--"Non çé pa ça."

--"Ess Aza?"

--"Non, çé pa ça."

--"Ess Nini?"

--"Châché encò."

--"Ess Tité"

--"Ou pa save,--tant pis pou ou!"

--"Ess Youma?"

--"Pouki ou 'lè save nom moin?--ça ou ké épi y?"

--"Ess Yaiya?"

--"Non, çé pa y."

--"Ess Maiyotte?"

--"Non! ou pa ké janmain trouvé y!"

--"Ess Sounoune?--ess Loulouze?"

She does not answer, but quickens her pace and begins to sing,--
not as the half-breed, but as the African sings,--commencing with 
a low long weird intonation that suddenly breaks into fractions 
of notes inexpressible, then rising all at once to a liquid 
purling bird-tone, and descending as abruptly again to the first 
deep quavering strain:--

"À te-- 
moin ka dòmi toute longue; 
Yon paillasse sé fai main bien, 
Doudoux!

À te-- 
moin ka dòmi toute longue; 
Yon robe biésé sé fai moin bien, 
Doudoux!

À te-- 
moin ka dòmi toute longue; 
Dè jolis foulà sé fai moin bien, 
Doudoux!

À te-- 
moin ka dòmi toute longue; 
Yon joli madras sé fai moin bien, 
Doudoux!

À te-- 
moin ka dòmi toute longue: 
Çe à tè..."

... Obliged from the first to lengthen his stride in order to 
keep up with her, Fafa has found his utmost powers of walking 
overtaxed, and has been left behind. Already his thin attire is 
saturated with sweat; his breathing is almost a panting;--yet the 
black bronze of his companion's skin shows no moisture; her 
rhythmic her silent respiration, reveal no effort: she laughs at 
his desperate straining to remain by her side.

--"Marché toujou' deïé moin,--anh, chè?--marché toujou' 
deïé!"...

And the involuntary laggard--utterly bewitched by supple 
allurement of her motion, by the black flame of her gaze, by the 
savage melody of her chant--wonders more and more who she may 
be, while she waits for him with her mocking smile.

But Gabou--who has been following and watching from afar off, and 
sounding his fruitless ouklé betimes--suddenly starts, halts, 
turns, and hurries back, fearfully crossing himself at every 
step.

He has seen the sign by which She is known...



VI.


... None ever saw her by night.  Her hour is the fulness of the 
sun's flood-tide: she comes in the dead hush and white flame of 
windless noons,--when colors appear to take a very unearthliness 
of intensity,--when even the flash of some colibri, bosomed with 
living fire, shooting hither and thither among the grenadilla 
blossoms, seemeth a spectral happening because of the great green 
trance of the land....

Mostly she haunts the mountain roads, winding from plantation to 
plantation, from hamlet to hamlet,--sometimes dominating huge 
sweeps of azure sea, sometimes shadowed by mornes deep-wooded to 
the sky.  But close to the great towns she sometimes walks: she 
has been seen at mid-day upon the highway which overlooks the 
Cemetery of the Anchorage, behind the cathedral of St. Pierre....  
A black Woman, simply clad, of lofty stature and strange beauty, 
silently standing in the light, _keeping her eyes fixed upon the 
Sun!_...



VII.


Day wanes.  The further western altitudes shift their pearline 
gray to deep blue where the sky is yellowing up behind them; and 
in the darkening hollows of nearer mornes strange shadows gather 
with the changing of the light--dead indigoes, fuliginous 
purples, rubifications as of scoriae,--ancient volcanic colors 
momentarily resurrected by the illusive haze of evening.  And the 
fallow of the canes takes a faint warm ruddy tinge.  On certain 
far high slopes, as the sun lowers, they look like thin golden 
hairs against the glow,--blond down upon the skin of the living 
hills.

Still the Woman and her follower walk together,--chatting 
loudly, laughing--chanting snatches of song betimes.
And now the valley is well behind them;--they climb the steep 
road crossing the eastern peaks,--through woods that seem to 
stifle under burdening of creepers. The shadow of the Woman and 
the shadow of the man,--broadening from their feet,--lengthening 
prodigiously,--sometimes, mixing, fill all the way; sometimes, 
at a turn, rise up to climb the trees.  Huge masses of frondage, 
catching the failing light, take strange fiery color;--the sun's 
rim almost touches one violet hump in the western procession of 
volcanic silhouettes....

Sunset, in the tropics, is vaster than sunrise....  The dawn, 
upflaming swiftly from the sea, has no heralding erubescence, no 
awful blossoming--as in the North: its fairest hues are fawn-
colors, dove-tints, and yellows,--pale yellows as of old dead 
gold, in horizon and flood. But after the mighty heat of day has 
charged all the blue air with translucent vapor, colors become 
strangely changed, magnified, transcendentalized when the sun 
falls once more below the verge of visibility.  Nearly an hour 
before his death, his light begins to turn tint; and all the 
horizon yellows to the color of a lemon.  Then this hue deepens, 
through tones of magnificence unspeakable, into orange; and the 
sea becomes lilac.  Orange is the light of the world for a little 
space; and as the orb sinks, the indigo darkness comes--not 
descending, but rising, as if from the ground--all within a few 
minutes. And during those brief minutes peaks and mornes, 
purpling into richest velvety blackness, appear outlined against 
passions of fire that rise half-way to the zenith,--enormous 
furies of vermilion.

... The Woman all at once leaves the main road,--begins to mount 
a steep narrow path leading up from it through the woods upon the 
left.  But Fafa hesitates,--halts a moment to look back.  He 
sees the sun's huge orange face sink down,--sees the weird 
procession of the peaks vesture themselves in blackness 
funereal,--sees the burning behind them crimson into awfulness; 
and a vague fear comes upon him as he looks again up the darkling 
path to the left.  Whither is she now going?

--"Oti ou kallé la?" he cries.

--"Mais conm ça!--chimin tala plis cou't,--coument?"

It may be the shortest route, indeed;--but then, the fer-de-
lance!...

--"Ni sèpent ciya,--en pile."

No: there is not a single one, she avers; she has taken that path 
too often not to know:

--"Pa ni sèpent piess! Moin ni coutime passé là;--pa ni piess !"

... She leads the way....  Behind them the tremendous glow 
deepens;--before them the gloom.  Enormous gnarled forms of 
ceiba, balata, acoma, stand dimly revealed as they pass; masses 
of viny drooping things take, by the failing light, a sanguine 
tone.  For a little while Fafa can plainly discern the figure of 
the Woman before him;--then, as the path zigzags into shadow, he 
can descry only the white turban and the white foulard;--and then 
the boughs meet overhead: he can see her no more, and calls to 
her in alarm:--

--"Oti ou?--moin pa pè ouè arien!"

Forked pending ends of creepers trail cold across his face.  Huge 
fire-flies sparkle by,--like atoms of kindled charcoal thinkling, 
blown by a wind.

--"Içitt!--quimbé lanmain-moin!"...

How cold the hand that guides him!...She walks swiftly, surely, 
as one knowing the path by heart.  It zigzags once more; and the 
incandescent color flames again between the trees;--the high 
vaulting of foliage fissures overhead, revealing the first stars.  
A _cabritt-bois_ begins its chant.  They reach the summit of the 
morne under the clear sky.

The wood is below their feet now; the path curves on eastward 
between a long swaying of ferns sable in the gloom,--as between a 
waving of prodigious black feathers.  Through the further 
purpling, loftier altitudes dimly loom; and from some viewless 
depth, a dull vast rushing sound rises into the night....  Is it 
the speech of hurrying waters, or only some tempest of insect 
voices from those ravines in which the night begins?...

Her face is in the darkness as she stands;--Fafa's eyes turned 
to the iron-crimson of the western sky.  He still holds her hand, 
fondles it,--murmurs something to her in undertones.

--"Ess ou ainmein moin conm ça?" she asks, almost in a whisper,

Oh! yes, yes, yes!...  more than any living being he loves 
her!... How much?  Ever so much,--_gouôs conm caze!_... Yet she 
seems to doubt him,--repeating her questionn over and over:

--"Ess ou ainmein moin?"

And all the while,--gently, caressingly, imperceptibly--she 
draws him a little nearer to the side of the nearer to the black 
waving of the ferns, nearer to the great dull rushing sound that 
rises from beyond them:

--"Ess ou ainmein moin?"

--"Oui, oui!" he responds,--"ou save ça!--oui, chè doudoux, ou 
save ça!"...

And she, suddenly,--turning at once to him and to the last red 
light, the goblin horror of her face transformed,--shrieks with 
a burst of hideous laughter:

--"_Atò, bô!_"  [16]

For the fraction of a moment he knows her name:--then, smitten 
to the brain with the sight of her, reels, recoils, and, backward 
falling, crashes two thousand feet down to his death upon the 
rocks of a mountain torrent. 




CHAPTER V.
LA VÉRETTE.




I. --ST.  PIERRE,  _1887_.


One returning from the country to the city in the Carnival season 
is lucky to find any comfortable rooms for rent.  I have been 
happy to secure one even in a rather retired street,--so steep 
that it is really dangerous to sneeze while descending it, lest 
one lose one's balance and tumble right across the town.  It is 
not a fashionable street, the Rue du Morne Mirail; but, after 
all, there is no particularly fashionable street in this 
extraordinary city, and the poorer the neighborhood, the better 
one's chance to see something of its human nature.

One consolation is that I have Manm-Robert for a next-door 
neighbor, who keeps the best bouts in town (those long thin 
Martinique cigars of which a stranger soon becomes fond), and who 
can relate more queer stories and legends of old times in the 
island than anybody else I know of.  Manm-Robert is _yon màchanne 
lapacotte_, a dealer in such cheap articles of food as the poor 
live upon: fruits and tropical vegetables, manioc-flour, 
"macadam " (a singular dish of rice stewed with salt fish--_diri 
épi coubouyon lamori_), akras, etc.; but her bouts probably bring 
her the largest profit--they are all bought up by the békés.  
Manm-Robert is also a sort of doctor: whenever anyone in the 
neighborhood falls sick she is sent for, and always comes, and 
very often cures,--as she is skilled in the knowledge and use of 
medicinal herbs, which she gathers herself upon the mornes.  But 
for these services she never accepts any reuneration: she is a 
sort of Mother of the poor in immediate vicinity.  She helps 
everybody, listens to everybody's troubles, gives everybody some 
sort of consolation, trusts everybody, and sees a great deal of 
the thankless side of human nature without seeming to feel any 
the worse for it.  Poor as she must really be she appears to have 
everything that everybody wants; and will lend anything to her 
neighbors except a scissors or a broom, which it is thought bad-
luck to lend.  And, finally, if anyybody is afraid of being 
bewitched (_quimboisé_) Manm-Robert can furnish him or her with 
something that will keep the bewitchment away....



II.  _February 15th._


... Ash-Wednesday.  The last masquerade will appear this 
afternoon, notwithstanding; for the Carnival is in Martinique a 
day longer than elsewhere.

All through the country districts since the first week of 
January there have been wild festivities every Sunday--dancing 
on the public highways to the pattering of tamtams,--African 
dancing, too, such as is never seen in St. Pierre.  In the city, 
however, there has been less merriment than in previous years;--
the natural gaiety of the population has been visibly affected by 
the advent of a terrible and unfamiliar visitor to the island,--
_La Vérette_: she came by steamer from Colon.

... It was in September.  Only two cases had been reported when 
every neighboring British colony quarantined against Martinique.  
Then other West Indian colonies did likewise.  Only two cases of 
small-pox.  "But there may be two thousand in another month," 
answered the governors and the consuls to many indignant 
protests.  Among West Indian populations the malady has a 
signification unknown in Europe or the United States: it means an 
exterminating plague.

Two months later the little capital of Fort-de-France was swept 
by the pestilence as by a wind of death.  Then the evil began to 
spread.  It entered St. Pierre in December, about Christmas time.  
Last week 173 cases were reported; and a serious epidemic is 
almost certain. There were only 8500 inhabitants in Fort-de-
France; there are 28,000 in the three quarters of St. Pierre 
proper, not including her suburbs; and there is no saying what 
ravages the disease may make here.



III.


... Three o'clock, hot and clear....  In the distance there is a 
heavy sound of drums, always drawing nearer: _tam!--tam!--
tamtamtam!_  The Grande Rue is lined with expectant multitudes; 
and its tiny square,--the Batterie d'Esnotz,--thronged with 
békés.  _Tam!--tam!--tamtamtam!_...  In our own street the 
people are beginning to gather at door-ways, and peer out of 
windows,--prepared to descend to the main thoroughfare at the 
first glimpse of the procession.

--"_Oti masque-à?_"  Where are the maskers?

It is little Mimi's voice: she is speaking for two besides 
herself, both quite as anxious as she to know where the maskers 
are,--Maurice, her little fair-haired and blue-eyed brother, 
three years old; and Gabrielle, her child-sister, aged four,--
two years her junior.

Every day I have been observing the three, playing in the door-
way of the house across the street.  Mimi, with her brilliant 
white skin, black hair, and laughing black eyes, is the 
prettiest,--though all are unusually pretty children. Were it not 
for the fact that their mother's beautiful brown hair is usually 
covered with a violet foulard, you would certainly believe them 
white as any children in the world.  Now there are children whom 
everyone knows to be white, living not very far from here, but in 
a much more silent street, and in a rich house full of servants, 
children who resemble these as one _fleur-d'amour_ blossom 
resembles another;--there is actually another Mimi (though she is 
not so called at home) so like this Mimi that you could not 
possibly tell one from the other,--except by their dress.  And 
yet the most unhappy experience of the Mimi who wears white satin 
slippers was certainly that punishment given her for having been 
once caught playing in the street with this Mimi, who wears no 
shoes at all.  What mischance could have brought them thus 
together?--and the worst of it was they had fallen in love with 
each other at first sight!...  It was not because the other Mimi 
must not talk to nice little colored girls, or that this one may 
not play with white children of her own age: it was because there 
are cases....  It was not because the other children I speak of 
are prettier or sweeter or more intelligent than these now 
playing before me;--or because the finest microscopist in the 
world could or could not detect any imaginable race difference 
between those delicate satin skins.  It was only because human 
nature has little changed since the day that Hagar knew the hate 
of Sarah, and the thing was grievous in Abraham's sight because 
of his son.....

... The father of these children loved them very much: he had 
provided a home for them,--a house in the Quarter of the Fort, 
with an allowance of two hundred francs monthly; and he died in 
the belief their future was secured.  But relatives fought the 
will with large means and shrewd lawyers, and won!...  Yzore, the 
mother, found herself homeless and penniless, with three children 
to care for.  But she was brave;--she abandoned the costume of 
the upper class forever, put on the douillette and the foulard,--
the attire that is a confession of race,--and went to work.  She 
is still comely, and so white that she seems only to be 
masquerading in that violet head-dress and long loose robe....

--"_Vini ouè!--vini ouè!_" cry the children to one another,--
"come and see!"  The drums are drawing near;--everybody is 
running to the Grande Rue....



IV.


_Tam!--tam!--tamtamtam!_...  The spectacle is interesting from 
the Batterie d'Esnotz.  High up the Rue Peysette,--up all the 
precipitous streets that ascend the mornes,--a far gathering of 
showy color appears: the massing of maskers in rose and blue and 
sulphur-yellow attire....  Then what a _degringolade_ begins!-- 
what a tumbling, leaping, cascading of color as the troupes 
descend.  Simultaneously from north and south, from the Mouillage 
and the Fort, two immense bands enter the Grande Rue;--the great 
dancing societies these,--the _Sans-souci_ and the _Intrépides_.  
They are rivals; they are the composers and singers of those 
Carnival songs,--cruel satires most often, of which the local 
meaning is unintelligible to those unacquainted with the incident 
inspiring the improvisation,--of which the words are too often 
coarse or obscene,--whose burdens will be caught up and re-echoed 
through all the burghs of the island.  Vile as may be the motive, 
the satire, the malice, these chants are preserved for 
generations by the singular beauty of the airs; and the victim of 
a Carnival song need never hope that his failing or his wrong 
will be forgotten: it will be sung of long after he is in his 
grave.

[Illustration: RUE VICTOR HUGO (FORMERLY GRANDE RUE), ST. PIERRE]

... Ten minutes more, and the entire length of the street is 
thronged with a shouting, shrieking, laughing, gesticulating host 
of maskers.  Thicker and thicker the press becomes;--the drums 
are silent: all are waiting for the signal of the general dance.  
Jests and practical jokes are being everywhere perpetrated; there 
is a vast hubbub, made up of screams, cries, chattering, 
laughter.  Here and there snatches of Carnival song are being 
sung:--"_Cambronne, Cambronne_;" or "_Ti fenm-là doux, li doux, 
li doux!_ "...  "Sweeter than sirup the little woman is";--this 
burden will be remembered when the rest of the song passes out of 
fashion.  Brown hands reach out from the crowd of masks, pulling 
the beards and patting the faces of white spectators....  "_Moin 
connaitt ou, chè!--moin connaitt ou, doudoux! ba moin ti d'mi 
franc!_"  It is well to refuse the half-franc,--though you do not 
know what these maskers might take a notion to do to-day....  
Then all the great drums suddenly boom together; all the bands 
strike up; the mad medley kaleidoscopes into some sort of order; 
and the immense processional dance begins.  From the Mouillage to 
the Fort there is but one continuous torrent of sound and color: 
you are dazed by the tossing of peaked caps, the waving of hands, 
and twinkling of feet;--and all this passes with a huge swing,--a 
regular swaying to right and left....  It will take at least an 
hour for all to pass; and it is an hour well worth passing.  Band 
after band whirls by; the musicians all garbed as women or as 
monks in canary-colored habits;--before them the dancers are 
dancing backward, with a motion as of skaters; behind them all 
leap and wave hands as in pursuit.  Most of the bands are playing 
creole airs,--but that of the _Sans-souci_ strikes up the melody 
of the latest French song in vogue,--_Petits amoureux aux plumes_ 
("Little feathered lovers"). [17]

Everybody now seems to know this song by heart; you hear 
children only five or six years old singing it: there are pretty 
lines in it, although two out of its four stanzas are commonplace 
enough, and it is certainly the air rather than the words which 
accounts for its sudden popularity.



V.

...  Extraordinary things are happening in the streets through 
which the procession passes.  Pest-smitten women rise from their 
beds to costume themselves,--to mask face already made 
unrecognizable by the hideous malady,--and stagger out to join 
the dancers.... They do this in the Rue Longchamps, in the Rue 
St. Jean-de-Dieu, in the Rue Peysette, in the Rue de Petit 
Versailles.  And in the Rue Ste.-Marthe there are three young 
girls sick with the disease, who hear the blowing of the horns 
and the pattering of feet and clapping of hands in chorus;--they 
get up to look through the slats of their windows on the 
masquerade,--and the creole passion of the dance comes upon them.  
"_Ah!_" cries one,--"_nou ké bien amieusé nou!--c'est zaffai si 
nou mò!_"  [We will have our fill of fun: what matter if we die 
after!]  And all mask, and join the rout, and dance down to the 
Savane, and over the river-bridge into the high streets of the 
Fort, carrying contagion with them!...  No extraordinary example, 
this: the ranks of the dancers hold many and many a _verrettier_.



VI.


... The costumes are rather disappointing,-though the mummery has 
some general characteristics that are not unpicturesquel--for 
example, the predominance of crimson and canary-yellow in choice 
of color, and a marked predilection for pointed hoods and high-
peaked head-dresses, Mock religious costumes also form a striking 
element in the general tone of the display,--Franciscan, 
Dominican, or Penitent habits,--usually crimson or yellow, rarely 
sky-blue.  There are no historical costumes, few eccentricities 
or monsters: only a few "vampire-bat" head-dresses abruptly break 
the effect of the peaked caps and the hoods....  Still there are 
some decidedly local ideas in dress which deserve notice,--the 
_congo_, the _bébé_ (or _ti-manmaille_), the _ti nègue gouos-
sirop_ ("little molasses-negro"); and the _diablesse_.

The congo is merely the exact reproduction of the dress worn by 
workers on the plantations.  For the women, a gray calico shirt 
and coarse petticoat of percaline with two coarse handkerchiefs 
(_mouchoirs fatas_), one for her neck, and one for the head, over 
which is worn a monstrous straw hat;--she walks either barefoot 
or shod with rude native sandals, and she carries a hoe.  For the 
man the costume consists of a gray shirt of Iuugh material, blue 
canvas pantaloons, a large mouchoir fatas to tie around his 
waist, and a _chapeau Bacoué_,--an enormous hat of Martinique 
palm-straw.  He walks barefooted and carries a cutlass.

The sight of a troupe of young girls _en bébé_, in baby-dress, 
is really pretty.  This costume comprises only a loose 
embroidered chemise, lace-edged pantalettes, and a child's cap; 
the whole being decorated with bright ribbbons of various colors.  
As the dress is short and leaves much of the lower limbs exposed, 
there is ample opportunity for display of tinted stockings and 
elegant slippers.

The "molasses-negro" wears nothing but a cloth around his 
loins;--his whole body and face being smeared with an atrocious 
mixture of soot and molasses.  He is supposed to represent the 
original African ancestor.

The _devilesses_ (_diablesses_) are few in number; for it 
requires a very tall woman to play deviless.  These are robed all 
in black, with a white turban and white foulard;--they wear 
black masks.  They also carry _boms_ (large tin cans), which they 
allow to fall upon the pavement and from time to time; and they 
walk barefoot....  The deviless (in true Bitaco idiom, 
"_guiablesse_") represents a singular Martinique superstition.  
It is said that sometimes at noonday, a beautiful negress passes 
silently through some isolated plantation,--smiling at the 
workers in the cane-fields,--tempting men to follow her.  But he 
who follows her never comes back again; and when a field hand 
mysteriously disappears, his fellows say, "_Y té ka ouè la 
Guiablesse!_"...  The tallest among the devilesses always walks 
first, chanting the question, "_Fou ouvè?" (Is it yet daybreak?) 
And all the others reply in chorus, "_Jou pa'ncò ouvè_." (It is 
not yet day.)

--The masks worn by the multitude include very few grotesques: 
as a rule, they are simply white wire masks, having the form of an oval 
and regular human face;--and disguise the wearer absolutely, although 
they can be through perfectly well from within.  It struck me that this 
peculiar type of wire mask gave an indescribable tone of ghostliness to 
the whole exhibition.  It is not in the least comical; it is neither comely 
nor ugly; it is colorless as mist,--expressionless, void,--it lies 
on the face like a vapor, like a cloud,--creating the idea of a 
spectral vacuity behind it....



VII.


... Now comes the band of the _Intrépides_, playing the _bouèné_.
It is a dance melody,--also the name of a _mode_ of dancing, peculiar and 
unrestrained;--the dancers advance and retreat face to face; they 
hug each other, press together, and separate to embrace again.  A 
very old dance, this,--of African origin; perhaps the same of which Père 
Labat wrote in 1722:--

--"It is not modest.  Nevertheless, it has not failed to become so 
popular with the Spanish Creoles of America, so much in vogue 
among them, that it now forms the chief of their amusements, and 
that it enters even into their devotions.  They dance it even in 
their Churches, in their Processions; and the Nuns seldom fail to 
dance it Christmas Night, upon a stage erected in their choir and 
immediately in front of their iron grating, which is left open, so 
that the People may share in the manifested by these good souls 
for the birth of the Saviour."... [18]


VIII.


... Every year, on the last day of the Carnival, a droll ceremony 
used to take place called the" Burial of the Bois-bois,"--the 
bois-bois being a dummy, a guy, caricaturing the most unpopular 
thing in city life or in politics.  This bois-bois, after having 
been paraded with mock solemnity through all the ways of St. 
Pierre, was either interred or "drowned,"--flung into the sea....  
And yesterday the dancing societies had announced their intention 
to bury a _bois-bois laverette_,--a manikin that was to represent 
the plague.  But this bois-bois does not make its appearance.  _La 
Verette_ is too terrible a visitor to be made fun of, my friends;--
you will not laugh at her, because you dare not....

No: there is one who has the courage,--a yellow goblin crying from 
behind his wire mask, in imitation of the màchannes: "_Ça qui lè 
quatòze graines laverette pou yon sou?_"  (Who wants to buy 
fourteen verette-spots for a sou?)

Not a single laugh follows that jest....  And just one week from 
to-day, poor mocking goblin, you will have a great many more than 
_quatorze graines_, which will not cost you even a sou, and which 
will disguise you infinitely better than the mask you now wear;--
and they will pour quick-lime over you, ere ever they let you 
pass through this street again--in a seven franc coffin!...



IX.


And the multicolored clamoring stream rushes by,--swerves off at 
last through the Rue des Ursulines to the Savane,--rolls over the 
new bridge of the Roxelane to the ancient quarter of the Fort.

All of a sudden there is a hush, a halt;--the drums stop 
beating, the songs cease.  Then I see a sudden scattering of 
goblins and demons and devilesses in all directions: they run 
into houses, up alleys,--hide behind door-ways.  And the crowd 
parts; and straight through it, walking very quickly, comes a 
priest in his vestments, preceded by an acolyte who rings a 
little bell.  _C'est Bon-Dié ka passé!_  ("It is the Good-God who goes 
by!")  The father is bearing the "viaticum" to some victim of the 
pestilence: one must not appear masked as a devil or a deviless 
in the presence of the Bon-Die. 

He goes by.  The flood of maskers recloses behind the ominous passage;
--the drums boom again; the dance recommences; and all the fantastic 
mummery ebbs swiftly out of sight.



X.


Night falls;--the maskers crowd to the ball-rooms to dance 
strange tropical measures that will become wilder and wilder as 
the hours pass.  And through the black streets, the Devil makes 
his last Carnival-round. 

By the gleam of the old-fashioned oil lamps hung across the thoroughfares 
I can make out a few details of his costume.  He is clad in red, wears 
a hideous blood-colored mask, and a cap of which the four sides are formed 
by four looking-glasses;--the whole head-dress being surmounted by a 
red lantern.  He has a white wig made of horse-hair, to make him 
look weird and old,--since the Devil is older than the world!  
Down the street he comes, leaping nearly his own height,--
chanting words without human signification,--and followed by some 
three hundred boys, who form the chorus to his chant--all 
clapping hands together and giving tongue with a simultaneity 
that testifies how strongly the sense of rhythm enters into the natural 
musical feeling of the African,--a feeling powerful enough to impose itself 
upon all Spanish-America, and there create the unmistakable characteristics of 
all that is called "creole music."

--"Bimbolo!"

--"Zimabolo!"

--"Bimbolo!"

--"Zimabolo!"

--"Et zimbolo!"

--"Et bolo-po!"

--sing the Devil and his chorus.  His chant is cavernous, 
abysmal,--booms from his chest like the sound of a drum beaten in 
the bottom of a well....  _Ti manmaille-là, baill moin lavoix!_ 
("Give me voice, little folk,--give me voice!") And all chant 
after him, in a chanting like the rushing of many waters, and 
with triple clapping of hands:--"Ti manmaille-là, baill moin 
lavoix!_"...  Then he halts before a dwelling in the Rue Peysette, 
and thunders:--

--"_Eh! Marie-sans-dent!--Mi! diabe-là derhò!_"

That is evidently a piece of spite-work: there is somebody living 
there against whom he has a grudge....

"_Hey! Marie-without-teeth! look! the Devil is outside!_"

And the chorus catch the clue.

DEVIL.--"_Eh! Marie-sans-dent!_"...

CHORUS.--"_Marie-sans-dent! mi!--diabe-là derhò!_"

D.--"_Eh! Marie-sans-dent!_"'...

C.--"_Marie-sans-dent! mi!--diabe-à derhò!_"

D.--"_Eh! Marie-sans-dent!_"... etc.

[Illustration: QUARTER OF THE FORT, ST. PIERRE (OVERLOOKING
THE RIVIÈRE ROXELANE).]

The Devil at last descends to the main street, always singing the 
same song;--follow the chorus to the Savanna, where the rout 
makes for the new bridge over the Roxelane, to mount the high 
streets of the old quarter of the Fort; and the chant changes as 
they cross over:--

DEVIL.--"_Oti ouè diabe-là passé lariviè?_" (Where
did you see the Devil going over the river?) And all the boys 
repeat the words, falling into another rhythm with perfect 
regularity and ease:--"_Oti ouè diabe-là passé lariviè?_"

DEVIL.--"_Oti ouè diabe?_"...

CHORUS.--"_Oti ouè diabe-là passé lariviè?_"

D.--"_Oti ouè diabe?_"

C,--"Oti ouè diabe-làp passé lariviè?_"

D,-"_Oti ouè diabe?_...etc.

About midnight the return of the Devil and his following arouses 
me from sleep:--all are chanting a new refrain, "The Devil and 
the zombis sleep anywhere and everywhere!" (_Diabe épi zombi ka 
dòmi tout-pàtout_.)  The voices of the boys are still clear, 
shrill, fresh,--clear as a chant of frogs;--they still clap hanwith 
a precision of rhythm that is simply wonderful,--making each 
time a sound almost exactly like the bursting of a heavy wave:--

DEVIL.--"_Diable épi zombi_."...

CHORUS.--"_Diable épi zombi ka d'omi tout-pàtout!_" 

D.--"_Diable épi zombi_."
 
C.--"_Diable épi zombi ka dòmi tout-pàtout!_"

D.--_Diable épi zombi_."...etc.

... What is this after all but the old African method of chanting 
at labor, The practice of carrying the burden upon the head left 
the hands free for the rhythmic accompaniment of clapping.  And
you may still hear the women who load the transatlantic steamers 
with coal at Fort-de-France thus chanting and clapping....

Evidently the Devil is moving very fast; for all the boys are 
running;--the pattering of bare feet upon the pavement sounds 
like a heavy shower....  Then the chanting grows fainter in 
distance; the Devil's immense basso becomes inaudible;--one only 
distinguishes at regular intervals the _crescendo_ of the burden,--
a wild swelling of many hundred boy-voices all rising together,--
a retreating storm of rhythmic song, wafted to the ear in gusts, 
in _raifales_ of contralto....



XI.  _February 17th._


... Yzore is a _calendeuse_.

The calendeuses are the women who make up the beautiful Madras 
turbans and color them; for the amazingly brilliant yellow of 
these head-dresses is not the result of any dyeing process: they 
are all painted by hand.  When purchased the Madras is simply a 
great oblong handkerchief, having a pale green or pale pink 
ground, and checkered or plaided by intersecting bands of dark 
blue, purple, crimson, or maroon.  The calendeuse lays the Madras 
upon a broad board placed across her knees,--then, taking a 
camel's-hair brush, she begins to fill in the spaces between the 
bands with a sulphur-yellow paint, which is always mixed with 
gum-arabic.  It requires a sure eye, very steady fingers, and long 
experience to do this well....  After the Madras has been 
"calendered" (_calendé_) and has become quite stiff and dry, it is 
folded about the head of the purchaser after the comely 
Martinique fashion,--which varies considerably from the modes 
popular in Guadeloupe or Cayenne,--is fixed into the form thus 
obtained; and can thereafter be taken off or put on without 
arrangement or disarrangement, like a cap.  The price for 
calendering a Madras is now two francs and fifteen sous;--and for 
making-up the turban, six sous additional, except in Carnival-
time, or upon holiday occasions, when the price rises to twenty-
five sous....  The making-up of the Madras into a turban is 
called "tying a head" (_marré yon tête_); and a prettily folded 
turban is spoken of as "a head well tied" (_yon tête bien 
marré_)....  However, the profession of calendeuse is far from 
being a lucrative one: it is two or three days' work to calender 
a single Madras well.  .  .  .

But Yzore does not depend upon calendering alone for a living: 
she earns much more by the manufacture of _moresques_ and of 
_chinoises_ than by painting Madras turbans....  Everybody in 
Martinique who can afford it wears moresques and chinoises.  The 
moresques are large loose comfortable pantaloons of thin printed 
calico (_indienne_),--having colored designs representing birds, 
frogs, leaves, lizards, flowers, butterflies, or kittens,--or 
perhaps representing nothing in particular, being simply 
arabesques.  The chinoise is a loose body-garment, very much like 
the real Chinese blouse, but always of brightly colored calico 
with fantastic designs.  These things are worn at home during 
siestas, after office-hours, and at night.  To take a nap during 
the day with one's ordinary clothing on means always a terrible 
drenching from perspiration, and an after-feeling of exhaustion 
almost indescribable--best expressed, perhaps, by the local term: 
_corps écrasé_.  Therefore, on entering one's room for the siesta, 
one strips, puts on the light moresques and the chinoise, and 
dozes in comfort.  A suit of this sort is very neat, often quite 
pretty, and very cheap (costing only about six francs);--the 
colors do not fade out in washing, and two good suits will last a 
year....  Yzore can make two pair of moresques and two chinoises 
in a single day upon her machine.

... I have observed there is a prejudice here against treadle 
machines;--the creole girls are persuaded they injure the health.  
Most of the sewing-machines I have seen among this people are 
operated by hand,--with a sort of little crank....



XII.  _February 22d._


... Old physicians indeed predicted it; but who believed them?...

It is as though something sluggish and viewless, dormant and 
deadly, had been suddenly upstirred to furious life by the wind 
of robes and tread of myriad dancing feet,--by the crash of 
cymbals and heavy vibration of drums!  Within a few days there 
has been a frightful increase of the visitation, an almost 
incredible expansion of the invisible poison: the number of new 
cases and of deaths has successively doubled, tripled, 
quadrupled....

... Great caldrons of tar are kindled now at night in the more 
thickly peopled streets,--about one hundred paces apart, each 
being tended by an Indian laborer in the pay of the city: this is 
done with the idea of purifying the air.  These sinister fires 
are never lighted but in times of pestilence and of tempest: on 
hurricane nights, when enormous waves roll in from the fathomless 
sea upon one of the most fearful coasts in the world, and great 
vessels are being driven ashore, such is the illumination by 
which the brave men of the coast make desperate efforts to save 
the lives of shipwrecked men, often at the cost of their own. [19]



XIII.  _February 23d._


A Coffin passes, balanced on the heads of black men.  It holds the 
body of Pascaline Z-, covered with quick-lime. 

She was the prettiest, assuredly, among the pretty shopgirls 
of the Grande Rue,--a rare type of _sang-mêlée.  So oddly 
pleasing, the young face, that once seen, you could never again 
dissociate the recollection of it from the memory of the street.  
But one who saw it last night before they poured quick-lime upon 
it could discern no features,--only a dark brown mass, like a 
fungus, too frightful to think about.

... And they are all going thus, the beautiful women of color.  
In the opinion of physicians, the whole generation is doomed....  
Yet a curious fact is that the young children of octoroons are 
suffering least: these women have their children vaccinated,--
though they will not be vaccinated themselves.  I see many 
brightly colored children, too, recovering from the disorder: the 
skin is not pitted, like that of the darker classes; and the 
rose-colored patches finally disappear altogether, leaving no 
trace.

... Here the sick are wrapped in banana leaves, after having been 
smeared with a certain unguent....  There is an immense demand 
for banana leaves.  In ordinary times these leaves--especially 
the younger ones, still unrolled, and tender and soft beyond any 
fabric possible for man to make--are used for poultices of all 
kinds, and sell from one to two sous each, according to size and 
quality.



XIV.  _February 29th._


...  The whites remain exempt from the malady. 

One might therefore hastily suppose that liability of contagion would 
be diminished in proportion to the excess of white blood over 
African; but such is far from being the case;--St. Pierre is 
losing its handsomest octoroons.  Where the proportion of white 
to black blood is 116 to 8, as in the type called _mamelouc_;--or 
122 to 4, as in the _quarteronné_ (not to be confounded with the 
_quarteron_ or quadroon);--or even 127 to 1, as in the
_sang-mêlé_, the liability to attack remains the same, while the 
chances of recovery are considerably less than in the case of the 
black.  Some few striking instances of immunity appear to offer a 
different basis for argument; but these might be due to the 
social position of the individual rather than to any 
constitutional temper: wealth and comfort, it must be remembered, 
have no small prophylactic value in such times.  Still,--although 
there is reason to doubt whether mixed races have a 
constitutional vigor comparable to that of the original parent- 
races,--the liability to diseases of this class is decided less, 
perhaps, by race characteristics than by ancestral experience.  
The white peoples of the world have been practically inoculated, 
vaccinated, by experience of centuries;--while among these 
visibly mixed or black populations the seeds of the pest find 
absolutely fresh soil in which to germinate, and its ravages are 
therefore scarcely less terrible than those it made among the 
American-Indian or the Polynesian races in other times.  Moreover, 
there is an unfortunate prejudice against vaccination here.  
People even now declare that those vaccinated die just as 
speedily of the plague as those who have never been;--and they 
can cite cases in proof.  It is useless to talk to them about 
averages of immunity, percentage of liability, etc.;--they have 
seen with their own eyes persons who had been well vaccinated die 
of the verette, and that is enough to destroy their faith in the 
system....  Even the priests, who pray their congregations to 
adopt the only known safeguard against the disease, can do little 
against this scepticism.



XV.  _March 5th._


... The streets are so narrow in this old-fashioned quarter 
that even a whisper is audible across them; and after dark I hear 
a great many things,--sometimes sounds of pain, sobbing, despairing 
cries as Death makes his round,--sometimes, again, angry words, 
and laughter, and even song,--always one melancholy chant: the voice
has that peculiar metallic timbre that reveals the young negress:--

"_Pauv' ti Lélé,
Pauv' ti Lélé!
Li gagnin doulè, doulè, doulè,--
Li gagnin doulè
Tout-pàtout!_"

I want to know who little Lélé was, and why she had pains "all over";-- 
for however artless and childish these creole songs seem, they are 
invariably originated by some real incident.  And at last somebody 
tells me that "poor little Lélé" had the reputation in other years of 
being the most unlucky girl in St. Pierre; whatever she tried to do 
resulted only in misfortune;--when it was morning she wished it were 
evening, that she might sleep and forget; but when the night came 
she could not sleep for thinking of the trouble she had had during the 
day, so that she wished it were morning....

More pleasant it is to hear the chatting of Yzore's childlren across 
the way, after the sun has set, and the stars come out....  Gabrielle 
always wants to know what the stars are:--

--"_Ça qui ka clairé conm ça, manman?_" (What is it shines like 
that?) 

And Yzore answers:--

--"_Ça, mafi,--c'est ti limiè Bon-Dié._" (Those are the little lights 
of the Good-God.)

--"It is so pretty,--eh, mamma? I want to count them."

--"You cannot count them, child."

--"One-two-three-four-five-six-seven."  Gabrielle can only count up to 
seven.  "_Moin peide!_--I am lost, mamma!"

The moon comes up;--she cries:--"_Mi! manman!--gàdé gouôs difé 
qui adans ciel-à!_  Look at the great fire in the sky."

--"It is the Moon, child!...  Don't you see St. Joseph in 
it, carrying a bundle of wood ?"

--"Yes, mamma! I see him!...  A great big bundle of wood!"...

But Mimi is wiser in moon-lore: she borrows half a franc from her 
mother "to show to the Moon."  And holding it up before the 
silver light, she sings:-- 

"Pretty Moon, I show you my little money;--now let me always have 
money so long as you shine!" [20]

Then the mother takes them up to bed;--and in a little while 
there floats to me, through the open window, the murmur of the 
children's evening prayer:--

"Ange-gardien
Veillez sur moi;
* * * * 
Ayez pitié de ma faiblesse; 
Couchez-vous sur mon petit lit;
Suivez-moi sans cesse."... [21]

I can only catch a line here and there....  They do not sleep 
immediately;--they continue to chat in bed.  Gabrielle wants to 
know what a guardian-angel is like.  And I hear Mimi's voice 
replying in creole:--

--"_Zange-gàdien, c'est yon jeine fi, toutt bel_." (The guardian-
angel is a young girl, all beautiful.)  

A little while, and there is silence; and I see Yzore come out, 
barefooted, upon the moonlit balcony of her little room,--looking 
up and down the hushed street, looking at the sea, looking up 
betimes at the high flickering of stars,--moving her lips as in 
prayer....  And, standing there white-robed, with her rich dark 
hair loose-falling, there is a weird grace about her that recalls 
those long slim figures of guardian-angels in French religious prints....



XVI.  _March 6th_


This morning Manm-Robert brings me something queer,--something 
hard tied up in a tiny piece of black cloth, with a string 
attached to hang it round my neck. I must wear it, she says,

--"_Ça ça ye, Manm-Robert?_"

--"_Pou empêché ou pouend laverette_," she answers.  It to keep me 
from catching the _verette_!...  And what is inside it?

--"_Toua graines maïs, épi dicamfre_." (Three grains of corn, with a 
bit of camphor!).  .  .



XVII.  _March 8th_


... Rich households throughout the city are almost helpless for 
the want of servants.  One can scarcely obtain help at any price: 
it is true that young country-girls keep coming into town to fill 
the places of the dead; but these new-comers fall a prey to the 
disease much more readily than those who preceded them, And such 
deaths en represent more than a mere derangement in the mechanism 
of domestic life.  The creole _bonne_ bears a relation to the family 
of an absolutely peculiar sort,--a relation of which the term 
"house-servant" does not convey the faintest idea.  She is really 
a member of the household: her association with its life usually 
begins in childhood, when she is barely strong enough to carry a 
dobanne of water up-stairs;--and in many cases she has the additional 
claim of having been born in the house.  As a child, she plays with 
the white children,--shares their pleasures and presents.  She is very 
seldom harshly spoken to, or reminded of the fact that she is a 
servitor: she has a pet name;--she is allowed much familiarity,--
is often permitted to join in conversation when there is no 
company present, and to express her opinion about domestic 
affairs.  She costs very little to keep; four or five dollars a 
year will supply her with all necessary clothing;--she rarely 
wears shoes;--she sleeps on a little straw mattress (_paillasse_) 
on the floor, or perhaps upon a paillasse supported upon an 
"elephant" (_lèfan_)--two thick square pieces of hard mattress 
placed together so as to form an oblong.  She is only a nominal 
expense to the family; and she is the confidential messenger, the 
nurse, the chamber-maid, the water-carrier,--everything, in short, 
except cook and washer-woman.  Families possessing a really good 
bonne would not part with her on any consideration.  If she has 
been brought up in the house-hold, she is regarded almost as a 
kind of adopted child.  If she leave that household to make a home 
of her own, and have ill-fortune afterwards, she will not be 
afraid to return with her baby, which will perhaps be received 
and brought up as she herself was, under the old roof.  The 
stranger may feel puzzled at first by this state of affairs; yet 
the cause is not obscure.  It is traceable to the time of the 
formation of creole society--to the early period of slavery.  
Among the Latin races,--especially the French,--slavery preserved 
in modern times many of the least harsh features of slavery in 
the antique world,--where the domestic slave, entering the 
_familia_, actually became a member of it.



XVIII.  _March 10th._


...  Yzore and her little ones are all in Manm-Robert's shop;--
she is recounting her troubles,--fresh troubles: forty-seven 
francs' worth of work delivered on time, and no money 
received....  So much I hear as I enter the little boutique 
myself, to buy a package of "_bouts_."

--"_Assise!_" says Manm-Robert, handing me her own hair;--she is
always pleased to see me, pleased to chat lith me about creole 
folk-lore.  Then observing, a smile exchanged between myself and 
Mimi, she tells the children to bid me good-day:--"_Alle di bonjou' 
Missié-a!_"
 
One after another, each holds up a velvety cheek to kiss.  And 
Mimi, who has been asking her mother the same question over and 
over again for at least five minutes without being able to obtain 
an answer, ventures to demand of me on the strength of this 
introduction:--

--"Missié, oti masque-à?_"

--"_Y ben fou, pouloss!_" the mother cries out;--"Why, the child 
must be going out of her senses!...  _Mimi pa 'mbêté moune 
conm ça!--pa ni piess masque: c'est la-vérette qui ni_." (Don't 
annoy people like that!--there are no maskers now; there is 
nothing but the verette!) 

[You are not annoying me at all, little Mimi; but I would not 
like to answer your question truthfully.  I know where the maskers 
are,--most of them, child; and I do not think it would be well for 
you to know.  They wear no masks now; but if you were to see them 
for even one moment, by some extraordinary accident, pretty Mimi, 
I think you would feel more frightened than you ever felt before.]...

--"_Toutt lanuite y k'anni rêvé masque-à_," continues Yzore....
I am curious to know what Mimi's dreams are like;--wonder if I 
can coax her to tell me....



XIX.


... I have written Mimi's last dream from the child's 
dictation:-- [22]

--"I saw a ball," she says, " I was dreaming: I saw everybody 
dancing with masks on;--I was looking at them, And all at once I 
saw that the folks who were dancing were all made of pasteboard.  
And I saw a commandeur: he asked me what I was doing there, I 
answered him: 'Why, I saw a ball, and I came to look--what of 
it?'  He answered me:--'Since you are so curious to come and look 
at other folks' business, you will have to stop here and dance 
too!'  I said to him:--'No! I won't dance with people made of 
pasteboard;--I am afraid of them!' ...And I ran and ran and ran,
--I was so much afraid.  And I ran into a big garden, where I saw a 
big cherry-tree that had only leaves upon it; and I saw a man 
sitting under the cherry-tree, He asked me:--'What are you doing 
here?' I said to him:--'I am trying to find my way out,' He 
said:--'You must stay here.'  I said:--'No, no!'--and I said, 
in order to be able to get away:--'Go up there!--you will see 
a fine ball: all pasteboard people dancing there, and a pasteboard 
commandeur commanding them!' ... And then I got so frightened that 
I awoke."...

... "And why were you so afraid of them, Mimi?" I ask.

--"_Pace yo té toutt vide endedans!_" answers Mimi. (_Because they 
were all hollow inside_!)



XX.  _March 19th._


... The death-rate in St. Pierre is now between three hundred 
and fifty and four hundred a month.  Our street is being 
depopulated.  Every day men come with immense stretchers,--
covered with a sort of canvas awning,--to take somebody away to 
the _lazaretto_.  At brief intervals, also, coffins are carried 
into houses empty, and carried out again followed by women who 
cry so loud that their sobbing can be heard a great way off.

... Before the visitation few quarters were so densely peopled: 
there were living often in one small house as many as fifty.  The 
poorer classes had been accustomed from birth to live as simply 
as animals,--wearing scarcely any clothing, sleeping on bare 
floors, exposing themselves to all changes of weather, eating the 
cheapest and coarsest food.  Yet, though living under such 
adverse conditions, no healthier people could be found, perhaps, 
in the world,--nor a more cleanly.  Every yard having its 
fountain, almost everybody could bathe daily,--and with hundreds 
it was the custom to enter the river every morning at daybreak, 
or to take a swim in the bay (the young women here swim as well 
as the men)....

But the pestilence, entering among so dense and unprotected a 
life, made extraordinarily rapid havoc; and bodily cleanliness 
availed little against the contagion.  Now all the bathing resorts 
are deserted,--because the lazarettos infect the bay with refuse, 
and because the clothing of the sick is washed in the Roxelane.

... Guadeloupe, the sister colony, now sends aid;--the sum total 
is less than a single American merchant might give to a 
charitable undertaking: but it is a great deal for Guadeloupe to 
give.  And far Cayenne sends money too; and the mother-country 
will send one hundred thousand francs.



XXI.  _March 20th._


... The infinite goodness of this colored population to one 
another is something which impresses with astonishment those 
accustomed to the selfishness of the world's great cities.  No one 
is suffered to go to the pest-house who has a bed to lie upon, 
and a single relative or tried friend to administer remedies;--
the multitude who pass through the lazarettos are strangers,--
persons from the country who have no home of their own, or 
servants who are not permitted to remain sick in houses of 
employers....  There are, however, many cases where a mistress 
will not suffer her bonne to take the risks of the pest-house,--
especially in families where there are no children: the domestic 
is carefully nursed; a physician hired for her, remedies 
purchased for her....

But among the colored people themselves the heroism displayed is 
beautiful, is touching,--something which makes one doubt all 
accepted theories about the natural egotism of mankind, and would 
compel the most hardened pessimist to conceive a higher idea of 
humanity. There is never a moment's hesitation in visiting a 
stricken individual: every relative, and even the most intimate 
friends of every relative, may be seen hurrying to the bedside.  
They take turns at nursing, sitting up all night, securing 
medical attendance and medicines, without ever thought of the danger,
--nay, of the almost absolute certainty of contagion.  If the patient 
have no means, all contribute: what the sister or brother has not, 
the uncle or the aunt, the godfather or godmother, the cousin, brother-
in-law or sister-in-law, may be able to give.  No one dreams of refusing 
money or linen or wine or anything possible to give, lend, or procure 
on credit.  Women seem to forget that they are beautiful, that they are 
young, that they are loved,--forget everything but sense of that 
which they hold to be duty.  You see young girls of remarkably elegant 
presence,--young colored girls well educated and _élevées-en-chapeau_ [23]
(that is say, brought up like white creole girls, dressed and 
accomplished like them), voluntarily leave rich homes to nurse some 
poor mulatress or capresse in the indigent quarters of the town, because 
the sick one happens to be a distant relative.  They will not trust 
others to perform this for them;--they feel bound to do it in person. 
I heard such a one say, in reply to some earnest protest about thus 
exposing herself (she had never been vaccinated);--"_Ah! quand il 
s'agit du devoir, la vie ou la mort c'est pour moi la même chose_." 

... But without any sanitary law to check this self-immolation, 
and with the conviction that in the presence of duty, or what is 
believed to be duty, "life or death is same thing," or ought to 
be so considered,--you can readily imagine how soon the city must 
become one vast hospital.



XXII.


... By nine o'clock, as a general rule, St. Pierre becomes silent: 
everyone here retires early and rises with the sun.  But sometimes, 
when the night is exceptionally warm, people continue to sit at their 
doors and chat until a far later hour; and on such a night one may 
hear and see curious things, in this period of plague.... 

It is certainly singular that while the howling of a dog at night has 
no ghastly signification here (nobody ever pays the least attention to the 
sound, however hideous), the moaning and screaming of cats is 
believed to bode death; and in these times folks never appear to 
feel too sleepy to rise at any hour and drive them away when they 
begin their cries....  To-night--a night so oppressive that all 
but the sick are sitting up--almost a panic is created in our 
street by a screaming of cats;--and long after the creatures 
have been hunted out of sight and hearing, everybody who has a 
relative ill with the prevailing malady continues to discuss the 
omen with terror.

... Then I observe a colored child standing bare-footed in the 
moonlight, with her little round arms uplifted and hands joined 
above her head.  A more graceful little figure it would be hard 
to find as she appears thus posed; but, all unconsciously, she is 
violating another superstition by this very attitude; and the 
angry mother shrieks:--

--"_Ti manmaille-là!--tiré lanmain-ou assous tête-ou, foute! 
pisse moin encò là!... Espéré moin allé lazarett avant metté 
lanmain conm ça!_"  (Child, take down your hands from your head...  
because I am here yet!  Wait till I go to the lazaretto before 
you put up your hands like that!)

For it was the savage, natural, primitive gesture of mourning,--
of great despair.

... Then all begin to compare their misfortunes, to relate their 
miseries;--they say grotesque things,--even make jests about 
their troubles.  One declares:-- 

--"_Si moin té ka venne chapeau, à fòce moin ni malhè, toutt manman 
sé fai yche yo sans tête._"  (I have that ill-luck, that if I were 
selling hats all the mothers would have children without heads!)

--Those who sit at their doors, I observe, do not sit, a rule, 
upon the steps, even when these are of wood. There is a 
superstition which checks such a practice. "_Si ou assise assous 
pas-lapòte, ou ké pouend doulè toutt moune_."  (If you sit upon the 
door-step, you will take the pain of all who pass by.)



XXIII.  _March 30th._


Good Friday....

The bells have ceased to ring,--even the bells for the dead; the 
hours are marked by cannon-shots.  The ships in the harbor form 
crosses with their spars, turn their flags upside down.  And the 
entire colored population put on mourning:--it is a custom among 
them centuries old.

You will not perceive a single gaudy robe to-day, a single 
calendered Madras: not a speck of showy color visible through all 
the ways of St. Pierre.  The costumes donned are all similar to 
those worn for the death relatives: either full mourning,--a 
black robe with violet foulard, and dark violet-banded 
headkerchief; or half-mourning,--a dark violet robe with black 
foulard and turban;--the half-mourning being worn only by those who
cannot afford the more sombre costume.  From my winndow I can see 
long processions climbing the mornes about the city, to visit the 
shrines and crucifixes, and to pray for the cessation of the 
pestilence.

... Three o'clock.  Three cannon-shots shake the hill: it is the 
supposed hour of the Saviour's death. All believers--whether in the 
churches, on the highways, or in their homes--bow down and kiss 
the cross thrice, or, if there be no cross, press their lips three
times to the ground or the pavement, and utter those three 
wishes which if expressed precisely at this traditional moment 
will surely, it is held, be fulfilled.  Immense crowds are 
assembled before the crosses on the heights, and about the statue 
of Notre Dame de la Garde.

... There is no hubbub in the streets; there is not even the 
customary loud weeping to be heard as the coffins go by.  One 
must not complain to-day, nor become angry, nor utter unkind 
words,--any fault committed on Good Friday is thought to obtain a 
special and awful magnitude in the sight of Heaven....  There is 
a curious saying in vogue here.  If a son or daughter grow up 
vicious,--become a shame to the family and a curse to the 
parents,--it is observed of such:--"_Ça, c'est yon péché Vendredi-
Saint!_" (Must be a _Good-Friday sin!_)

There are two other strange beliefs connected with Good Friday.  
One is that it always rains on that day,--that the sky weeps for 
the death of the Saviour; and that this rain, if caught in a 
vessel, will never evaporate or spoil, and will cure all 
diseases.

The other is that only Jesus Christ died precisely at three 
o'clock.  Nobody else ever died exactly at that hour;--they may 
die a second before or a second after three, but never exactly at 
three.



XXIV.  _March 31st._


...  Holy Saturday morning;--nine o'clock.  All the bells 
suddenly ring out; the humming of the bourdon blends with the 
thunder of a hundred guns: this is the _Gloria!_...  At this signal 
it is a religious custom for the whole coast-population to enter 
the sea, and for those living too far from the beach to bathe in 
the rivers. But rivers and sea are now alike infected;--all the 
linen of the lazarettos has been washed therein; and to-day there 
are fewer bathers than usual.

But there are twenty-seven burials.  Now they are ring the dead 
two together: the cemeteries are over-burdened....



XXV.


... In most of the old stone houses you will occasionally see 
spiders of terrifying size,--measuring across perhaps as much as 
six inches from the tip of one out-stretched leg to the tip of 
its opposite fellow, as they cling to the wall.  I never heard of 
anyone being bitten by them; and among the poor it is deemed 
unlucky to injure or drive them away....  But early this morning
Yzore swept her house clean, and ejected through door-way quite a 
host of these monster insects. Manm-Robert is quite dismayed:--

--"_Fesis-Maïa!_--ou 'lè malhè encò pou fai ça, chè?" (You want to 
have still more bad luck, that you do such a thing?)

And Yzore answers:--

--"_Toutt moune içitt pa ni yon sou!--gouôs conm ça fil zagrignin, 
et moin pa menm mangé!  Epi laverette encò.... Moin couè toutt ça ka 
pòté malhè!_" (No one here has a sou!--heaps of cobwebs like that, 
and nothing to eat yet; and the verette into the bargain... I think 
those things bring bad luck.)

--"Ah! you have not eaten yet!"  cries Manm-Robert.  "_Vini épi  
moin!_"  (Come with me!)

And Yzore--already feeling a little remorse for her treatment of the 
spiders--murmurs apologetically as she crosses over to Manm-Robert's 
little shop:--"_Moin pa tchoué yo; moin chassé yo--ké vini encò_."  (I 
did not kill them; I only put them out;--they will come back 
again.) 

But long afterwards, Manm-Robert remarked to me that they never went 
back....



XXVI.  _April 5th._


--"_Toutt bel bois ka allé_," says Manm-Robert.  (All the beautiful 
trees are going.)...  I do not understand.

--"_Toutt bel bois--toutt bel moune ka alle_," she adds,
interpretatively.  (All the "beautiful trees,"--all the handsome 
people,--are passing away.)... As in the speech of the world's 
primitive poets, so in the creole patois is a beautiful woman 
compared with a comely tree: nay, more than this, the name of the 
object is actually substituted for that of the living being.  _Yon 
bel bois_ may mean a fine tree: it more generally signifies a 
graceful woman: this is the very comparison made by Ulysses 
looking upon Nausicaa, though more naively expressed.
... And now there comes to me the recollection of a creole 
ballad illustrating the use of the phrase,--a ballad about a 
youth of Fort-de-France sent to St. Pierre by his father to 
purchase a stock of dobannes, [24] who, falling in love with 
a handsome colored girl, spent all his father's money in buying 
her presents and a wedding outfit:--

"Moin descenne Saint-Piè
Acheté dobannes 
Auliè ces dobannes 
C'est yon _bel-bois_ moin mennein monté!"

("I went down to Saint-Pierre to buy dobannes: instead of the 
dobannes, 'tis a pretty tree--a charming girl--that I bring back 
with me")

--"Why, who is dead now, Manm-Robert?"

--"It is little Marie, the porteuse, who has got the verette.  
She is gone to the lazaretto."



XXVII.  _April 7th._


--_Toutt bel bois ka allé_....  News has just come that Ti 
Marie died last night at the lazaretto of the Fort: she was 
attacked by what they call the _lavérette-pouff_,--a form of 
the disease which strangles its victim within a few hours.

Ti Marie was certainly the neatest little màchanne I ever knew.  
Without being actually pretty, her face had a childish charm 
which made it a pleasure to look at her;--and she had a clear 
chocolate-red skin, a light compact little figure, and a 
remarkably symmetrical pair of little feet which had never felt 
the pressure of a shoe.  Every morning I used to hear her passing 
cry, just about daybreak:--"_Qui 'lè café?--qui 'lè sirop?_" (Who 
wants coffee?--who wants syrup?)  She looked about sixteen, but 
was a mother.  "Where is her husband?" I ask. "_Nhomme-y mò 
laverette 'tou_."  (Her man died of the verette also.)  "And the 
little one, her _yche_?" "Y lazarett." (At the lazaretto.)...  
But only those without friends or relatives in the city are 
suffered to go to the lazaretto;--Ti Marie cannot have been of 
St. Pierre?

--"No: she was from Vauclin," answers Manrn-Robert.  "You do not often 
see pretty red girls who are natives of St. Pierre.  St. Pierre has 
pretty _sang-mêlées_.  The pretty red girls mostly come from Vauclin.  
The yellow ones, who are really _bel-bois_, are from Grande Anse: they 
are banana-colored people there.  At Gros-Morne they are generally black."...



XXVIII.


... It appears that the red race here, the _race capresse_, is 
particularly liable to the disease.  Every family employing 
capresses for house-servants loses them;--one family living at the 
next corner has lost four in succession....

The tint is a cinnamon or chocolate color;--the skin is 
naturally clear, smooth, glossy: it is of the capresse especially 
that the term "sapota-skin" (_peau-chapoti_) is used,--coupled with 
all curious creole adjectives to express what is comely,
--_jojoll, beaujoll_, etc. [25]  The hair is long, but bushy; 
the limbs light and strong, and admirably shaped....  I am told 
that when transported to a colder climate, the capre or capresse 
partly loses this ruddy tint.  Here, under the tropic sun, it has 
a beauty only possible to imitate in metal....  And because 
photography cannot convey any idea of this singular color, the 
capresse hates a photograph.--"_Moin pas nouè_," she says;
--"_moin ouôuge: ou fai moin nouè nans pòtrait-à_." (I am not 
black: I am red:--you make me black in that portrait.) It is 
difficult to make her pose before the camera: she is red, as 
she avers, beautifully red; but the malicious instrument makes 
her gray or black--_nouè conm poule-zo-nouè_ ("black as a black-
boned hen!")

 ... And this red race is disappearing from St. Pierre--doubtless 
also from other plague-stricken centres.



XXIX.  _April l0th._


Manm-Robert is much annoyed and puzzled because the American 
steamer--the _bom-mangé_, as she calls does not come.  It used to 
bring regularly so many barrels of potatoes and beans, so much lard 
and cheese garlic and dried pease--everything, almost, of which 
she keeps a stock.  It is now nearly eight weeks since the cannon 
of a New York steamer aroused the echoes the harbor.  Every morning 
Manm-Robert has been sending out her little servant Louis to see if 
there is any sign of the American packet:--"Allé ouè Batterie d' 
Esnotz si bom-mangé-à pas vini_."  But Louis always returns with same 
rueful answer:--

--"_Manm-Robert, pa ni piess bom-mangé_" (there is not so much as 
a bit of a _bom-mangé_).

... "No more American steamers for Martinique:" that is the news 
received by telegraph!  The disease has broken out among the 
shipping; the harbors have been delared infected.  United States 
mail-packets drop their Martinique mails at St. Kitt's or 
Dominica, and pass us by.  There will be suffering now among the 
_canotiers_, the _caboteurs_, all those who live by stowing or unloading 
cargo;--great warehouses are being closed up, and strong men
discharged, because there will be nothing for them to do.

... They are burying twenty-five _verettiers_ per day in city.

But never was this tropic sky more beautiful;--never was this 
circling sea more marvellously blue;--never were the mornes more 
richly robed in luminous green, under a more golden day....
And it seems strange that Nature should remain so lovely....

... Suddenly it occurs to me that I have not seen Yzore nor her 
children for some days; and I wonder if they have moved away....  
Towards evening, passing by Manm-Robert's, I ask about them.  
The old woman answers me very gravely:--

--"_Atò, mon chè, c'est Yzore qui ni laverette!_" 

The mother has been seized by the plague at last.  But Manm-Robert 
will look after her; and Manm-Robert has taken charge of the three 
little ones, who are not now allowed to leave the house, for fear 
some one should tell them what it were best they should not know.... 
_Pauv ti manmaille!_



XXX.  _April 13th._


... Still the vérette does not attack the native whites. But the 
whole air has become poisoned; the sanitary condition of the city 
becomes unprecedentedly bad; and a new epidemic makes its 
appearance,--typhoid fever.  And now the békés begin to go, 
especially the young and strong; and the bells keep sounding for 
them, and the tolling bourdon fills the city with its enormous 
hum all day and far into the night.  For these are rich; and the 
high solemnities of burial are theirs--the coffin of acajou, and 
the triple ringing, and the Cross of Gold to be carried before 
them as they pass to their long sleep under the palms,--saluted 
for the last time by all the population of St. Pierre, standing 
bareheaded in the sun....

... Is it in times like these, when all the conditions are 
febrile, that one is most apt to have queer dreams?

Last night it seemed to me that I saw that Carnival dance 
again,--the hooded musicians, the fantastic torrent of peaked 
caps, and the spectral masks, and the swaying of bodies and 
waving of arms,--but soundless as a passing of smoke.  There were 
figures I thought I knew;--hands I had somewhere seen reached out 
and touched me in silence;--and then, all suddenly, a Viewless 
Something seemed to scatter the shapes as leaves are blown
by a wind....  And waking, I thought I heard again,--plainly as 
on that last Carnival afternoon,--the strange cry of fear:--
"_C'est Bon-Dié ka passé!_"...



XXXI.  _April 20th._


Very early yesterday morning Yzore was carried away under a covering 
of quick-lime: the children do not know; Manm-Robert took heed they 
should not see.  They have been told their mother has been taken to 
the country to get well,--that the doctor will bring her back....  
All the furniture is to be sold at auction to debts;--the landlord 
was patient, he waited four months; the doctor was kindly: but now 
these must have their due.  Everything will be bidden off, except
the chapelle, with its Virgin and angels of porcelain: _yo pa ka
pè venne Bon-Dié_ (the things of the Good-God must not be sold).  
And Manm-Robert will take care little ones.

The bed--a relic of former good-fortune,--a great Martinique bed of 
carved heavy native wood,--a _lit-à-bateau_ (boat-bed), so called 
because shaped almost like a barge, perhaps--will surely bring three 
hundred francs;--the armoire, with its mirror doors, not less than 
two hundred and fifty.  There is little else of value: the whole will
not fetch enough to pay all the dead owes.



XXXII.  _April 28th._


_--Tam-tam-tam!--tam-tam-tam!_...  It is the booming of the auction-drum 
from the Place: Yzore's furniture is about to change hands.

The children start at the sound, so vividly associated in their minds with 
the sights of Carnival days, with the fantastic mirth of the great 
processional dance: they run to the sunny street, calling to each 
other.--_Vini ouè!_--they look up and down.  But there is a great quiet in 
the Rue du Morne Mirail;--the street is empty.

... Manm-Robert enters very weary: she has been at the sale, 
trying to save something for the children, but the prices were 
too high.  In silence she takes her accustomed seat at the worn 
counter of her little shop; the young ones gather about her, 
caress her;--Mimi looks up laughing into the kind brown face, and 
wonders why Manm-Robert will not smile.  Then Mimi becomes afraid 
to ask where the maskers are,--why they do not come, But little 
Maurice, bolder and less sensitive, cries out:--

--"_Manm-Robert, oti masque-à?_"

Manm-Robert does not answer;--she does not hear.  She is gazing 
directly into the young faces clustered about her knee,--yet she 
does not see them: she sees far, far beyond them,--into the 
hidden years.  And, suddenly, with a savage tenderness in her 
voice, she utters all the dark thought of her heart for them:--

--"_Toua ti blancs sans lesou!--qutitté moin châché papaou 
qui adans cimétiè pou vini pouend ou tou!_"  (Ye three little 
penniless white ones!--let me go call your father, who is in the 
cemetery, to come and take you also away!)




CHAPTER VI.
LES BLANCHISSEUSES.



I.


Whoever stops for a few months in St. Pierre is certain, sooner or 
later, to pass an idle half-hour in that charming place of Martinique 
idlers,--the beautiful Savane du Fort,--and, once there, is equally 
certain to lean a little while over the mossy parapet of the river-wall 
to watch the _blanchisseuses_ at work.  It has a curious interest, this 
spectacle of primitive toil: the deep channel of the Roxelane winding 
under the palm-crowned heights of the Fort; the blinding whiteness of 
linen laid out to bleach for miles upon the huge bowlders of porphyry 
and prismatic basalt; and the dark bronze-limbed women, with faces 
hidden under immense straw hats, and knees in the rushing torrent,--all 
form a scene that makes one think of the earliest civilizations.  Even 
here, in this modern colony, it is nearly three centuries old; and it 
will probably continue thus at the Rivière des Blanchisseuses for fully 
another three hundred years.  Quaint as certain weird Breton legends 
whereof it reminds you,--especially if you watch it before daybreak 
while the city still sleeps,--this fashion of washing is not likely to 
change.  There is a local prejudice against new methods, new 
inventions, new ideas;--several efforts at introducing a less savage 
style of washing proved unsuccessful; and an attempt to establish a 
steam-laundry resulted in failure.  The public were quite contented 
with the old ways of laundrying, and saw no benefits to be gained by 
forsaking them;--while the washers and ironers engaged by the laundry 
proprietor at higher rates than they had ever obtained before soon 
wearied of in-door work, abandoned their situations, and returned with 
a sense of relief to their ancient way of working out in the blue air 
and the wind of the hills, with their feet in the mountain-water and 
their heads in the awful sun.

... It is one of the sights of St. Pierre,--this daily scene at the 
River of the Washerwomen: everybody likes to watch it;--the men, 
because among the blanchisseuses there are not a few decidedly handsome 
girls; the wormen, probably because a woman feels always interested 
in woman's work.  All the white bridges of the Roxelane are dotted with 
lookers-on during fine days, and particularly in the morning, when 
every bonne on her way to and from the market stops a moment to observe 
or to greet those blanchisseuses whom she knows.  Then one hears such a 
calling and clamoring,--such an intercrossing of cries from the bridge 
to the river, and the river to the bridge.  ... "Ouill! Noémi!"... "Coument
ou yé, chè?"... "Eh! Pascaline!", ..."Bonjou', Youtte!--Dede!-Fifi!--
Henrillia!"... "Coument ou kallé, Cyrillia?"... "Toutt douce, chè!--et 
Ti Mémé?"... "Y bien;--oti Ninotte?"... "Bo ti manmaille pou moin, chè 
--ou tanne?"...  But the bridge leading to the market of the Fort is 
the poorest point of view; for the better classes of blanchisseuses are 
not there: only the lazy, the weak, or non-professionals--house-
servants, who do washing at the river two or three times a month as 
part of their family-service--are apt to get so far down.  The 
experienced professionals and early risers secure the best places and 
choice of rocks; and among the hundreds at work you can discern 
something like a physical gradation.  At the next bridge the women look 
better, stronger; more young faces appear; and the further you follow 
the river-course towards the Jardin des Plantes, the more the 
appearance of the blanchisseuses improves,--so that within the space of 
a mile you can see well exemplified one natural law of life's 
struggle,--the best chances to the best constitutions.

[Illustration: RIVIÈRE DES BLANCHISSEUSES.]

You might also observe, if you watch long enough, that among the 
blanchisseuses there are few sufficiently light of color to be classed 
as bright mulatresses;--the majority are black or of that dark copper-
red race which is perhaps superior to the black creole in strength and 
bulk; for it requires a skin insensible to sun as well as the toughest 
of constitutions to be a blanchisseuse.  A porteuse can begin to make 
long trips at nine or ten years; but no girl is strong enough to learn 
the washing-trade until she is past twelve.  The blanchisseuse is the 
hardest worker among the whole population;--her daily labor is rarely 
less than thirteen hours; and during the greater part of that time she 
is working in the sun, and standing up to her knees in water that 
descends quite cold from the mountain peaks.  Her labor makes her 
perspire profusely and she can never venture to cool herself by further 
immersion without serious danger of pleurisy.  The trade is said to 
kill all who continue at it beyond a certain number of years:--"_Nou ka 
mò toutt dleau_" (we all die of the water), one told me, replying to a 
question.  No feeble or light-skinned person can attempt to do a single 
day's work of this kind without danger; and a weak girl, driven by 
necessity to do her own washing, seldom ventures to go to the river.
Yet I saw an instance of such rashness one day.  A pretty sang-mêlée, 
perhaps about eighteen or nineteen years old,--whom I afterwards 
learned had just lost her mother and found herself thus absolutely 
destitute,--began to descend one of the flights of stone steps leading 
to the river, with a small bundle upon her head; and two or three of 
the blanchisseuses stopped their work to look at her.  A tall capresse 
inquired mischievously:--

--"_Ou vini pou pouend yon bain?_" (Coming to take a bath?) For the 
river is a great bathing-place.

--"_Non; moin vini lavé_." (No; I am coming to wash.)

--"Aïe! aïe! aïe!--y vini lavé!_"...  And all within hearing 
laughed together.  "Are you crazy, girl?--_ess ou fou?_"  The tall 
capresse snatched the bundle from her, opened it, threw a garment to 
her nearest neighbor, another to the next one, dividing the work among 
a little circle of friends, and said to the stranger, "Non ké lavé 
toutt ça ba ou bien vite, chè,--va, amisé ou!" (We'll wash this for 
you very quickly, dear--go and amuse yourself!)  These kind women even 
did more for the poor girl;--they subscribed to buy her a good 
breakfast, when the food-seller--the màchanne-mangé--made her regular 
round among them, with fried fish and eggs and manioc flour and 
bananas.



II.


All of the multitude who wash clothing at the river are not 
professional blanchisseuses.  Hundreds of women, too poor to pay for 
laundrying, do their own work at the Roxelane;--and numerous bonnes 
there wash the linen of their mistresses as a regular part of their 
domestic duty.  But even if the professionals did not always occupy a 
certain well-known portion of the channel, they could easily be 
distinguished from others by their rapid and methodical manner of work, 
by the ease with which immense masses of linen are handled by them, 
and, above all, by their way of whipping it against the rocks. 
Furthermore, the greater number of professionals are likewise teachers, 
mistresses (_bou'geoises_), and have their apprentices beside them,--
young girls from twelve to sixteen years of age.  Among these _apprenti_, 
as they are called in the patois, there are many attractive types, such 
as idlers upon the bridges like to look at.

If, after one year of instruction, the apprentice fails to prove a good 
washer, it is not likely she will ever become one; and there are some 
branches of the trade requiring a longer period of teaching and of 
practice. The young girl first learns simply to soap and wash the linen 
in the river, which operation is called "rubbing" (_frotté_ in creole);--
after she can do this pretty well, she is taught the curious art of 
whipping it (_fessé_).  You can hear the sound of the fesse a great way 
off, echoing and re-echoing among the mornes: it is not a sharp 
smacking noise, as the name might seem to imply, but a heavy hollow 
sound exactly like that of an axe splitting dry timber.  In fact, it so 
closely resembles the latter sound that you are apt on first hearing it 
to look up at the mornes with the expectation of seeing woodmen there 
at work.  And it is not made by striking the linen with anything, but 
only by lashing it against the sides of the rocks....  After a piece 
has been well rubbed and rinsed, it is folded up into a peculiar sheaf-
shape, and seized by the closely gathered end for the fessé.  Then the 
folding process is repeated on the reverse, and the other end whipped.  
This process expels suds that rinsing cannot remove: it must be done 
very dexterously to avoid tearing or damaging the material.  By an 
experienced hand the linen is never torn; and even pearl and bone 
buttons are much less often broken than might be supposed. The singular 
echo is altogether due to the manner of folding the article for the 
fessé.

After this, all the pieces are spread out upon the rocks, in the sun, 
for the "first bleaching" (_pouèmiè lablanie_). In the evening they are 
gathered into large wooden trays or baskets, and carried to what is 
called the "lye-house" (_lacaïe lessive_)--overlooking the river from a 
point on the fort bank opposite to the higher end of the Savane.  There 
each blanchisseuse hires a small or a large vat, or even several,--
according to the quantity of work done,--at two, three, or ten sous, 
and leaves her washing to steep in lye (_coulé_ is the creole word used) 
during the night. There are watchmen to guard it.  Before daybreak it 
is rinsed in warm water; then it is taken back to the river,--is 
rinsed again, bleached again, blued and starched.  Then it is ready for 
ironing.  To press and iron well is the most difficult part of the 
trade.  When an apprentice is able to iron a gentleman's shirt nicely, 
and a pair of white pantaloons, she is considered to have finished her 
time;--she becomes a journey-woman (_ouvouïyé_).

Even in a country where wages are almost incredibly low, the 
blanchisseuse earns considerable money.  There is no fixed scale of 
prices: it is even customary to bargain with these women beforehand.  
Shirts and white pantaloons figure at six and eight cents in laundry 
bills; but other washing is much cheaper.  I saw a lot of thirty-three 
pieces--including such large ones as sheets, bed-covers, and several 
douillettes (the long Martinique trailing robes of one piece from neck 
to feet)--for which only three francs was charged.  Articles are 
frequently stolen or lost by house-servants sent to do washing at the 
river; but very seldom indeed by the regular blanchisseuses.  Few of 
them can read or write or understand owners' marks on wearing apparel; 
and when you see at the river the wilderness of scattered linen, the 
seemingly enormous confusion, you cannot understand how these women 
manage to separate and classify it all.  Yet they do this admirably,--
and for that reason perhaps more than any other, are able to charge 
fair rates;--it is false economy to have your washing done by the 
house-servant;--with the professionals your property is safe.  And 
cheap as her rates are, a good professional can make from twenty-five 
to thirty francs a week; averaging fully a hundred francs a month,--as 
much as many a white clerk can earn in the stores of St. Pierre, and 
quite as much (considering local differences in the purchasing power of 
money) as $60 per month would represent in the United States.

Probably the ability to earn large wages often tempts the 
blanchisseuse to continue at her trade until it kills her.  The "water-
disease," as she calls it (_maladie-dleau_), makes its appearance after 
middle-life: the feet, lower limbs, and abdomen swell enormously, while 
the face becomes almost fleshless;--then, gradually tissues give way, 
muscles yield, and the whole physical structure crumbles.  Nevertheless, 
the blanchisseuse is essentially a sober liver,--never a drunkard.  In 
fact, she is sober from rigid necessity: she would not dare to swallow 
one mouthful of spirits while at work with her feet in the cold water;
--everybody else in Martinique, even the little children, can drink rum; 
the blanchisseuse cannot, unless she wishes to die of a congestion.  
Her strongest refreshment is _mabi_,--a mild, effervescent, and, I think, 
rather disagreeable, beer made from molasses.



III.


Always before daybreak they rise to work, while the vapors of the 
mornes fill the air with scent of mouldering vegetation,--clayey 
odors,--grassy smells: there is only a faint gray light, and the water 
of the river is very chill.  One by one they arrive, barefooted, under 
their burdens built up tower-shape on their trays;--silently as ghosts 
they descend the steps to the river-bed, and begin to unfold and 
immerse their washing.  They greet each other as they come, then become 
silent again; there is scarcely any talking: the hearts of all are 
heavy with the heaviness of the hour.  But the gray light turns yellow; 
the sun climbs over the peaks: light changes the dark water to living 
crystal; and all begin to chatter a little.  Then the city awakens; the 
currents of its daily life circulate again,--thinly and slowly at 
first, then swiftly and strongly,--up and down every yellow street, 
and through the Savane, and over the bridges of the river.  Passers-by 
pause to look down, and cry "_bonjou', che!_"  Idle men stare at some 
pretty washer, till she points at them and cries:--"_Gadé Missie-à ka 
guetté nou!--anh!--anh!--anh!_"  And all the others look up and repeat the 
groan--"_anh!--anh!--anh!_" till the starers beat a retreat. The air 
grows warmer; the sky blue takes fire: the great light makes joy for 
the washers; they shout to each other from distance to distance, jest, 
laugh, sing.  Gusty of speech these women are: long habit of calling to 
one another through the roar of the torrent has given their voices a 
singular sonority and force: it is well worth while to hear them sing.  
One starts the song,--the next joins her; then another and another, 
till all the channel rings with the melody from the bridge of the 
Jardin des Plantes to the Pont-bois:-

"C'est main qui té ka lavé,
Passé, raccommodé:
Y té néf hè disouè
Ou metté moin derhò,--
Yche main assous bouas moin;--
Laplie té ka tombé-- 
Léfan moin assous tête moin!
Doudoux, ou m'abandonne!
Moin pa ni pèsonne pou soigné moin." [26]

... A melancholy chant--originally a Carnival improvisation made to 
bring public shame upon the perpetrator of a cruel act;--but it 
contains the story of many of these lives--the story of industrious 
affectionate women temporarily united to brutal and worthless men in a 
country where legal marriages are rare.  Half of the creole songs which 
I was able to collect during a residence of nearly two years in the 
island touch upon the same sad theme.  Of these, "Chè Manman Moin," a 
great favorite still with the older blanchisseuses, has a simple pathos 
unrivalled, I believe, in the oral literature of this people. Here is 
an attempt to translate its three rhymeless stanzas into prose; but the 
childish sweetness of the patois original is lost:--


CHÈ MANMAN MOIN.

I.

... "Dear mamma, once you were young like I;--dear papa, you also 
have been young;--dear great elder brother, you too have been young.  
Ah! let me cherish this sweet friendship!--so sick my heart is--yes, 
'tis very, very ill, this heart of mine: love, only love can make it 
well again."...

II. 

"0 cursed eyes he praised that led me to him!  0 cursed lips of 
mine which ever repeated his name!  0 cursed moment in which I gave up 
my heart to the ingrate who no longer knows how to love."...

III.

"Doudoux, you swore to me by heaven!--doudoux, you swore to me by 
your faith!... And now you cannot come to me? ... Oh! my heart is 
withering with pain!...  I was passing by the cemetery;--I saw my name 
upon a stone--all by itself.  I saw two white roses; and in a moment 
one faded and fell before me....  So my forgotten heart will be!"...

The air is not so charming, however, as that of a little song which 
every creole knows, and which may be often heard still at the river: I 
think it is the prettiest of all creole melodies.  "To-to-to"  
(patois for the French _toc_) is an onomatope for the sound of knocking 
at a door. 

"_To, to, to!_--Ça qui là?'
--'C'est moin-mênme, lanmou;--
Ouvé lapott ba moin!'

"_To, to, to!_--Ça qui là?'
--'C'est moin-mênme lanmou,
Qui ka ba ou khè moin!' 

"_To, to, to!_--Ça qui là?'
--'C'est moin-mênme lanmou,
Laplie ka mouillé moin!'"

[_To-to-to_... "Who taps there?"--"'Tis mine own self Love: open the door 
for me." 
_To-to-to_... "Who taps there?"--"'Tis mine own self Love, who give my 
heart to thee." 
_To-to-to_... "Who taps there?"--" 'Tis mine own self Love: open thy 
door to me;--the rain is wetting me!"]

... But it is more common to hear the blanchisseuses singing merry, 
jaunty, sarcastic ditties,--Carnival compositions,--in which the 
African sense of rhythmic melody is more marked:--"Marie-Clémence 
maudi," "Loéma tombé," "Quand ou ni ti mari jojoll."

--At mid-day the màchanne-mangé comes, with her girls,--carrying trays 
of fried fish, and _akras_, and cooked beans, and bottles of mabi.  The 
blanchisseuses buy, and eat with their feet in the water, using rocks 
for tables.  Each has her little tin cup to drink her mabi in...  Then 
the washing and the chanting and the booming of the fessé begin again.  
Afternoon wanes;--school-hours close; and children of many beautiful 
colors come to the river, and leap down the steps crying, "_Eti! 
manman!"--"Sésé!"--"Nenneine!" calling their elder sisters, mothers, 
and godmothers: the little boys strip naked to play in the water a 
while....  Towards sunset the more rapid and active workers begin to 
gather in their linen, and pile it on trays.  Large patches of bald 
rock appear again....  By six o'clock almost the whole bed of the river 
is bare;--the women are nearly all gone.  A few linger a while on the 
Savane, to watch the last-comer.  There is always a great laugh at the 
last to leave the channel: they ask her if she has not forgotten "to 
lock up the river."

--"_Ou fèmé lapòte lariviè, chè-anh?_"

--"_Ah! oui, chè!--moin fèmé y, ou tanne?--moin ni laclé-à!_" (Oh yes, 
dear.  I locked it up,--you hear?--I've got the key!)

But there are days and weeks when they do not sing,--times of want or 
of plague, when the silence of the valley is broken only by the sound 
of linen beaten upon the rocks, and the great voice of the Roxelane, 
which will sing on when the city itself shall have ceased to be, just 
as it sang one hundred thousand years ago....

"Why do they not sing to-day?" I once asked during the summer of 1887,

--a year of pestilence.  "_Yo ka pensé toutt lanmizè yo,--toutt lapeine 
yo_," I was answered. (They are thinking of all their trouble, all their 
misery.)  Yet in all seasons, while youth and strength stay with them, 
they work on in wind and sun, mist and rain, washing the linen of the 
living and the dead,--white wraps for the newly born, white robes for 
the bride, white shrouds for them that pass into the Great Silence.  And 
the torrent that wears away the ribs of the perpetual hills wears away 
their lives,--sometimes slowly, slowly as black basalt is worn,
--sometimes suddenly,--in the twinkling of an eye.

For a strange danger ever menaces the blanchisseuse,--the treachery 
of the stream!...  Watch them working, and observe how often they turn 
their eyes to the high north-east, to look at Pelée.  Pelée gives them 
warning betimes.  When all is sunny in St. Pierre, and the harbor lies 
blue as lapis-lazuli, there may be mighty rains in the region of the 
great woods and the valleys of the higher peaks; and thin streams swell 
to raging floods which burst suddenly from the altitudes, rolling down 
rocks and trees and wreck of forests, uplifting crags, devastating 
slopes.  And sometimes, down the ravine of the Roxelane, there comes a 
roar as of eruption, with a rush of foaming water like a moving 
mountain-wall; and bridges and buildings vanish with its passing.  In 
1865 the Savane, high as it lies above the river-bed, was flooded;--and 
all the bridges were swept into the sea.

So the older and wiser blanchisseuses keep watch upon Pelée; and if a 
blackness gather over it, with lightnings breaking through, then--
however fair the sun shine on St. Pierre--the alarm is given, the miles 
of bleaching linen vanish from the rocks in a few minutes, and every 
one leaves the channel.  But it has occasionally happened that Pelée 
gave no such friendly signal before the river rose: thus lives have 
been lost.  Most of the blanchisseuses are swimmers, and good ones,--I 
have seen one of these girls swim almost out of sight in the harbor, 
during an idle hour;--but no swimmer has any chances in a rising of the 
Roxelane: all overtaken by it are stricken by rocks and drift;--_yo 
crazé_, as a creole term expresses it,--a term signifying to crush, to 
bray, to dash to pieces.

... Sometimes it happens that one who has been absent at home for a 
brief while returns to the river only to meet her comrades fleeing 
from it,--many leaving their linen behind them.  But she will not 
abandon the linen intrusted to her: she makes a run for it,--in spite 
of warning screams,--in spite of the vain clutching of kind rough 
fingers.  She gains the river-bed;--the flood has already reached her 
waist, but she is strong; she reaches her linen,--snatches it up, piece 
by piece, scattered as it is--"one!--two!--five!--seven!"--there is a 
roaring in her ears--"eleven!--thirteen!" she has it all... but now 
the rocks are moving!  For one instant she strives to reach the steps, 
only a few yards off;--another, and the thunder of the deluge is upon 
her,--and the crushing crags,--and the spinning trees.... 

Perhaps before sundown some canotier may find her floating far in the 
bay,--drifting upon her face in a thousand feet of water,--with faithful 
dead hands still holding fast the property of her employer. 




CHAPTER VII.
LA PELÉE.



I.


The first attempt made to colonize Martinique was abandoned 
almost as soon as begun, because the leaders of the expedition 
found the country "too rugged and too mountainous," and were 
"terrified by the prodigious number of serpents which covered its 
soil."  Landing on June 25, 1635, Olive and Duplessis left the 
island after a few hours' exploration, or, rather, observation, 
and made sail for Guadeloupe,--according to the quaint and most 
veracious history of Père Dutertre, of the Order of Friars-
Preachers.

A single glance at the topographical map of Martinique would 
suffice to confirm the father's assertion that the country was 
found to be _trop haché et trop montueux_: more than two-thirds of 
it is peak and mountain;--even to-day only 42,445 of its supposed 
98,782 hectares have been cultivated; and on page 426 of the last 
"Annuaire" (1887) I find the statement that in the interior there 
are extensive Government lands of which the area is "not exactly 
known."  Yet mountainous as a country must be which--although 
scarcely forty-nine miles long and twenty miles in average 
breadth--remains partly unfamiliar to its own inhabitants after 
nearly three centuries of civilization (there are not half a 
dozen creoles who have travelled all over it), only two elevations 
in Martinique bear the name _montagne_.  These are La Montagne 
Pelée, in the north, and La Montagne du Vauclin, in the south.  
The term _morne_, used throughout the French West Indian colonies 
to designate certain altitudes of volcanic origin, a term rather  
unsatisfactorily translated in certain dictionaries as "a small 
mountain," is justly applied to the majority of Martinique hills, 
and unjustly sometimes even to its mightiest elevation,--called 
Morne Pelé, or Montagne Pelée, or simply "La Montagne," 
according, perhaps, to the varying degree of respect it inspires in 
different minds.  But even in the popular nomenclature one finds the 
orography of Martinique, as well as of other West Indian islands, regularly 
classified by _pitons_, _mornes_, and _monts_ or _montagnes_. Mornes 
usually have those beautiful and curious forms which bespeak volcanic 
origin even to the unscientific observer: they are most often pyramidal 
or conoid up to a certain height; but have summits either rounded or 
truncated;--their sides, green with the richest vegetation, rise 
from valley-levels and coast-lines with remarkable abruptness, 
and are apt to be curiously ribbed or wrinkled.  The pitons, far 
fewer in number, are much more fantastic in form;--volcanic 
cones, or volcanic upheavals of splintered strata almost at right 
angles,--sometimes sharp of line as spires, and mostly too steep 
for habitation.  They are occasionally mammiform, and so 
symmetrical that one might imagine them artificial creations,--
particularly when they occur in pairs.  Only a very important 
mass is dignified by the name _montagne_... there are, as I have 
already observed, but two thus called in all Martinique,--Pelée, 
the head and summit of the island; and La Montagne du Vauclin, 
in the south-east.  Vauclin is inferior in height and bulk to 
several mornes and pitons of the north and north-west,--and owes 
its distinction probably to its position as centre of a system of 
ranges: but in altitude and mass and majesty, Pelée far outranks 
everything in the island, and well deserves its special 
appellation, "La Montagne."

No description could give the reader a just idea of what
Martinique is, configuratively, so well as the simple statement 
that, although less than fifty miles in extreme length, and less 
than twenty in average breadth, there are upwards of _four hundred 
mountains_ in this little island, or of what at least might be 
termed mountains elsewhere.  These again are divided and 
interpeaked, and bear hillocks on their slopes;--and the lowest 
hillock in Martinique is fifty metres high.  Some of the peaks 
are said to be totally inaccessible: many mornes are so on one or 
two or even three sides.  Ninety-one only of the principal 
mountains have been named; and among these several bear similar 
appellations: for example, there are two Mornes-Rouges, one in 
the north and one in the south; and there are four or five Gros-
Mornes.  All the elevations belong to six great groups, 
clustering about or radiating from six ancient volcanic centres,--
1. La Pelée;  2. Pitons du Carbet;  3. Roches Carrées; [27]  
4. Vauclin;  5. Marin;  6. Morne de la Plaine.  
Forty-two distinct mountain-masses belong to the Carbet system 
alone,--that of Pelée including but thirteen; and the whole 
Carbet area has a circumference of 120,000 metres,--much more 
considerable than that of Pelée.  But its centre is not one 
enormous pyramidal mass like that of "La Montagne": it is marked 
only by a group of five remarkable porphyritic cones,--the Pitons 
of Carbet;--while Pelée, dominating everything, and fiIling the 
north, presents an aspect and occupies an area scarcely inferior 
to those of AEtna. 

--Sometimes, while looking at La Pelée, I have wondered if the 
enterprise of the great Japanese painter who made the Hundred Views 
of Fusiyama could not be imitated by some creole artist equally proud 
of his native hills, and fearless of the heat of the plains or the 
snakes of the slopes.  A hundred views of Pelée might certainly be made: 
for the enormous mass is omnipresent to dwellers in the northern part of 
the island, and can be seen from the heights of the most southern mornes.
It is visible from almost any part of St. Pierre,--which nestles 
in a fold of its rocky skirts.  It overlooks all the island 
ranges, and overtops the mighty Pitons of Carbet by a thousand 
feet;--you can only lose sight of it by entering gorges, or 
journeying into the valleys of the south....
But the peaked character of the whole country, and the hot moist 
climate, oppose any artistic undertaking of the sort suggested: 
even photographers never dream of taking views in the further 
interior; nor on the east coast.  Travel, moreover, is no less 
costly than difficult: there are no inns or places of rest for 
tourists; there are, almost daily, sudden and violent rains, 
which are much dreaded (since a thorough wetting, with the pores 
all distended by heat, may produce pleurisy); and there are 
serpents!  The artist willing to devote a few weeks of travel and 
study to Pelée, in spite of these annoyances and risks, has not 
yet made his appearance in Martinique. [28]

[Illustration: FOOT OF PELÉE, BEHIND THE QUARTER OF THE FORT.]

Huge as the mountain looks from St. Pierre, the eye under-
estimates its bulk; and when you climb the mornes about the town, 
Labelle, d'Orange, or the much grander Parnasse, you are 
surprised to find how much vaster Pelée appears from these 
summits.  Volcanic hills often seem higher, by reason of their 
steepness, than they really are; but Pelée deludes in another 
manner.  From surrounding valleys it appears lower, and from 
adjacent mornes higher than it really is: the illusion in the 
former case being due to the singular slope of its contours, and 
the remarkable breadth of its base, occupying nearly all the 
northern end of the island; in the latter, to misconception of 
the comparative height of the eminence you have reached, which 
deceives by the precipitous pitch of its sides.  Pelée is not 
very remarkable in point of altitude, however: its height was 
estimated by Moreau de Jonnes at 1600 metres; and by others at 
between 4400 and 4500 feet.  The sum of the various imperfect 
estimates made justify the opinion of Dr. Cornilliac that the 
extreme summit is over 5000 feet above the sea--perhaps 5200. [29]
The clouds of the summit afford no indication to eyes accustomed 
to mountain scenery in northern countries; for in these hot moist 
latitudes clouds hang very low, even in fair weather.  But in 
bulk Pelée is grandiose: it spurs out across the island from the 
Caribbean to the Atlantic: the great chains of mornes about it are
merely counter-forts; the Piton Pierreux and the Piton 
Pain-à-Sucre (_Sugar-loaf Peak_), and other elevations varying from 
800 to 2100 feet, are its volcanic children.  Nearly thirty 
rivers have their birth in its flanks,--besides many thermal 
springs, variously mineralized.  As the culminant point of the 
island, Pelée is also the ruler of its meteorologic life,--cloud-
herder, lightning-forger, and rain-maker.  During clear weather 
you can see it drawing to itself all the white vapors of the 
land,--robbing lesser eminences of their shoulder-wraps and head-
coverings;--though the Pitons of Carbet (3700 feet) usually 
manage to retain about their middle a cloud-clout,--a _lantchô_.
You will also see that the clouds run in a circle about Pelée,
--gathering bulk as they turn by continual accessions from other points.  
If the crater be totally bare in the morning, and shows the broken 
edges very sharply against the blue, it is a sign of foul rather 
than of fair weather to come. [30]

Even in bulk, perhaps, Pelée might not impress those who know 
the stupendous scenery of the American ranges; but none could 
deny it special attractions appealing to the senses of form and 
color.  There is an imposing fantasticality in its configuraion 
worth months of artistic study: one does not easily tire of 
watching its slopes undulating against the north sky,--and the 
strange jagging of its ridges,--and the succession of its 
terraces crumbling down to other terraces, which again break into 
ravines here and there bridged by enormous buttresses of basalt: 
an extravaganza of lava-shapes overpitching and cascading into 
sea and plain.  All this is verdant wherever surfaces catch the sun: 
you can divine what the frame is only by examining the dark and 
ponderous rocks of the torrents.  And the hundred tints of this 
verdure do not form the only colorific charms of the landscape. 
Lovely as the long upreaching slopes of cane are,--and the 
loftier bands of forest-growths, so far off that they look like 
belts of moss,--and the more tender-colored masses above, 
wrinkling and folding together up to the frost-white clouds of 
the summit,--you will be still more delighted by the shadow-
colors,--opulent, diaphanous.  The umbrages lining the wrinkles, 
collecting in the hollows, slanting from sudden projections, 
may become before your eyes almost as unreally beautiful as the 
landscape colors of a Japanese fan;--they shift most generally 
during the day from indigo-blue through violets and paler blues 
to final lilacs and purples; and even the shadows of passing 
clouds have a faint blue tinge when they fall on Pelée.

... Is the great volcano dead? ... Nobody knows.  Less than forty 
years ago it rained ashes over all the roofs of St. Pierre;--
within twenty years it has uttered mutterings.  For the moment, 
it appears to sleep; and the clouds have dripped into the cup of 
its highest crater till it has become a lake, several hundred 
yards in circumference.  The crater occupied by this lake--called 
L'Étang, or "The Pool"--has never been active within human 
memory.  There are others,--difficult and dangerous to visit 
because opening on the side of a tremendous gorge; and it was one 
of these, no doubt, which has always been called _La Souffrière_, 
that rained ashes over the city in 1851.

The explosion was almost concomitant with the last of a series 
of earthquake shocks, which began in the middle of May and ended in 
the first week of August,--all much more severe in Guadeloupe 
than in Martinique. In the village Au Prêcheur, lying at the foot of 
the western slope of Pelée, the people had been for some time 
complaining of an oppressive stench of sulphur,--or, as chemists 
declared it, sulphuretted hydrogen,--when, on the 4th of August, 
much trepidation was caused by a long and appalling noise from 
the  mountain,--a noise compared by planters on the neighboring 
slopes to the hollow roaring made by a packet blowing off steam, 
but infinitely louder.  These sounds continued through intervals 
until the following night, sometimes deepening into a rumble like 
thunder.  The mountain guides declared: "_C'est la Souffrière qui 
bout!_" (the Souffrière is boiling); and a panic seized the negroes 
of the neighboring plantations.  At 11 P.M. the noise was terrible 
enough to fill all St. Pierre with alarm; and on the morning of the 
6th the city presented an unwonted aspect, compared by creoles who 
had lived abroad to the effect of a great hoar-frost.  All the roofs, 
trees, balconies, awnings, pavements, were covered with a white 
layer of ashes.  The same shower blanched the roofs of Morne 
Rouge, and all the villages about the chief city,--Carbet, Fond- 
Corré, and Au Prêcheur; also whitening the neighboring country: 
the mountain was sending up columns of smoke or vapor; and it was 
noticed that the Rivière Blanche, usually of a glaucous color, 
ran black into the sea like an outpouring of ink, staining its 
azure for a mile.  A committee appointed to make an 
investigation, and prepare an official report, found that a 
number of rents had either been newly formed, or suddenly become 
active, in the flank of the mountain: these were all situated in 
the immense gorge sloping westward from that point now known as 
the Morne de la Croix.  Several were visited with much 
difficulty,--members of the commission being obliged to lower 
themselves down a succession of precipices with cords of lianas; 
and it is noteworthy that their researches were prosecuted in 
spite of the momentary panic created by another outburst.  It was  
satisfactorily ascertained that the main force of the explosion 
had been exerted within a perimeter of about one thousand yards; 
that various hot springs had suddenly gushed out,--the temperature 
of the least warm being about 37° Réaumur (116° F.);--that there 
was no change in the configuration of the mountain;--and that the 
terrific sounds had been produced only by the violent outrush of 
vapor and ashes from some of the rents.  In hope of allaying the 
general alarm, a creole priest climbed the summit of the volcano, 
and there planted the great cross which gives the height its name 
and still remains to commemorate the event. 

There was an extraordinary emigration of serpents from the high woods, 
and from the higher to the lower plantations,--where they were killed by 
thousands.  For a long time Pelée continued to send up an immense column of 
white vapor; but there were no more showers of ashes; and the 
mountain gradually settled down to its present state of quiescence.



II.


From St. Pierre, trips to Pelée can be made by several routes;
--the most popular is that by way of Morne Rouge and the 
Calebasse; but the summit can be reached in much less time by 
making the ascent from different points along the coast-road to 
Au Prêcheur,--such as the Morne St. Martin, or a well-known path 
further north, passing near the celebrated hot springs (_Fontaines 
Chaudes_).  You drive towards Au Prêcheur, and begin the ascent on 
foot, through cane-plantations....  The road by which you follow 
the north-west coast round the skirts of Pelée is very 
picturesque:--you cross the Roxelane, the Rivière des Pères, the 
Rivière Sèche (whose bed is now occupied only by a motionless torrent 
of rocks);--passing first by the suburb of Fond-Corré, with its cocoa 
groves, and broad beach of iron-gray sand,--a bathing resort;--then 
Pointe Prince, and the Fond de Canonville, somnolent villages that 
occupy wrinkles in the hem of Pelée's lava robe.  The drive ultimately 
rises and lowers over the undulations of the cliff, and is well 
shadowed along the greater part of its course: you will admire 
many huge _fromagers_, or silk-cotton trees, various heavy lines of 
tamarinds, and groups of _flamboyants_ with thick dark feathery foliage, 
and cassia-trees with long pods pending and blackening from every branch, 
and hedges of _campêche_, or logwood, and calabash-trees, and multitudes 
of the pretty shrubs bearing the fruit called in creole _raisins-bò-lanmè_, 
or "sea-side grapes."  Then you reach Au Prêcheur: a very antiquated village, 
which boasts a stone church and a little public square with a fountain 
in it.  If you have time to cross the Rivière du Prêcheur, a little 
further on, you can obtain a fine view of the coast, which, rising suddenly 
to a grand  altitude, sweeps round in a semicircle over the Village of 
the Abysses (_Aux Abymes_),--whose name was doubtless suggested by the 
immense depth of  the sea at that point....  It was under the 
shadow of those cliffs that the  Confederate cruiser _Alabama_ 
once hid herself, as a fish hides in the shadow  of a rock, and 
escaped from her pursuer, the _Iroquois_.  She had long been  
blockaded in the harbor of St. Pierre by the Northern man-of-
war,--anxiously awaiting a chance to pounce upon her the instant she 
should leave French  waters;--and various Yankee vessels in port were 
to send up rocket-signals  should the _Alabama_ attempt to escape under 
cover of darkness.  But one night the privateer took a creole pilot on 
board, and steamed out southward, with all her lights masked, and her 
chimneys so arranged that neither smoke nor sparks could betray her to 
the enemy in the offing. However, some Yankee vessels near enough to discern 
her movements through the darkness at once shot rockets south; and the 
_Iroquois_ gave chase.  The _Alabama_ hugged the high shore as far as Carbet, 
remaining quite invisible in the shadow of it: then she suddenly turned and 
recrossed the harbor.  Again Yankee rockets betrayed her 
manreuvre to the _Iroquois;_ but she gained Aux Abymes, laid 
herself close to the enormous black cliff, and there remained 
indistinguishable; the _Iroquois_ steamed by north without seeing 
her.  Once the Confederate cruiser found her enemy well out of 
sight, she put her pilot ashore and escaped into the Dominica 
channel.  The pilot was a poor mulatto, who thought himself well 
paid with five hundred francs!

... The more popular route to Pelée by way of Morne Rouge is 
otherwise interesting...  Anybody not too much afraid of the 
tropic sun must find it a delightful experience to follow the 
mountain roads leading to the interior from the city, as all the 
mornes traversed by them command landscapes of extraordinary 
beauty.  According to the zigzags of the way, the scenery shifts 
panoramically.  At one moment you are looking down into valleys a 
thousand feet below, at another, over luminous leagues of meadow 
or cane-field, you see some far crowding of cones and cratered 
shapes;--sharp as the teeth of a saw, and blue as sapphire,--with 
further eminences ranging away through pearline color to high-
peaked remotenesses of vapory gold.  As you follow the windings 
of such a way as the road of the Morne Labelle, or the Morne 
d'Orange, the city disappears and reappears many times,--always 
diminishing, till at last it looks no bigger than a chess-board.  
Simultaneously distant mountain shapes appear to unfold and 
lengthen;--and always, always the sea rises with your rising.  
Viewed at first from the bulwark (_boulevard_) commanding the 
roofs of the town, its horizon-line seemed straight and keen as 
a knife-edge;--but as you mount higher, it elongates, begins to 
curve; and gradually the whole azure expanse of water broadens 
out roundly like a disk.  From certain very lofty summits further 
inland you behold the immense blue circle touching the sky all round 
you,--except where a still greater altitude, like that of Pelée or 
the Pitons, breaks the ring; and this high vision of the sea has a 
phantasmal effect hard to describe, and due to vapory conditions of the 
atmosphere.  There are bright cloudless days when, even as seen 
from the city, the ocean-verge has a spectral vagueness; but on 
any day, in any season, that you ascend to a point dominating the 
sea by a thousand feet, the rim of the visible world takes a 
ghostliness that startles,--because the prodigious light gives to 
all near shapes such intense sharpness of outline and vividness 
of color.

Yet wonderful as are the perspective beauties of those mountain 
routes from which one can keep St. Pierre in view, the road to 
Morne Rouge surpasses them, notwithstanding that it almost 
immediately leaves the city behind, and out of sight.  Excepting 
only _La Trace_,--the long route winding over mountain ridges and 
between primitive forests south to Fort-de-France,--there is 
probably no section of national highway in the island more 
remarkable than the Morne Rouge road.  Leaving the Grande Rue by 
the public conveyance, you drive out through the Savane du Fort, 
with its immense mango and tamarind trees, skirting the Roxelane.  
Then reaching the boulevard, you pass high Morne Labelle,--and 
then the Jardin des Plantes on the right, where white-stemmed 
palms are lifting their heads two hundred feet,--and beautiful 
Parnasse, heavily timbered to the top;--while on your left the 
valley of the Roxelane shallows up, and Pelée shows less and less 
of its tremendous base.  Then you pass through the sleepy, palmy, 
pretty Village of the Three Bridges (_Trois Ponts_),--where a Fahrenheit 
thermometer shows already three degrees of temperature lower than 
at St. Pierre;--and the national road, making a sharp turn to the 
right, becomes all at once very steep--so steep that the horses 
can mount only at a walk.  Around and between the wooded hills it 
ascends by zigzags,--occasionally overlooking the sea,--sometimes 
following the verges of ravines.  Now and then you catch glimpses 
of the road over which you passed half an hour before undulating far 
below, looking narrow as a tape-line,--and of the gorge of the 
Roxelane,--and of Pelée, always higher, now thrusting out long spurs 
of green and purple land into the sea. You drive under cool shadowing 
of mountain woods--under waving bamboos like enormous ostrich feathers 
dyed green,--and exquisite tree-ferns thirty to forty feet high,--and 
imposing ceibas, with strangely buttressed trunks,--and all 
sorts of broad-leaved forms: cachibous, balisiers, bananiers....  
Then you reach a plateau covered with cane, whose yellow expanse 
is bounded on the right by a demilune of hills sharply angled as 
crystals;--on the left it dips seaward; and before you Pelée's 
head towers over the shoulders of intervening mornes.  A strong 
cool wind is blowing; and the horses can trot a while.  Twenty 
minutes, and the road, leaving the plateau, becomes steep again;
--you are approaching the volcano over the ridge of a colossal 
spur.  The way turns in a semicircle,--zigzags,--once more 
touches the edge of a valley,--where the clear fall might be 
nearly fifteen hundred feet.  But narrowing more and more, the 
valley becomes an ascending gorge; and across its chasm, upon the 
brow of the opposite cliff, you catch sight of houses and a spire 
seemingly perched on the verge, like so many birds'-nests,--the 
village of Morne Rouge.  It is two thousand feet above the sea;
and Pelée, although looming high over it, looks a trifle less 
lofty now.

One's first impression of Morne Rouge is that of a single 
straggling street of gray-painted cottages and shops (or rather 
booths), dominated by a plain church, with four pursy-bodied 
palmistes facing the main porch. Nevertheless, Morne Rouge is not 
a small place, considering its situation;--there are nearly five 
thousand inhabitants; but in order to find out where they live, 
you must leave the public road, which is on a ridge, and explore 
the high-hedged lanes leading down from it on either side.  Then 
you will find a veritable city of little wooden cottages,--each 
screened about with banana-trees, Indian-reeds, and _pommiers-
roses_.  You will also see a number of handsome private 
residences--country-houses of wealthy merchants; and you will 
find that the church, though uninteresting exteriorly, is rich 
and impressive within: it is a famous shrine, where miracles are 
alleged to have been wrought.  Immense processions periodically 
wend their way to it from St. Pierre,--starting at three or four 
o'clock in the morning, so as to arrive before the sun is well 
up....  But there are no woods here,--only fields.  An odd tone 
is given to the lanes by a local custom of planting hedges of 
what are termed _roseaux d' Inde_, having a dark-red foliage; and 
there is a visible fondness for ornamental plants with crimson 
leaves.  Otherwise the mountain summit is somewhat bare; trees 
have a scrubby aspect.  You must have noticed while ascending 
that the palmistes became smaller as they were situated higher: 
at Morne Rouge they are dwarfed,--having a short stature, and 
very thick trunks.

In spite of the fine views of the sea, the mountain-heights, 
and the valley-reaches, obtainable from Morne Rouge, the place 
has a somewhat bleak look.  Perhaps this is largely owing to the 
universal slate-gray tint of the buildings,--very melancholy by 
comparison with the apricot and banana yellows tinting the walls 
of St. Pierre.  But this cheerless gray is the only color which 
can resist the climate of Morne Rouge, where people are literally 
dwelling in the clouds.  Rolling down like white smoke from Pelée, 
these often create a dismal fog; and Morne Rouge is certainly one 
of the rainiest places in the world.  When it is dry everywhere else, 
it rains at Morne Rouge.  It rains at least three hundred and sixty 
days and three hundred and sixty nights of the year. It rains almost 
invariably once in every twenty-four hours; but oftener five or 
six times.  The dampness is phenomenal.  All mirrors become 
patchy; linen moulds in one day; leather turns while woollen 
goods feel as if saturated with moisture; new brass becomes 
green; steel crumbles into red powder; wood-work rots with 
astonishing rapidity; salt is quickly transformed into brine; and 
matches, unless kept in a very warm place, refuse to light.  
Everything moulders and peels and decomposes; even the frescos of 
the church-interior lump out in immense blisters; and a 
microscopic vegetation, green or brown, attacks all exposed 
surfaces of timber or stone.  At night it is often really cold;--
and it is hard to understand how, with all this dampness and 
coolness and mouldiness, Morne Rouge can be a healthy place. But 
it is so, beyond any question: it is the great Martinique resort 
for invalids; strangers debilitated by the climate of Trinidad or 
Cayenne come to it for recuperation.

[Illustration: VILLAGE OF MORNE ROUGE, MARTINIQUE]

Leaving the village by the still uprising road, you will be 
surprised, after a walk of twenty minutes northward, by a 
magnificent view,--the vast valley of the Champ-Flore, watered 
by many torrents, and bounded south and west by double, triple, 
and quadruple surging of mountains,--mountains broken, peaked, 
tormented-looking, and tinted (_irisées_, as the creoles say) with 
all those gem-tones distance gives in a West Indian atmosphere.  
Particularly impressive is the beauty of one purple cone in the 
midst of this many-colored chain: the Piton Gélé. All the valley-
expanse of rich land is checkered with alternations of meadow and 
cane and cacao,--except northwestwardly, where woods billow out of 
sight beyond a curve.  Facing this landscape, on your left, are mornes 
of various heights,--among which you will notice La Calebasse, 
overtopping everything but Pelée shadowing behind it;--and a 
grass-grown road leads up westward from the national highway 
towards the volcano.  This is the Calebasse route to Pelée.



III.


We must be very sure of the weather before undertaking the ascent 
of Pelée; for if one merely selects some particular leisure day 
in advance, one's chances of seeing anything from the summit are 
considerably less than an astronomer's chances of being able to 
make a satisfactory observation of the next transit of Venus.  
Moreover, if the heights remain even partly clouded, it may not 
be safe to ascend the Morne de la Croix,--a cone-point above the 
crater itself, and ordinarily invisible from below.  And a 
cloudless afternoon can never be predicted from the aspect of 
deceitful Pelée: when the crater edges are quite clearly cut 
against the sky at dawn, you may be tolerably certain there will 
be bad weather during the day; and when they are all bare at 
sundown, you have no good reason to believe they will not be 
hidden next morning.  Hundreds of tourists, deluded by such 
appearances, have made the weary trip in vain,--found themselves 
obliged to return without having seen anything but a thick white 
cold fog.  The sky may remain perfectly blue for weeks in every 
other direction, and Pelée's head remain always hidden.  In order 
to make a successful ascent, one must not wait for a period of dry 
weather,--one might thus wait for years!  What one must look for 
is a certain periodicity in the diurnal rains,--a regular 
alternation of sun and cloud; such as characterizes a certain 
portion of the _hivernage_, or rainy summer season, when mornings 
and evenings are perfectly limpid, with very heavy sudden rains 
in the middle of the day.  It is of no use to rely on the 
prospect of a dry spell.  There is no really dry weather, 
notwithstanding there recurs--in books--a _Saison de la 
Sécheresse_.  In fact, there are no distinctly marked seasons in 
Martinique:--a little less heat and rain from October to July, a 
little more rain and heat from July to October: that is about all 
the notable difference!  Perhaps the official notification by 
cannon-shot that the hivernage, the season of heavy rains and 
hurricanes, begins on July 15th, is no more trustworthy than the 
contradictory declarations of Martinique authors who have 
attempted to define the vague and illusive limits of the tropic 
seasons. Still, the Government report on the subject is more 
satisfactory than any: according to the "Annuaire," there are 
these seasons:--
1.  _Saison fraîche_.  December to March.  Rainfall, about 475 
millimetres.
2.  _Saison chaude et sèche_.  April to July.  Rainfall, about 140 
millimetres.
3.  _Saison chaude et pluvieuse_.  July to November. Rainfall 
average, 121 millimetres.

Other authorities divide the _saison chaude et sèche_ into two 
periods, of which the latter, beginning about May, is called the 
_Renouveau_; and it is at least true that at the time indicated 
there is a great burst of vegetal luxuriance. But there is always 
rain, there are almost always clouds, there is no possibility of 
marking and dating the beginnings and the endings of weather in 
this country where the barometer is almost useless, and the 
thermometer mounts in the sun to twice the figure it reaches in 
the shade.  Long and patient observation has, however, established 
the fact that during the hivernage, if the heavy showers have a 
certain fixed periodicity,--falling at midday or in the heated part 
of the afternoon,--Pelée is likely to be clear early in the morning; 
and by starting before daylight one can then have good chances of 
a fine view from the summit.



IV.


At five o'clock of a September morning, warm and starry, I leave 
St. Pierre in a carriage with several friends, to make the ascent 
by the shortest route of all,--that of the Morne St. Martin, one 
of Pelée's western counterforts.  We drive north along the shore 
for about half an hour; then, leaving the coast behind, pursue a 
winding mountain road, leading to the upper plantations, between 
leagues of cane.  The sky begins to brighten as we ascend, and a 
steely glow announces that day has begun on the other side of the 
island.  Miles up, the crest of the volcano cuts sharp as a saw-
edge against the growing light: there is not a cloud visible. 
Then the light slowly yellows behind the vast cone; and one of 
the most beautiful dawns I ever saw reveals on our right an 
immense valley through which three rivers flow.  This deepens 
very quickly as we drive; the mornes about St. Pierre, beginning 
to catch the light, sink below us in distance; and above them, 
southwardly, an amazing silouette begins to rise,--all blue,--a 
mountain wall capped with cusps and cones, seeming high as Pelée 
itself in the middle, but sinking down to the sea-level westward.  
There are a number of extraordinary acuminations; but the most 
impressive shape is the nearest,--a tremendous conoidal mass 
crowned with a group of peaks, of which two, taller than the 
rest, tell their name at once by the beauty of their forms,--
the Pitons of Carbet.  They wear their girdles of cloud, though 
Pelée is naked to-day.  All this is blue: the growing light only 
deepens the color, does not dissipate it;--but in the nearer valleys 
gleams of tender yellowish green begin to appear.  Still the sun has 
not been able to show himself;--it will take him some time yet to 
climb Pelée. 

Reaching the last plantation, we draw rein in a village of small wooden 
cottages,--the quarters of the field hands,--and receive from the 
proprietor, a personal friend of my friends, the kindest welcome.  At 
his house we change clothing and prepare for the journey;--he provides 
for our horses, and secures experienced guides for us,--two young colored 
men belonging to the plantation.  Then we begin the ascent.  The 
guides walk before, barefoot, each carrying a cutlass in his hand 
and a package on his head--our provisions, photographic 
instruments, etc.

The mountain is cultivated in spots up to twenty-five hundred 
feet; and for three-quarters of an hour after leaving the 
planter's residence we still traverse fields of cane and of 
manioc.  The light is now strong in the valley; but we are in the 
shadow of Pelée.  Cultivated fields end at last; the ascending 
path is through wild cane, wild guavas, guinea-grass run mad, and 
other tough growths, some bearing pretty pink blossoms.  The 
forest is before us.  Startled by our approach, a tiny fer-de- 
lance glides out from a bunch of dead wild-cane, almost under the 
bare feet of our foremost guide, who as instantly decapitates it 
with a touch of his cutlass.  It is not quite fifteen inches 
long, and almost the color of the yellowish leaves under which it 
had been hiding....  The conversation turns on snakes as we make 
our first halt at the verge of the woods.

Hundreds may be hiding around us; but a snake never shows 
himself by daylight except under the pressure of sudden alarm.  
We are not likely, in the opinion of all present, to meet with another.  
Every one in the party, except myself, has some curious experience to 
relate.  I hear for the first time, about the alleged inability of the 
trigonocephalus to wound except at a distance from his enemy of 
not less than one-third of his length;--about M. A--, a former 
director of the Jardin des Plantes, who used to boldly thrust his 
arm into holes where he knew snakes were, and pull them out,--
catching them just behind the head and wrapping the tail round 
his arm,--and place them alive in a cage without ever getting 
bitten;--about M. B--, who, while hunting one day, tripped in the 
coils of an immense trigonocephalus, and ran so fast in his 
fright that the serpent, entangled round his leg, could not bite 
him;--about M. C--, who could catch a fer-de-lance by the tail, 
and "crack it like a whip" until the head would fly off ;--about 
an old white man living in the Champ-Flore, whose diet was snake-
meat, and who always kept in his ajoupa "a keg of salted serpents" 
(_yon ka sèpent-salé);--about a monster eight feet long which 
killed, near Morne Rouge, M. Charles Fabre's white cat, but was 
also killed by the cat after she had been caught in the folds of 
the reptile;--about the value of snakes as protectors of the 
sugar-cane and cocoa-shrub against rats;--about an unsuccessful 
effort made, during a plague of rats in Guadeloupe, to introduce 
the fer-de-lance there;--about the alleged power of a monstrous 
toad, the _crapaud-ladre_, to cause the death of the snake that 
swallows it;--and, finally, about the total absence of the 
idyllic and pastoral elements in Martinique literature, as due to 
the presence of reptiles everywhere.  "Even the flora and fauna 
of the country remain to a large extent unknown,"--adds the last 
speaker, an amiable old physician of St. Pierre,--"because the 
existence of the fer-de-lance renders all serious research 
dangerous in the extreme."

My own experiences do not justify my taking part in such a 
conversation;--I never saw alive but two very small specimens of 
the trigonocephalus.  People who have passed even a considerable 
time in Martinique may have never seen a fer-de-lance except in a 
jar of alcohol, or as exhibited by negro snake-catchers, tied 
fast to a bamboo, But this is only because strangers rarely 
travel much in the interior of the country, or find themselves on 
country roads after sundown.  It is not correct to suppose that 
snakes are uncommon even in the neighborhood of St. Pierre: they 
are often killed on the bulwarks behind the city and on the verge 
of the Savane; they have been often washed into the streets by 
heavy rains; and many washer-women at the Roxelane have been 
bitten by them.  It is considered very dangerous to walk about 
the bulwarks after dark;--for the snakes, which travel only at 
night, then descend from the mornes towards the river, The Jardin 
des Plantes shelters great numbers of the reptiles; and only a 
few days prior to the writing of these lines a colored laborer in 
the garden was stricken and killed by a fer-de-lance measuring 
one metre and sixty-seven centimetres in length.  In the interior 
much larger reptiles are sometimes seen: I saw one freshly killed 
measuring six feet five inches, and thick as a man's leg in the 
middle. There are few planters in the island who have not some of 
their hands bitten during the cane-cutting and cocoa-gathering 
seasons;--the average annual mortality among the class of 
_travailleurs_ from serpent bite alone is probably fifty, [31]
--always fine young men or women in the prime of life.  Even 
among the wealthy whites deaths from this cause are less rare 
than might be supposed: I know one gentleman, a rich citizen of 
St, Pierre, who in ten years lost three relatives by the 
trigonocephalus,--the wound having in each case been received in 
the neighborhood of a vein.  When the vein has been pierced, cure 
is impossible.



V.


... We look back over the upreaching yellow fan-spread of cane-
fields, and winding of tortuous valleys, and the sea expanding 
beyond an opening in the west. It has already broadened 
surprisingly, the sea appears to have risen up, not as a 
horizontal plane, but like an immeasurable azure precipice: what 
will it look like when we shall have reached the top? Far down we 
can distinguish a line of field-hands--the whole _atelier_, as it 
is called, of a plantation slowly descending a slope, hewing the 
canes as they go.  There is a woman to every two men, a binder 
(_amarreuse_): she gathers the canes as they are cut down; binds 
them with their own tough long leaves into a sort of sheaf, and 
carries them away on her head;--the men wield their cutlasses so 
beautifully that it is a delight to watch them.  One cannot often 
enjoy such a spectacle nowadays; for the introduction of the 
piece-work system has destroyed the picturesqueness of plantation 
labor throughout the island, with rare exceptions.  Formerly the 
work of cane-cutting resembled the march of an army;--first 
advanced the cutlassers in line, naked to the waist; then the 
amareuses, the women who tied and carried; and behind these the 
ka, the drum,--with a paid _crieur_ or _crieuse_ to lead the song;--
and lastly the black Commandeur, for general.  And in the old 
days, too, it was not unfrequent that the sudden descent of an 
English corsair on the coast converted this soldiery of labor 
into veritable military: more than one attack was repelled by the 
cutlasses of a plantation atelier.

At this height the chatting and chanting can be heard, though 
not distinctly enough to catch the words. Suddenly a voice, 
powerful as a bugle, rings out,--the voice of the Commandeur: he 
walks along the line, looking, with his cutlass under his arm.  I 
ask one of our guides what the cry is:--

--"_Y ka coumandé yo pouend gàde pou sèpent_," he replies. (He is 
telling them to keep watch for serpents.) The nearer the 
cutlassers approach the end of their task, the greater the 
danger: for the reptiles, retreating before them to the last 
clump of cane, become massed there, and will fight desperately.  
Regularly as the ripening-time, Death gathers his toll of human 
lives from among the workers.  But when one falls, another steps 
into the vacant place,--perhaps the Commandeur himself: these 
dark swordsmen never retreat; all the blades swing swiftly as 
before; there is hardly any emotion; the travailleur is a 
fatalist.... [32]



VI.


... We enter the grands-bois,--the primitive forest,--the "high 
woods."

As seen with a field-glass from St. Pierre, these woods present 
only the appearance of a band of moss belting the volcano, and 
following all its corrugations,--so densely do the leafy crests 
intermingle.  But on actually entering them, you find yourself at 
once in green twilight, among lofty trunks uprising everywhere 
like huge pillars wrapped with vines;--and the interspaces 
between these bulks are all occupied by lianas and parasitic 
creepers,--some monstrous,--veritable parasite-trees,--ascending 
at all angles, or dropping straight down from the tallest crests 
to take root again.  The effect in the dim light is that of 
innumerable black ropes and cables of varying thicknesses 
stretched taut from the soil to the tree-tops, and also from 
branch to branch, like rigging.  There are rare and remarkable 
trees here,--acomats, courbarils, balatas, ceibas or fromagers, 
acajous, gommiers;--hundreds have been cut down by charcoal-
makers; but the forest is still grand.  It is to be regretted 
that the Government has placed no restriction upon the barbarous 
destruction of trees by the _charbonniers_, which is going on 
throughout the island.  Many valuable woods are rapidly 
disappearing.  The courbaril, yielding a fine-grained, heavy, 
chocolate-colored timber; the balata, giving a wood even heavier, 
denser, and darker; the acajou, producing a rich red wood, with a 
strong scent of cedar; the bois-de-fer; the bois d'Inde; the 
superb acomat,--all used to flourish by tens of thousands upon 
these volcanic slopes, whose productiveness is eighteen times 
greater than that of the richest European soil.  All Martinique 
furniture used to be made of native woods; and the colored 
cabinet-makers still produce work which would probably astonish 
New York or London manufacturers.  But to-day the island exports 
no more hard woods: it has even been found necessary to import much 
from neighboring islands;--and yet the destruction of forests still 
goes on.  The domestic fabrication of charcoal from forest-trees 
has been estimated at 1,400,000 hectolitres per annum.  Primitive 
forest still covers the island to the extent of 21.37 per cent; 
but to find precious woods now, one must climb heights like those 
of Pelée and Carbet, or penetrate into the mountains of the 
interior.

[Illustration: LA MONTAGNE PELÉE, AS SEEN FROM GRANDE ANSE.]

Most common formerly on these slopes were the gommiers, from 
which canoes of a single piece, forty-five feet long by seven 
wide, used to be made.  There are plenty of gommiers still; but 
the difficulty of transporting them to the shore has latterly 
caused a demand for the gommiers of Dominica.  The dimensions of 
canoes now made from these trees rarely exceed fifteen feet in 
length by eighteen inches in width: the art of making them is an 
inheritance from the ancient Caribs.  First the trunk is shaped 
to the form of the canoe, and pointed at both ends; it is then 
hollowed out.  The width of the hollow does not exceed six inches 
at the widest part; but the cavity is then filled with wet sand, 
which in the course of some weeks widens the excavation by its 
weight, and gives the boat perfect form.  Finally gunwales of 
plank are fastened on; seats are put in--generally four;--and no 
boat is more durable nor more swift.

... We climb.  There is a trace rather than a foot-path;--no 
visible soil, only vegetable detritus, with roots woven over it 
in every direction.  The foot never rests on a flat surface,--
only upon surfaces of roots; and these are covered, like every 
protruding branch along the route, with a slimy green moss, 
slippery as ice.  Unless accustomed to walking in tropical woods, 
one will fall at every step.  In a little while I find it 
impossible to advance.  Our nearest guide, observing my predicament, 
turns, and without moving the bundle upon his head, cuts and trims 
me an excellent staff with a few strokes of his cutlass.  This staff 
not only saves me from dangerous slips, but also serves at times to 
probe the way; for the further we proceed, the vaguer the path becomes.  
It was made by the _chasseurs-de-choux_ (cabbage-hunters),--the 
negro mountaineers who live by furnishing heads of young cabbage-
palm to the city markets; and these men also keep it open,--
otherwise the woods would grow over it in a month.  Two 
chasseurs-de-choux stride past us as we advance, with their 
freshly gathered palm-salad upon their heads, wrapped in cachibou 
or balisier leaves, and tied with lianas.  The palmiste-franc 
easily reaches a stature of one hundred feet; but the young trees 
are so eagerly sought for by the chasseurs-de-choux that in these 
woods few reach a height of even twelve feet before being cut.

... Walking becomes more difficult;--there seems no termination 
to the grands-bois: always the same faint green light, the same 
rude natural stair-way of slippery roots,--half the time hidden 
by fern leaves and vines.  Sharp ammoniacal scents are in the air; 
a dew, cold as ice-water, drenches our clothing.  Unfamiliar 
insects make trilling noises in dark places; and now and then a 
series of soft clear notes ring out, almost like a thrush's 
whistle: the chant of a little tree-frog.  The path becomes more 
and more overgrown; and but for the constant excursions of the 
cabbage-hunters, we should certainly have to cutlass every foot 
of the way through creepers and brambles.  More and more amazing 
also is the interminable interweaving of roots: the whole forest 
is thus spun together--not underground so much as overground.  
These tropical trees do not strike deep, although able to climb 
steep slopes of porphyry and basalt: they send out great far-
reaching webs of roots,--each such web interknotting with others 
all round it, and these in turn with further ones;--while between 
their reticulations lianas ascend and descend: and a nameless 
multitude of shrubs as tough as india-rubber push up, together with 
mosses, grasses, and ferns. Square miles upon square miles of 
woods are thus interlocked and interbound into one mass solid 
enough to resist the pressure of a hurricane; and where there is 
no path already made, entrance into them can only be effected by 
the most dexterous cutlassing.

An inexperienced stranger might be puzzled to understand how 
this cutlassing is done.  It is no easy feat to sever with one 
blow a liana thick as a man's arm; the trained cutlasser does it 
without apparent difficulty: moreover, he cuts horizontally, so 
as to prevent the severed top presenting a sharp angle and 
proving afterwards dangerous.  He never appears to strike hard,--
only to give light taps with his blade, which flickers 
continually about him as he moves.  Our own guides in cutlassing 
are not at all inconvenienced by their loads; they walk perfectly 
upright, never stumble, never slip, never hesitate, and do not 
even seem to perspire: their bare feet are prehensile.  Some 
creoles in our party, habituated to the woods, walk nearly as 
well in their shoes; but they carry no loads.

... At last we are rejoiced to observe that the trees are 
becoming smaller;--there are no more colossal trunks;--there are 
frequent glimpses of sky: the sun has risen well above the peaks, 
and sends occasional beams down through the leaves.  Ten minutes, 
and we reach a clear space,--a wild savane, very steep, above 
which looms a higher belt of woods.  Here we take another short 
rest.

Northward the view is cut off by a ridge covered with herbaceous 
vegetation;--but to the south-west it is open, over a gorge of 
which both sides are shrouded in sombre green-crests of trees 
forming a solid  curtain against the sun.  Beyond the outer and 
lower cliff valley-surfaces appear miles away, flinging up broad 
gleams of cane-gold; further off greens disappear into blues, and 
the fantastic masses of Carbet loom up far higher than before.  
St. Pierre, in a curve of the coast, is a little red-and-yellow 
semicircular streak, less than two inches long.  The interspaces 
between far mountain chains,--masses of pyramids, cones, single 
and double humps, queer blue angles as of raised knees under coverings,
--resemble misty lakes: they are filled with brume;--the sea-line has 
vanished altogether.  Only the horizon, enormously heightened, can 
be discerned as a circling band of faint yellowish light,--auroral, 
ghostly,--almost on a level with the tips of the Pitons.  Between this 
vague horizon and the shore, the sea no longer looks like sea, 
but like a second hollow sky reversed.  All the landscape has 
unreal beauty:--there are no keen lines; there are no definite 
beginnings or endings; the tints are half-colors only;--peaks 
rise suddenly from mysteries of bluish fog as from a flood; land 
melts into sea the same hue.  It gives one the idea of some great 
aquarelle unfinished,--abandoned before tones were deepened and 
details brought out.



VII.


We are overlooking from this height the birthplaces of several 
rivers; and the rivers of Pelée are the clearest and the coolest 
of the island.

From whatever direction the trip be undertaken, the ascent of 
the volcano must be made over some one of those many immense 
ridges sloping from the summit to the sea west, north, and east,
--like buttresses eight to ten miles long,--formed by ancient 
lava-torrents.  Down the deep gorges between them the cloud-fed 
rivers run,--receiving as they descend the waters of countless 
smaller streams gushing from either side of the ridge.  There are also 
cold springs,--one of which furnishes St. Pierre with her _Eau-de-
Gouyave_ (guava-water), which is always sweet, clear, and cool in 
the very hottest weather.  But the water of almost everyone of 
the seventy-five principal rivers of Martinique is cool and clear 
and sweet. And these rivers are curious in their way.  Their 
average fall has been estimated at nine inches to every six 
feet;--many are cataracts;--the Rivière de Case-Navire has a fall 
of nearly 150 feet to every fifty yards of its upper course.  
Naturally these streams cut for themselves channels of immense 
depth.  Where they flow through forests and between mornes, their 
banks vary from 1200 to 1600 feet high,--so as to render their 
beds inaccessible; and many enter the sea through a channel of 
rock with perpendicular walls from 100 to 200 feet high. Their 
waters are necessarily shallow in normal weather; but during 
rain-storms they become torrents thunderous, and terrific beyond 
description.  In order to comprehend their sudden swelling, one 
must know what tropical rain is.  Col. Boyer Peyreleau, in 1823, 
estimated the annual rainfall in these colonies at 150 inches on 
the coast, to 350 on the mountains,--while the annual fall at 
Paris was only eighteen inches.  The character of such rain is 
totally different from that of rain in the temperate zone: the 
drops are enormous, heavy, like hailstones,--one will spatter 
over the circumference of a saucer;--and the shower roars so that 
people cannot hear each other speak without shouting.  When there 
is a true storm, no roofing seems able to shut out the cataract; 
the best-built houses leak in all directions; and objects but a 
short distance off become invisible behind the heavy curtain of 
water.  The ravages of such rain may be imagined!  Roads are cut 
away in an hour;  trees are overthrown as if blown down;--for 
there are few West Indian trees which plunge their roots even as 
low as two feet; they merely extend them over a large diameter; and 
isolated trees will actually slide under rain.  The swelling of 
rivers is so sudden that washer-women at work in the Roxelane 
and other streams have been swept away and drowned without the 
least warning of their danger; the shower occurring seven or 
eight miles off.

Most of these rivers are well stocked with fish, of which the 
_tétart_, _banane_, _loche_, and _dormeur_ are the principal varieties.  
The tétart (best of all) and the loche climb the torrents to the 
height of 2500 and even 3000 feet: they have a kind of pneumatic 
sucker, which enables them to cling to rocks.  Under stones in 
the lower basins crawfish of the most extraordinary size are 
taken; some will measure thirty-six inches from claw to tail. And 
at all the river-mouths, during July and August, are caught vast 
numbers of "_titiri_" [33] --tiny white fish, of which a thousand 
might be put into one teacup.  They are delicious when served 
in oil,--infinitely more delicate than the sardine.  Some regard 
them as a particular species: others believe them to be only the 
fry of larger fish,--as their periodical appearance and disappearance 
would seem to indicate.  They are often swept by millions into 
the city of St. Pierre, with the flow of mountain-water which 
purifies the streets: then you will see them swarming in the gutters, 
fountains, and bathing-basins;--and on Saturdays, when the water 
is temporarily shut off to allow of the pipes being cleansed, the 
titiri may die in the gutters in such numbers as to make the air 
offensive.

[Illustration: ARBORESCENT FERNS ON A MOUNTAIN ROAD.]

The mountain-crab, celebrated for its periodical migrations, 
is also found at considerable heights.  Its numbers appear to 
have been diminished extraordinarily by its consumption as an 
article of negro diet; but in certain islands those armies of 
crabs described by the old writers are still occasionally to be 
seen.  The Père Dutertre relates that in 1640, at St. Christophe, 
thirty sick emigrants, temporarily left on the beach, were 
attacked and devoured alive during the night by a similar species 
of crab.  "They descended from the mountains in such multitude," 
he tells us, "that they were heaped higher than houses over the 
bodies of the poor wretches... whose bones were picked so clean 
that not one speck of flesh could be found upon them."...



VIII.


... We enter the upper belt of woods--green twilight again.  
There are as many lianas as ever: but they are less massive in 
stem;--the trees, which are stunted, stand closer together; and 
the web-work of roots is finer and more thickly spun.  These are 
called the _petits-bois_ (little woods), in contradistinction to 
the grands-bois, or high woods.  Multitudes of balisiers, dwarf-
palms, arborescent ferns, wild guavas, mingle with the lower 
growths on either side of the path, which has narrowed to the 
breadth of a wheel-rut, and is nearly concealed by protruding 
grasses and fern leaves.  Never does the sole of the foot press 
upon a surface large as itself,--always the slippery backs of 
roots crossing at all angles, like loop-traps, over sharp 
fragments of volcanic rock or pumice-stone.  There are abrupt 
descents, sudden acclivities, mud-holes, and fissures;--one 
grasps at the ferns on both sides to keep from falling; and some 
ferns are spiked sometimes on the under surface, and tear the 
hands.  But the barefooted guides stride on rapidly, erect as ever 
under their loads,--chopping off with their cutlasses any branches 
that hang too low.  There are beautiful flowers here,--various 
unfamiliar species of lobelia;--pretty red and yellow blossoms belonging 
to plants which the creole physician calls _Bromeliacoe_; and a 
plant like the _Guy Lussacia_ of Brazil, with violet-red petals.  
There is an indescribable multitude of ferns,--a very museum of 
ferns!  The doctor, who is a great woodsman, says that he never 
makes a trip to the hills without finding some new kind of fern; 
and he had already a collection of several hundred.

The route is continually growing steeper, and makes a number of 
turns and windings: we reach another bit of savane, where we have 
to walk over black-pointed stones that resemble slag;--then more 
petits-bois, still more dwarfed, then another opening.  The naked 
crest of the volcano appears like a peaked precipice, dark-red, 
with streaks of green, over a narrow but terrific chasm on the 
left: we are almost on a level with the crater, but must make a 
long circuit to reach it, through a wilderness of stunted timber 
and bush.  The creoles call this undergrowth _razié_: it is really 
only a prolongation of the low jungle which carpets the high 
forests below, with this difference, that there are fewer 
creepers and much more fern....   Suddenly we reach a black gap in 
the path about thirty inches wide--half hidden by the tangle of 
leaves,--_La Fente_.  It is a volcanic fissure which divides the whole 
ridge, and is said to have no bottom: for fear of a possible slip, 
the guides insist upon holding our hands while we cross it.  Happily 
there are no more such clefts; but there are mud-holes, snags, roots, 
and loose rocks beyond counting.  Least disagreeable are the 
_bourbiers_, in which you sink to your knees in black or gray 
slime.  Then the path descends into open light again;--and we 
find ourselves at the Étang,--in the dead Crater of the Three 
Palmistes.

An immense pool, completely encircled by high green walls of 
rock, which shut out all further view, and shoot up, here and 
there, into cones, or rise into queer lofty humps and knobs.  One 
of these elevations at the opposite side has almost the shape of 
a blunt horn: it is the Morne de la Croix.  The scenery is at 
once imposing and sinister: the shapes towering above the lake 
and reflected in its still surface have the weirdness of things 
seen in photographs of the moon.  Clouds are circling above them 
and between them;--one descends to the water, haunts us a moment, 
blurring everything; then rises again.  We have travelled too 
slow; the clouds have had time to gather.

I look in vain for the Three Palmistes which gave the crater a 
name: they were destroyed long ago.  But there are numbers of 
young ones scattered through the dense ferny covering of the 
lake-slopes,--just showing their heads like bunches of great 
dark-green feathers.

--The estimate of Dr. Rufz, made in 1851, and the estimate of 
the last "Annuaire" regarding the circumference of the lake, are 
evidently both at fault.  That of the "Annuaire," 150 metres, is 
a gross error: the writer must have meant the diameter,--
following Rufz, who estimated the circumference at something over 
300 paces. As we find it, the Étang, which is nearly circular, 
must measure 200 yards across;--perhaps it has been greatly 
swollen by the extraordinary rains of this summer. Our guides say 
that the little iron cross projecting from the water about two 
yards off was high and dry on the shore last season.  At present 
there is only one narrow patch of grassy bank on which we can 
rest, between the water and the walls of the crater.

The lake is perfectly clear, with a bottom of yellowish
shallow mud, which rests--according to investigations made in 
1851--upon a mass of pumice-stone mixed in places with 
ferruginous sand; and the yellow mud itself is a detritus of 
pumice-stone.  We strip for a swim.  

Though at an elevation of nearly 5000 feet, this water is not so 
cold as that of the Roxelane, nor of other rivers of the north-west 
and north-east coasts.  It has an agreeable fresh taste, like dew.  
Looking down into it, I see many larvae of the _maringouin_, or 
large mosquito: no fish.  The maringouins themselves are troublesome,
--whirring around us and stinging.  On striking out for the middle, 
one is surprised to feel the water growing slightly warmer.  The 
committee of investigation in 1851 found the temperature of the 
lake, in spite of a north wind, 20.5 Centigrade, while that of 
the air was but 19 (about 69 F. for the water, and 66.2 for the 
air).  The depth in the centre is over six feet; the average is 
scarcely four. 

Regaining the bank, we prepare to ascend the Morne de la Croix.  
The circular path by which it is commonly reached is now under water; 
and we have to wade up to our waists.  All the while clouds keep 
passing over us in great slow whirls.  Some are white and half-
transparent; others opaque and dark gray;--a dark cloud passing through; 
a white one looks like a goblin. Gaining the opposite shore, we find a 
very rough path over splintered stone, ascending between the thickest 
fern-growths possible to imagine.  The general tone of this fern is dark 
green; but there are paler cloudings of yellow and pink,--;due to 
the varying age of the leaves, which are pressed into a cushion 
three or four feet high, and almost solid enough to sit upon.  
About two hundred and fifty yards from the crater edge, the path 
rises above this tangle, and zigzags up the morne, which now 
appears twice as lofty as from the lake, where we had a curiously 
foreshortened view of it.  It then looked scarcely a hundred feet 
high; it is more than double that.  The cone is green to the top 
with moss,  low grasses, small fern, and creeping pretty plants, 
like violets, with big carmine flowers.  The path is a black line: 
the rock laid bare by it looks as if burned to the core.  We have now 
to use our hands in climbing; but the low thick ferns give a good hold.  
Out of breath, and drenched in perspiration, we reach the apex,--the 
highest point of the island.  But we are curtained about with 
clouds,--moving in dense white and gray masses: we cannot see 
fifty feet away.

The top of the peak has a slightly slanting surface of perhaps 
twenty square yards, very irregular in outline;--southwardly the 
morne pitches sheer into a frightful chasm, between the 
converging of two of those long corrugated ridges already 
described as buttressing the volcano on all sides.  Through a 
cloud-rift we can see another crater-lake twelve hundred feet 
below--said to be five times larger than the Étang we have just 
left: it is also of more irregular outline.  This is called the 
_Étang Sec_, or "Dry Pool," because dry in less rainy seasons.  It 
occupies a more ancient crater, and is very rarely visited: the 
path leading to it is difficult and dangerous,--a natural ladder 
of roots and lianas over a series of precipices.  Behind us the 
Crater of the Three Palmistes now looks no larger than the 
surface on which we stand;--over its further boundary we can see 
the wall of another gorge, in which there is a third crater-lake. 
West and north are green peakings, ridges, and high lava walls 
steep as fortifications.  All this we can only note in the 
intervals between passing of clouds.  As yet there is no 
landscape visible southward;--we sit down and wait.



IX.


... Two crosses are planted nearly at the verge of the 
precipice; a small one of iron; and a large one of wood--probably 
the same put  up by the Abbé Lespinasse during the panic of 
1851, after the eruption.  This has been splintered 
to pieces by a flash of lightning; and the fragments are clumsily 
united with cord.  There is also a little tin plate let into a 
slit in a black post: it bears a date,--_8 Avril, 1867_....  The 
volcanic vents, which were active in 1851, are not visible from 
the peak: they are in the gorge descending from it, at a point 
nearly on a level with the Étang Sec.

The ground gives out a peculiar hollow sound when tapped, and is 
covered with a singular lichen,--all composed of round overlapping 
leaves about one-eighth of an inch in diameter, pale green, and 
tough as fish-scales.  Here and there one sees a beautiful 
branching growth, like a mass of green coral: it is a gigantic 
moss. _Cabane-Jésus_ ("bed of-Jesus") the patois name is: at 
Christmas-time, in all the churches, those decorated cribs in 
which the image of the Child-Saviour is laid are filled with it.  
The creeping crimson violet is also here.  Fire-flies with 
bronze-green bodies are crawling about;-I notice also small 
frogs, large gray crickets, and a species of snail with a black 
shell.  A solitary humming-bird passes, with a beautiful blue 
head, flaming like sapphire.  All at once the peak vibrates to a 
tremendous sound from somewhere below....  It is only a peal of 
thunder; but it startled at first, because the mountain rumbles 
and grumbles occasionally....  From the wilderness of ferns about 
the lake a sweet long low whistle comes--three times;-a 
_siffleur-de-montagne_ has its nest there.  There is a rain-storm 
over the woods beneath us: clouds now hide everything but the 
point on which we rest; the crater of the Palmistes becomes 
invisible.  But it is only for a little while that we are thus 
befogged: a wind comes, blows the clouds over us, lifts them up 
and folds them like a drapery, and slowly whirls them away 
northward.  And for the first time the view is clear over
the intervening gorge,--now spanned by the rocket-leap of a 
perfect rainbow.

... Valleys and mornes, peaks and ravines,--succeeding each 
other swiftly as surge succeeds surge in a storm,--a weirdly 
tossed world, but beautiful as it is weird: all green the 
foreground, with all tints of green, shadowing off to billowy 
distances of purest blue.  The sea-line remains invisible as 
ever: you know where it is only by the zone of pale light ringing 
the double sphericity of sky and ocean.  And in this double blue 
void the island seems to hang suspended: far peaks seem to come 
up from nowhere, to rest on nothing--like forms of mirage.  
Useless to attempt photography;--distances take the same color 
as the sea.  Vauclin's truncated mass is recognizable only by the 
shape of its indigo shadows.  All is vague, vertiginous;--the 
land still seems to quiver with the prodigious forces that up-
heaved it.

High over all this billowing and peaking tower the Pitons of 
Carbet, gem-violet through the vapored miles,--the tallest one 
filleted with a single soft white band of cloud.  Through all the 
wonderful chain of the Antilles you might seek in vain for other 
peaks exquisite of form as these.  Their beauty no less surprises 
the traveller today than it did Columbus three hundred and 
eighty-six years ago, when--on the thirteenth day of June, 1502--
his caravel first sailed into sight of them, and he asked his 
Indian guide the name of the unknown land, and the names of those 
marvellous shapes.  Then, according to Pedro Martyr de Anghiera, 
the Indian answered that the name of the island was Madiana; that 
those peaks had been venerated from immemorial time by the 
ancient peoples of the archipelago as the birthplace of the human 
race; and that the first brown habitants of Madiana, having been 
driven from their natural heritage by the man-eating pirates of 
the south--the cannibal Caribs,--remembered and mourned for their 
sacred mountains, and gave the names of them, for a memory, to 
the loftiest summits of their new home,--Hayti....  Surely never 
was fairer spot hallowed by the legend of man's nursing-place than 
the valley blue-shadowed by those peaks,--worthy, for their gracious 
femininity of shape, to seem the visible breasts of the All-nourishing 
Mother,--dreaming under this tropic sun.

Touching the zone of pale light north-east, appears a beautiful 
peaked silhouette,--Dominica.  We had hoped to perceive Saint 
Lucia; but the atmosphere is too heavily charged with vapor to-
day.  How magnificent must be the view on certain extraordinary 
days, when it reaches from Antigua to the Grenadines--over a 
range of three hundred miles!  But the atmospheric conditions 
which allow of such a spectacle are rare indeed.  As a general 
rule, even in the most unclouded West Indian weather, the 
loftiest peaks fade into the light at a distance of one hundred 
miles.

A sharp ridge covered with fern cuts off the view of the 
northern slopes: one must climb it to look down upon Macouba.  
Macouba occupies the steepest slope of Pelée, and the grimmest 
part of the coast: its little _chef-lieu_ is industrially famous 
for the manufacture of native tobacco, and historically for the 
ministrations of Père Labat, who rebuilt its church.  Little 
change has taken place in the parish since his time.  "Do you 
know Macouba?" asks a native writer;--"it is not Pelion upon 
Ossa, but ten or twelve Pelions side by side with ten or twelve 
Ossae, interseparated by prodigious ravines.  Men can speak to 
each other from places whence, by rapid walking, it would require 
hours to meet;--to travel there is to experience on dry land the 
sensation of the sea." 

With the diminution of the warmth provoked by the exertion of climbing, 
you begin to notice how cool it feels;--you could almost doubt the 
testimony of your latitude.  Directly east is Senegambia: we are well 
south of Timbuctoo and the Sahara,--on a line with southern India.  The 
ocean has cooled the winds; at this altitude the rarity of the 
air is northern; but in the valleys below the vegetation is 
African.  The best alimentary plants, the best forage, the 
flowers of the gardens, are of Guinea;--the graceful date-palms 
are from the Atlas region: those tamarinds, whose thick shade 
stifles all other vegetal life beneath it, are from Senegal. 
Only, in the touch of the air, the vapory colors of distance, the 
shapes of the hills, there is a something not of Africa: that 
strange fascination which has given to the island its poetic 
creole name,--_le Pays de Revenants_.  And the charm is as puissant 
in our own day as it was more than two hundred years ago, when 
Père Dutertre wrote:--"I have never met one single man, nor one 
single woman, of all those who came back therefrom, in whom I 
have not remarked a most passionate desire to return thereunto."

Time and familiarity do not weaken the charm, either for those 
born among these scenes who never voyaged beyond their native 
island, or for those to whom the streets of Paris and the streets 
of St. Pierre are equally well known.  Even at a time when 
Martinique had been forsaken by hundreds of her ruined planters, 
and the paradise-life of the old days had become only a memory to 
embitter exile,--a Creole writes:--

"Let there suddenly open before you one of those vistas, or 
_anses_, with colonnades of cocoa-palm--at the end of which you see 
smoking the chimney of a sugar-mill, and catch a glimpse of the 
hamlet of negro cabins (_cases_);--or merely picture to yourself 
one of the most ordinary, most trivial scenes: nets being hauled 
by two ranks of fishermen; a _canot_ waiting for the _embellie_ to 
make a dash for the beach; even a negro bending under the weight 
of a basket of fruits, and running along the shore to get to market;
--and illuminate that with the light of our sun!  What landscapes!
--O Salvator Rosa!  0 Claude Lorrain,--if I had your pencil!...  
Well do I remember the day on which, after twenty years of absence, 
I found myself again in presence of these wonders;--I feel once more 
the thrill of delight that made all my body tremble, the tears that 
came to my eyes. It was my land, my own land, that appeared so 
beautiful."... [34]



X.


At the beginning, while gazing south, east, west, to the rim of 
the world, all laughed, shouted, interchanged the quick delight 
of new impressions: every face was radiant....  Now all look 
serious;--none speak.  The first physical joy of finding oneself 
on this point in violet air, exalted above the hills, soon yields 
to other emotions inspired by the mighty vision and the colossal 
peace of the heights.  Dominating all, I think, is the 
consciousness of the awful antiquity of what one is looking 
upon,--such a sensation, perhaps, as of old found utterance in 
that tremendous question of the Book of Job:--"_Wast thou brought 
forth before the hills?_"...  And the blue multitude of the peaks, 
the perpetual congregation of the mornes, seem to chorus in the 
vast resplendence,--telling of Nature's eternal youth, and the 
passionless permanence of that about us and beyond us and 
beneath,--until something like the fulness of a great grief 
begins to weigh at the heart....  For all this astonishment of 
beauty, all this majesty of light and form and color, will surely 
endure,--marvellous as now,--after we shall have lain down to 
sleep where no dreams come, and may never arise from the dust of 
our rest to look upon it. [34]




CHAPTER VIII.
'TI CANOTIÉ




I.


One might almost say that commercial time in St. Pierre is 
measured by cannon-shots,--by the signal-guns of steamers.  Every 
such report announces an event of extreme importance to the whole 
population.  To the merchant it is a notification that mails, 
money, and goods have arrived;--to consuls and Government 
officials it gives notice of fees and dues to be collected;--for 
the host of lightermen, longshoremen, port laborers of all 
classes, it promises work and pay;--for all it signifies the 
arrival of food.  The island does not feed itself: cattle, salt 
meats, hams, lard, flour, cheese, dried fish, all come from 
abroad,--particularly from America.  And in the minds of the 
colored population the American steamer is so intimately 
associated with the idea of those great tin cans in which food-
stuffs are brought from the United States, that the onomatope 
applied to the can, because of the sound outgiven by it when 
tapped,--_bom!_--is also applied to the ship itself.  The English 
or French or Belgian steamer, however large, is only known as 
_packett-à_, _batiment-là_; but the American steamer is always the 
"bom-ship"--_batiment-bom-à_, or, the "food-ship"--_batiment-
mangé-à_....  You hear women and men asking each other, as the 
shock of the gun flaps through all the town, "_Mi! gadé ça qui là, 
chè?_" And if the answer be, "_Mais c'est bom-là, chè,--bom-
mangé-à ka rivé_" (Why, it is the bom, dear,--the food-bom that 
has come), great is the exultation.

Again, because of the sound of her whistle, we find a steamer 
called in this same picturesque idiom, _batiment-cône_,--"the 
horn-ship."  There is even a song, of which the refrain is:--

"Bom-là rivé, chè.-
Batiment-cône-là rivé."

... But of all the various classes of citizens, those most 
joyously excited by the coming of a great steamer, whether she be 
a "bom" or not,--are the _'ti canotié_, who swarm out immediately 
in little canoes of their own manufacture to dive for coins which 
passengers gladly throw into the water for the pleasure of 
witnessing the graceful spectacle.  No sooner does a steamer drop 
anchor--unless the water be very rough indeed--than she is 
surrounded by a fleet of the funniest little boats imaginable, 
full of naked urchins screaming creole.

These _'ti canotié_--these little canoe-boys and professional 
divers--are, for the most part, sons of boatmen of color, the 
real _canotiers_.  I cannot find who first invented the _'ti  
canot_: the shape and dimensions of the little canoe are fixed 
according to a tradition several generations old; and no 
improvements upon the original model seem to have ever been 
attempted, with the sole exception of a tiny water-tight box 
contrived sometimes at one end, in which the _palettes_, or 
miniature paddles, and various other trifles may be stowed away.  
The actual cost of material for a canoe of this kind seldom 
exceeds twenty-five or thirty cents; and, nevertheless, the 
number of canoes is not very large--I doubt if there be more than 
fifteen in the harbor;--as the families of Martinique boatmen are 
all so poor that twenty-five sous are difficult to spare, in 
spite of the certainty that the little son can earn fifty times 
the amount within a month after owning a canoe.

For the manufacture of a Canoe an American lard-box
or kerosene-oil box is preferred by reason of its shape; but any 
well-constructed shipping-case of small size would serve the 
purpose.  The top is removed; the sides and the corners of the 
bottom are sawn out at certain angles; and the pieces removed are 
utilized for the sides of the bow and stern,--sometimes also in 
making the little box for the paddles, or palettes, which are 
simply thin pieces of tough wood about the form and size of a 
cigar-box lid.  Then the little boat is tarred and varnished: it 
cannot sink,--though it is quite easily upset.  There are no 
seats.  The boys (there are usually two to each canot) simply 
squat down in the bottom,--facing each other, they can paddle 
with surprising swiftness over a smooth sea; and it is a very 
pretty sight to witness one of their prize contests in racing,--
which take place every 14th of July....

[Illustration: 'TI CANOT.]

... It was five o'clock in the afternoon: the horizon beyond the 
harbor was turning lemon-color;--and a thin warm wind began to 
come in weak puffs from the south-west,--the first breaths to 
break the immobility of the tropical air.  Sails of vessels 
becalmed at the entrance of the bay commenced to flap lazily: 
they might belly after sundown.

The _La Guayra_ was in port, lying well out: her mountainous iron 
mass rising high above the modest sailing craft moored in her 
vicinity,--barks and brigantines and brigs and schooners and 
barkentines.  She had lain before the town the whole afternoon, 
surrounded by the entire squadron of _'ti canots_; and the boys 
were still circling about her flanks, although she had got up 
steam and was lifting her anchor.  They had been very lucky, 
indeed, that afternoon,--all the little canotiers;--and even 
many yellow lads, not fortunate enough to own canoes, had swum 
out to her in hope of sharing the silver shower falling from her 
saloon-deck.  Some of these, tired out, were resting themselves 
by sitting on the slanting cables of neighboring ships.  Perched 
naked thus,--balancing in the sun, against the blue of sky or 
water, their slender bodies took such orange from the mellowing 
light as to seem made of some self-luminous substance,--flesh of 
sea-fairies....

Suddenly the _La Guayra_ opened her steam-throat and uttered such 
a moo that all the mornes cried out for at least a minute after;
--and the little fellows perched on the cables of the sailing 
craft tumbled into the sea at the sound and struck out for shore.  
Then the water all at once burst backward in immense frothing 
swirls from beneath the stern of the steamer; and there arose 
such a heaving as made all the little canoes dance.  The _La 
Guayra_ was moving.  She moved slowly at first, making a great 
fuss as she turned round: then she began to settle down to her 
journey very majestically,--just making the water pitch a little 
behind her, as the hem of a woman's robe tosses lightly at her 
heels while she walks.  

And, contrary to custom, some of the canoes followed after her.  
A dark handsome man, wearing an immense Panama hat, and jewelled 
rings upon his hands, was still throwing money; and still the boys 
dived for it.  But only one of each crew now plunged; for, though the 
_La Guayra_ was yet moving slowly, it was a severe strain to follow 
her, and there was no time to be lost. 

The captain of the little band--black Maximilien, ten years old, and 
his comrade Stéphane--nicknamed _Ti Chabin_, because of his bright 
hair,--a slim little yellow boy of eleven--led the pursuit, crying 
always, "_Encò, Missié,--encò!_"...

The _La Guayra_ had gained fully two hundred yards when the 
handsome passenger made his final largess,--proving himself quite 
an expert in flinging coin.  The piece fell far short of the 
boys, but near enough to distinctly betray a yellow shimmer as it 
twirled to the water.  That was gold!

In another minute the leading canoe had reached the spot, the 
other canotiers voluntarily abandoning the quest,--for it was 
little use to contend against Maximilien and Stéphane, who had 
won all the canoe contests last 14th of July.  Stéphane, who was 
the better diver, plunged. 

He was much longer below than usual, came up at quite a distance, 
panted as he regained the canoe, and rested his arms upon it.  
The water was so deep there, he could not reach the coin the first 
time, though he could see it: he was going to try again,--it was 
gold, sure enough.

--"_Fouinq! ça fond içitt!_" he gasped.

Maximilien felt all at once uneasy.  Very deep water, and 
perhaps sharks.  And sunset not far off!  The _La Guayra_ was 
diminishing in the offing.

--"_Boug-là 'lé fai nou néyé!--laissé y, Stéphane!_" he cried.  
(The fellow wants to drown us.  _Laissé_--leave it alone.)

But Stéphane had recovered breath, and was evidently resolved to 
try again.  It was gold!

--"_Mais ça c'est lò!_"

--"_Assez, non!_" screamed Maximilien.  "_Pa plongé 'ncò, moin 
ka di ou! Ah! foute!_"...

Stéphane had dived again!

... And where were the others?  "_Bon-Dié, gadé oti yo yé!_"  They 
were almost out of sight,--tiny specks moving shoreward....  The 
_La Guayra_ now seemed no bigger than the little packet running 
between St. Pierre and Fort-de-France.

Up came Stéphane again, at a still greater distance than 
before,--holding high the yellow coin in one hand.  He made for 
the canoe, and Maximilien paddled towards him and helped him in.  
Blood was streaming from the little diver's nostrils, and blood 
colored the water he spat from his mouth.

--"_Ah! moin té ka di ou laissé y!_" cried Maximilien, in anger 
and alarm....  "_Gàdé, gàdé sang-à ka coulé nans
nez ou,-nans bouche ou!...Mi oti Iézautt!_" 

_Lèzautt_, the rest, were no longer visible.

--"_Et mi oti nou yé!_" cried Maximilien again.  They had never 
ventured so far from shore.

But Stéphane answered only, "_C'est lò!_"  For the first time in 
his life he held a piece of gold in his fingers.  He tied it up in 
a little rag attached to the string fastened about his waist,--a 
purse of his own invention,--and took up his paddles, coughing 
the while and spitting crimson.

--"_Mi! mi!--mi oti nou yé!_" reiterated Maximilien. "_Bon-Dié!_ 
look where we are!"

The Place had become indistinct;--the light-house, directly 
behind half an hour earlier, now lay well south: the red light 
had just been kindled.  Seaward, in advance of the sinking orange 
disk of the sun, was the _La Guayra_, passing to the horizon.  
There was no sound from the shore: about them a great silence had 
gathered,--the Silence of seas, which is a fear.  Panic seized 
them: they began to paddle furiously.

But St. Pierre did not appear to draw any nearer.  Was it only an 
effect of the dying light, or were they actually moving towards 
the semicircular cliffs of Fond Corré?... Maximilien began to cry.  
The little chabin paddled on,--though the blood was still trickling 
over his breast.

Maximilien screamed out to him:--

--"_Ou pa ka pagayé,--anh?--ou ni bousoin dòmi?_" (Thou dost not 
paddle, eh?--thou wouldst go to sleep?)

--"_Si! moin ka pagayé,--epi fò!_" (I am paddling, and hard, 
too!) responded Stéphane....

--"_Ou ka pagayé!--ou ka menti!_" (Thou art paddling!--thou liest!) 
vociferated Maximilien....  "And the fault is all thine.  I 
cannot, all by myself, make the canoe to go in water like this! 
The fault is all thine: I told thee not to dive, thou stupid!"

--"_Ou fou!_" cried Stéphane, becoming angry.  "_Moin ka pagayé!_" (I 
am paddling.)

--"Beast! never may we get home so!  Paddle, thou lazy!--paddle, 
thou nasty!"

--"_Macaque_ thou!--monkey!"

--"_Chabin!_--must be chabin, for to be stupid so!"

--"Thou black monkey!--thou species of _ouistiti!_"

--"Thou tortoise-of-the-land!--thou slothful more than _molocoye!_"

--"Why, thou cursed monkey, if thou sayest I do not paddle, thou 
dost not know how to paddle!"...

... But Maximilien's whole expression changed: he suddenly 
stopped paddling, and stared before him and behind him at a great 
violet band broadening across the sea northward out of sight; and 
his eyes were big with terror as he cried out:--

--"_Mais ni qui chose qui douôle içitt!_...  There is something 
queer, Stéphane; there is something queer."...

--"Ah! you begin to see now, Maximilien!-it is the current!"

--"A devil-current, Stéphane....  We are drifting: we will go to 
the horizon!"...

To the horizon--"_nou kallé lhorizon!_"--a phrase of terrible 
picturesqueness.... In the creole tongue, "to the horizon" 
signifies to the Great Open--into the measureless sea.

--"_C'est pa lapeine pagayé atouèlement_" (It is no use to paddle 
now), sobbed Maximilien, laying down his palettes.

--"_Si! si!_" said Stéphane, reversing the motion: "paddle with 
the current."

--"With the current!  It runs to La Dominique!"

--"_Pouloss_," phlegmatically returned Stéphane,--"_ennou!_--let us 
make for La Dominique!"

--"Thou fool!--it is more than past forty kilometres.
..._Stéphane, mi! gadé!--mi quz" gouôs requ'em!_"

A long black fin cut the water almost beside them, passed, and 
vanished,--a _requin_ indeed!  But, in his patois, the boy almost 
re-echoed the name as uttered by quaint Père Dutertre, who, 
writing of strange fishes more than two hundred years ago, says 
it is called REQUIEM, because for the man who findeth himself 
alone with it in the midst of the sea, surely a requiem must be 
sung.

--"Do not paddle, Stéphane!--do not put thy hand in the water 
again!"



III.


... The _La Guayra_ was a point on the sky-verge;--the sun's face 
had vanished.  The silence and the darkness were deepening 
together.

--"_Si lanmè ka vini plis fò, ça nou ké fai?_" (If the sea 
roughens, what are we to do?) asked Maximilien.

--"Maybe we will meet a steamer," answered Stéphane: "the _Orinoco_ 
was due to-day."

--"And if she pass in the night?"

--"They can see us."...

--"No, they will not be able to see us at all.  There is no moon."

--"They have lights ahead."

--"I tell thee, they will not see us at all,--pièss! pièss! 
pièss!"

--"Then they will hear us cry out."

--"NO,--we cannot cry so loud.  One can hear nothing but a steam-
whistle or a cannon, with the noise of the wind and the water and 
the machine....  Even on the Fort-de-France packet one cannot 
hear for the machine.  And the machine of the _Orinoco_ is more big 
than the church of the 'Centre.'"

--"Then we must try to get to La Dominique."

... They could now feel the sweep of the mighty current;--it 
even seemed to them that they could hear it,--a deep low 
whispering.  At long intervals they saw lights,--the lights of 
houses in Pointe-Prince, in Fond-Canonville,--in Au Prêcheur.  
Under them the depth was unfathomed:--hydrographic charts mark it 
_sans-fond_.  And they passed the great cliffs of Aux Abymes, 
under which lies the Village of the Abysms.

The red glare in the west disappeared suddenly as if blown out;
--the rim of the sea vanished into the void of the gloom;--the 
night narrowed about them, thickening like a black fog.  And the 
invisible, irresistible power of the sea was now bearing them 
away from the tall coast,--over profundities unknown,--over the 
_sans-fond_,--out to the horizon.



IV.


... Behind the canoe a long thread of pale light quivered and 
twisted: bright points from time to time mounted up, glowered 
like eyes, and vanished again;--glimmerings of faint flame 
wormed away on either side as they floated on.  And the little 
craft no longer rocked as before;--they felt another and a larger 
motion,--long slow ascents and descents enduring for minutes at a 
time;--they were riding the great swells,--_riding the horizon!_

Twice they were capsized.  But happily the heaving was a smooth 
one, and their little canoe could not sink: they groped for it, 
found it, righted it, and climbed in, and baled out the water 
with their hands.

From time to time they both cried out together, as loud as they 
could,--"_Sucou!--sucou!--sucou!_"--hoping that some one might be 
looking for them....  The alarm had indeed been given; and one of 
the little steam-packets had been sent out to look for them,--
with torch-fires blazing at her bows; but she had taken the 
wrong direction.

--"Maximilien," said Stéphane, while the great heaving seemed 
to grow vaster,--"_fau nou ka prié Bon-Dié_."... 

Maximilien answered nothing.

--"_Fau prié Bon-Dié_" (We must pray to the Bon-Dié, repeated 
Stéphane.

--"_Pa lapeine, li pas pè ouè nou atò!_" (It is not worth while: 
He cannot see us now) answered the little black. ... In the 
immense darkness even the loom of the island was no longer 
visible.

--"0 Maximilien!--_Bon-Dié ka ouè toutt, ka connaitt toutt_" (He 
sees all; He knows all), cried Stéphane.

--"_Y pa pè ouè non pièss atouèelement, moin ben sur!_" (He 
cannot see us at all now,--I am quite sure) irreverently 
responded Maximilien....

--"Thou thinkest the Bon-Dié like thyself!--He has not eyes like 
thou," protested Stéphane.  "_Li pas ka tini coulè; li pas ka 
tini zié" (He has not color; He has not eyes), continued the boy, 
repeating the text of his catechism,--the curious creole 
catechism of old Perè Goux, of Carbet.  [Quaint priest and quaint 
catechism have both passed away.]

--"_Moin pa save si li pa ka tini coulè_" (I know not if He has not 
color), answered Maximilien.  "But what I well know is that if He 
has not eyes, He cannot see.... _Fouinq!_--how idiot!"

--"Why, it is in the Catechism," cried Stéphane.... "_'Bon-Dié, 
li conm vent: vent tout-patout, et nou pa save ouè li;-li ka 
touché nou,--li ka boulvésé lanmè.'_" (The Good-God is like the 
Wind: the Wind is everywhere, and we cannot see It;--It touches 
us,--It tosses the sea.)

--"If the Bon-Dié is the Wind," responded Maximilien, "then pray 
thou the Wind to stay quiet."

--"The Bon-Dié is not the Wind," cried Stéphane: "He is like the 
Wind, but He is not the Wind."...

--"_Ah! soc-soc--fouinq!_ ...  More better past praying to care we be 
not upset again and eaten by sharks."

*	*	*	*	*	*	*

... Whether the little chabin prayed either to the Wind or to 
the Bon-Dié, I do not know.  But the Wind remained very quiet all 
that night,--seemed to hold its breath for fear of ruffling the 
sea.  And in the Mouillage of St. Pierre furious American 
captains swore at the Wind because it would not fill their sails,



V.


Perhaps, if there had been a breeze, neither Stéphane nor 
Maximilien would have seen the sun again.  But they saw him rise.

Light pearled in the east, over the edge of the ocean, ran 
around the rim of the sky and yellowed: then the sun's brow 
appeared;--a current of gold gushed rippling across the sea 
before him;--and all the heaven at once caught blue fire from 
horizon to zenith.  Violet from flood to cloud the vast recumbent 
form of Pelée loomed far behind,--with long reaches of 
mountaining: pale grays o'ertopping misty blues.  And in the 
north another lofty shape was towering,--strangely jagged and 
peaked and beautiful,--the silhouette of Dominica: a sapphire 
Sea! ... No wandering clouds:--over far Pelée only a shadowy 
piling of nimbi....  Under them the sea swayed dark as purple 
ink--a token of tremendous depth....  Still a dead calm, and 
no sail in sight.

--"_Ça c'est la Dominique_," said Maximilien,--"_Ennou pou 
ouivage-à!_"

They had lost their little palettes during the night;--they 
used their naked hands, and moved swiftly.  But Dominica was many 
and many a mile away.  Which was the nearer island, it was yet 
difficult to say;--in the morning sea-haze, both were vapory,--
difference of color was largely due to position....

_Sough!--sough!--sough!_--A bird with a white breast passed 
overhead; and they stopped paddling to look at it,-a gull.  Sign 
of fair weather!--it was making for Dominica.

--"_Moin ni ben faim_," murmured Maximilien.  Neither had eaten 
since the morning of the previous day,--most of which they had 
passed sitting in their canoe.

--"_Moin ni anni soif_," said Stéphane.  And besides his thirst 
he complained of a burning pain in his head, always growing 
worse.  He still coughed, and spat out pink threads after each 
burst of coughing.

The heightening sun flamed whiter and whiter: the flashing of 
waters before his face began to dazzle like a play of 
lightning....  Now the islands began to show sharper lines, 
stronger colors; and Dominica was evidently the nearer;--for 
bright streaks of green were breaking at various angles through 
its vapor-colored silhouette, and Martinique still remained all 
blue.

... Hotter and hotter the sun burned; more and more blinding 
became his reverberation.  Maximilien's black skin suffered 
least; but both lads, accustomed as they were to remaining naked 
in the sun, found the heat difficult to bear.  They would gladly 
have plunged into the deep water to cool themselves, but for fear 
of sharks;--all they could do was to moisten their heads, and 
rinse their mouths with sea-water.

Each from his end of the canoe continually watched the horizon.  
Neither hoped for a sail, there was no wind; but they looked for 
the coming of steamers,--the _Orinoco_ might pass, or the English 
packet, or some one of the small Martinique steamboats might be 
sent out to find them.

Yet hours went by; and there still appeared no smoke in the ring 
of the sky,--never a sign in all the round of the sea, broken 
only by the two huge silhouettes.... But Dominica was certainly 
nearing;--the green lights were spreading through the luminous 
blue of her hills.

... Their long immobility in the squatting posture began to tell 
upon the endurance of both boys,--producing dull throbbing aches 
in thighs, hips, and loins.... Then, about mid-day, Stéphane 
declared he could not paddle any more;--it seemed to him as if 
his head must soon burst open with the pain which filled it: even 
the sound of his own voice hurt him,--he did not want to talk.



VI.


... And another oppression came upon them,--in spite of all the 
pains, and the blinding dazzle of waters, and the biting of the 
sun: the oppression of drowsiness. They began to doze at 
intervals,--keeping their canoe balanced in some automatic way,--
as cavalry soldiers, overweary, ride asleep in the saddle.

But at last, Stéphane, awaking suddenly with a paroxysm of 
coughing, so swayed himself to one side as to overturn the canoe; 
and both found themselves in the sea.  Maximilien righted the 
craft, and got in again; but the little chabin twice fell back in 
trying to raise himself upon his arms.  He had become almost 
helplessly feeble. Maximilien, attempting to aid him, again 
overturned the unsteady little boat; and this time it required 
all his skill and his utmost strength to get Stéphane out of the 
water.  Evidently Stéphane could be of no more assistance;--the 
boy was so weak he could not even sit up straight.

--"_Aïe! ou ké jété nou encò_," panted Maximilien,--"_metté ou 
toutt longue_."

Stéphane slowly let himself down, so as to lie nearly all his 
length in the canoe,--one foot on either side of Maximilien's 
hips.  Then he lay very still for a long time,--so still that 
Maximilien became uneasy.

--"_Ou ben malade?_" he asked.... Stéphane did not seem to hear: 
his eyes remained closed.

--"Stéphane!" cried Maximilien, in alarm,--"Stéphane!"

--"_C'est lò, papoute_," murmured Stéphane, without lifting his 
eyelids,--"_ça c'est lò!--ou pa janmain ouè yon bel pièce conm 
ça?_" (It is gold, little father....  Didst thou ever see a pretty 
piece like that?...  No, thou wilt not beat me, little father?--
no, _papoute!_)

--"_Ou ka dòmi, Stéphane?_"--queried Maximilien, wondering,--
"art asleep?"

But Stéphane opened his eyes and looked at him so strangely! 
Never had he seen Stéphane look that way before.

--"_C'a ou ni, Stéphane?--what ails thee ?--aïe, Bon-Dié, Bon-
Dié!_"

--"_Bon-Dié!_"--muttered Stéphane, closing his eyes again at the 
sound of the great Name,--"He has no color!--He is like the 
Wind."...

--"Stéphane!"...

--"He feels in the dark--He has not eyes."...

--"_Stéphane, pa pàlé ça!!_"

--"He tosses the sea....  He has no face;--He lifts up the 
dead... and the leaves."...

--"_Ou fou_" cried Maximilien, bursting into a wild fit of 
sobbing,--"Stéphane, thou art mad!"

And all at once he became afraid of Stéphane,--afraid of all he 
said,--afraid of his touch,--afraid of his eyes... he was growing 
like a _zombi!_  

But Stéphane's eyes remained closed!--he ceased to speak.

... About them deepened the enormous silence of the sea;--low 
swung the sun again.  The horizon was yellowing: day had begun to 
fade.  Tall Dominica was now half green; but there yet appeared 
no smoke, no sail, no sign of life.

And the tints of the two vast Shapes that shattered the rim of 
the light shifted as if evanescing,--shifted like tones of West 
Indian fishes,--of _pisquette_ and _congre_,--of _caringue_ and 
_gouôs-zié_ and _balaou_.  Lower sank the sun;--cloud-fleeces of orange 
pushed up over the edge of the west;--a thin warm breath caressed 
the sea,--sent long lilac shudderings over the flanks of the 
swells.  Then colors changed again: violet richened to purple;--
greens blackened softlY;--grays smouldered into smoky gold.

And the sun went down.



VII.


And they floated into the fear of the night together.  Again the 
ghostly fires began to wimple about them: naught else was visible 
but the high stars. Black hours passed.  From minute to minute 
Maximilien cried out:--"_Sucou! sucou!_"  Stéphane lay motionless 
and dumb: his feet, touching Maximilien's naked hips, felt 
singularly cold.

... Something knocked suddenly against the bottom of the canoe,
--knocked heavily--making a hollow loud sound.  It was not 
Stéphane;--Stéphane lay still as a stone: it was from the depth 
below.  Perhaps a great fish passing.

It came again,--twice,--shaking the canoe like a great blow.  
Then Stéphane suddenly moved,--drew up his feet a little,--made 
as if to speak:--"_Ou..._"; but the speech failed at his lips,--
ending in a sound like the moan of one trying to call out in 
sleep;--and Maximilien's heart almost stopped beating....  Then 
Stéphane's limbs straightened again; he made no more movement;--
Maximilien could not even hear him breathe....  All the sea had 
begun to whisper.

A breeze was rising;--Maximilien felt it blowing upon him.  All 
at once it seemed to him that he had ceased to be afraid,--that 
he did not care what might happen.  He thought about a cricket he 
had one day watched in the harbor,--drifting out with the tide, 
on an atom of dead bark.--and he wondered what had become of it 
Then he understood that he himself was the cricket,--still 
alive.  But some boy had found him and pulled off his legs.  
There they were,--his own legs, pressing against him: he could 
still feel the aching where they had been pulled off; and they 
had been dead so long they were now quite cold....  It was 
certainly Stéphane who had pulled them off....

The water was talking to him.  It was saying the same thing over 
and over again,--louder each time, as if it thought he could not 
hear.  But he heard it very well:--"_Bon-Dié, li conm vent...  li 
ka touché nou... nou pa save ouè li_." (But why had the Bon-
Dié shaken the wind?) "_Li pa ka tini zié_," answered the water....
_Ouille!_--He might all the same care not to upset folks 
in the sea!... _Mi!_...

But even as he thought these things, Maximilien became aware 
that a white, strange, bearded face was looking at him: the Bon-
Dié was there,--bending over him with a lantern,--talking to him 
in a language he did not understand.  And the Bon-Dié certainly 
had eyes,--great gray eyes that did not look wicked at all.  He
tried to tell the Bon-Dié how sorry he was for what he had been 
saying about him;--but found he could not utter a word, He felt 
great hands lift him up to the stars, and lay him down very near 
them,--just under them.  They burned blue-white, and hurt his eyes 
like lightning:--he felt afraid of them....  About him he heard 
voices,--always speaking the same language, which he could not 
understand....  "_Poor little devils!--poor little devils!_"  Then 
he heard a bell ring; and the Bon-Dié made him swallow something 
nice and warm;--and everything became black again.  The stars 
went out!...

... Maximilien was lying under an electric-light on board the 
great steamer _Rio de Janeiro_, and dead Stéphane beside him....  
It was four o'clock in the morning.




CHAPTER IX.
LA FILLE DE COULEUR.



I.


Nothing else in the picturesque life of the French colonies of 
the Occident impresses the traveller on his first arrival more 
than the costumes of the women of color.  They surprise the 
aesthetic sense agreeably;--they are local and special: you will 
see nothing resembling them among the populations of the British 
West Indies; they belong to Martinique, Guadeloupe, Désirade, 
Marie-Galante, and Cayenne,--in each place differing sufficiently 
to make the difference interesting, especially in regard to the 
head-dress.  That of Martinique is quite Oriental;--more 
attractive, although less fantastic than the Cayenne coiffure, or 
the pretty drooping mouchoir of Guadeloupe.

These costumes are gradually disappearing, for various reasons,
--the chief reason being of course the changes in the social 
condition of the colonies during the last forty years.  Probably 
the question of health had also something to do with the almost 
universal abandonment in Martinique of the primitive 
slave dress,--_chemise_ and _jupe_,--which exposed its wearer to 
serious risks of pneumonia; for as far as economical reasons are 
concerned, there was no fault to find with it: six francs could 
purchase it when money was worth more than it is now.  The 
douillette, a long trailing dress, one piece from neck to feet, 
has taken its place. [35]

[Illustration: THE MARTINIQUE TURBAN, OR MADRAS CALENDE.]

But there was a luxurious variety of the jupe costume which is 
disappearing because of its cost; there is no money in the 
colonies now for such display:--I refer to the celebrated attire 
of the pet slaves and _belles affranchies_ of the old colonial 
days.  A full costume,--including violet or crimson "petticoat" 
of silk or satin; chemise with half-sleeves, and much embroidery 
and lace; "trembling-pins" of gold (_zépingue tremblant_) to 
attach the folds of the brilliant Madras turban; the great 
necklace of three or four strings of gold beads bigger than peas 
(_collier-choux_); the ear-rings, immense but light as egg-shells 
(_zanneaux-à-clous_ or _zanneaux-chenilles_); the bracelets (_portes-
bonheur_); the studs (_boutons-à-clous_); the brooches, not only 
for the turban, but for the chemise, below the folds of the showy 
silken foulard or shoulder-scarf,--would sometimes represent over 
five thousand francs expenditure.  This gorgeous attire is becoming 
less visible every year: it is now rarely worn except on very 
solemn occasions,--weddings, baptisms, first communions, 
confirmations.  The _da_ (nurse) or "porteuse-de-baptême" who bears 
the baby to church holds it at the baptismal font, and afterwards 
carries it from house to house in order that all the friends of 
the family may kiss it, is thus attired; but nowadays, unless she 
be a professional (for there are professional _das_, hired only for 
such occasions), she usually borrows the jewellery.  If tall, young, 
graceful, with a rich gold tone of skin, the effect of her costume 
is dazzling as that of a Byzantine Virgin.  I saw one young da who, 
thus garbed, scarcely seemed of the earth and earthly;--there was 
an Oriental something in her appearance difficult to describe,
--something that made you think of the Queen of Sheba going to visit 
Solomon.  She had brought a merchant's baby, just christened, to 
receive the caresses of the family at whose house I was visiting; 
and when it came to my turn to kiss it, I confess I could not notice 
the child: I saw only the beautiful dark face, coiffed with orange 
and purple, bending over it, in an illumination of antique 
gold....  What a da! ... She represented really the type of that 
_belle affranchie_ of other days, against whose fascination special 
sumptuary laws were made; romantically she imaged for me the 
supernatural god-mothers and Cinderellas of the creole fairy-
tales.  For these become transformed in the West Indian 
folklore,--adapted to the environment, and to local idealism:--
Cinderella, for example, is changed to a beautiful metisse, 
wearing a quadruple _collier-choux_, _zépingues tremblants_, and all 
the ornaments of a da. [36] Recalling the impression of that dazzling 
_da_, I can even now feel the picturesque justice of the fabulist's 
description of Cinderella's creole costume: _Ça té ka baille ou mal 
zie!_--(it would have given you a pain in your eyes to look at her!)

[Illustration: THE GUADELOUPE HEAD-DRESS.]

... Even the every-day Martinique costume is slowly changing.  
Year by year the "calendeuses"--the women who paint and fold the 
turbans--have less work to do;--the colors of the _douiellette_ 
are becoming less vivid;--while more and more young colored 
girls are being _élevées en chapeau_ ("brought up in a hat")--i.e., 
dressed and educated like the daughters of the whites.  These, it 
must be confessed, look far less attractive in the latest Paris 
fashion, unless white as the whites themselves: on the other 
hand, few white girls could look well in _douillette_ and 
_mouchoir_,--not merely because of color contrast, but because they 
have not that amplitude of limb and particular cambering of the 
torso peculiar to the half-breed race, with its large bulk and 
stature.  Attractive as certain coolie women are, I observed that 
all who have adopted the Martinique costume look badly in it: 
they are too slender of body to wear it to advantage.

Slavery introduced these costumes, even though it probably did 
not invent them; and they were necessarily doomed to pass away 
with the peculiar social conditions to which they belonged.  If 
the population clings still to its _douillettes_, _mouchoirs_, and 
_foulards_, the fact is largely due to the cheapness of such 
attire.  A girl can dress very showily indeed for about twenty 
francs--shoes excepted;--and thousands never wear shoes.  But the 
fashion will no doubt have become cheaper and uglier within 
another decade.

At the present time, however, the stranger might be sufficiently 
impressed by the oddity and brilliancy of these dresses to ask 
about their origin,--in which case it is not likely that he will 
obtain any satisfactory answer.  After long research I found myself 
obliged to give up all hope of being able to outline the history 
of Martinique costume,--partly because books and histories are 
scanty or defective, and partly because such an undertaking would 
require a knowledge possible only to a specialist.  I found good 
reason, nevertheless, to suppose that these costumes were in the 
beginning adopted from certain fashions of provincial France,--that 
the respective fashions of Guadeloupe, Martinique, and Cayenne were 
patterned after modes still worn in parts of the mother-country.  
The old-time garb of the _affranchie_--that still worn by the _da_
--somewhat recalls dresses worn by the women of Southern France, 
more particularly about Montpellier.  Perhaps a specialist might 
also trace back the evolution of the various creole coiffures to 
old forms of head-dresses which still survive among the French 
country-fashions of the south and south-west provinces;--but 
local taste has so much modified the original style as to leave 
it unrecognizable to those who have never studied the subject.  
The Martinique fashion of folding and tying the Madras, and of 
calendering it, are probably local; and I am assured that the 
designs of the curious semi-barbaric jewellery were all invented 
in the colony, where the _collier-choux_ is still manufactured by 
local goldsmiths.  Purchasers buy one, two, or three _grains_, or 
beads, at a time, and string them only on obtaining the requisite 
number....  This is the sum of all that I was able to learn on 
the matter; but in the course of searching various West Indian 
authors and historians for information, I found something far 
more important than the origin of the _douillette_ or the _collier-
choux_: the facts of that strange struggle between nature and 
interest, between love and law, between prejudice and passion, 
which forms the evolutional history of the mixed race.



II.


Considering only the French peasant colonist and the West African 
slave as the original factors of that physical evolution visible 
in the modern _fille-de-couleur_, it would seem incredible;--for 
the intercrossing alone could not adequately explain all the 
physical results.  To understand them fully, it will be necessary 
to bear in mind that both of the original races became modified
in their lineage to a surprising degree by conditions of climate 
and environment.

[Illustration: YOUNG MULATTRESS.]

[Illustration: PLANTATION COOLIE WOMAN IN MARTINIQUE COSTUME.]

The precise time of the first introduction of slaves into 
Martinique is not now possible to ascertain,--no record exists on 
the subject; but it is probable that the establishment of slavery 
was coincident with the settlement of the island.  Most likely 
the first hundred colonists from St. Christophe, who landed, in 
1635, near the bay whereon the city of St. Pierre is now 
situated, either brought slaves with them, or else were furnished 
with negroes very soon after their arrival.  In the time of Père 
Dutertre (who visited the colonies in 1640, and printed his 
history of the French Antilles at Paris in 1667) slavery was 
already a flourishing institution,--the foundation of the whole 
social structure.  According to the Dominican missionary, the 
Africans then in the colony were decidedly repulsive; he 
describes the women as "hideous" (_hideuses_).  There is no good 
reason to charge Dutertre with prejudice in his pictures of them.  
No writer of the century was more keenly sensitive to natural 
beauty than the author of that "Voyage aux Antilles" which 
inspired Chateaubriand, and which still, after two hundred and 
fifty years, delights even those perfectly familiar with the 
nature of the places and things spoken of.  No other writer and 
traveller of the period possessed to a more marked degree that 
sense of generous pity which makes the unfortunate appear to us 
in an illusive, almost ideal aspect.  Nevertheless, he asserts 
that the negresses were, as a general rule, revoltingly ugly,--
and, although he had seen many strange sides of human nature 
(having been a soldier before becoming a monk), was astonished to 
find that miscegenation had already begun.  Doubtless the first 
black women thus favored, or afflicted, as the case might be, 
were of the finer types of negresses; for he notes remarkable 
differences among the slaves procured from different coasts and 
various tribes.  Still, these were rather differences of ugliness 
than aught else: they were all repulsive;--only some were more 
repulsive than others. [37] Granting that the first mothers of 
mulattoes in the colony were the superior rather than the inferior 
physical types,--which would be a perfectly natural supposition,
--still we find their offspring worthy in his eyes of no higher 
sentiment than pity.  He writes in his chapter entitled "_De la 
naissance honteuse des mulastres_":

--"They have something of their Father and something of their Mother,
--in the same wise that Mules partake of the qualities of the creatures 
that engendered them: for they are neither all white, like the French; 
nor all black, like the Negroes, but have a livid tint, which comes of 
both."...

To-day, however, the traveller would look in vain for a _livid_ 
tint among the descendants of those thus described: in less than 
two centuries and a half the physical characteristics of the race 
have been totally changed.  What most surprises is the rapidity of 
the transformation.  After the time of Père Labat, Europeans never 
could "have mistaken little negro children for monkeys."  Nature 
had begun to remodel the white, the black, and half-breed 
according to environment and climate: the descendant of the early 
colonists ceased to resemble his fathers; the creole negro 
improved upon his progenitors; [38] the mulatto began to give 
evidence of those qualities of physical and mental power which 
were afterwards to render him dangerous to the integrity of the 
colony itself.  In a temperate climate such a change would have 
been so gradual as to escape observation for a long period;
--in the tropics it was effected with a quickness that astounds 
by its revelation of the natural forces at work.

[Illustration: COOLIE HALF-BREED]

--"Under the sun of the tropics," writes Dr. Rufz, of Martinique, 
"the African race, as well as the European, becomes greatly 
modified in its reproduction. Either race gives birth to a 
totally new being. The Creole African came into existence as did 
the Creole white.

And just as the offspring of Europeans who emigrated to the 
tropics from different parts of France displayed characteristics 
so identical that it was impossible to divine the original race-
source,--so likewise the Creole negro--whether brought into 
being by the heavy thick-set Congo, or the long slender black of 
Senegambia, or the suppler and more active Mandingo,--appeared so 
remodelled, homogeneous, and adapted in such wise to his 
environment that it was utterly impossible to discern in his 
features anything of his parentage, his original kindred, his 
original source....  The transformation is absolute.  All that 
In be asserted is: "This is a white Creole; this is a black 
Creole";--or, "This is a European white; this is an African 
black";--and furthermore, after a certain number of years passed 
in the tropics, the enervated and discolored aspect of the European 
may create uncertainty, as to his origin.  But with very few 
exceptions the primitive African, or, as he is termed here, the 
"Coast Black" (_le noir de la Cote_), can be recognized at 
once....

[Illustration: COUNTRY-GIRL--PURE NEGRO RACE.]

... "The Creole negro is gracefully shaped, finely proportioned: 
his limbs are lithe, his neck long;--his features are more 
delicate, his lips less thick, his nose less flattened, than 
those of the African;--he has the Carib's large and melancholy 
eye, better adapted to express the emotions. ... Rarely can you 
discover in him the sombre fury of the African, rarely a 
surly and savage mien: he is brave, chatty, boastful.  His skin 
has not the same tint as his father's,--it has become more 
satiny; his hair remains woolly, but it is a finer wool;... all 
his outlines are more rounded;--one may perceive that the cellular
tissue predominates, as in cultivated plants, of which the 
ligneous and savage fibre has become transformed."... [39]

This new and comelier black race naturally won from its masters 
a more sympathetic attention than could have been vouchsafed to 
its progenitors; and the consequences in Martinique and elsewhere 
seemed to have evoked the curinus Article 9 of the _Code Noir_ of 
1665,--enacting, first, that free men who should have one or two 
children by slave women, as well as the slave-owners permitting 
the same, should be each condemned to pay two thousand pounds of 
sugar; secondly, that if the violator of the ordinance should be 
himself the owner of the mother and father of her children, the 
mother and the children should be confiscated for the profit of 
the Hospital, and deprived for their lives of the right to 
enfranchisement.  An exception, however, was made to the effect 
that if the father were unmarried at the period of his 
concubinage, he could escape the provisions of the penalty by 
marrying, "according to the rites of the Church," the female 
slave, who would thereby be enfranchised, and her children 
"rendered free and legitimate."  Probably the legislators did not 
imagine that the first portion of the article could prove 
inefficacious, or that any violator of the ordinance would seek 
to escape the penalty by those means offered in the provision.  The 
facts, however, proved the reverse.  Miscegenation continued; and 
Labat notices two cases of marriage between whites and blacks,--
describing the offspring of one union as "very handsome little 
mulattoes."  These legitimate unions were certainly exceptional,
--one of them was dissolved by the ridicule cast upon the father;
--but illegitimate unions would seem to have become common within 
a very brief time after the passage of the law.  At a later day 
they were to become customary.  The Article 9 was evidently at 
fault; and in March, 1724, the Black Code was reinforced by a new 
ordinance, of which the sixth provision prohibited marriage as 
well as concubinage between the races.

It appears to have had no more effect than the previous law, 
even in Martinique, where the state of public morals was better 
than in Santo Domingo.  The slave race had begun to exercise an 
influence never anticipated by legislators.  Scarcely a century 
had elapsed since the colonization of the island; but in that 
time climate and civilization had transfigured the black woman. 
"After one or two generations," writes the historian Rufz, "the 
_Africaine_, reformed, refined, beautified in her descendants, 
transformed into the creole negress, commenced to exert a 
fascination irresistible, capable of winning anything (_capable de 
tout obtenir_)." [40]  Travellers of the eighteenth century were 
confounded by the luxury of dress and of jewellery displayed by 
swarthy beauties in St. Pierre.  It was a public scandal to 
European eyes.  But the creole negress or mulattress, beginning 
to understand her power, sought for higher favors and privileges 
than silken robes and necklaces of gold beads: she sought to 
obtain, not merely liberty for herself, but  for her parents, 
brothers, sisters,--even friends.  What successes she achieved 
in this regard may be imagined from the serious statement of 
creole historians that if human nature had been left untrammelled 
to follow its better impulses, slavery would have ceased to exist 
a century before the actual period of emancipation!  By 1738, 
when the white population had reached its maximum (15,000), [41]
and colonial luxury had arrived at its greatest height, the 
question of voluntary enfranchisement was becoming very grave.  
So omnipotent the charm of half-breed beauty that masters were 
becoming the slaves of their slaves.  It was not only the creole 
_negress_ who had appeared to play a part in this strange drama 
which was the triumph of nature over interest and judgment: her 
daughters, far more beautiful, had grown up to aid her, and to 
form a special class.  These women, whose tints of skin rivalled 
the colors of ripe fruit, and whose gracefulness--peculiar, 
exotic, and  irresistible--made them formidable rivals to the 
daughters of the dominant race, were no doubt physically superior 
to the modern _filles-de-couleur_.  They were results of a natural 
selection which could have taken place in no community otherwise 
constituted;--the offspring of the union between the finer types 
of both races.  But that which only slavery could have rendered 
possible began to endanger the integrity of slavery itself: the  
institutions upon which the whole social structure rested were 
being steadily sapped by the influence of half-breed girls. Some 
new, severe, extreme policy was evidently necessary to  avert the 
already visible peril.  Special laws were passed by the Home-
Government to check enfranchisement, to limit its reasons or 
motives; and the power of the slave woman was so well 
comprehended by the Métropole that an extraordinary enactment was
made against it.  It was decreed that whosoever should free a 
woman of color would have to pay to the Government _three times 
her value as a slave!_

Thus heavily weighted, emancipation advanced much more slowly 
than before, but it still continued to a considerable extent.  
The poorer creole planter or merchant might find it impossible to 
obey the impulse of his conscience or of his affection, but among 
the richer classes pecuniary considerations could scarcely affect 
enfranchisement.  The country had grown wealthy; and although the 
acquisition of wealth may not evoke generosity in particular 
natures, the enrichment of a whole class develops pre-existing 
tendencies to kindness, and opens new ways for its exercise.  
Later in the eighteenth century, when hospitality had been 
cultivated as a gentleman's duty to fantastical extremes,--when 
liberality was the rule throughout society,--when a notary 
summoned to draw up a deed, or a priest invited to celebrate a 
marriage, might receive for fee five thousand francs in gold,--
there were certainly many emancipations....  "Even though 
interest and public opinion in the colonies," says a historian, [42]
"were adverse to enfranchisement, the private feeling of each man  
combated that opinion;--Nature resumed her sway in the secret 
places of hearts;--and as local custom permitted a sort of  
polygamy, the rich man naturally felt himself bound in honor to 
secure the freedom of his own blood....  It was not a rare thing 
to see legitimate wives taking care of the natural children of 
their husbands,--becoming their godmothers (_s'en faire les 
marraines_)." ... Nature seemed to laugh all these laws to scorn, 
and the prejudices of race!  In vain did the wisdom of 
legislators attempt to render the condition of the enfranchised 
more humble,--enacting extravagant penalties for the blow by which 
a mulatto might avenge the insult of a white,--prohibiting the 
freed from wearing the same dress as their former masters or 
mistresses wore;--"the _belles affranchies_ found, in a costume 
whereof the negligence seemed a very inspiration of voluptuousness, 
means of evading that social inferiority which the law sought to 
impose upon them:--they began to inspire the most violent 
jealousies." [43]



III.


What the legislators of 1685 and 1724 endeavored to correct did 
not greatly improve with the abolition of slavery, nor yet with 
those political troubles which socially deranged colonial life.  
The _fille-de-couleur_, inheriting the charm of the belle 
_affranchie_, continued to exert a similar influence, and to fulfil 
an almost similar destiny.  The latitude of morals persisted,--
though with less ostentation: it has latterly contracted under 
the pressure of necessity rather than through any other 
influences.  Certain ethical principles thought essential to 
social integrity elsewhere have always been largely relaxed in 
the tropics; and--excepting, perhaps, Santo Domingo--the moral 
standard in Martinique was not higher than in the other French 
coloniei.  Outward decorum might be to some degree maintained; 
but there was no great restraint of any sort upon private lives: 
it was not uncommon for a rich man to have many "natural" 
families; and almost every individual of means had children of 
color.  The superficial character of race prejudices was 
everywhere manifested by unions, which although never mentioned 
in polite converse, were none the less universally known; and the 
"irresistible fascination" of the half-breed gave the open lie to
pretended hate.  Nature, in the guise of the _belle affranchie_, 
had mocked at slave codes;--in the _fille-de-couleur_ she still 
laughed at race pretensions, and ridiculed the fable of physical 
degradation.  To-day, the situation has not greatly changed; and 
with such examples on the part of the cultivated race, what could 
be expected from the other?  Marriages are rare;--it has been 
officially stated that the illegitimate births are sixty per 
cent; but seventy-five to  eighty per cent would probably be 
nearer the truth.  It is very common to see in the local papers 
such announcements as: _Enfants légitimes_, 1 (one birth 
announced); _enfants naturels_, 25.

In speaking of the _fille-de-couleur_ it is necessary also to 
speak of the extraordinary social stratification of the community 
to which she belongs.  The official statement of  20,000 
"colored" to the total population of between 173,000 and 174,000 
(in which the number of pure whites is said to have fallen as low 
as 5,000) does not at all indicate the real proportion of mixed 
blood.  Only a small element of unmixed African descent really 
exists; yet when a white creole speaks of the _gens-de-couleur_ he 
certainly means nothing darker than a mulatto skin.  Race 
classifications have been locally made by sentiments of political 
origin: at least four or five shades of visible color are classed 
as negro.  There is, however, some natural truth at the bottom of 
this classification: where African blood predominates, the 
sympathies are likely to be African; and the turning-point is 
reached only in the true mulatto, where, allowing the proportions 
of mixed blood to be nearly equal, the white would have the 
dominant influence in situations more natural than existing 
politics.  And in speaking of the _filles-de-couleur_, the local 
reference is always to women in whom the predominant element is 
white: a white creole, as a general rule, deigns only thus to 
distinguish those who are nearly white,--more usually
he refers to the whole class as mulattresses.  Those women whom 
wealth and education have placed in a social position parallel 
with that of the daughters of creole whites are in some cases 
allowed to pass for white,--or at the very worst, are only 
referred to in a whisper as being _de couleur_.  (Needless to say, 
these are totally beyond the range of the present considerations: 
there is nothing to be further said of them except that they can 
be classed with the most attractive and refined women of the 
entire tropical world.)  As there is an almost infinite gradation 
from the true black up to the brightest _sang-mêlé_, it is 
impossible to establish any color-classification recognizable by 
the eye alone; and whatever lines of demarcation can be drawn 
between castes must be social rather than ethnical.  In this 
sense we may accept the local Creole definition of _fille-de-
couleur_ as signifying, not so much a daughter of the race of 
visible color, as the half-breed girl destined from her birth to 
a career like that of the _belle affranchie_ of the old regime;--
for the moral cruelties of slavery have survived emancipation.

Physically, the typical _fille-de-couleur_ may certainly be 
classed, as white creole writers have not hesitated to class her, 
with the "most beautiful women of the human race." [44]  She has 
inherited not only the finer bodily characteristics of either 
parent race, but a something else belonging originally to 
neither, and created by special climatic and physical 
conditions,--a grace, a suppleness of form, a delicacy of 
extremities (so that all the lines described by  the bending of 
limbs or fingers are parts of clean curves), a satiny smoothness 
and fruit-tint of skin,--solely West Indian....  Morally, of course, 
it is much more difficult to describe her; and whatever may safe1y 
be said refers rather to the fille-de-couleur of the past than of 
the present half-century.  The race is now in a period of transition: 
public education and political changes are modifying the type, and 
it is impossible to guess the ultimate consequence, because it is 
impossible to safely predict what new influences may yet be 
brought to affect its social development.  Befare the present era 
of colonial decadence, the character of the fille-de-couleur was 
not what it is now.  Even when totally uneducated, she had a 
peculiar charm,--that charm of childishness which has power to 
win sympathy from the rudest natures. One could not but feel 
attracted towards this naïf being, docile as an infant, and as 
easily pleased or as easily pained,--artless in her goodnesses as 
in her faults, to all outward appearance;--willing to give her 
youth, her beauty, her caresses to some one in exchange for the 
promise to love her,--perhaps also to care for a mother, or a 
younger brother.  Her astonishing capacity for being delighted 
with trifles, her pretty vanities and pretty follies, her sudden 
veerings of mood from laughter to tears,--like the sudden 
rainbursts and sunbursts of her own passionate climate: these 
touched, drew, won, and tyrannized.  Yet such easily created joys 
and pains did not really indicate any deep reserve of feeling: 
rather a superficial sensitiveness only,--like the _zhèbe-m'amisé_, 
or _zhèbe-manmzelle_, whose leaves close at the touch of a hair. 
Such human manifestations, nevertheless, are apt to attract  more 
in proportion as they are more visible,--in proportion as the 
soul-current, being less profound, flows more audibly.  But no 
hasty observation could have revealed  the whole character of the 
fil1e-de-couleur to the stranger, equally charmed and surprised: 
the creole comprehended her better, and probably treated her 
with even more real kindness.  The truth was that centuries of 
deprivation of natural rights and hopes had given to her race
--itself fathered by passion unrestrained and mothered by subjection 
unlimited--an inherent scepticism in the duration of love, and a 
marvellous capacity for accepting the destiny of abandonment as 
one accepts the natural and the inevitable.  And that desire to 
please--which in the fille-de-couleur seemed to prevail above all 
other motives of action (maternal affection excepted)--could 
have appeared absolutely natural only to those who never 
reflected that even sentiment had been artificially cultivated by 
slavery.

She asked for so little,--accepted a gift with such childish 
pleasure,--submitted so unresistingly to the will of the man who 
promised to love her.  She bore him children--such beautiful 
children!--whom he rarely acknowledged, and was never asked to 
legitimatize;--and she did not ask perpetual affection 
notwithstanding,--regarded the relation as a necessarily 
temporary one, to be sooner or later dissolved by the marriage of 
her children's father.  If deceived in all things,--if absolutely 
ill-treated and left destitute, she did not lose faith in human 
nature: she seemed a born optimist, believing most men good;--she 
would make a home for another and serve him better than any 
slave....  "_Née de l'amour_," says a creole writer, "_la fille-de-
couleur vit d'amour, de rires, et d'oublis_."... [45]

[Illustration: CAPRESSE.]

Then came the general colonial crash!...  You cannot see its 
results without feeling touched by them.  Everywhere the weird 
beauty, the immense melancholy of tropic ruin.  Magnificent 
terraces, once golden with cane, now abandoned to weeds and 
serpents;--deserted  plantation-homes, with trees rooted in the 
apartments and pushing up through the place of the roofs;--grass-
grown alleys ravined by rains;--fruit-trees strangled by lianas;
--here and there the stem of some splendid palmiste, brutally  
decapitated, naked as a mast;--petty frail growths of banana-
trees or of bamboo slowly taking the place of century-old forest 
giants destroyed to make charcoal. But beauty enough remains to 
tell what the sensual paradise  of the old days must have been, 
when sugar was selling at 52.


And the fille-de-couleur has also changed.  She is much less 
humble and submissive,--somewhat more exacting: she comprehends 
better the moral injustice of her position.  The almost extreme 
physical refinement and delicacy, bequeathed to her by the 
freedwomen of the old regime, are passing away: like a 
conservatory plant deprived of its shelter, she is returning to 
a more primitive condition,--hardening and growing perhaps less 
comely as well as less helpless.  She perceives also in a vague 
way the peril of her race: the creole white, her lover and 
protector, is emigrating;--the domination of the black becomes 
more and more probable.  Furthermore, with the continual increase 
of the difficulty of living, and the growing pressure of 
population, social cruelties and hatreds have been developed such 
as her ancestors never knew.  She is still loved; but it is 
alleged that she rarely loves the white, no matter how large the 
sacrifices made for her sake, and she no longer enjoys that 
reputation of fidelity accorded to her class in other years.  
Probably the truth is that the fille-de-couleur never had at any 
time capacity to bestow that quality of affection imagined
or exacted as a right.  Her moral side is still half savage: her 
feelings are still those of a child.  If she does not love the 
white man according to his unreasonable  desire, it is certain at 
least that she loves him as well as he deserves.  Her alleged 
demoralization is more apparent than real;--she is changing from 
an artificial to a very natural being, and revealing more and 
more in her sufferings the true character of the luxurious  
social condition that brought her into existence.  As a general 
rule, even while questioning her fidelity, the creole freely 
confesses her kindness of heart, and grants her capable of 
extreme generosity and devotedness  to strangers or to children 
whom she has an opportunity to care for.  Indeed, her natural 
kindness is so strikingly in contrast with the harder and subtler 
character of the men of color that one might almost feel tempted 
to doubt if she belong to the same race.  Said a creole once, in 
my hearing:--"The gens-de-couleur are just like the _tourtouroux_:  
[46] one must pick out the females and leave the males alone."  
Although perhaps capable of a double meaning, his words were not 
lightly uttered;--he referred to the curious but indubitable 
fact that the character of the colored woman appears in many 
respects far superior to that of the colored man.  In order to 
understand  this, one must bear in mind the difference in the 
colonial history of both sexes; and a citation from General 
Romanet, [47] who visited Martinique at the end of the last century, 
offers a clue to the mystery.  Speaking of the tax upon 
enfranchisement, he writes:--

--"The governor appointed by the sovereign delivers the certificates 
of liberty,--on payment by the master of a sum usually equivalent to 
the value of the subject.  Public interest frequently justifies him 
in making the price of the slave proportionate to the desire or the 
interest manifested by the master.  It can be readily understood that 
the tax upon the liberty of the women ought to be higher than that of 
the men: the latter unfortunates having no greater advantage than that 
of being useful;--the former know how to please: they have those 
rights and privileges which the whole world allows to their sex; 
they know how to make even the fetters of slavery serve them for 
adornments.  They may be seen placing upon their proud tyrants 
the same chains worn by themselves, and making them kiss the 
marks left thereby: the master becomes the slave, and purchases  
another's liberty only to lose his own,"

Long before the time of General Romanet, the colored male slave 
might win liberty as the guerdon of bravery in fighting against 
foreign invasion, or might purchase it by extraordinary economy, 
while working as a mechanic on extra time for his own account (he 
always refused to labor with negroes); but in either case his 
success depended upon the possession and exercise of qualities 
the reverse of amiable.  On the other hand, the bondwoman won
manumission chiefly through her power to excite affection.  In the 
survival and perpetuation of the fittest of both sexes these 
widely different characteristics would obtain more and more 
definition with successive generations.

I find in the "Bulletin des Actes Administratifs de la 
Martinique" for 1831 (No. 41) a list of slaves to whom liberty 
was accorded _pour services rendus à leurs maîtres_.  Out of the 
sixty-nine enfranchisements recorded under this head, there are 
only two names of male adults to be found,--one an old man of 
sixty;--the other, called Laurencin, the betrayer of a 
conspiracy.  The rest are young girls, or young mothers and 
children;--plenty of those singular and pretty names in vogue among 
the creole population,--Acélie, Avrillette, Mélie, Robertine, 
Célianne, Francillette, Adée, Catharinette, Sidollie, Céline, 
Coraline;--and the ages given are from sixteen to twenty-one, with few 
exceptions.  Yet these liberties were asked for and granted at a 
time when Louis Philippe had abolished the tax on manumissions....  
The same "Bulletin" contains a list of liberties granted to colored 
men, _pour service accompli dans la milice_, only!

Most of the French West Indian writers whose works I was able to 
obtain and examine speak severely of the _hommes-de-couleur_ as a 
class,--in some instances the historian writes with a very 
violence of hatred.  As far back as the commencement of the 
eighteenth century, Labat, who, with all his personal oddities, 
was undoubtedly a fine judge of men, declared:--"The mulattoes 
are as a general rule well made, of good stature, vigorous, 
strong, adroit, industrious, and daring (_hardis_) beyond all 
conception.  They have much vivacity, but are given to their 
pleasures, fickle, proud, deceitful (_cachés_), wicked, and capable 
of the greatest crimes."  A San Domingo historian, far more 
prejudiced than Père Labat, speaks of them "as physically 
superior, though morally inferior to the whites": he wrote at a 
time when the race had given to the world the two best swordsmen 
it has yet perhaps seen,--Saint-Georges and Jean-Louis.

Commenting on the judgment of Père Labat, the historian Borde 
observes:--"The wickedness spoken of by Père Labat doubtless 
relates to their political passions only; for the women of color 
are, beyond any question, the best and sweetest persons in the 
world--_à coup sûr, les meilleures et les plus douces personnes
qu'il y ait au monde_."--("Histoire de l'Ile de la 
Trinidad," par M. Pierre Gustave Louis Borde, vol. i., p. 222.) 
The same author, speaking of their goodness of heart, generosity 
to strangers and the sick says "they are born Sisters of 
Charity";--and he is not the only historian who has expressed 
such admiration of their moral qualities.  What I myself saw 
during the epidemic of 1887-88 at Martinique convinced me that 
these eulogies of the women of color are not extravagant.  On the 
other hand, the existing creole opinion of the men of color is 
much less favorable than even that expressed by Père Labat. 
Political events and passions have, perhaps, rendered a just 
estimate of their qualities difficult.  The history of the 
_hommes-de-couleur_ in all the French colonies has been the same;--
distrusted by the whites, who feared their aspirations to social 
equality, distrusted even more by the blacks (who still hate them 
secretly, although ruled by them), the mulattoes became an 
Ishmaelitish clan, inimical to both races, and dreaded of both.  
In Martinique it was attempted, with some success, to manage  
them by according freedom to all who would serve in the militia 
for a certain period with credit.  At no time was it found 
possible to compel them to work with blacks; and they formed the 
whole class of skilled city workmen and mechanics for a century 
prior to emancipation.

... To-day it cannot be truly said of the _fille-de-couleur_ that 
her existence is made up of "love, laughter, and forgettings."  
She has aims in life,--the bettering of her condition, the higher 
education of her children, whom she hopes to free from the curse 
of prejudice.  She still clings to the white, because through him 
she may hope to improve her position.  Under other conditions 
she might even hope to effect some sort of reconciliation between 
the races.  But the gulf has become so much widened within the 
last forty years, that no rapprochement now appears possible; 
and it is perhaps too late even to restore the lost prosperity of 
the colony by any legislative or commercial reforms.  The 
universal creole belief is summed  up in the daily-repeated cry: 
"_C'est un pays perdu!_"  Yearly the number of failures increase; 
and more whites emigrate;--and with every bankruptcy or departure 
some fille-de-couleur is left almost destitute, to begin life over 
again.  Many a one has been rich and poor several times in succession;
--one day her property is seized for debt;--perhaps on the morrow she 
finds some one able and willing to give her a home again,...  
Whatever comes, she does not die for grief, this daughter of the 
sun: she pours out her pain in song, like a bird, Here is one of 
her little improvisations,--a song very popular in both 
Martinique and Guadeloupe, though originally composed in the 
latter colony:--

--"Good-bye Madras!
Good-bye foulard!  
Good-bye pretty calicoes!  
Good-bye collier-choux!  
That ship  
Which is there on the buoy, 
It is taking  
My doudoux away.

--"Adiéu Madras! 
Adiéu foulard! 
Adiéu dézinde! 
Adiéu collier-choux! 
Batiment-là
Qui sou labouè-là,
Li ka mennein 
Doudoux-à-moin allé.

--"Very good-day,--
Monsieur the Consignee.   
I come  
To make one little petition.   
My doudoux  
Is going away.   
Alas! I pray you  
Delay his going" 

--"Bien le-bonjou',
Missié le Consignataire. 
Moin ka vini 
Fai yon ti pétition; 
Doudoux-à-moin 
Y ka pati,--
T'enprie, hélas! 
Rétàdé li."

[He answers kindly in French: the _békés_ are always kind to these 
gentle children.]


--"My dear child,
It is too late.
The bills of lading 
Are already signed; 
The ship 
Is already on the buoy. 
In an hour from now  
They will be getting her under way."

--"Ma chère enfant 
Il est trop tard, 
Les connaissements 
Sont déjà signés, 
Est déjà sur la bouée; 
Dans une heure d'ici, 
Ils vont appareiller."

--"When the foulards came....
I always had some; 
When the Madras-kerchiefs came, 
I always had some; 
When the printed calicoes came, 
I always had some.
... That second officer--
Is such a kind man! 

--"Foulard rivé, 
Moin té toujou tini; 
Madras rivé, 
Moin té toujou tini; 
Dézindes rivé, 
Moin té toujou tini.
--Capitaine sougonde 
C'est yon bon gàçon! 

"Everybody has" 
Somebody to love; 
Everybody has 
Somebody to pet; 
Every body has 
A sweetheart of her own. 
I am the only one 
Who cannot have that,--I!" 

"Toutt moune tini 
Yon moune yo aimé; 
Toutt moune tini 
Yon moune yo chéri; 
Toutt moune tini 
Yon doudoux à yo. 
Jusse moin tou sèle 
Pa tini ça--moin!"

... On the eve of the _Fête Dieu_, or Corpus Christi festival, in 
all these Catholic countries, the city streets are hung with 
banners and decorated with festoons and with palm branches; and 
great altars are erected at various points along the route of the 
procession, to serve as resting-places for the Host.  These are 
called _reposoirs_; in creole patois, "_reposouè Bon-Dié_."  Each 
wealthy man lends something to help to make them attractive,--
rich plate, dainty crystal, bronzes, paintings, beautiful models 
of ships or steamers, curiosities from remote parts of the 
world....  The procession over, the altar is stripped, the 
valuables are returned to their owners: all the splendor 
disappears....  And the spectacle of that evanescent 
magnificence, repeated year by year, suggested to this proverb-
loving people a similitude for the unstable fortune of the 
fille-de-couleur:--_Fortune milatresse c'est reposouè Bon-Dié_.  
(The luck of the mulattress is the resting-place of the Good-
God).




CHAPTER X.
BÊTE-NI-PIÉ.



I.


St. Pierre is in one respect fortunate beyond many tropical 
cities;--she has scarcely any mosquitoes, although there are 
plenty of mosquitoes in other parts of Martinique, even in the 
higher mountain villages.  The flood of bright water that pours 
perpetually through all her streets, renders her comparatively 
free from the pest;--nobody sleeps under a mosquito bar.

Nevertheless, St. Pierre is not exempt from other peculiar 
plagues of tropical life; and you cannot be too careful about 
examining your bed before venturing to lie down, and your 
clothing before you dress;--for various disagreeable things might 
be hiding in them: a spider large as a big crab, or a scorpion or 
a _mabouya_ or a centipede,--or certain large ants whose bite burns 
like the pricking of a red-hot needle.  No one who has lived in 
St. Pierre is likely to forget the ants....  There are three or 
four kinds in every house;--the _fourmi fou_ (mad ant), a little 
speckled yellowish creature whose movements are so rapid as to 
delude the vision; the great black ant which allows itself to be 
killed before it lets go what it has bitten; the venomous little 
red ant, which is almost too small to see; and the small black 
ant which does not bite at all,--are usually omnipresent, and 
appear to dwell together in harmony.  They are pests in kitchens, 
cupboards, and safes; but they are scavengers.  It is marvellous 
to see them carrying away the body of a great dead roach or 
centipede,--pulling and pushing together like trained laborers, 
and guiding the corpse over obstacles or around them with 
extraordinary skill.  ... There was a time when ants almost destroyed 
the colony,--in 1751.  The plantations, devastated by them are described 
by historians as having looked as if desolated by fire.  Underneath 
the ground in certain places, layers of their eggs two inches 
deep were found extending over acres.  Infants left unwatched in 
the cradle for a few hours were devoured alive by them.  Immense 
balls of living ants were washed ashore at the same time on 
various parts of the coast {a phenomenon repeated within the 
memory of creoles now living in the north-east parishes).  The 
Government vainly offered rewards for the best means of 
destroying the insects; but the plague gradually disappeared as 
it came.


None of these creatures can be prevented from entering a 
dwelling;--you may as well resign yourself to the certainty of 
meeting with them from time to time.  The great spiders (with the 
exception of those which are hairy) need excite no alarm or 
disgust;--indeed they are suffered to live unmolested in many 
houses, partly owing to a belief that they bring good-luck, and 
partly because they destroy multitudes of those enormous and 
noisome roaches which spoil whatever they cannot eat.  The 
scorpion is less common; but it has a detestable habit of lurking 
under beds; and its bite communicates a burning fever.  With far 
less reason, the mabouya is almost equally feared.  It is a 
little lizard about six inches long, and ashen-colored;--it 
haunts only the interior of houses, while the bright-green 
lizards dwell only upon the roofs.  Like other reptiles of the 
same order, the mabouya can run over or cling to polished 
surfaces; and there is a popular belief that if frightened, it 
will leap at one's face or hands and there fasten itself so 
tightly that it cannot be dislodged except by cutting it to 
pieces.  Moreover, it's feet are supposed to have the power of 
leaving certain livid and ineffaceable marks upon the skin of 
the person to whom it attaches itself:--ça ka ba ou lota_, say 
the colored people.  Nevertheless, there is no creature more 
timid and harmless than the mabouya.

But the most dreaded and the most insolent invader of domestic 
peace is the centipede.  The water system of the city banished 
the mosquito; but it introduced the centipede into almost every 
dwelling.  St. Pierre has a plague of centipedes.  All the 
covered drains, the gutters, the crevices of fountain-basins and 
bathing-basins, the spaces between floor and ground, shelter 
centipedes. And the _bête à-mille-pattes_ is the terror of the 
barefooted population:--scarcely a day passes that some child or 
bonne or workman is not bitten by the creature.

The sight of a full-grown centipede is enough to affect a strong 
set of nerves.  Ten to eleven inches is the average length of 
adults; but extraordinary individuals much exceeding this 
dimension may be sometimes observed in the neighborhood of 
distilleries (_rhommeries_) and sugar-refineries.  According to 
age, the color of the creature varies from yellowish to black;--
the younger ones often have several different tints; the old ones 
are uniformly jet-black, and have a carapace of surprising 
toughness,--difficult to break.  If you tread, by accident or 
design, upon the tail, the poisonous head will instantly curl 
back and bite the foot through any ordinary thickness of upper-
leather.

As a general rule the centipede lurks about the court-yards, 
foundations, and drains by preference; but in the season of heavy 
rains he does not hesitate to move upstairs, and make himself at 
home in parlors and bed-rooms.  He has a provoking habit of 
nestling in your _moresques_ or your _chinoises_,--those wide light 
garments you put on before taking your siesta or retiring for the 
night.  He also likes to get into your umbrella,--an article 
indispensable in the tropics; and you had better never 
open it carelessly.  He may even take a notion to curl himself up 
in your hat, suspended on the wall.  (I have known a 
trigonocephalus to do the same thing in a country-house).  He has 
also a singular custom of mounting upon the long trailing dresses 
(douillettes) worn by Martinique women,--and climbing up very 
swiftly and lightly to the wearer's neck, where the prickling of 
his feet first betrays his presence.  Sometimes he will get into 
bed with you and bite you, because you have not resolution 
enough to lie perfectly still while he is tickling you....  It is 
well to remember before dressing that merely shaking a garment 
may not dislodge him;--you must examine every part very 
patiently,--particularly the sleeves of a coat and the legs of 
pantaloons.

The vitality of the creature is amazing.  I kept one in a bottle 
without food or water for thirteen weeks, at the end of which 
time it remained active and dangerous as ever.  Then I fed it 
with living insects, which it devoured ravenously;--beetles, 
roaches, earthworms, several _lepismaoe_, even one of the 
dangerous-looking millepedes, which have a great resemblance in 
outward structure to the centipede, but a thinner body, and more 
numerous limbs,--all seemed equally palatable to the prisoner....
I knew an instance of one, nearly a foot long, remaining in a 
silk parasol for more than four months, and emerging unexpectedly 
one day, with aggressiveness undiminished, to bite the hand that 
had involuntarily given it deliverance.

In the city the centipede has but one natural enemy able to cope 
with him,--the hen!  The hen attacks him with delight, and often 
swallows him, head first, without taking the trouble to kill him.  
The cat hunts him, but she is careful never to put her head near 
him;--she has a trick of whirling him round and round upon the 
floor so quickly as to stupefy him: then, when she sees a
good chance, she strikes him dead with her claws.  But if you 
are fond of your cat you will let her run no risks, as the bite 
of a large centipede might have very bad results for your pet.  
Its quickness of movement demands all the quickness of even the 
cat for self-defence....  I know of men who have proved 
themselves able to seize a fer-de-lance by the tail, whirl it 
round and round, and then flip it as you would crack a whip,--
whereupon the terrible head flies off; but I never heard of 
anyone in Martinique daring to handle a living centipede.

There are superstitions concerning the creature which have a 
good effect in diminishing his tribe.  If you kill a centipede, 
you are sure to receive money soon; and even if you dream of 
killing one it is good-luck.  Consequently, people are glad of any 
chance to kill centipedes,--usually taking a heavy stone or some 
iron utensil for the work;--a wooden stick is not a good weapon. 
There is always a little excitement when a _bête-ni-pié_ (as the 
centipede is termed in the patois) exposes itself to death; and 
you may often hear those who kill it uttering a sort of litany of 
abuse with every blow, as if addressing a human enemy:--"_Quitté 
moin tchoué ou, maudi!--quitté moin tchoué ou, scelerat!--
quitté moin tchoué ou, Satan!--quitté moin tchoué ou, abonocio!_" 
etc.  (Let me kill you, accursed! scoundrel! Satan! abomination!)

The patois term for the centipede is not a mere corruption of the 
French _bête-à-mille-pattes_.  Among a population of slaves, unable 
to read or write, [48] there were only the vaguest conceptions of 
numerical values; and the French term bête-à-mille-pattes was not 
one which could appeal to negro imagination.  The slaves themselves 
invented an equally vivid name, _bête-anni-pié_ (the Beast-which-is-
all-feet); _anni_ in creole signifying "only," and in such a sense 
"all."  Abbreviated by subsequent usage to _bête-'ni-pié_, the 
appellation has amphibology;--for there are two words _ni_ in the 
patois, one signifying "to have," and the other "naked."  So that 
the creole for a centipede might be translated in three ways,
--"the Beast-which-is-all-feet"; or, "the Naked-footed Beast"; 
or, with fine irony of affirmation, "the Beast-which-has-feet."



II.


What is the secret of that horror inspired by the centipede? ... 
It is but very faintly related to our knowledge that the creature 
is venomous;--the results of the bite are only temporary swelling 
and a brief fever;--it is less to be feared than the bite of 
other tropical insects and reptiles which never inspire the same 
loathing by their aspect.  And the shapes of venomous creatures 
are not always shapes of ugliness.  The serpent has elegance of 
form as well as attractions of metallic tinting;--the tarantula, 
or the _matoutou-falaise_, have geometrical beauty.  Lapidaries 
have in all ages expended rare skill upon imitations of serpent 
grace in gold and gems;--a princess would not scorn to wear a 
diamond spider.  But what art could utilize successfully the form 
of the centipede?  It is a form of absolute repulsiveness,--a 
skeleton-shape half defined:--the suggestion of some old reptile-
spine astir, crawling with its fragments of ribs.

No other living thing excites exactly the same feeling produced 
by the sight of the centipede,--the intense loathing and peculiar 
fear.  The instant you see a centipede you feel it is absolutely 
necessary to kill it; you cannot find peace in your house while
you know that such a life exists in it: perhaps the intrusion of 
a serpent would annoy and disgust you less.  And it is not
easy to explain the whole reason of this loathing.  The form 
alone has, of course, something to do with it,--a form that seems 
almost a departure from natural laws.  But the form alone does not 
produce the full effect, which is only experienced when you see 
the creature in motion.  The true horror of the centipede, 
perhaps, must be due to the monstrosity of its movement,-- 
multiple and complex, as of a chain of pursuing and inter- 
devouring lives: there is something about it that makes you 
recoil, as from a sudden corrupt swarming-out.  It is confusing,
--a series of contractings and lengthenings and, undulations so 
rapid as to allow of being only half seen: it alarms also, 
because the thing seems perpetually about to disappear, and 
because you know that to lose sight of it for one moment involves 
the very unpleasant chance of finding it upon you the next,-- 
perhaps between skin and clothing.

But this is not all:--the sensation produced by the centipede is 
still more complex--complex, in fact, as the visible organization 
of the creature.  For, during pursuit,--whether retreating or 
attacking, in hiding or fleeing,--it displays a something which 
seems more than instinct: calculation and cunning,--a sort of 
malevolent intelligence.  It knows how to delude, how to 
terrify;--it has marvellous skill in feinting;--it is an 
abominable juggler....



III.


I am about to leave my room after breakfast, when little Victoire 
who carries the meals up-stairs in a wooden tray, screams out:--
"_Gadé, Missié! ni bête-ni-pié assous dos ou!_" There is a thousand-
footed beast upon my back!".

Off goes my coat, which I throw upon the floor;--the little 
servant, who has a nervous horror of centipedes, climbs upon a 
chair.  I cannot see anything under the coat, nevertheless;--I 
lift it by the collar, turn it about very cautiously--nothing!  
Suddenly the child screams again; and I perceive the head close 
to my hand;--the execrable thing had been hiding in a perpendicular 
fold of the coat, which I drop only just in time to escape getting 
bitten.  Immediately the centipede becomes invisible. Then I take 
the coat by one flap, and turn it over very quickly: just as 
quickly does the centipede pass over it in the inverse direction, 
and disappear under it again.  I have had my first good look at 
him: he seems nearly a foot long,--has a greenish-yellow hue 
against the black cloth,--and pink legs, and a violet head;--he 
is evidently young....  I turn the coat a second time: same 
disgusting manreuvre.  Undulations of livid color flow over him 
as he lengthens and shortens;--while running his shape is but 
half apparent; it is only as he makes a half pause in doubling 
round and under the coat that the panic of his legs becomes 
discernible.  When he is fully exposed they move with invisible 
rapidity,--like a vibration;--you can see only a sort of pink haze 
extending about him,--something to which you would no more dare 
advance your finger than to the vapory halo edging a circular 
saw in motion.  Twice more I turn and re-turn the coat with the 
same result;--I observe that the centipede always runs towards 
my hand, until I withdraw it: he feints!

With a stick I uplift one portion of the coat after another; and 
suddenly perceive him curved under a sleeve,--looking quite 
small!--how could he have seemed so large a moment ago? ...But 
before I can strike him he has flickered over the cloth again, 
and vanished; and I discover that he has the power of _magnifying 
himself_,--dilating the disgust of his shape at will: he 
invariably amplifies himself to face attack.... 

It seems very difficult to dislodge him; he displays astonishing activity 
and cunning at finding wrinkles and folds to hide in.  Even at the risk 
of damaging various things in the pockets, I stamp upon the coat;
--then lift it up with the expectation of finding the creature dead. 
But it suddenly rushes out from some part or other, looking larger 
and more wicked than ever,--drops to the floor, and charges at my 
feet: a sortie!  I strike at him unsuccessfully with the stick: 
he retreats to the angle between wainscoting and floor, and runs 
along it fast as a railroad train,--dodges two or three pokes,
--gains the door-frame,--glides behind a hinge, and commences to 
run over the wall of the stair-way.  There the hand of a black 
servant slaps him dead.

--"Always strike at the head," the servant tells me; "never 
tread on the tail....  This is a small one: the big fellows can 
make you afraid if you do not know how to kill them."

... I pick up the carcass with a pair of scissors.  It does not 
look formidable now that it is all contracted;--it is scarcely 
eight inches long,--thin as card-board, and even less heavy.  It 
has no substantiality, no weight;--it is a mere appearance, a 
mask, a delusion....  But remembering the spectral, cunning, 
juggling something which magnified and moved it but a moment 
ago,--I feel almost tempted to believe, with certain savages, 
that there are animal shapes inhabited by goblins....



IV.


--"Is there anything still living and lurking in old black drains 
of Thought,--any bigotry, any prejudice, anything in the moral 
world whereunto the centipede may be likened?"

--"Really, I do not know," replied the friend to whom I had put 
the question; "but you need only go as far as the vegetable world 
for a likeness.  Did you ever see anything like this?" he added, 
opening a drawer and taking therefrom something revolting, which, 
as he pressed it in his hand, looked like a long thick bundle of 
dried centipedes.

--"Touch them," he said, holding out to me the mass of 
articulated flat bodies and bristling legs.

--"Not for anything!" I replied, in astonished disgust.  He 
laughed, and opened his hand.  As he did so, the mass expanded.  

--"Now look," he exclaimed!

Then I saw that all the bodies were united at the tails--grew 
together upon one thick flat annulated stalk ... a plant!--"But 
here is the fruit," he continued, taking from the same drawer a 
beautifully embossed ovoid nut, large as a duck's egg, ruddy-
colored, and so exquisitely varnished by nature as to resemble a 
rosewood carving fresh from the hands of the cabinet-maker.  In 
its proper place among the leaves and branches, it had the 
appearance of something delicious being devoured by a multitude 
of centipedes.  Inside was a kernel, hard and heavy as iron-wood; 
but this in time, I was told, falls into dust: though the 
beautiful shell remains always perfect.

Negroes call it the _coco-macaque_.




CHAPTER XI.
MA BONNE.



I.


I cannot teach Cyrillia the clock;--I have tried until both of us 
had our patience strained to the breaking-point.  Cyrillia still 
believes she will learn how to tell the time some day or other;--
I am certain that she never will.  "_Missié_," she says, "_lézhè pa 
aïen pou moin: c'est minitt ka fouté moin yon travail!_"--the 
hours do not give her any trouble; but the minutes are a 
frightful bore!  And nevertheless, Cyrillia is punctual as the 
sun;--she always brings my coffee and a slice of corossol at five 
in the morning precisely.  Her clock is the _cabritt-bois_.  The 
great cricket stops singing, she says, at half-past four: the 
cessation of its chant awakens her.  

--"_Bonjou', Missié.  Coument ou passé lanuitt?"--"Thanks, my daughter, 
I slept well."--"The weather is beautiful: if Missié would like to go 
to the beach, his bathing-towels are ready."--"Good! Cyrillia; I will 
go."...  Such is our regular morning conversation. 

Nobody breakfasts before eleven o'clock or thereabout; but after an 
early sea-bath, one is apt to feel a little hollow during the morning, 
unless one take some sort of refreshment.  Cyrillia always 
prepares something for me on my return from the beach,--either a 
little pot of fresh cocoa-water, or a _cocoyage_, or a _mabiyage_, or 
a _bavaroise_.

The _cocoyage_ I like the best of all.  Cyrillia takes a green 
cocoa-nut, slices off one side of it so as to open a hole, then 
pours the opalescent water into a bowl, adds to it a fresh egg, a 
little Holland gin, and some grated nutmeg and plenty of sugar.  
Then she whips up the mixture into effervescence with her _baton-
lélé_.  The _baton-lélé_ is an indispensaple article in every creole 
home: it is a thin stick which is cut from a young tree so as to 
leave at one end a whorl of branch-stumps sticking out at right 
angles like spokes;--by twirling the stem between the hands, the 
stumps whip up the drink in a moment.

The _mabiyage_ is less agreeable, but is a popular morning drink 
among the poorer classes.  It is made with a little white rum and 
a bottle of the bitter native root-beer called _mabi_.  The taste 
of _mabi_ I can only describe as that of molasses and water 
flavored with a little cinchona bark.

The _bavaroise_ is fresh milk, sugar, and a little Holland gin or 
rum,--mixed with the baton-lélé until a fine thick foam is 
formed.  After the _cocoyage_, I think it is the best drink one can 
take in the morning; but very little spirit must be used for any 
of these mixtures.  It is not until just before the mid-day meal 
that one can venture to take a serious stimulant,--_yon ti ponch_,--
rum and water, sweetened with plenty of sugar or sugar syrup.

The word _sucre_ is rarely used in Martinique,--considering that 
sugar is still the chief product;--the word _doux_, "sweet," is 
commonly substituted for it.  _Doux_ has, however, a larger range 
of meaning: it may signify syrup, or any sort of sweets,--
duplicated into _doudoux_, it means the corossole fruit as well as 
a sweetheart.  _Ça qui lè doudoux?_ is the cry of the corossole-
seller.  If a negro asks at a grocery store (_graisserie_) for 
_sique_ instead of for _doux_, it is only because he does not want 
it to be supposed that he means syrup;--as a general rule, he 
will only use the word _sique_ when referring to quality of sugar 
wanted, or to sugar in hogsheads.  _Doux_ enters into domestic 
consumption in quite remarkable ways.  People put sugar into fresh 
milk, English porter, beer, and cheap wine;--they cook various 
vegetables with sugar, such as peas; they seem to be particularly 
fond of sugar-and-water and of _d'leau-pain_,--bread-and-water 
boiled, strained, mixed with sugar, and flavored with cinnamon.  
The stranger gets accustomed to all this sweetness without evil 
results.  In a northern climate the consequence would probably be 
at least a bilious attack; but in the tropics, where salt fish 
and fruits are popularly preferred to meat, the prodigal use of 
sugar or sugar-syrups appears to be decidedly beneficial.

... After Cyrillia has prepared my _cocoyage_, and rinsed the 
bathing-towels in fresh-water, she is ready to go to market, and 
wants to know what I would like to eat for breakfast.  "Anything 
creole, Cyrillia;--I want to know what people eat in this 
country."  She always does her best to please me in this 
respect,--almost daily introduces me to some unfamiliar dishes, 
something odd in the way of fruit or fish.



II.


Cyrillia has given me a good idea of the range and character of 
_mangé-Créole_, and I can venture to write something about it after 
a year's observation.  By _mangé-Créole_ I refer only to the food 
of the people proper, the colored population; for the _cuisine_ of 
the small class of wealthy whites is chiefly European, and devoid 
of local interest:--I might observe, however, that the fashion of 
cooking is rather Provençal than Parisian;--rather of southern 
than of northern France.

Meat, whether fresh or salt, enters little into the nourishment 
of the poorer classes.  This is partly, no doubt, because of the 
cost of all meats; but it is also due to natural preference for 
fruits and fish.  When fresh meat is purchased, it is usually to 
make a stew or _daube_;--probably salt meats are more popular; and 
native vegetables and manioc flour are preferred to bread.  There 
are only two popular soups which are peculiar to the creole 
cuisine,--_calalou_, a gombo soup, almost precisely similar to that 
of Louisiana; and the _soupe-d'habitant_, or "country soup."  It 
is made of yams, carrots, bananas, turnips, _choux-caraïbes_, 
pumpkins, salt pork, and pimento, all boiled together;--the salt 
meat being left out of the composition on Fridays.

The great staple, the true meat of the population, is salt 
codfish, which is prepared in a great number of ways.  The most 
popular and the rudest preparation of it is called "Ferocious " 
(_férocé_); and it is not at all unpalatable.  The codfish is 
simply fried, and served with vinegar, oil, pimento;--manioc 
flour and avocados being considered indispensable adjuncts.  As 
manioc flour forms a part of almost every creole meal, a word of 
information regarding it will not be out of place here.  Everybody 
who has heard the name probably knows that the manioc root is 
naturally poisonous, and that the toxic elements must be removed 
by pressure and desiccation before the flour can be made.  Good 
manioc flour has an appearance like very coarse oatmeal; and is 
probably quite as nourishing.  Even when dear as bread, it is 
preferred, and forms the flour of the population, by whom the 
word _farine_ is only used to signify manioc flour: if wheat-flour 
be referred to it is always qualified as "French flour" (_farine-
Fouance_).  Although certain flours are regularly advertised as 
American in the local papers, they are still _farine-Fouance_ for 
the population, who call everything foreign French.  American 
beer is _biè-Fouance_; American canned peas, _ti-pois-Fouance_;  
any white foreigner who can talk French is _yon béké-Fouance_. 

Usually the manioc flour is eaten uncooked: [49]
merely poured into a plate, with a little water and stirred with 
a spoon into a thick paste or mush,--the thicker the better;-- 
_dleau passé farine_ (more water than manioc flour) is a saying 
which describes the condition of a very destitute person.  When 
not served with fish, the flour is occasionally mixed with 
water and refined molasses (_sirop-battrie_): this preparation, 
which is very nice, is called _cousscaye_.  There is also a way of 
boiling it with molasses and milk into a kind of pudding.  This is 
called _matêté_; children are very fond of it.  Both of these 
names, _cousscaye_ and _matêté_, are alleged to be of Carib origin: 
the art of preparing the flour itself from manioc root is 
certainly an inheritance from the Caribs, who bequeathed many 
singular words to the creole patois of the French West Indies.  

Of all the preparations of codfish with which manioc flour is 
eaten, I preferred the _lamori-bouilli_,--the fish boiled plain, 
after having been steeped long enough to remove the excess of 
salt; and then served with plenty of olive-oil and pimento.  The 
people who have no home of their own, or at least no place to 
cook, can buy their food already prepared from the _màchannes 
lapacotte_, who seem to make a specialty of _macadam_ (codfish 
stewed with rice) and the other two dishes already referred to. 
But in every colored family there are occasional feasts of 
_lamori-au-laitt_, codfish stewed with milk and potatoes; _lamori-
au-grattin_, codfish boned, pounded with toast crumbs, and boiled 
with butter, onions, and pepper into a mush;--_coubouyon-lamori_, 
codfish stewed with butter and oil;--_bachamelle_, codfish boned 
and stewed with potatoes, pimentos, oil, garlic, and butter. 

_Pimento_ is an essential accompaniment to all these dishes, 
whether it be cooked or raw: everything is served with plenty of 
pimento,-_en pile_, _en pile piment._  Among the various kinds I 
can mention only the _piment-café_, or "coffee-pepper," larger but 
about the same shape as a grain of Liberian coffee, violet-red at 
one end; the _piment-zouèseau, or bird-pepper, small and long and 
scarlet;--and the _piment-capresse_, very large, pointed at one 
end, and bag-shaped at the other.  It takes a very deep red color 
when ripe, and is so strong that if you only break the pod in a 
room, the sharp perfume instantly fills the apartment.  Unless 
you are as well-trained as any Mexican to eat pimento, you will 
probably regret your first encounter with the _capresse_.

Cyrillia told me a story about this infernal vegetable.


II

ZHISTOUÈ PIMENT.

Té ni yon manman qui té ni en pile, en pile yche; et yon jou y pa 
té ni aïen pou y té baill yche-là mangé.  Y té ka lévé bon 
matin-là sans yon sou: y pa sa ça y té douè fai,--là y té ké 
baill latête.  Y allé lacaïe macoumè-y, raconté lapeine-y.  
Macoumè baill y toua chopine farine-manioc.  Y allé 
lacaill liautt macoumè, qui baill y yon grand trai piment.
Macoumè-là di y venne trai-piment-à, épi y té pè acheté lamori,
--pisse y ja té ni farine.  Madame-là di: "Mèçi, macoumè;"
--y di y bonjou'; épi y allé lacaïe-y. 

Lhè y rivé àcaïe y limé difè: y metté canari épi dleau assous 
difé-a; épi y cassé toutt piment-là et metté yo adans canari-à 
assous diré.  

Lhè y oue canari-à ka bouï, y pouend _baton-lélé_, epi y lélé 
piment-à.: aloss y ka fai yonne calalou-piment. Lhè calalou-piment-là 
té tchouitt, y pouend chaque zassiett yche-li; y metté calalou yo 
fouète dans zassiett-là; y metté ta-mari fouète, assou, épi ta-y. 
Épi lhè calalou-là té bien fouète, y metté farine nans chaque 
zassiett-là.  Épi y crié toutt moune vini mangé.  Toutt moune vini 
metté yo à-tabe. 

Pouèmiè bouchée mari-à pouend, y rété,--y crié: "Aïe! ouaill! mafenm!" 
Fenm-là réponne mari y: "Ouaill! monmari!"  Cés ti manmaille-la crie: 
"Ouaill! manman!"  Manman-à.  réponne:--"Ouaill! yches-moin!"... 
Yo toutt pouend couri, quitté caïe-là sèle,--épi yo toutt tombé larviè 
à touempé bouche yo.  Cés ti manmaille-là bouè dleau sitellement jusse 
temps yo toutt néyé: té ka rété anni manman-là épi papa-là. Yo té là bò
lariviè, qui té ka pleiré.  Moin té ka passé à lhè-à;--moin ka mandé yo:
"Ça zautt ni?"

Nhomme-là lévé: y baill moin yon sèle coup d'piè, y voyé moin lautt 
bo lariviè-ou ouè moin vini pou conté ça ba ou.


II.

PIMENTO STORY.

There was once a mamma who had ever so many children; and one day 
she had nothing to give those children to eat.  She had got up 
very early that morning, without a sou in the world: she did not 
know what to do: she was so worried that her head was upset.  She 
went to the house of a woman-friend, and told her about her 
trouble.  The friend gave her three _chopines_ [three pints] of 
manioc flour.  Then she went to the house of another female 
friend, who gave her a big trayful of pimentos.  The friend told 
her to sell that tray of pimentos: then she could buy some 
codfish,--since she already had some manioc flour.  The good- 
wife said: "Thank you, _macoumè_,"--she bid her good-day, and then 
went to her own house. 

The moment she got home, she made a fire, and put her _canari_ 
[earthen pot] full of water on the fire to boil: then she broke up 
all the pimentos and put them into the canari on the fire.

As soon as she saw the canari boiling, she took her _baton-lélé_, 
and beat up all those pimentos: then she made a _pimento-calalou_.  
When the pimento-calalou was well cooked, she took each one of 
the children's plates, and poured their calalou into the plates 
to cool it; she also put her husband's out to cool, and her own.  
And when the calalou was quite cool, she put some manioc flour 
into each of the plates.  Then she called to everybody to come 
and eat.  They all came, and sat down to table. 

The first mouthful that husband took he stopped and screamed:--"_Aïe! 
ouaill!_ my wife!"  The woman answered her husband: "_Ouaill_! my 
husband!"  The little children all screamed: "_Ouaill!_ mamma !" 
Their mamma answered: "_Ouaill!_ my children!" ... They all ran 
out, left the house empty; and they tumbled into the river to 
steep their mouths.  Those little children just drank water and 
drank water till they were all drowned: there was nobody left 
except the mamma and the papa, They stayed there on the river-
bank, and cried.  I was passing that way just at that time;--I 
asked them: "What ails you people?"  That man got up and gave me 
just one kick that sent me right across the river; I came here at 
once, as you see, to tell you all about it....



IV.


... It is no use for me to attempt anything like a detailed 
description of the fish Cyrillia brings me day after day from 
the Place du Fort: the variety seems to be infinite.  I have 
learned, however, one curious fact which is worth noting: that, 
as a general rule, the more beautifully colored fish are the 
least palatable, and are sought after only by the poor.  The 
_perroquet_, black, with bright bands of red and yellow; the 
_cirurgien_, blue and black; the _patate_, yellow and black; the 
_moringue_, which looks like polished granite; the _souri_, pink and 
yellow; the vermilion _Gouôs-zie_; the rosy _sade_; the red _Bon-
Dié-manié-moin_ ("the-Good-God-handled-me")--it has two queer 
marks as of great fingers; and the various kinds of all-blue 
fish, _balaou_, _conliou_, etc. varying from steel-color to 
violet,--these are seldom seen at the tables of the rich.  There 
are exceptions, of course, to this and all general rules: notably 
the _couronné_, pink spotted beautifully with black,--a sort of 
Redfish, which never sells less than fourteen cents a pound; and 
the _zorphie_, which has exquisite changing lights of nacreous green 
and purple.  It is said, however, that the zorphi is sometimes 
poisonous, like the _bécunne_; and there are many fish which, 
although not venomous by nature, have always been considered 
dangerous.  In the time of Père Dutertre it was believed these 
fish ate the apples of the manchineel-tree, washed into the sea 
by rains;--to-day it is popularly supposed that they are rendered 
occasionally poisonous by eating the barnacles attached to 
copper-plating of ships.  The _tazard_, the _lune_, the _capitaine_, 
the _dorade_, the _perroquet_, the _couliou_, the _congre_, various 
crabs, and even the _tonne_,--all are dangerous unless perfectly 
fresh: the least decomposition seems to develop a mysterious 
poison.  A singular phenomenon regarding the poisoning 
occasionally produced by the bécunne and dorade is that the skin 
peels from the hands and feet of those lucky enough to survive 
the terrible colics, burnings, itchings, and delirium, which are 
early symptoms, Happily these accidents are very rare, since the 
markets have been properly inspected: in the time of Dr. Rufz, 
they would seem to have been very common,--so common that he 
tells us he would not eat fresh fish without being perfectly 
certain where it was caught and how long it had been out of the 
water. 

The poor buy the brightly colored fish only when the finer qualities 
are not obtainable at low rates; but often and often the catch is 
so enormous that half of it has to be thrown back into the sea.  
In the hot moist air, fish decomposes very rapidly; it is impossible 
to transport it to any distance into the interior; and only the 
inhabitants of the coast can indulge in fresh fish,--at least sea-fish.

Naturally, among the laboring class the question of quality is 
less important than that of quantity and substance, unless the 
fish-market be extraordinarily well stocked.  Of all fresh fish, 
the most popular is the _tonne_, a great blue-gray creature whose 
flesh is solid as beef; next come in order of preferment the 
flying-fish (_volants_), which often sell as low as four for a 
cent;--then the _lambi_, or sea-snail, which has a very dense and 
nutritious flesh;--then the small whitish fish classed as 
_sàdines_;--then the blue-colored fishes according to price, 
_couliou_, _balaou_, etc.;--lastly, the shark, which sells commonly 
at two cents a pound.  Large sharks are not edible; the flesh is 
too hard; but a young shark is very good eating indeed.  Cyrillia 
cooked me a slice one morning: it was quite delicate, tasted 
almost like veal.

[Illustration: OLD MARKET-PLACE OF THE FORT, ST. PIERRE.
--(REMOVED IN 1888.]

The quantity of very small fish sold is surprising.  With ten 
sous the family of a laborer can have a good fish-dinner: a pound 
of _sàdines_ is never dearer than two sous;--a pint of manioc flour 
can be had for the same price; and a big avocado sells for a sou.  
This is more than enough food for any one person; and by doubling 
the expense one obtains a proportionately greater quantity--
enough for four or five individuals.  The _sàdines_ are roasted over 
a charcoal fire, and flavored with a sauce of lemon, pimento, and 
garlic.  When there are no _sàdines_, there are sure to be _coulious_ 
in plenty,--small _coulious_ about as long as your little finger: 
these are more delicate, and fetch double the price.  With four 
sous' worth of _coulious_ a family can have a superb _blaffe_.  To 
make a _blaffe_ the fish are cooked in water, and served with 
pimento, lemon, spices, onions, and garlic; but without oil or 
butter.  Experience has demonstrated that _coulious_ make the best 
_blaffe_; and a _blaffe_ is seldom prepared with other fish.



V.


There are four dishes which are the holiday luxuries of the 
poor:--_manicou_, _ver-palmiste_, _zandouille_, and _poule-
épi-diri_. [50]

The _manitou_ is a brave little marsupial, which might be called 
the opossum of Martinique: it fights, although overmatched, with 
the serpent, and is a great enemy to the field-rat.  In the 
market a manicou sells for two francs and a half at cheapest: it 
is generally salted before being cooked.

The great worm, or caterpillar, called _ver-palmiste_ is found in 
the heads of cabbage-palms,--especially after the cabbage has been 
cut out, and the tree has begun to perish.  It is the grub of a 
curious beetle, which has a proboscis of such form as suggested 
the creole appellation, _léfant_: the "elephant."  These worms are 
sold in the Place du Fort at two sous each: they are spitted and 
roasted alive, and are said to taste like almonds.  I have never 
tried to find out whether this be fact or fancy;  and I am glad 
to say that few white creoles confess a liking for this barbarous 
food.

The _zandouilles_ are delicious sausages made with pig-buff,--and 
only seen in the market on Sundays.  They cost a franc and a half 
each; and there are several women who have an established 
reputation throughout  \Martinique for their skill in making them.  
I have tasted some not less palatable than the famous London 
"pork-pies."  Those of Lamentin are reputed the best in the 
island.

But _poule-épi-diri_ is certainly the most popular dish of all: it 
is the dearest, as well, and poor people can rarely afford it.  
In Louisiana an almost similar dish is called _jimbalaya_: chicken 
cooked with rice.  The Martiniquais think it such a delicacy that 
an over-exacting person, or one difficult to satisfy, is reproved 
with the simple question:--"_Ça ou lè 'nco-poule.épi-diri?_" 
(What more do you want, great heavens!--chicken-and-rice?)  
Naughty children are bribed into absolute goodness by the promise 
of poule-épi-diri:--

--"_Aïe! chè, bò doudoux!
Doudoux ba ou poule-épi-diri;
Aïe! chè, bò doudoux!_"...

(Aïe, dear! kiss _doudoux!--doudoux_ has rice-and-chicken for you!
--_aïe_, dear! kiss _doudoux!_) 

How far rice enters into the success of the dish above mentioned I 
cannot say; but rice ranks in favor generally above all cereals; 
it is at least six times more in demand than maize.  _Diri-doux_, rice 
boiled with sugar, is sold in prodigious quantities daily,--especially 
at the markets, where little heaps of it, rolled in pieces of banana 
or _cachibou_ leaves, are retailed at a cent each.  _Diri-aulaitt_, a 
veritable rice-pudding, is also very popular; but it would weary 
the reader to mention one-tenth of the creole preparations into 
which rice enters.



VI.


Everybody eats _akras_;--they sell at a cent apiece.  The akra is a 
small fritter or pancake, which may be made of fifty different 
things,--among others codfish, titiri, beans, brains, _choux-
caraïbes_, little black peas (_poix-zié-nouè_, "black-eyed peas"), 
or of crawfish (_akra-cribîche_).  When made of carrots, bananas, 
chicken, palm-cabbage, etc. and sweetened, they are called 
_marinades_.  On first acquaintance they seem rather greasy for so 
hot a climate; but one learns, on becoming accustomed to tropical 
conditions, that a certain amount of oily or greasy food is both 
healthy and needful.

First among popular vegetables are beans.  Red beans are 
preferred; but boiled white beans, served cold with vinegar and 
plenty of oil, form a favorite salad.  Next in order of 
preferment come the _choux-caraïbes_, _patates_, _zignames_, _camanioc_, 
and _cousscouche_: all immense roots,--the true potatoes of the 
tropics.  The camanioc is finer than the choux-caraïbe, boils 
whiter and softer: in appearance it resembles the manioc root 
very closely, but has no toxic element.  The cousscouche is the 
best of all: the finest Irish potato boiled into sparkling flour 
is not so good.  Most of these roots can be cooked into a sort of 
mush, called _migan_: such as _migan-choux_, made with the choux-
caraïbe; _migan-zignames_, made with yams; _migan-cousscouche_, 
etc.,--in which case crabs or shrimps are usually served with the 
_migan_.  There is a particular fondness for the little rosy crab 
called _tourlouroux_, in patois _touloulou_.  _Migan_ is also made 
with bread-fruit.  Very large bananas or plantains are boiled with 
codfish, with _daubes_, or meat stews, and with eggs.  The bread- 
fruit is a fair substitute for vegetables.  It must be cooked 
very thoroughly, and has a dry potato taste. What is called the 
_fleu-fouitt-à-pain_, or "bread-fruit flower"--a long pod-shaped 
solid growth, covered exteriorly with tiny seeds closely set as 
pin-heads could be, and having an interior pith very elastic and 
resistant,--is candied into a delicious sweetmeat.



VII.


The consumption of bananas is enormous: more bananas are eaten 
than vegetables; and more banana-trees are yearly being 
cultivated.  The negro seems to recognize instinctively that 
economical value of the banana to which attention was long since 
called by Humboldt, who estimated that while an acre planted in 
wheat would barely support three persons, an acre planted in 
banana-trees would nourish fifty.

Bananas and plantains hold the first place among fruits in 
popular esteem;--they are cooked in every way, and served with 
almost every sort of meat or fish.  What we call bananas in the 
United States, however, are not called bananas in Martinique, but 
figs (_figues_).  Plantains seem to be called _bananes_.  One is 
often surprised at popular nomenclature: _choux_ may mean either a 
sort of root (_choux-caraïbe_), or the top of the cabbage-palm; 
_Jacquot_ may mean a fish; _cabane_ never means a cabin, but a bed; 
_crickett_ means not a cricket, but a frog; and at least fifty 
other words have equally deceptive uses.  If one desires to speak 
of real figs--dried figs--he must say _figues-Fouanc_ (French figs); 
otherwise nobody will understand him.  There are many kinds of 
bananas here called _figues_,--the four most popular are the 
_figues-bananes_, which are plantains, I think; the _figues-
makouenga_, which grow wild, and have a red skin; the _figues-
pommes_ (apple-bananas), which are large and yellow; and the _ti- 
figues-desse_ (little-dessert-bananas), which are to be seen on 
all tables in St. Pierre.  They are small, sweet, and always 
agreeable, even when one has no appetite for other fruits.

It requires some little time to become accustomed to many 
tropical fruits, or at least to find patience as well as 
inclination to eat them.  A large number, in spite of delicious 
flavor, are provokingly stony: such as the ripe guavas, the 
cherries, the barbadines; even the corrossole and _pomme-cannelle_ 
are little more than huge masses of very hard seeds buried in 
pulp of exquisite taste.  The _sapota_, or _sapodtilla_, is less 
characterized by stoniness, and one soon learns to like it.  It 
has large flat seeds, which can be split into two with the 
finger-nail; and a fine white skin lies between these two halves.  
It requires some skill to remove entire this little skin, or 
pellicle,  without breaking it: to do so is said to be a test of 
affection.  Perhaps this bit of folk-lore was suggested by the 
shape of the pellicle, which is that of a heart.  The pretty 
fille-de-couleur asks her doudoux:--"_Ess ou ainmein moin?--
pouloss tiré ti lapeau-là sans cassé-y_."  Woe to him if he breaks 
it!...  The most disagreeable fruit is, I think, the _pomme-
d'Haiti_, or Haytian apple: it is very attractive exteriorly; but 
has a strong musky odor and taste which nauseates.  Few white 
creoles ever eat it. 

Of the oranges, nothing except praise can be said; but there are 
fruits that look like oranges, and are not oranges, that are far 
more noteworthy.  There is the _chadèque_, which grows here to 
fully three feet in circumference, and has a sweet pink pulp; and 
there is the "forbidden-fruit" (_fouitt-défendu_), a sort of cross 
between the orange and the chadèque, and superior to both.  The 
colored people declare that this monster fruit is the same which 
grew in Eden upon the fatal tree: _c'est ça mênm qui fai moune ka 
fai yche conm ça atouelement!_  The fouitt-défendu is wonderful, 
indeed, in its way; but the fruit which most surprised me on my 
first acquaintance with it was the _zabricôt_.

--"_Ou lè yon zabricôt?_" (Would you like an apricot?) Cyrillia 
asked me one day.  I replied that I liked apricots very much,--
wanted more than one.  Cyrillia looked astonished, but said 
nothing until she returned from market, and put on the table _two_ 
apricots, with the observation:--"_Ça ke fai ou malade mangé 
toutt ça!_" (You will get sick if you eat all that.)  I could not 
eat even half of one of them.  Imagine a plum larger than the 
largest turnip, with a skin like a russet apple, solid sweet 
flesh of a carrot-red color, and a nut in the middle bigger than 
a duck's egg and hard as a rock.  These fruits are aromatic as  
well as sweet to the taste: the price varies from one to four 
cents each, according to size.  The tree is indigenous to the 
West Indies; the aborigines of Hayti had a strange belief 
regarding it.  They alleged that its fruits formed the 
nourishment of the dead; and however pressed by hunger, an Indian 
in the woods would rather remain without food than strip one of 
these trees, lest he should deprive the ghosts of their 
sustenance....  No trace of this belief seems to exist among the 
colored people of Martinique.

[Illustration: BREAD-FRUIT TREE.]

Among the poor such fruits are luxuries: they eat more mangoes 
than any other fruits excepting bananas.  It is rather slobbery 
work eating a common mango, in which every particle of pulp is 
threaded fast to the kernel: one prefers to gnaw it when alone.  
But there are cultivated mangoes with finer and thicker flesh 
which can be sliced off, so that the greater part of the fruit 
may be eaten without smearing and sucking.  Among grafted 
varieties the _mangue_ is quite as delicious as the orange.  
Perhaps there are nearly as many varieties of mangoes in 
Martinique as there are varieties of peaches with us: I am 
acquainted, however, with only a few,--such as the _mango-
Bassignac_;--_mango-pêche_ (or peach-mango);--_mango-vert_ (green 
mango), very large and oblong;--_mango-grêffé_;--_mangotine_, quite 
round and small;--_mango-quinette_, very small also, almost egg-
shaped;--_mango-Zézé_, very sweet, rather small, and of flattened 
form;--_mango-d'or_ (golden mango), worth half a franc each;--
_mango-Lamentin_, a highly cultivated variety--and the superb 
_Reine-Amélie_ (or Queen Amelia), a great yellow fruit which 
retails even in Martinique at five cents apiece.



VIII.


... "_Ou c'est bonhomme caton?-ou c'est zimage, non?_" (Am I a 
pasteboard man, or an image, that I do not eat?) Cyrillia wants 
to know.  The fact is that I am a little overfed; but the 
stranger in the tropics cannot eat like a native, and my 
abstemiousness is a surprise.  In the North we eat a good deal 
for the sake of caloric; in the tropics, unless one be in the 
habit of taking much physical exercise, which is a very difficult 
thing to do, a generous appetite is out of the question.  
Cyrillia will not suffer me to live upon _mangé-Creole_ altogether; 
she insists upon occasional beefsteaks and roasts, and tries to 
tempt me with all kinds of queer delicious, desserts as well,--
particularly those cakes made of grated cocoanut and sugar-syrup 
(_tablett-coco-rapé_) of which a stranger becomes very fond.  But, 
nevertheless, I cannot eat enough to quiet Cyrillia's fears.

Not eating enough is not her only complaint against me.  I am 
perpetually doing something or other which shocks her.  The 
Creoles are the most cautious livers in the world, perhaps;--the 
stranger who walks in the sun without an umbrella, or stands in 
currents of air, is for them an object of wonder and compassion.  
Cyrillia's complaints about my recklessness in the matter of  
hygiene always terminate with the refrain: "_Yo pa fai ça içi_"--
(People never do such things in Martinique.)  Among such rash acts 
are washing one's face or hands while perspiring, taking off 
one's hat on coming in from a walk, going out immediately after a 
bath, and washing my face with soap.  "Oh, Cyrillia! what 
foolishness!--why should I not wash my face with soap?"  "Because 
it will blind you," Cyrillia answers: "_ça ké tchoué limiè zié  
ou_" (it will kill the light in your eyes).  There is no cleaner 
person than Cyrillia; and, indeed among the city people, the 
daily bath is the rule in all weathers; but soap is never used on 
the face by thousands, who, like Cyrillia, believe it will "kill 
the light of the eyes." 

One day I had been taking a long walk in the sun, and returned so 
thirsty that all the old stories about travellers suffering in 
waterless deserts returned to memory with new significance;--visions 
of simooms arose before me.  What a delight to see and to grasp the 
heavy, red, thick-lipped _dobanne_, the water-jar, dewy and cool 
with the exudation of the _Eau-de-Gouyave_ which filled it to the 
brim,--_toutt vivant_, as Cyrillia says, "all alive"!  There was a 
sudden scream,--the water-pitcher was snatched from my hands by 
Cyrillia with the question: "_Ess ou lè tchoué cò-ou?--Saint 
Joseph!_" (Did I want to kill my body?)...  The Creoles use the 
word "body" in speaking of anything that can happen to one,--"hurt 
one's body," "tire one's body," "marry one's body," "bury one's 
body," etc.;--I wonder whether the expression originated in zealous 
desire to prove a profound faith in the soul....  Then Cyrillia 
made me a little punch with sugar and rum, and told me I must never 
drink fresh-water after a walk unless I wanted to kill my body.  In 
this matter her advice was good.  The immediate result of a cold 
drink while heated is a profuse and icy perspiration, during which 
currents of air are really dangerous.  A cold is not dreaded 
here, and colds are rare; but pleurisy is common, and may be the 
consequence of any imprudent exposure.

I do not often have the opportunity at home of committing even 
an unconscious imprudence; for Cyrillia is ubiquitous, and always 
on the watch lest something dreadful should happen to me.  She is 
wonderful as a house-keeper as well as a cook: there is certainly 
much to do, and she has only a child to help her, but she always 
seems to have time.  Her kitchen apparatus is of the simplest 
kind: a charcoal furnace constructed of bricks, a few earthenware 
pots (_canar_), and some grid-irons;--yet with these she can 
certainly prepare as many dishes as there are days in the year.  
I have never known her to be busy with her _canari_ for more than 
an hour; yet everything is kept in perfect order.  When she is 
not working, she is quite happy in sitting at a window, and 
amusing herself by watching the life of the street,--or playing 
with a kitten, which she has trained so well that it seems to 
understand everything she says.



IX.


With darkness all the population of the island retire to their 
homes;--the streets become silent, and the life of the day is 
done.  By eight o'clock nearly all the windows are closed, and 
the lights put out;--by nine the people are asleep.  There are no 
evening parties, no night amusements, except during rare 
theatrical seasons and times of Carnival; there are no evening 
visits: active existence is almost timed by the rising and 
setting of the sun....  The only pleasure left for the stranger 
of evenings is a quiet smoke on his balcony or before his door: 
reading is out of the question, partly because books are rare, 
partly because lights are bad, partly because insects throng 
about every lamp or candle.  I am lucky enough to have a balcony, 
broad enough for a rocking-chair; and sometimes Cyrillia and the 
kitten come to keep me company before bedtime.  The kitten climbs 
on my knees; Cyrillia sits right down upon the balcony.

One bright evening, Cyrillia was amusing herself very much by 
watching the clouds: they were floating high; the moonlight made 
them brilliant as frost.  As they changed shape under the 
pressure of the trade-wind, Cyrillia seemed to discover wonderful 
things in them: sheep, ships with sails, cows, faces, perhaps 
even _zombis_.

--"_Travaill Bon-Dié joli,--anh?_" (Is not the work of the Good-God 
pretty?) she said at last....  "There was Madame Remy, who used 
to sell the finest _foulards_ and Madrases in St. Pierre;--she used 
to study the clouds.  She drew the patterns of the clouds for her 
_foulards_: whenever she saw a beautiful cloud or a beautiful 
rainbow, she would make a drawing of it in color at once; and 
then she would send that to France to have _foulards_ made just 
like it....  Since she is dead, you do not see any more pretty 
_foulards_ such as there used to be."...

--"Would you like to look at the moon with my telescope,  
Cyrillia?" I asked.  "Let me get it for you."

--"Oh no, no!" she answered, as if shocked.

--"Why?"

--"_Ah! faut pa gàdé baggaïe Bon-Dié conm ça!_" (It is not right to 
look at the things of the Good-God that way.)

I did not insist.  After a little silence, Cyrillia resumed:--

--"But I saw the Sun and the Moon once fighting together: that 
was what people call an _eclipse_,--is not that the word?...  They 
fought together a long time: I was looking at them.  We put a 
_terrine_ full of water on the ground, and looked into the water 
to see them.  And the Moon is stronger than the Sun!--yes, the 
Sun was obliged to give way to the Moon....  Why do they fight 
like that ?"

--"They don't, Cyrillia."

--"Oh yes, they do.  I saw them!...  And the Moon is much 
stronger than the Sun!"

I did not attempt to contradict this testimony of the eyes.  
Cyrillia continued to watch the pretty clouds. Then she said:
--"Would you not like to have a ladder long enough to let you 
climb up to those clouds, and see what they are made of?"

--"Why, Cyrillia, they are only vapor,--brume: I have been in 
clouds."

She looked at me in surprise, and, after a moment's silence, 
asked, with an irony of which I had not supposed her capable:--

--"Then you are the Good-God?"

--"Why, Cyrillia, it is not difficult to reach clouds. You see 
clouds always upon the top of the Montagne Pelée;--people go 
there.  I have been there--in the clouds."

--"Ah! those are not the same clouds: those are not the clouds 
of the Good-God.  You cannot touch the sky when you are on the 
Morne de la Croix."

--"My dear Cyrillia, there is no sky to touch.  The sky is only 
an appearance."

--"_Anh, anh, anh!_ No sky!--you say there is no sky?...  Then, 
what is that up there ?"

--"That is air, Cyrillia, beautiful blue air."

--"And what are the stars fastened to?"

--"To nothing.  They are suns, but so much further away than our 
sun that they look small."

--"No, they are not suns!  They have not the same form as the 
sun...  You must not say there is no sky: it is wicked!  But you 
are not a Catholic!"

--"My dear Cyrillia, I don't see what that has to do with the 
sky."

--"Where does the Good-God stay, if there be no sky? And where is 
heaven?--,and where is hell?"

--"Hell in the sky, Cyrillia?"

--"The Good-God made heaven in one part of the sky, and hell in 
another part, for bad people....  Ah! you are a Protestant;--you 
do not know the things of the Good-God!  That is why you talk like 
that."

--"What is a Protestant, Cyrillia?"

--"You are one.  The Protestants do not believe in religion,--do 
not love the Good-God."

--"Well, I am neither a Protestant nor a Catholic, Cyrillia."

--"Oh! you do not mean that; you cannot be a _maudi_, an accursed.  
There are only the Protestants, the Catholics, and the accursed.  
You are not a _maudi_, I am sure, But you must not say there is no 
sky"...

--"But, Cyrillia"--

--"No: I will not listen to you:--you are a Protestant. Where 
does the rain come from, if there is no sky,"...

--"Why, Cyrillia,... the clouds"...

--"No, you are a Protestant....  How can you say such things? 
There are the Three Kings and the Three Valets,--the beautiful 
stars that come at Christmas-time,--there, over there--all 
beautiful, and big, big, big! ...And you say there is no sky!"

--"Cyrillia, perhaps I am a _maudi_."

--"No, no! You are only a Protestant.  But do not tell me there 
is no sky: it is wicked to say that!"

--"I won't say it any more, Cyrillia--there!  But I will say there 
are no _zombis_."

--"I know you are not a _maudi_;--you have been baptized."

--"How do you know I have been baptized?"

--"Because, if you had not been baptized you would see _zombis_ all 
the time, even in broad day.  All children who are not baptized 
see _zombis_."...



X.


Cyrilla's solicitude for me extends beyond the commonplaces of 
hygiene and diet into the uncertain domain of matters ghostly.  
She fears much that something might happen to me through the 
agency of wizards, witches (_sociès_), or _zombis_.  Especially 
zombis.  Cyrillia's belief in zombis has a solidity that renders 
argument out of the question.  This belief is part of her inner 
nature,--something hereditary, racial, ancient as Africa, as 
characteristic of her people as the love of rhythms and melodies 
totally different from our own musical conceptions, but 
possessing, even for the civilized, an inexplicable emotional  
charm.

_Zombi!_--the word is perhaps full of mystery even for those who 
made it.  The explanations of those who utter it most often are 
never quite lucid: it seems to convey ideas darkly impossible to 
define,--fancies belonging to the mind of another race and 
another era,--unspeakably old.  Perhaps the word in our own 
language  which offers the best analogy is "goblin": yet the one 
is not fully translated by the other.  Both have, however, one 
common ground on which they become indistinguishable,--that 
region of the supernatural which is most primitive and most 
vague; and the closest relation between the savage and the 
civilized fancy may be found in the fears which we call 
childish,--of darkness, shadows, and things dreamed.  One form of 
the _zombi_-belief--akin to certain ghostly superstitions held by 
various primitive races--would seem to have been suggested by 
nightmare,--that form of nightmare in which familiar persons 
become slowly and hideously transformed into malevolent beings.  
The _zombi_ deludes under the appearance of a travelling companion, 
an old comrade--like the desert spirits of the Arabs--or even 
under the form of an animal.  Consequently the creole negro fears 
everything living which he meets after dark upon a lonely road,--
a stray horse, a cow, even a dog; and mothers quell the 
naughtiness of their children by the threat of summoning a zombi-
cat or a zombi-creature of some kind.  "_Zombi ké nana ou_" (the 
zombi will gobble thee up) is generally an effectual menace in 
the country parts, where it is believed zombis may be met with 
any time after sunset.  In the city it is thought that their 
regular hours are between two and four o'clock in the morning.  
At least so Cyrillia says:--

--"Dèezhè, toua-zhè-matin: c'est lhè zombi.  Yo ka sòti dèzhè, 
toua zhè: c'est lhè yo.  A quattrhè yo ka rentré;--angelus ka 
sonné." (At four o'clock they go back where they came from, 
before the _Angelus_ rings.) Why?

--"_C'est pou moune pas joinne yo dans larue_." (So that people may 
not meet with them in the street), Cyrillia answers.

--"Are they afraid of the people, Cyrillia ?" I asked.

--"No, they are not afraid; but they do not want people to know 
their business" (_pa lè moune ouè zaffai yo_).

Cyrillia also says one must not look out of the window  when a 
dog howls at night.  Such a dog may be a _mauvais vivant_ (evil 
being): "If he sees me looking at him he will say, '_Ou tropp 
quirièse quittée cabane ou pou gàdé zaffai lezautt_.'" (You are too 
curious to leave your bed like that to look at other folks' 
business.)

--"And what then, Cyrillia?"

--"Then he will put out your eyes,--_y ké coqui zié ou_,--make you 
blind."

--"But, Cyrillia," I asked one day, "did you ever see any 
zombis?"

--"How? I often see them!...  They walk about the room at night;
--they walk like people.  They sit in the rocking-chairs and rock 
themselves very softly, and look at me.  I say to them:--'What do 
you want here?--I never did any harm to anybody.  Go away!' Then 
they go away."

--"What do they look like?"

--"Like people,--sometimes like beautiful people (_bel moune_).  I 
am afraid of them.  I only see them when there is no light 
burning.  While the lamp bums before the Virgin they do not come.  
But sometimes the oil fails, and the light dies."

In my own room there are dried palm leaves and some withered 
flowers fastened to the wall.  Cyrillia put them there.  They 
were taken from the _reposoirs_ (temporary altars) erected for the 
last Corpus Christi procession: consequently they are blessed, 
and ought to keep the zombis away.  That is why they are fastened 
to the wall, over my bed.

Nobody could be kinder to animals than Cyrillia usually shows 
herself to be: all the domestic animals in the neighborhood 
impose upon her;--various dogs and cats steal from her 
impudently, without the least fear of being beaten.  I was 
therefore very much surprised to see her one evening catch a 
flying beetle that approached the light, and deliberately put its 
head in the candle-flame.  When I asked her how she could be so 
cruel, she replied:--

--"_Ah ou pa connaitt choïe pays-ci_." (You do not know Things 
in this country.)

The Things thus referred to I found to be supernatural  Things.  
It is popularly believed that certain winged creatures which 
circle about candles at night may be _engagés_ or _envoyés_--wicked 
people having the power of transformation, or even zombis "sent" 
by witches or wizards to do harm.  "There was a woman at 
Tricolore," Cyrillia says, "who used to sew a great deal at night; 
and a big beetle used to come into her room and fly about the candle, and 
and bother her very much.  One night she managed to get hold of it, 
and she singed its head in the candle.  Next day, a woman who 
was her neighbor came to the house with her head all tied up. 
'_Ah! macoumè_,' asked the sewing-woman, '_ça ou ni dans guiôle-ou?_'
And the other answered, very angrily, '_Ou ni toupet mandé moin ça 
moin ni dans guiôle moin!--et cété ou qui té brilé guiôle moin 
nans chandelle-ou hiè-souè_.'" (You have the impudence to ask what 
is the matter with my mouth! and you yourself burned my mouth in 
your candle last night.)

Early one morning, about five o'clock, Cyrillia, opening the 
front door, saw a huge crab walking down the street.  Probably it 
had escaped from some barrel; for it is customary here to keep 
live crabs in barrels and fatten them,--feeding them with maize, 
mangoes, and, above all, green peppers: nobody likes to cook 
crabs as soon as caught; for they may have been eating manchineel 
apples at the river-mouths.  Cyrillia uttered a cry of dismay on 
seeing that crab; then I heard her talking to herself:--"_I_ touch 
it?--never! it can go about its business.  How do I know it is 
not _an arranged crab_ (_yon crabe rangé_), or an _envoyé_?--since 
everybody knows I like crabs.  For two sous I can buy a fine crab 
and know where it comes from."  The crab went on down the street: 
everywhere the sight of it created consternation;  nobody dared 
to touch it; women cried out at it, "_Miserabe!--envoyé Satan!--
allez, maudi!_"--some threw holy water on the crab.  Doubtless it 
reached the sea in safety.  In the evening Cyrillia said: "I 
think that crab was a little zombi;--I am going to burn a light 
all night to keep it from coming back."

Another day, while I was out, a negro to whom I had lent two 
francs came to the house, and paid his debt Cyrillia told me when 
I came back, and showed me the money carefully enveloped in a 
piece of brown paper; but said I must not touch it,--she would 
get rid of it for me at the market.  I laughed at her fears; and 
she observed: "You do not know negroes, Missié!--negroes are 
wicked, negroes are jealous!  I do not want you to touch that 
money, because I have not a good opinion about this affair."

After I began to learn more of the underside of Martinique  
life, I could understand the source and justification of many  
similar superstitions in simple and uneducated minds.   The negro 
sorcerer is, at worst, only a poisoner; but he possesses a very 
curious art which long defied serious investigation, and in the 
beginning of the last century was attributed, even by whites, to 
diabolical influence.  In 1721, 1723, and 1725, several negroes 
were burned alive at the stake as wizards in league with the 
devil.  It was an era of comparative ignorance; but even now 
things are done which would astonish the most sceptical and 
practical physician.  For example, a laborer  discharged from a 
plantation vows vengeance; and the next morning the whole force 
of hands--the entire atelier--are totally disabled from work.  
Every man and woman on the place is unable to walk; everybody has 
one or both legs frightfully swollen.  _Yo te ka pilé malifice_:  
they have trodden on a "malifice."  What is the "malifice"?  All 
that can be ascertained is that certain little prickly seeds have 
been scattered all over the ground, where the barefooted workers 
are in the habit of passing.  Ordinarily, treading on these seeds 
is of no consequence; but it is evident in such a case that they 
must have been prepared in a special way,--soaked in some poison, 
perhaps snake-venom.  At all events, the physician deems it 
safest to treat the inflammations after the manner of snake 
wounds; and after many days the hands are perhaps able to resume 
duty.



XI.


While Cyrillia is busy with her _canari_, she talks to herself or 
sings.  She has a low rich voice,--sings strange things, things 
that have been forgotten by this generation,--creole songs of the 
old days, having a weird rhythm and fractions of tones that are 
surely African.  But more generally she talks to herself, as all 
the Martiniquaises do: it is a continual murmur as of a stream.
At first I used to think she was talking to somebody else, and 
would call out:--

--"_Épi quiless moune ça ou ka pàlé-à?_"

But she would always answer:--"_Moin ka pàlé anni cò moin_" (I am 
only talking to my own body), which is the creole expression for 
talking to oneself.

--"And what are you talking so much to your own body about, 
Cyrillia?"

--"I am talking about my own little affairs" (_ti zaffai-
moin_)....  That is all that I could ever draw from her. 

But when not working, she will sit for hours looking out of the 
window.  In this she resembles the kitten: both seem to find the 
same silent pleasure in watching the street, or the green heights 
that rise above its roofs,--the Morne d'Orange.  Occasionally at 
such times she will break the silence in the strangest way, if she 
thinks I am not too busy with my papers to answer a question:--

--"_Missié?_"--timidly.

--"Eh?"

--"_Di moin, chè, ti manmaille dans pays ou, toutt piti, piti,--ess 
ça pàlé Anglais?_" (Do the little children in my country--the 
very, very little children--talk English?)

--"Why, certainly, Cyrillia."

--"_Toutt piti, piti?_"--with growing surprise.

--"Why, of course!"

--"_C'est drôle, ça_" (It is queer, that!) She cannot understand it.

--"And the little _manmaille_ in Martinique, Cyrillia--_toutt 
piti,piti_,--don't they talk creole?"

--"'_Oui; mais toutt moune ka pâlé nègue: ça facile_." (Yes; but 
anybody can talk negro--that is easy to learn.)



XII.


Cyrillia's room has no furniture in it: the Martinique bonne 
lives as simply and as rudely as a domestic animal.  One thin 
mattress covered with a sheet, and elevated from the floor only 
by a léfant, forms her bed. The _léfant_, or "elephant," is 
composed of two thick square pieces of coarse hard mattress 
stuffed with shavings, and placed end to end.  Cyrillia has a 
good pillow, however,--_bourré épi flêches-canne_,--filled with 
the plumes of the sugar-cane.  A cheap trunk with broken hinges 
contains her modest little wardrobe: a few _mouchoirs_, or 
kerchiefs, used for head-dresses, a spare _douillette_, or long 
robe, and some tattered linen.  Still she is always clean, neat, 
fresh-looking.  I see a pair of sandals in the corner,--such as 
the women of the country sometimes wear--wooden soles with a 
leather band for the instep, and two little straps; but she never 
puts them on.  Fastened to the wall are two French prints--
lithographs: one representing Victor Hugo's _Esmeralda_ in prison 
with her pet goat; the other, Lamartine's _Laurence_ with her fawn.  
Both are very old and stained and bitten by the _bête-à-ciseau_, a 
species of _lepisma_, which destroys books and papers, and 
everything it can find exposed.  On a shelf are two bottles,--one 
filled with holy water; another with _tafia camphrée_ (camphor 
dissolved in tafia), which is Cyrillia's sole remedy for colds, 
fevers, headaches--all maladies not of a very fatal description.  
There are also a little woollen monkey, about three inches high--
the dusty plaything of a long-dead child;--an image of the 
Virgin, even smaller;--and a broken cup with fresh bright 
blossoms in it, the Virgin's flower-offering;--and the Virgin's 
invariable lamp--a night-light, a little wick floating on olive-
oil in a tiny glass.

I know that Cyrillia must have bought these flowers--they are 
garden flowers--at the Marchè du Fort.  There are always old 
women sitting there who sell nothing else but bouquets for the 
Virgin,--and who cry out to passers-by:--"_Gagné ti bouquet pou 
Viège-ou, chè!_...  Buy a nosegay, dear, for your Virgin;--she is 
asking you for one;--give her a little one, _chè cocott_."...  
Cyrillia says you must not smell the flowers you give the Virgin: 
it would be stealing from her....  The little lamp is always 
lighted at six o'clock.  At six o'clock the Virgin is supposed  
to pass through all the streets of St. Pierre, and wherever a 
lamp burns before her image, she enters there and blesses that 
house.  "_Faut limé lampe ou pou fai la-Viège passé dans caïe-
ou_," says Cyrillia. (You must light the lamp to make the Virgin 
come into your house.)...  Cyrillia often talks to her little 
image, exactly as if it were a baby,--calls it pet names,--asks 
if it is content with the flowers.

This image of the Virgin is broken: it is only half a Virgin,--
the upper half.  Cyrillia has arranged it so, nevertheless, that 
had I not been very inquisitive I should never have divined its 
mishap.  She found a small broken powder-box without a lid,--
probably thrown negligently out of a boudoir window by some 
wealthy beauty: she filled this little box with straw, and fixed 
the mutilated image upright within it, so that you could never 
suspect the loss of its feet.  The Virgin looks very funny, thus 
peeping over the edge of her little box,--looks like a broken 
toy, which a child has been trying to mend.  But this Virgin has 
offerings too: Cyrillia buys flowers for her, and sticks them all 
round her, between the edge of the powder-box and the straw.  
After all, Cyrillia's Virgin is quite as serious a fact as any 
image of silver or of ivory in the homes of the rich: probably 
the prayers said to her are more simply beautiful, and more 
direct from the heart, than many daily murmured before the 
_chapelles_ of luxurious homes.  And the more one looks at it, the 
more one feels that it were almost wicked to smile at this little 
broken toy of faith.

--"Cyrillia, _mafi_," I asked her one day, after my discovery  of 
the little Virgin,--"would you not like me to buy a _chapelle_ for 
you?"  The _chapelle_ is the little bracket-altar, together with 
images and ornaments, to be found in every creole bedroom.

--"_Mais non, Missié_," she answered, smiling, "moin aimein ti 
Viège moin, pa lè gagnin dautt_.  I love my little Virgin: do not 
want any other.  I have seen much trouble: she was with me in my 
trouble;--she heard my prayers.  It would be wicked for me to 
throw her away.  When I have a sou to spare, I buy flowers for 
her;--when I have no money, I climb the mornes, and pick pretty 
buds for her....  But why should Missié want to buy me a 
_chapelle?_--Missié is a Protestant?"

--"I thought it might give you pleasure, Cyrillia."

--"No, Missié, I thank you; it would not give me pleasure.  But 
Missié could give me something else which would make me very 
happy--I often thought of asking Missié...but--"

--"Tell me what it is, Cyrillia."

She remained silent a moment, then said:--

--"Missié makes photographs...."

--"You want a photograph of yourself, Cyrillia?"

--"Oh! no, Missié, I am too ugly and too old.  But I have a 
daughter.  She is beautiful--_yon bel bois_,--like a beautiful tree, 
as we say here.  I would like so much to have her picture taken."

A photographic instrument belonging to a clumsy amateur suggested 
this request to Cyrillia.  I could not attempt such work 
successfully; but I gave her a note to a photographer of much 
skill; and a few days later the portrait was sent to the house.  
Cyrillia's daughter was certainly a comely girl,--tall and almost 
gold-colored, with pleasing features; and the photograph looked 
very nice, though less nice than the original.  Half the beauty 
of these people is a beauty of tint,--a tint so exquisite 
sometimes that I have even heard white creoles declare no white 
complexion compares with it: the greater part of the charm 
remaining is grace,--the grace of movement; and neither of these 
can be rendered by photography.  I had the portrait framed for 
Cyrillia, to hang up beside her little pictures.

When it came, she was not in; I put it in her room, and waited 
to see the effect.  On returning, she entered there; and I did 
not see her for so long a time that I stole to the door of the 
chamber to observe her.  She was standing before the portrait,--
looking at it, talking to it as if it were alive.  "_Yche moin, 
yche moin!...  Oui! ou toutt bel!--yche moin bel_." (My child, my 
child!... Yes, thou art all beautiful: my child is beautiful.) 
All at once she turned--perhaps she noticed my shadow, or felt my 
presence in some way: her eyes were wet;--she started, flushed, 
then laughed. 

--"Ah! Missié, you watch me;--_ou guette moin_....  But she is 
my child.  Why should I not love her?... She looks so beautiful 
there."

--"She is beautiful, Cyrillia;--I love to see you love her."

She gazed at the picture a little longer in silence;--then 
turned to me again, and asked earnestly:--

--"_Pouki yo ja ka fai pòtrai palé--anh?... pisse yo ka tiré y 
toutt samm ou: c'est ou-menm!...  Yo douè fai y palé 'tou_."

(Why do they not make a portrait talk,--tell me?  For they draw it 
just all like you!--it is yourself: they ought to make it talk.)

--"Perhaps they will be able to do something like that one of 
these days, Cyrillia."

--"Ah! that would be so nice.  Then I could talk to her.  _C'est 
yon bel moune moin fai--y bel, joli moune!  ... Moin sé causé 
épi y_."...

... And I, watching her beautiful childish emotion, thought:--
Cursed be the cruelty that would persuade itself that one soul 
may be like another,--that one affection may be replaced by 
another,--that individual goodness is not a thing apart, 
original, untwinned on earth, but only the general 
characteristic of a class or type, to be sought and found and 
utilized at will!...

Self-curséd he who denies the divinity of love!  Each heart, each 
brain in the billions of humanity,--even so surely as sorrow 
lives,--feels and thinks in some special way unlike any other; 
and goodness in each has its unlikeness to all other goodness,--
and thus its own infinite preciousness; for however humble, 
however small, it is something all alone, and God never repeats 
his work. No heart-beat is cheap, no gentleness is despicable, no 
kindness is common; and Death, in removing a life--the simplest 
life ignored,--removes what never will reappear through the 
eternity of eternities,--since every being is the sum of a chain 
of experiences infinitely varied from all others....  To some 
Cyrillia's happy tears might bring a smile: to me that smile 
would seem the unforgivable sin against the Giver of Life!... 




CHAPTER XII.
"PA COMBINÉ, CHÈ!"



I.


... More finely than any term in our tongue does the French word 
_frisson_ express that faint shiver--as of a ghostly touch 
thrilling from hair to feet--which intense pleasure sometimes 
gives, and which is felt most often and most strongly in 
childhood, when the imagination is still so sensitive and so 
powerful that one's whole being trembles to the vibration of a 
fancy.  And this electric word best expresses, I think, that long 
thrill of amazed delight inspired by the first knowledge of the 
tropic world,--a sensation of weirdness in beauty, like the 
effect, in child-days, of fairy tales and stories of phantom 
isles.

For all unreal seems the vision of it.  The transfiguration of 
all things by the stupendous light and the strange vapors of the 
West Indian sea,--the interorbing of flood and sky in blinding 
azure,--the sudden spirings of gem-tinted coast from the ocean,
--the iris-colors and astounding shapes of the hills,--the 
unimaginable magnificence of palms,--the high woods veiled and 
swathed in vines that blaze like emerald: all remind you in some 
queer way of things half forgotten,--the fables of enchantment.  
Enchantment it is indeed--but only the enchantment of that Great 
Wizard, the Sun, whose power you are scarcely beginning to know.

And into the life of the tropical city you enter as in dreams 
one enters into the life of a dead century.  In all the quaint 
streets--over whose luminous yellow façades the beautiful burning 
violet of the sky appears as if but a few feet away--you see 
youth good to look upon as ripe fruit; and the speech of the 
people is soft as a coo; and eyes of brown girls caress you with 
a passing look....  Love's world, you may have heard, has few 
restraints here, where Nature ever seems to cry out, like the 
swart seller of corossoles:--"_ça qui le doudoux?_"...

How often in some passing figure does one discern an ideal 
almost realized, and forbear to follow it with untired gaze only 
when another, another, and yet another, come to provoke the same 
aesthetic fancy,--to win the same unspoken praise!  How often 
does one long for artist's power to fix the fleeting lines, to 
catch the color, to seize the whole exotic charm of some special 
type!...  One finds a strange charm even in the timbre of these 
voices,--these half-breed voices, always with a tendency to contralto, 
and vibrant as ringing silver.  What is that mysterious quality in a 
voice which has power to make the pulse beat faster, even when 
the singer is unseen? ... do only the birds know?

... It seems to you that you could never weary of watching this 
picturesque life,--of studying the costumes, brilliant with 
butterfly colors,--and the statuesque semi-nudity of laboring 
hundreds,--and the untaught grace of attitudes,--and the 
simplicity of manners.  Each day brings some new pleasure of 
surprise;--even from the window of your lodging you are ever 
noting something novel, something to delight the sense of oddity 
or beauty....   Even in your room everything interests you, 
because of its queerness or quaintness: you become fond of the 
objects about you,--the great noiseless rocking-chairs that lull 
to sleep;--the immense bed (_lit-à-bateau_) of heavy polished wood, 
with its richly carven sides reaching down to the very floor;--
and its invariable companion, the little couch or _sopha_, 
similarly shaped but much narrower, used only for the siesta;--
and the thick red earthen vessels (_dobannes_) which keep your 
drinking-water cool on the hottest days, but which are always 
filled thrice between sunrise and sunset with clear water from 
the mountain,--_dleau toutt vivant_, "all alive";--and the 
_verrines_, tall glass vases with stems of bronze in which your 
candle will burn steadily despite a draught;--and even those 
funny little angels and Virgins which look at you from their 
bracket in the corner, over the oil lamp you are presumed to 
kindle nightly in their honor, however great a heretic you may 
be.... You adopt at once, and without reservation, those creole 
home habits which are the result of centuries of experience with 
climate,--abstention from solid food before the middle of the 
day, repose after the noon meal;--and you find each repast an 
experience as curious as it is agreeable.  It is not at all 
difficult to accustom oneself to green pease stewed with sugar, 
eggs mixed with tomatoes, salt fish stewed in milk, palmiste pith 
made into salad, grated cocoa formed into rich cakes, and dishes 
of titiri cooked in oil,--the minuscule fish, of which a thousand 
will scarcely fill a saucer.  Above all, you are astonished by 
the endless variety of vegetables and fruits, of all conceivable 
shapes and inconceivable flavors.

And it does not seem possible that even the simplest little 
recurrences of this antiquated, gentle home-life could ever prove 
wearisome by daily repetition through the months and years.  The 
musical greeting of the colored  child, tapping at your door 
before sunrise,--"_Bonjou', Missié_,"--as she brings your cup of 
black hot coffee and slice of corossole;--the smile of the 
silent brown girl who carries your meals up-stairs in a tray 
poised upon her brightly coiffed head, and who stands by while 
you dine, watching every chance to serve, treading quite silently with 
her pretty bare feet;--the pleasant manners of the _màchanne_ who 
brings your fruit, the _porteuse_ who delivers your bread, the 
_blanchisseuse_ who washes your linen at the river,--and all the 
kindly folk who circle about your existence, with their trays and 
turbans, their _foulards_ and _douillettes_, their primitive grace 
and creole chatter: these can never cease to have a charm for 
you.  You cannot fail to be touched also by the amusing 
solicitude of these good people for your health, because you are 
a stranger: their advice about hours to go out and hours to stay 
at home,--about roads to follow and paths to avoid on account of 
snakes,--about removing your hat and coat, or drinking while 
warm....  Should you fall ill, this solicitude intensifies to 
devotion; you are tirelessly tended;--the good people  will 
exhaust their wonderful knowledge of herbs to get you well,--will 
climb the mornes even at midnight, in spite of the risk of snakes 
and fear of zombis, to gather strange plants by the light of a 
lantern.  Natural joyousness, natural kindliness, heart-felt 
desire to please, childish capacity of being delighted with 
trifles,--seem characteristic of all this colored population.  It 
is turning its best side towards you, no doubt; but the side of 
the nature made visible appears none the less agreeable because 
you suspect there is another which you have not seen.  What 
kindly inventiveness is displayed in contriving surprises for 
you, or in finding some queer thing to show you,--some fantastic 
plant, or grotesque fish, or singular bird!  What apparent 
pleasure in taking trouble to gratify,--what innocent frankness 
of sympathy!... Childishly beautiful seems the readiness of this 
tinted race to compassionate: you do not reflect that it is also 
a savage trait, while the charm of its novelty is yet upon you.  
No one is ashamed to shed tears for the death of a pet animal; any 
mishap to a child creates excitement, and evokes an immediate 
volunteering of services.  And this compassionate sentiment is 
often extended, in a semi-poetical way, even to inanimate 
objects.  One June morning, I remember, a three-masted schooner 
lying in the bay took fire, and had to be set adrift.  An immense 
crowd gathered on the wharves; and I saw many curious 
manifestations of grief,--such grief, perhaps, as an infant feels 
for the misfortune of a toy it imagines to possess feeling, but 
not the less sincere because unreasoning.  As the flames climbed 
the rigging, and the masts fell, the crowd moaned as though 
looking upon some human tragedy; and everywhere one could hear 
such strange cries of pity as, "_Pauv' malhérè!_" (poor 
unfortunate), "_pauv' diabe!_"...  "_Toutt baggaïe-y pou allé, 
casse!_" (All its things-to-go-with are broken!) sobbed a girl, 
with tears streaming down her cheeks....  She seemed to believe 
it was alive....

... And day by day the artlessness of this exotic humanity 
touches you more;--day by day this savage, somnolent, splendid 
Nature--delighting in furious color--bewitches you more.  
Already the anticipated necessity of having to leave it all some 
day--the far-seen pain of bidding it farewell--weighs upon you, 
even in dreams.



II.


Reader, if you be of those who have longed in vain for a glimpse 
of that tropic world,--tales of whose beauty charmed your 
childhood, and made stronger upon you that weird mesmerism of the 
sea which pulls at the heart of a boy,--one who had longed like 
you, and who, chance-led, beheld at last the fulfilment of the 
wish, can swear to you that the magnificence of the reality far 
excels the imagining.  Those who know only the lands in which all 
processes for the satisfaction of human wants have been perfected 
under the terrible stimulus of necessity, can little guess the 
witchery of that Nature ruling the zones of color and of light.  
Within their primeval circles, the earth remains radiant and 
young as in that preglacial time whereof some transmitted memory 
may have created the hundred traditions of an Age of Gold.  And 
the prediction of a paradise to come,--a phantom realm of rest 
and perpetual light: may this not have been but a sum of the 
remembrances and the yearnings of man first exiled from his 
heritage,--a dream born of the great nostalgia of races migrating 
to people the pallid North?...

... But with the realization of the hope to know this magical 
Nature you learn that the actuality varies from the preconceived 
ideal otherwise than in surpassing it.  Unless you enter the 
torrid world equipped with scientific knowledge extraordinary, 
your anticipations are likely to be at fault.  Perhaps you had 
pictured to yourself the effect of perpetual summer as a physical 
delight,--something like an indefinite prolongation of the 
fairest summer weather ever enjoyed at home.  Probably you had 
heard of fevers, risks of acclimatization, intense heat, and a 
swarming of venomous creatures; but you may nevertheless believe 
you know what precautions to take; and published statistics of 
climatic temperature may have persuaded you that the heat is not 
difficult to bear.  By that enervation to which all white 
dwellers in the tropics are subject you may have understood a 
pleasant languor,--a painless disinclination to effort in a 
country where physical effort is less needed than elsewhere,--a 
soft temptation to idle away the hours in a hammock, under the 
shade of giant trees.  Perhaps you have read, with eyes of faith, 
that torpor of the body is favorable to activity of the mind, and 
therefore believe that the intellectual powers can be stimulated 
and strengthened by tropical influences:--you suppose that 
enervation will reveal itself only as a beatific indolence which 
will leave the brain free to think with lucidity, or to revel in 
romantic dreams.



III.


You are not at first undeceived;--the disillusion is long 
delayed.  Doubtless you have read the delicious idyl of Bernardin 
de Saint-Pierre (this is not Mauritius, but the old life of 
Mauritius was wellnigh the same); and you look for idyllic 
personages among the beautiful humanity about you,--for idyllic 
scenes among the mornes shadowed by primeval forest, and the 
valleys threaded by a hundred brooks.  I know not whether the 
faces and forms that you seek will be revealed to you;--but you 
will not be able to complain for the lack of idyllic loveliness 
in the commonest landscape.  Whatever artistic knowledge you 
possess will merely teach you the more to wonder at the luxuriant 
purple of the sea, the violet opulence of the sky, the violent 
beauty of foliage greens, the lilac tints of evening, and the 
color-enchantments distance gives in an atmosphere full of 
iridescent power,--the amethysts and agates, the pearls and 
ghostly golds, of far mountainings.  Never, you imagine, never 
could one tire of wandering through those marvellous valleys,--of 
climbing the silent roads under emeraldine shadow to heights from 
which the city seems but a few inches long, and the moored ships 
tinier than gnats that cling to a mirror,--or of swimming in 
that blue bay whose clear flood stays warm through all the year. [51]

Or, standing alone, in some aisle of colossal palms, where 
humming-birds are flashing and shooting like a showering of jewel-fires, 
you feel how weak the skill of poet or painter to fix the sensation 
of that white-pillared imperial splendor;--and you think you know why 
creoles exiled by necessity to colder lands may sicken for love of their 
own,--die of home-yearning, as did many a one in far Louisiana, 
after the political tragedies of 1848....

... But you are not a creole, and must pay tribute of suffering 
to the climate of the tropics.  You will have to learn that a 
temperature of 90° Fahr. in the tropics is by no means the same 
thing as 90° Fahr. in Europe or the United States;--that the 
mornes cannot be climbed with safety during the hotter hours of 
the afternoon;--that by taking a long walk you incur serious 
danger of catching a fever;--that to enter the high woods, a path 
must be hewn with the cutlass through the creepers and vines and 
undergrowth,--among snakes, venomous insects, venomous plants, 
and malarial exhalations;--that the finest blown dust is full of 
irritant and invisible enemies;--that it is folly to seek repose 
on a sward, or in the shade of trees,--particularly under 
tamarinds.  Only after you have by experience become well 
convinced of these facts can you begin to comprehend something 
general in regard to West Indian conditions of life.



IV.


... Slowly the knowledge comes....  For months the vitality of a 
strong European (the American constitution bears the test even 
better) may resist the debilitating climate: perhaps the 
stranger will flatter himself that, like men habituated to heavy 
labor in stifling warmth,--those toiling in mines, in founderies 
in engine-rooms of ships, at iron-furnaces,--so he too may 
become accustomed, without losing his strength to the continuous 
draining of the pores, to the exhausting force of this strange 
motionless heat which compels change of clothing many times a 
day.  But gradually he finds that it is not heat alone which is 
debilitating him, but the weight and septic nature of an 
atmosphere charged with vapor, with electricity, with unknown 
agents not less inimical to human existence than propitious to 
vegetal luxuriance.  If he has learned those rules of careful 
living which served him well in a temperate climate, he will not 
be likely to abandon them among his new surroundings; and they 
will help him; no doubt,--particularly if he be prudent enough 
to avoid the sea-coast at night, and all exposure to dews or 
early morning mists, and all severe physical strain.  
Nevertheless, he becomes  slowly conscious of changes 
extraordinary going on within him,--in especial, a continual 
sensation of weight in the brain, daily growing, and compelling 
frequent repose;--also a curious heightening of nervous 
sensibility to atmospheric changes, to tastes and odors, to 
pleasure and pain.  Total loss of appetite soon teaches him to 
follow the local custom of eating nothing solid before mid-day, 
and enables him to divine how largely the necessity for caloric 
enters into the food-consumption of northern races.  He becomes 
abstemious, eats sparingly, and discovers his palate to have 
become oddly exacting--finds that certain fruits and drinks are 
indeed, as the creoles assert, appropriate only to particular 
physical conditions corresponding with particular hours of the 
day.  Corossole is only to be eaten in the morning, after black 
coffee;--vermouth is good to drink only between the hours of 
nine and half-past ten;--rum or other strong liquor only before 
meals or after fatigue;--claret or wine only during a repast, 
and then very sparingly,--for, strangely enough, wine is found 
to be injurious in a country where stronger liquors are 
considered among the prime necessaries of existence.

And he expected, at the worst, to feel lazy, to lose some 
physical energy!  But this is no mere languor which now begins to 
oppress him;--it is a sense of vital exhaustion painful as the 
misery of convalescence: the least effort provokes a perspiration 
profuse enough to saturate clothing, and the limbs ache as from 
muscular overstrain;--the lightest attire feels almost 
insupportable;--the idea of sleeping even under a sheet is 
torture, for the weight of a silken handkerchief is discomfort.   
One wishes one could live as a savage,--naked in the heat.  One 
burns with a thirst impossible to assuage--feels a desire for 
stimulants, a sense of difficulty in breathing, occasional 
quickenings of the heart's action so violent as to alarm.  Then 
comes at last the absolute dread of physical exertion.  Some 
slight relief might be obtained, no doubt, by resigning oneself 
forthwith to adopt the gentle indolent manners of the white 
creoles, who do not walk when it is possible to ride, and never 
ride if it is equally convenient to drive;--but the northern 
nature generally refuses to accept this ultimate necessity 
without a protracted and painful struggle.

... Not even then has the stranger fully divined the evil power 
of this tropical climate, which remodels the characters of races 
within a couple of generations,--changing the shape of the 
skeleton,--deepening the cavities of the orbits to protect the 
eye from the flood of light,--transforming the blood,--darkening 
the skin.  Following upon the nervous modifications of the first 
few months come modifications and changes of a yet graver kind;--
with the loss of bodily energy ensues a more than corresponding  
loss of mental activity and strength.  The whole range of thought 
diminishes, contracts,--shrinks to that narrowest of circles 
which surrounds the physical sell, the inner ring of merely 
material sensation: the memory weakens appallingly;--the mind 
operates faintly, slowly, incoherently,--almost as in dreams.  
Serious reading, vigorous thinking, become impossible.  You doze 
over the most important project;--you fall fast asleep over the 
most fascinating of books.

Then comes the vain revolt, the fruitless desperate striving 
with this occult power which numbs the memory and enchants the 
will.  Against the set resolve to think, to act, to study, there 
is a hostile rush of unfamiliar pain to the temples, to the 
eyes, to the nerve centres of  the brain; and a great weight is 
somewhere in the head, always growing heavier: then comes a 
drowsiness that overpowers and stupefies, like the effect of a 
narcotic.  And this obligation to sleep, to sink into coma, will 
impose itself just so surely as you venture to attempt any mental 
work in leisure hours, after the noon repast, or during the heat 
of the afternoon.  Yet at night you can scarcely sleep.  Repose 
is made feverish by a still heat that keeps the skin drenched 
with thick sweat, or by a perpetual, unaccountable, tingling and 
prickling of the whole body-surface.  With the approach of 
morning the air grows cooler, and slumber comes,--a slumber of 
exhaustion, dreamless and sickly; and perhaps when you would rise 
with the sun you feel such a dizziness, such a numbness, such a 
torpor, that only by the most intense effort can you keep your 
feet for the first five minutes.  You experience a sensation that 
recalls the poet's fancy of death-in-life, or old stories of 
sudden rising from the grave: it is as though all the electricity 
of will had ebbed away,--all the vital force evaporated, in the 
heat of the night....



V.


It might be stated, I think, with safety, that for a certain  
class of invalids the effect of the climate is like a powerful 
stimulant,--a tonic medicine which may produce astonishing 
results within a fixed time,--but which if taken beyond that time 
will prove dangerous.  After a certain number of months, your 
first enthusiasm with your new surroundings dies out;--even 
Nature ceases to affect the senses in the same way: the _frisson_ 
ceases to come to you.  Meanwhile you may have striven to become 
as much as possible a part of the exotic life into which you have 
entered,--may have adopted its customs, learned its language.  
But you cannot mix with it mentally;--You circulate only as an 
oil-drop in its current.  You still feel yourself alone.

The very longest West Indian day is but twelve hours fifty-six 
minutes;--perhaps your first dissatisfaction was evoked by the 
brevity of the days.  There is no twilight whatever; and all 
activity ceases with sundown: there is no going outside of the 
city after dark, because of snakes;--club life here ends at the 
hour it only begins abroad;--there is no visiting of evenings; 
after the seven o'clock dinner, everyone prepares to retire.  
And the foreigner, accustomed to make evening a time for social 
intercourse, finds no small difficulty in resigning himself to 
this habit of early retiring.  The natural activity of a European 
or American mind requires some intellectual exercise,--at least 
some interchange of ideas with sympathetic natures; the hours 
during the suspension of business after noon, or those following 
the closing of offices at sunset, are the only ones in which busy 
men may find time for such relaxation; and these very hours have 
been always devoted to restorative sleep by the native population 
ever since the colony began.  Naturally, therefore, the stranger 
dreads the coming of the darkness, the inevitable isolation of 
long sleepless hours.  And if he seek those solaces for loneliness 
which he was wont to seek at home,--reading, study,--he is made 
to comprehend, as never before, what the absence of all 
libraries, lack of books, inaccessibility of all reading-matter, 
means for the man of the nineteenth century.  One must send abroad 
to obtain even a review, and wait months for its coming.  And 
this mental starvation gnaws at the brain more and more as one 
feels less inclination and less capacity for effort, and as that 
single enjoyment, which at first rendered a man indifferent to 
other pleasures,--the delight of being alone with tropical  
Nature,--becomes more difficult to indulge.  When lethargy has 
totally mastered habit and purpose, and you must at last confess 
yourself resigned to view Nature from your chamber, or at best 
from a carriage window,--then, indeed, the want of all 
literature proves a positive torture.  It is not a consolation to 
discover that you are an almost solitary sufferer,--from climate 
as well as from mental hunger.  With amazement and envy you see 
young girls passing to walk right across the island and back 
before sunset, under burdens difficult for a strong man to lift 
to his shoulder;--the same journey on horseback would now weary 
you for days.  You wonder of what flesh and blood can these 
people be made,--what wonderful vitality lies in those slender 
woman-bodies, which, under the terrible sun, and despite their 
astounding expenditure of force, remain cool to the sight and 
touch as bodies of lizards and serpents!  And contrasting this 
savage strength with your own weakness, you begin to understand 
better how mighty the working of those powers which temper races 
and shape race habits in  accordance with environment.

... Ultimately, if destined for acclimatation, you will cease to 
suffer from these special conditions; but ere this can be, a long 
period of nervous irritability must be endured; and fevers must 
thin the blood, soften the muscles, transform the Northern tint 
of health to a dead brown.  You will have to learn that 
intellectual pursuits can be persisted in only at risk of life;--
that in this part of the world there is nothing to do but to 
plant cane and cocoa, and make rum, and cultivate tobacco,--or 
open a magazine for the sale of Madras handkerchiefs and _foulards_,
--and eat, drink, sleep, perspire.  You will understand  
why the tropics settled by European races produce no sciences, 
arts, or literature,--why the habits and the thoughts of other 
centuries still prevail where Time itself moves slowly as though 
enfeebled by the heat. 

And with the compulsory indolence of your life, the long exacerbation 
of the nervous system, will come the first pain of nostalgia,--the 
first weariness of the tropics.  It is not that Nature can become ever 
less lovely to your sight; but that the tantalization of her dangerous 
beauty, which you may enjoy only at a safe distance, exasperates at last.  
The colors that at first bewitched will vex your eyes by their 
violence;--the creole life that appeared so simple, so gentle, will reveal 
dulnesses and discomforts undreamed of.   You will ask yourself 
how much longer can you endure the prodigious light, and the 
furnace heat of blinding blue days, and the void misery of 
sleepless nights, and the curse of insects, and the sound of the 
mandibles of enormous roaches devouring the few books in your 
possession.   You will grow weary of the grace of the palms, of 
the gemmy colors of the ever-clouded peaks, of the sight of the 
high woods made impenetrable by lianas and vines and serpents.  
You will weary even of the tepid sea, because to enjoy it as a 
swimmer you must rise and go out at hours while the morning air 
is still chill and heavy with miasma;--you will weary, above all, 
of tropic fruits, and feel that you would gladly pay a hundred 
francs for the momentary pleasure of biting into one rosy juicy 
Northern apple.



VI.


--But if you believe this disillusion perpetual,--if you fancy 
the old bewitchment has spent all its force upon you,--you do not 
know this Nature.  She is not done with you yet: she has only 
torpefied your energies a little.  Of your willingness to obey 
her, she takes no cognizance;--she ignores human purposes, knows 
only molecules and their combinations; and the blind blood in 
your veins,--thick with Northern heat and habit,--is still in 
dumb desperate rebellion against her. 

Perhaps she will quell this revolt forever,--thus:--

One day, in the second hour of the afternoon, a few moments after 
leaving home, there will come to you a sensation such as you have never 
known before: a sudden weird fear of the light.

It seems to you that the blue sky-fire is burning down into your 
brain,--that the flare of the white pavements and yellow walls is 
piercing somehow into your life,--creating an unfamiliar mental 
confusion,--blurring out thought....  Is the whole world taking 
fire?...  The flaming azure of the sea dazzles and pains like a 
crucible-glow;--the green of the mornes flickers and blazes in 
some amazing way....  Then dizziness inexpressible: you grope 
with eyes shut fast--afraid to open them again in that stupefying 
torrefaction,--moving automatically,--vaguely knowing you must 
get out of the flaring and flashing,--somewhere, anywhere away 
from the white wrath of the sun, and the green fire of the hills, 
and the monstrous color of the sea....  Then, remembering 
nothing, you find yourself in bed,--with an insupportable sense 
of weight at the back of the head,--a pulse beating furiously,-- 
and a strange sharp pain at intervals stinging through your 
eyes....  And the pain grows, expands,--fills all the skull,--
forces you to cry out, replaces all other sensations except a 
weak consciousness, vanishing and recurring, that you are very 
sick, more sick than ever before in all your life.

... And with the tedious ebbing of the long fierce fever, all 
the heat seems to pass from your veins.  You can no longer 
imagine, as before, that it would be delicious to die of cold;--
you shiver even with all the windows closed;--you feel currents 
of air,--imperceptible to nerves in a natural condition,--which 
shock like a dash of cold water, whenever doors are opened and 
closed; the very moisture upon your forehead is icy.  What you now 
wish for are stimulants and warmth.  Your blood has been changed;
--tropic Nature has been good to you: she is preparing you to 
dwell with her.

... Gradually, under the kind nursing of those colored people,
--among whom, as a stranger, your lot will probably be cast,--you 
recover strength; and perhaps it will seem to you that the pain 
of lying a while in the Shadow of Death is more than compensated 
by this rare and touching experience of human goodness.  How 
tirelessly watchful,--how naïvely sympathetic,--how utterly  
self-sacrificing these women-natures are!  Patiently, through  
weeks of stifling days and sleepless nights,--cruelly unnatural 
to them, for their life is in the open air,--they struggle to 
save without one murmur of fatigue, without heed of their most 
ordinary physical wants, without  a thought of recompense;--
trusting to their own skill when the physician abandons hope,--
climbing to the woods for herbs when medicines prove, without 
avail.  The dream of angels holds nothing sweeter than this 
reality of woman's tenderness.

And simultaneously with the return of force, you may wonder 
whether this sickness has not sharpened your senses in some 
extraordinary way,--especially hearing, sight, and smell.  Once 
well enough to be removed without danger, you will be taken up 
into the mountains somewhere,--for change of air; and there it 
will seem to you, perhaps, that never before did you feel so 
acutely the pleasure of perfumes,--of color-tones,--of the timbre  
of voices.  You have simply been acclimated....  And suddenly the 
old fascination of tropic Nature seizes you again,--more strongly 
than in the first days;--the _frisson_ of delight returns; the joy 
of it thrills through all your blood,--making a great fulness at 
your heart as of unutterable desire to give thanks....



VII.


... My friend Felicien had come to the colony fresh from the 
region of the Vosges, with the muscles and energies of a 
mountaineer, and cheeks pink as a French country-girl's;--he had 
never seemed to me physically adapted for acclimation; and I 
feared much for him on hearing of his first serious illness.  
Then the news of his convalescence came to me as a grateful 
surprise.  But I did not feel reassured by his appearance the 
first evening I called at the little house to which he had been 
removed, on the brow of a green height overlooking the town.  I 
found him seated in a _berceuse_ on the veranda.  How wan he was, 
and how spectral his smile of welcome,--as he held out to me a 
hand that seemed all of bone!

... We chatted there a while.  It had been one of those tropic 
days whose charm interpenetrates and blends with all the subtler 
life of sensation, and becomes a luminous part of it forever,--
steeping all after-dreams of ideal peace in supernal glory of 
color,--transfiguring all fancies of the pure joy of being.  
Azure to the sea-line the sky had remained since morning; and the 
trade-wind, warm as a caress, never brought even one gauzy cloud 
to veil the naked beauty of the peaks. 

And the sun was yellowing,--as only over the tropics  he yellows 
to his death.  Lilac tones slowly spread through sea and heaven from 
the west;--mornes facing the light began to take wondrous glowing 
color,--a tone of green so fiery that it looked as though all the 
rich sap of their woods were phosphorescing.  Shadows blued;--far 
peaks took tinting that scarcely seemed of earth,--iridescent 
violets and purples interchanging through vapor of gold....  Such 
the colors of the _carangue_,  when the beautiful tropic fish is 
turned in the light, and its gem-greens shift to rich azure and 
prism-purple.

Reclining in our chairs, we watched the strange splendor from 
the veranda of the little cottage,--saw the peaked land slowly 
steep itself in the aureate glow,--the changing color of the 
verdured mornes, and of the sweep of circling sea.  Tiny birds, 
bosomed with fire, were shooting by in long curves, like embers 
flung by invisible hands.  From far below, the murmur of the city 
rose to us,--a stormy hum.  So motionless we remained that the 
green and gray lizards were putting out their heads from behind 
the columns of the veranda to stare at us,--as if wondering 
whether we were really alive.  I turned my head suddenly to look 
at two queer butterflies; and all the lizards hid themselves 
again. _Papillon-lanmò_,--Death's butterflies,--these were called in 
the speech of the people: their broad wings were black like 
blackest velvet;--as they fluttered against the yellow light, 
they looked like silhouettes of butterflies.  Always through my 
memory of that wondrous evening,--when I little thought I was 
seeing my friend's face for the last time,--there slowly passes 
the black palpitation of those wings....

... I had been chatting with Felicien about various things which 
I thought might have a cheerful interest for him; and more than 
once I had been happy to see him smile....  But our converse 
waned.  The ever-magnifying splendor before us had been 
mesmerizing our senses,--slowly overpowering our wills with the 
amazement of its beauty.  Then, as the sun's disk--enormous,--
blinding gold--touched the lilac flood, and the stupendous 
orange glow flamed up to the very zenith, we found ourselyes awed 
at last into silence.

The orange in the west deepened into vermilion.  Softly and very 
swiftly night rose like an indigo exhalation  from the land,--filling 
the valleys, flooding the gorges, blackening the woods, leaving only 
the points of the peaks a while to catch the crimson glow.  Forests and 
fields began to utter a rushing sound as of torrents, always deepening,
--made up of the instrumentation and the voices of numberless little 
beings: clangings as of hammered iron, ringings as of dropping 
silver upon a stone, the dry bleatings of the _cabritt-bois_, and 
the chirruping  of tree-frogs, and the _k-i-i-i-i-i-i_ of 
crickets.  Immense  trembling sparks began to rise and fall among 
the shadows,--twinkling out and disappearing all mysteriously:  
these were the fire-flies awakening.  Then about the branches of 
the _bois-canon_ black shapes began to hover, which were not birds
--shapes flitting processionally without any noise; each one in 
turn resting a moment as to nibble something at the end of a 
bough;--then yielding place to another, and circling away, to 
return again from the other side...the _guimbos_, the great bats.

But we were silent, with the emotion of sunset still upon us: 
that ghostly emotion which is the transmitted experience of a 
race,--the sum of ancestral experiences innumerable,--the mingled 
joy and pain of a million years....  Suddenly a sweet voice 
pierced the stillness,--pleading:--

--"_Pa combiné, chè!--pa combiné conm ça!_" (Do not think, dear!--
do not think like that!)

... Only less beautiful than the sunset she seemed, this slender 
half-breed, who had come all unperceived behind us, treading 
soundlessly with her slim bare feet.  ..."And you, Missié", she said
to me, in a tone of gentle reproach;--"you are his friend! why do you 
let him think?  It is thinking that will prevent him getting well."

_Combiné_ in creole signifies to think intently, and therefore to 
be unhappy,--because, with this artless race, as with children, 
to think intensely about anything is possible only under great 
stress of suffering.

--"_Pa combiné,--non, chè_," she repeated, plaintively, stroking 
Felicien's hair.  "It is thinking that makes us old....  And it 
is time to bid your friend good-night."...

--"She is so good," said Felicien, smiling to make her pleased;
--"I could never tell you how good.  But she does not understand.  
She believes I suffer if I am silent.  She is contented only when 
she sees me laugh; and so she will tell me creole stories by the 
hour to keep me amused, as if I were a child."...

As he spoke she slipped an arm about his neck.

--"_Doudoux_," she persisted;--and her voice was a dove's coo,--"_Si 
ou ainmein moin, pa combiné-non!_" 

And in her strange exotic beauty, her savage grace, her supple caress, 
the velvet witchery of her eyes,--it seemed to me that I beheld a 
something imaged, not of herself, nor of the moment only,--a something 
weirdly sensuous: the Spirit of tropic Nature made golden flesh, and 
murmuring to each lured wanderer:--"_If thou wouldst love me, do 
not think_"... 




CHAPTER XIII.
YÉ.



I.


Almost every night, just before bedtime, I hear some group of 
children in the street telling stories to each other.  Stories, 
enigmas or _tim-tim_, and songs, and round games, are the joy of 
child-life here,--whether rich or poor.  I am particularly fond 
of listening to the stories,--which seem to me the oddest stories 
I ever heard.

I succeeded in getting several dictated to me, so that I could 
write them;--others were written for me by creole friends, with 
better success.  To obtain them in all their original simplicity 
and naive humor of detail, one should be able to write them down 
in short-hand as fast as they are related: they lose greatly in 
the slow process of dictation.  The simple mind of the native 
story-teller, child or adult, is seriously tried by the 
inevitable interruptions and restraints of the dictation method;
--the reciter loses spirit, becomes soon weary, and purposely 
shortens the narrative to finish the task as soon as possible.  
It seems painful to such a one to repeat a phrase more than 
once,--at least in the same way; while frequent questioning may 
irritate the most good-natured in a degree that shows how painful 
to the untrained brain may be the exercise of memory and steady 
control of imagination required for continuous dictation.  By 
patience, however, I succeeded in obtaining many curiosities of 
oral literature,--representing a group of stories which, whatever 
their primal origin, have been so changed by local thought and 
coloring as to form a distinctively Martinique folk-tale circle.  
Among them are several especially popular with the children of my 
neighborhood; and I notice that almost every narrator embellishes 
the original plot with details of his own, which he varies at 
pleasure.

I submit a free rendering of one of these tales,--the history of 
Yé and the Devil.  The whole story of Yé would form a large 
book,--so numerous the list of his adventures; and this adventure 
seems to me the most characteristic of all.  Yé is the most 
curious figure in Martinique folk-lore.  Yé is the typical 
Bitaco,--or mountain negro of the lazy kind,--the country black 
whom city blacks love to poke fun at.  As for the Devil of 
Martinique folk-lore, he resembles the _travailleur_ at a distance; 
but when you get dangerously near him, you find that he has red 
eyes and red hair, and two little horns under his _chapeau-
Bacouè_, and feet like an ape, and fire in his throat.  _Y ka sam 
yon gouôs, gouôs macaque_....



II.


_Ça qui pa té connaitt Yé?_...  Who is there in all Martinique who 
never heard of Yé?  Everybody used to know the old rascal.  He 
had every fault under the sun;--he was the laziest negro in the 
whole island; he was the biggest glutton in the whole world.  He 
had an amazing number [52] of children; and they were most of the 
time all half dead for hunger.

Well, one day Yé went out to the woods to look for something to 
eat.  And he walked through the woods nearly all day, till he 
became ever so tired; but he could not find anything to eat.  He 
was just going to give up the search, when he heard a queer 
crackling noise,--at no great distance.  He went to see what it 
was,--hiding himself behind the big trees as he got nearer to it.

All at once he came to a little hollow in the woods, and saw a 
great fire burning there,--and he saw a Devil sitting beside the 
fire.  The Devil was roasting a great heap of snails; and the 
sound Yé had heard was the crackling of the snail-shells.  The 
Devil seemed to be very old;--he was sitting on the trunk of a 
bread-fruit tree; and Yé took a good long look at him.  After Yé 
had watched him for a while, Yé found out that the old Devil was 
quite blind.

--The Devil had a big calabash in his hand full of _feroce_,--
that is to say, boiled salt codfish and manioc flour, with ever 
so many pimentos (_épi en pile piment_),--just what negroes like Yé 
are most fond of.  And the Devil seemed to be very hungry; and 
the food was going so fast down his throat that it made Yé 
unhappy to see it disappearing.  It made him so unhappy that he 
felt at last he could not resist the temptation to steal from the 
old blind Devil.  He crept quite close up to the Devil without 
making any noise, and began to rob him.  Every time the Devil 
would lift his hand to his mouth, Yé would slip his own fingers 
into the calabash, and snatch a piece. The old Devil did not even 
look puzzled;--he did not seem to know anything; and Yé thought 
to himself that the old Devil was a great fool.  He began to get 
more and more courage;--he took bigger and bigger handfuls out of 
the calabash;--he ate even faster than the Devil could eat.  At 
last there was only one little bit left in the calabash.  Yé put 
out his hand to take it,--and all of a sudden the Devil made a 
grab at Yé's hand and caught it!  Yé was so frightened he could 
not even cry out, _Aïe-yaïe_.  The Devil finished the last morsel, 
threw down the calabash, and said to Yé in a terrible voice:-- 
"_Atò, saff!--ou c'est ta moin!_" (I've got you now, you glutton;--
you belong to me!)  Then he jumped on Yé's back, like a great 
ape, and twisted his legs round Yé's neck, and cried out:-

--"Carry me to your cabin,--and walk fast!"

... When Yé's poor children saw him coming, they wondered what 
their papa was carrying on his back. They thought it might be a 
sack of bread or vegetables or perhaps a _régime_ of bananas,--for 
it was getting dark, and they could not see well.  They laughed 
and showed their teeth and danced and screamed: "Here's papa 
coming with something to eat!--papa's coming with something to 
eat!"  But when Yé had got near enough for them to see what he 
was carrying, they yelled and ran away to hide themselves.  As 
for the poor mother, she could only hold up her two hands for 
horror.

When they got into the cabin the Devil pointed to a corner, and 
said to Yé:--"Put me down there!"  Yé put him down.  The Devil 
sat there in the corner and never moved or spoke all that evening 
and all that night. He seemed to be a very quiet Devil indeed.  
The children began to look at him.

But at breakfast-time, when the poor mother had managed to 
procure something for the children to eat,--just some bread-fruit 
and yams,--the old Devil suddenly rose up from his corner and 
muttered:--

--"_Manman mò!--papa mò!--touttt yche mò!_" (Mamma dead!--papa dead!
--all the children dead!)

And he blew his breath on them, and they all fell down stiff as 
if they were dead--_raidi-cadave!_.  Then the Devil ate up 
everything there was on the table. When he was done, he filled 
the pots and dishes with dirt, and blew his breath again on Yé 
and all the family, and muttered:--

--"_Toutt moune lévé!_" (Everybody get up!)

Then they all got up.  Then he pointed to all the plates and 
dishes full of dirt, and said to them:--*

[* In the original:--"Y té ka monté assous tabe-là, épi y té ka fai 
caca adans toutt plats-à, adans toutt zassiett-là."]

--"_Gobe-moin ça!_"

And they had to gobble it all up, as he told them. 

After that it was no use trying to eat anything. Every time anything 
was cooked, the Devil would do the same thing.  It was thus the next 
day, and the next, and the day after, and so every day for a long, 
long time.

Yé did not know what to do; but his wife said she did.  If she 
was only a man, she would soon get rid of that Devil.  "Yé," she 
insisted, "go and see the Bon-Dié [the Good-God], and ask him 
what to do.  I would go myself if I could; but women are not 
strong enough to climb the great morne."

So Yé started off very, very early one morning, before the peep 
of day, and began to climb the Montagne Pelée.  He climbed and 
walked, and walked and climbed, until he got at last to the top 
of the Morne de la Croix.*

[*A peaklet rising above the verge of the ancient crater now filled 
with water.]

Then he knocked at the sky as loud as he could till the Good-God put 
his head out of a cloud and asked him what he wanted:--

--"_Eh bien!--ça ou ni, Yé fa ou lè?_" 

When Yé had recounted his troubles, the Good-God said:--

--"_Pauv ma pauv!_  I knew it all before you came, Yé.  I can tell 
you what to do; but I am afraid it will be no use--you will never 
be able to do it!  Your gluttony is going to be the ruin of you, 
poor Yé!  Still, you can try.  Now listen well to what I am going 
to tell you. First of all, you must not eat anything before you 
get home.  Then when your wife has the children's dinner ready, 
and you see the Devil getting up, you must cry out:--'_Tam ni pou
tam ni bé!_'  Then the Devil will drop down dead.  Don't forget 
not to eat anything--_ou tanne?_"...

Yé promised to remember all he was told, and not to eat 
anything on his way down;--then he said good-bye to the Bon-Dié 
(_bien conm y faut_), and started.  All the way he kept repeating 
the words the Good-God had told him: "_Tam ni pou tam ni bé!"--
tam ni pou tam ni bé!_"--over and over again.

--But before reaching home he had to cross a little stream; and 
on both banks he saw wild guava-bushes growing, with plenty of 
sour guavas upon them;--for it was not yet time for guavas to be 
ripe.  Poor Yé was hungry!  He did all he could to resist the 
temptation, but it proved too much for him.  He broke all his 
promises to the Bon-Dié: he ate and ate and ate till there were 
no more guavas left,--and then he began to eat _zicaques_ and 
green plums, and all sorts of nasty sour things, till he could 
not eat any more.

--By the time he got to the cabin his teeth were so on edge that 
he could scarcely speak distinctly enough to tell his wife to get 
the supper ready.

And so while everybody was happy, thinking that they were going 
to be freed from their trouble, Yé was really in no condition to 
do anything. The moment the supper was ready, the Devil got up 
from his corner as usual, and approached the table.  Then Yé 
tried to speak; but his teeth were so on edge that instead of 
saying,--"_Tam ni pou tam ni bé_," he could only stammer out:-

--"_Anni toqué Diabe-là cagnan_."

This had no effect on the Devil at all: he seemed to be used to 
it!  He blew his breath on them all, sent them to sleep, ate up 
all the supper, filled the empty dishes with filth, awoke Yé and 
his family, and ordered them as usual;--

--"_Gobe-moin ça!_"  And they had to gobble it up,--every bit of 
it.

The family nearly died of hunger and disgust.  Twice more Yé 
climbed the Montagne Pelée; twice more he climbed the Morne de la 
Croix; twice more he disturbed the poor Bon-Dié, all for 
nothing!--since each time on his way down he would fill his 
paunch with all sorts of nasty sour things, so that he could not 
speak right.  The Devil remained in the house night and day;--the 
poor mother threw herself down on the ground, and pulled out her 
hair,--so unhappy she was!

But luckily for the poor woman, she had one child as cunning as 
a rat,--*

[* The great field-rat of Martinique is, in Martinique folk-lore, 
the symbol of all cunning, and probably merits its reputation.]

a boy called Ti Fonté (little Impudent), who bore his name well.   
When he saw his mother crying so much, he said to her:--

--"Mamma, send papa just once more to see the Good-God: I know 
something to do!"

The mother knew how cunning her boy was: she felt sure he meant 
something by his words;--she sent old Yé for the last time to see 
the Bon-Dié.

Yé used always to wear one of those big long coats they call 
_lavalasses_;--whether it was hot or cool, wet or dry, he never went 
out without it.  There were two very big pockets in it--one on 
each side.  When Ti Fonté saw his father getting ready to go, he 
jumped _floup!_ into one of the pockets and hid himself there.  Yé 
climbed all the way to the top of the Morne de la Croix without 
suspecting anything.  When he got there the little boy put one of 
his ears out of Yé's pocket,--so as to hear everything the Good-
God would say.

This time he was very angry,--the Bon-Dié: he spoke very 
crossly; he scolded Yé a great deal.  But he was so kind for all 
that,--he was so generous to good-for-nothing Yé, that he took 
the pains to repeat the words over and over again for him:--"_Tam 
ni pou tam ni bé_."...  And this time the Bon-Dié was not talking 
to no purpose: there was somebody there well able to remember 
what he said.  Ti Fonté made the most of his chance;--he 
sharpened that little tongue of his; he thought of his mamma and 
all his little brothers and sisters dying of hunger down below.  
As for his father, Yé did as he had done before--stuffed himself 
with all the green fruit he could find.

The moment Yé got home and took off his coat, Ti Fonté jumped 
out, _plapp!_--and ran to his mamma, and whispered:--

--"Mamma, get ready a nice, big dinner!--we are going to have it 
all to ourselves to-day: the Good-God didn't talk for nothing,--
I heard every word he said!"

Then the mother got ready a nice _calalou-crabe_, a _tonton-banane_, 
a _matété-cirique_,--several calabashes of _couss-caye_, two 
_régimes-figues_ (bunches of small bananas),--in short, a very fine 
dinner indeed, with a _chopine_ of tafia to wash it all well down.

The Devil felt as sure of himself that day as he had always 
felt, and got up the moment everything was ready.  But Ti Fonté 
got up too, and yelled out just as loud as he could:-

--"_Tam ni pou tam ni bé!_"

At once the Devil gave a scream so loud that it could be heard 
right down to the bottom of hell,--and he fell dead.

Meanwhile, Yé, like the old fool he was, kept trying to say what 
the Bon-Dié had told him, and could only mumble:--

--"_Anni toqué Diabe-là cagnan!_"

He would never have been able to do anything;--and his wife had 
a great mind just to send him to bed at once, instead of letting 
him sit down to eat all those nice things.  But she was a kind-
hearted soul; and so she let Yé stay and eat with the children, 
though he did not deserve it.  And they all ate and ate, and kept 
on eating and filling themselves until daybreak--_pauv piti!_

But during this time the Devil had begun to smell badly and he had 
become swollen so big that Yé found he could not move him.  
Still, they knew they must get him out of the way somehow.  The 
children had eaten so much that they were all full of strength--
_yo tè plein lafòce_; and Yé got a rope and tied one end round the 
Devil's foot; and then he and the children--all pulling together
--managed to drag the Devil out of the cabin and into the bushes, 
where they left him just like a dead dog.  They all felt 
themselves very happy to be rid of that old Devil.

But some days after old good-for-nothing Yé went off to hunt for 
birds.  He had a whole lot of arrows with him.  He suddenly 
remembered the Devil, and thought he would like to take one more 
look at him.  And he did.

_Fouinq!_ what a sight!  The Devil's belly had swelled up like a morne: 
it was yellow and blue and green,--looked as if it was going to burst.  
And Yé, like the old fool he always was, shot an arrow up in the air, so 
that it fell down and stuck into the Devil's belly.  Then he wanted to 
get the arrow, and he climbed up on the Devil, and pulled and 
pulled till he got the arrow out.  Then he put the point of the 
arrow to his nose,--just to see what sort of a smell dead Devils 
had.

The moment he did that, his nose swelled up as big as the 
refinery-pot of a sugar-plantation.

Yé could scarcely walk for the weight of his nose; but he had to 
go and see the Bon-Dié again.  The Bon-Dié said to him:--

--"Ah! Yé, my poor Yé, you will live and die a fool!--you are 
certainly the biggest fool in the whole world!... Still, I must 
try to do something for you;--I'll help you anyhow to get rid of 
that nose!...  I'll tell you how to do it.  To-morrow morning, 
very early, get up and take a big _taya_ [whip], and beat all the 
bushes well, and drive all the birds to the Roche de la 
Caravelle.  Then you must tell them that I, the Bon-Dié, want 
them to take off their bills and feathers, and take a good bath 
in the sea. While they are bathing, you can choose a nose for 
yourself out of the heap of bills there."

Poor Yé did just as the Good-God told him; and while the birds 
were bathing, he picked out a nose for himself from the heap of 
beaks,--and left his own refinery-pot in its place.

The nose he took was the nose of the _coulivicou_.* And that is 
why the _coulivicou_ always looks so much ashamed of himself even 
to this day.

[* The _coulivicou_, or "Colin Vicou," is a Martinique bird with 
a long meagre body, and an enormous bill.  It has a very tristful 
and taciturn expression.... _Maig conm yon coulivicou_, "thin as 
a coulivicou," is a popular comparison for the appearance of 
anybody much reduced by sickness.]



III.


... Poor Yé!--you still live for me only too vividly outside of 
those strange folk-tales of eating and of drinking  which so 
cruelly reveal the long slave-hunger of your race.  For I have 
seen you cutting cane on peak slopes above the clouds;--I have 
seen you climbing from plantation to plantation with your cutlass 
in your hand, watching for snakes as you wander to look for work, 
when starvation forces you to obey a master, though born with the 
resentment of centuries against all masters;--I have seen you 
prefer to carry two hundred-weight of bananas twenty miles to 
market, rather than labor in the fields;--I have seen you 
ascending through serpent-swarming woods to some dead crater to 
find a cabbage-palm,--and always hungry,--and always shiftless!  
And you are still a great fool, poor Yé!--and you have still your 
swarm of children,--your _rafale yche_,--and they are famished; for 
you have taken into your _ajoupa_ a Devil who devours even more 
than you can earn,--even your heart, and your splendid muscles, 
and your poor artless brain,--the Devil Tafia!...  And there is 
no Bon-Dié to help you rid yourself of him now: for the only Bon-
Dié you ever really had, your old creole master, cannot care for 
you any more, and you cannot care for yourself.  Mercilessly 
moral, the will of this enlightened century has abolished forever 
that patriarchal power which brought you up strong and healthy on 
scanty fare, and scourged you into its own idea of righteousness, 
yet kept you innocent as a child of the law of the struggle for 
life.  But you feel that law now;--you are a citizen of the 
Republic!  you are free to vote, and free to work, and free to 
starve if you prefer it, and free to do evil and suffer for it;--
and this new knowledge stupefies you so that you have almost 
forgotten how to laugh!




CHAPTER XIV
LYS



I.


It is only half-past four o'clock: there is the faintest blue 
light of beginning day,--and little Victoire already stands at 
the bedside with my wakening cup of hot black fragrant coffee.  
What! so early?...  Then with a sudden heart-start I remember 
this is my last West Indian morning.  And the child--her large 
timid eyes all gently luminous--is pressing something into my 
hand. 

Two vanilla beans wrapped in a morsel of banana-leaf,--her 
poor little farewell gift!...

Other trifling souvenirs are already packed away.   Almost 
everybody that knows me has given me something.  Manm-Robert 
brought me a tiny packet of orange-seeds,--seeds of a "gift-
orange": so long as I can keep these in my vest-pocket I will 
never be without money.  Cyrillia brought me a package of _bouts_, 
and a pretty box of French matches, warranted inextinguishable by 
wind.  Azaline, the blanchisseuse, sent me a little pocket 
looking-glass.  Cerbonnie, the _màchanne_, left a little cup of 
guava jelly for me last night.  Mimi--dear child!--brought me a 
little paper dog!  It is her best toy; but those gentle black 
eyes would stream with tears if I dared to refuse it....  Oh, 
Mimi! what am I to do with a little paper dog?  And what am I to 
do with the chocolate-sticks and the cocoanuts and all the sugar- 
cane and all the cinnamon-apples?...



II.


... Twenty minutes past five by the clock of the Bourse.  The 
hill shadows are shrinking back from the shore;--the long wharves 
reach out yellow into the sun;--the tamarinds of the Place 
Bertin, and the pharos for half its height, and the red-tiled 
roofs along the bay are catching the glow.  Then, over the light-
house--on the outermost line depending from the southern yard- 
arm of the semaphore--a big black ball suddenly runs up like a 
spider climbing its own thread....  _Steamer from the South!_  The 
packet has been sighted.  And I have not yet been able to pack 
away into a specially purchased wooden box all the fruits and 
vegetable curiosities and odd little presents sent to me.  If 
Radice the boatman had not come to help me, I should never be 
able to get ready; for the work of packing is being continually 
interrupted by friends and acquaintances coming to say good-bye.  
Manm-Robert brings to see me a pretty young girl--very fair, with 
a violet foulard twisted about her blonde head.  It is little 
Basilique, who is going to make her _pouémiè communion_.  So I kiss 
her, according to the old colonial custom, once on each downy 
cheek;--and she is to pray to _Notre Dame du Bon Port_ that the 
ship shall bear me safely to far-away New York. 

And even then the steamer's cannon-call shakes over the town and 
into the hills behind us, which answer with all the thunder of 
their phantom artillery.



III.


... There is a young white lady, accompanied by an aged negress, 
already waiting on the south wharf for the boat;--evidently she 
is to be one of my fellow-passengers.  Quite a pleasing 
presence: slight graceful figure,--a face not precisely pretty, 
but delicate and sensitive, with the odd charm of violet eyes 
under black eye-brows....

A friend who comes to see me off tells me all about her.  
Mademoiselle Lys is going to New York to be a governess,--to 
leave her native island forever.  A story sad enough, though not 
more so than that of many a gentle creole girl.  And she is going 
all alone, for I see her bidding good-bye to old Titine,--kissing 
her.  "_Adié encò, chè;--Bon-Dié ké béni ou!_" sobs the poor 
servant, with tears streaming down her kind black face.  She 
takes off her blue shoulder-kerchief, and waves it as the boat 
recedes from the wooden steps.

... Fifteen minutes later, Mademoiselle and I find ourselves 
under the awnings shading the saloon-deck of the _Guadeloupe_.  
There are at least fifty passengers,--many resting in chairs, 
lazy-looking Demerara chairs with arm-supports immensely 
lengthened so as to form rests for the lower limbs.  Overhead, 
suspended from the awning-frames, are two tin cages containing 
parrots;--and I see two little greenish monkeys, no bigger than 
squirrels, tied to the wheel-hatch,--two _sakiwinkis_. These are 
from the forests of British Guiana.  They keep up a continual 
thin sharp twittering, like birds,--all the while circling, 
ascending, descending, retreating or advancing to the limit of 
the little ropes attaching them to the hatch.

The _Guadeloupe_ has seven hundred packages to deliver at St.  
Pierre: we have ample time,--Mademoiselle Violet-Eyes and I,--to 
take one last look at the "Pays des Revenants."

I wonder what her thoughts are, feeling a singular sympathy for 
her,--for I am in that sympathetic mood which the natural emotion 
of leaving places and persons one has become fond of, is apt to 
inspire.  And now at the moment of my going,--when I seem to 
understand as never before the beauty of that tropic Nature, and 
the simple charm of the life to which I am bidding farewell,--
the question comes to me: "Does she not love it all as I do,--
nay, even much more, because of that in her own existence which 
belongs to it?"  But as a child of the land, she has seen no 
other skies,--fancies, perhaps, there may be brighter ones....

... Nowhere on this earth, Violet-Eyes!--nowhere beneath this 
sun!...  Oh! the dawnless glory of tropic morning!--the single 
sudden leap of the giant light over the purpling of a hundred 
peaks,--over the surging of the mornes!  And the early breezes 
from the hills,--all cool out of the sleep of the forests, and 
heavy with vegetal odors thick, sappy, savage-sweet!--and the 
wild high winds that run ruffling and crumpling through the cane 
of the mountain slopes in storms of papery sound!-- 

And the mighty dreaming of the woods,--green-drenched with silent 
pouring of creepers,--dashed with the lilac and yellow and rosy 
foam of liana flowers!--

And the eternal azure apparition of the all-circling sea,--that as 
you mount the heights ever appears to rise perpendicularly behind 
you,--that seems, as you descend, to sink and flatten before you!--

And the violet velvet distances of eyening;--and the swaying of 
palms against the orange-burning,--when all the heaven seems 
filled with vapors of a molten sun!...



IV.


How beautiful the mornes and azure-shadowed hollows in the jewel 
clearness of this perfect morning!  Even Pelée wears only her very 
lightest head-dress of gauze; and all the wrinklings of her green 
robe take unfamiliar tenderness of tint from the early sun.  All 
the quaint peaking of the colored town--sprinkling the sweep of 
blue bay with red and yellow and white-of-cream--takes a 
sharpness in this limpid light as if seen through a diamond lens; 
and there above the living green of the familiar hills I can see 
even the faces of the statues--the black Christ on his white 
cross, and the White Lady of the Morne d'Orange--among curving 
palms.  ... It is all as though the island were donning its utmost 
possible loveliness, exerting all its witchery,--seeking by 
supremest charm to win back and hold its wandering child,--
Violet-Eyes over there!...  She is looking too. 

I wonder if she sees the great palms of the Voie du Parnasse,--curving 
far away as to bid us adieu, like beautiful bending women.  I wonder if 
they are not trying  to say something to her; and I try myself to 
fancy what that something is:--

--"Child, wilt thou indeed abandon all who love thee! ... 
Listen!--'tis a dim grey land thou goest unto,--a land of bitter 
winds,--a land of strange gods,--a land of hardness and 
barrenness, where even Nature may not live through half the 
cycling of the year!  Thou wilt never see us there....  And there, 
when thou shalt sleep thy long sleep, child--that land will have 
no power to lift thee up;--vast weight of stone will press thee 
down forever;--until the heavens be no more thou shalt not 
awake!...  But here, darling, our loving roots would seek for 
thee, would find thee: thou shouldst live again!--we lift, like 
Aztec priests, the blood of hearts to the Sun."...



IV.


... It is very hot....  I hold in my hand a Japanese paper-fan 
with a design upon it of the simplest sort: one jointed green 
bamboo, with a single spurt of sharp leaves, cutting across a 
pale blue murky double streak that means the horizon above a sea.  
That is all.  Trivial to my Northern friends this design might 
seem; but to me it causes a pleasure bordering on pain....  I 
know so well what the artist means; and they could not know, 
unless they had seen bamboos,--and bamboos peculiarly situated.  
As I look at this fan I know myself descending the Morne 
Parnasse by the steep winding road; I have the sense of windy 
heights behind me, and forest on either hand, and before me the 
blended azure of sky and sea with one bamboo-spray swaying across 
it at the level of my eyes.  Nor is this all;--I have the every 
sensation of the very moment,--the vegetal odors, the mighty 
tropic light, the wamrth, the intensity of irreproducible  
color....  Beyond a doubt, the artist who dashed the design on 
this fan with his miraculous brush must have had a nearly similar 
experience to that of which the memory is thus aroused in me, but 
which I cannot communicate to others.

... And it seems to me now that all which I have tried to write 
about the _Pays des Revenants_ can only be for others, who have 
never beheld it,--vague like the design upon this fan.



VI.


_Brrrrrrrrrrr!_...  The steam-winch is lifting the anchor; and the 
_Guadeloupe_ trembles through every plank as the iron torrent of 
her chain-cable rumbles through the hawse-holes....  At last the 
quivering ceases;--there is a moment's silence; and Violet-Eyes 
seems trying  to catch a last glimpse of her faithful _bonne_ among 
the ever-thickening crowd upon the quay....  Ah! there she is--
waving her foulard.  Mademoiselle Lys is waving  a handkerchief 
in reply....

Suddenly the shock of the farewell gun shakes heavily through 
our hearts, and over the bay,--where the tall mornes catch the 
flapping thunder, and buffet it through all their circle in 
tremendous mockery.  Then there is a great whirling and 
whispering of whitened water behind the steamer--another,--
another; and the whirl becomes a foaming stream: the mighty 
propeller is playing!.... All the blue harbor swings slowly 
round;--and the green limbs of the land are pushed out further on 
the left, shrink back upon the right;--and the mountains are 
moving their shoulders.  And then the many-tinted façades,--and 
the tamarinds of the Place Bertin,--and the light-house,--and the 
long wharves with their throng of turbaned women,--and the 
cathedral towers,--and the fair palms,--and the statues of the 
hills,--all veer, change place, and begin to float away... 
steadily, very swiftly.

[Illustration: BASSE-TERRE ST. KITTS.]

Farewell, fair city,--sun-kissed city,--many-fountained city!--
dear yellow-glimmering streets,--white pavements learned by 
heart,--and faces ever looked for,--and voices ever loved!  
Farewell, white towers with your golden-throated bells!-- 
farewell, green steeps, bathed in the light of summer 
everlasting!--craters with your coronets of forest!--bright 
mountain paths upwinding 'neath pomp of fern and angelin and 
feathery bamboo!--and gracious palms that drowse above the dead!
Farewell, soft-shadowing majesty of valleys unfolding to the 
sun,--green golden cane-fields ripening to the sea!...

... The town vanishes.  The island slowly becomes a green 
silhouette.  So might Columbus first have seen it from the deck 
of his caravel,--nearly four hundred years ago.  At this distance 
there are no more signs of life upon it than when it first became 
visible to his eyes: yet there are cities there,--and toiling,--
and suffering,--and gentle hearts that knew me....  Now it is 
turning blue,--the beautiful shape!--becoming a dream....



VII.


And Dominica draws nearer,--sharply massing her hills against the 
vast light in purple nodes and gibbosities and denticulations.  
Closer and closer it comes, until the green of its heights breaks 
through the purple here and there,--in flashings and ribbings of 
color.  Then it remains as if motionless a while;--then the green 
lights go out again,--and all the shape begins to recede sideward 
towards the south.

... And what had appeared a pearl-grey cloud in the north slowly 
reveals itself as another island of mountains,--hunched and 
horned and mammiform: Guadeloupe begins to show her double 
profile.  But Martinique is  still visible;--Pelée still peers 
high over the rim of the south....  Day wanes;--the shadow of 
the ship lengthens over the flower-blue water.  Pelée changes 
aspect at last,--turns pale as a ghost,--but will not fade 
away....

... The sun begins to sink as he always sinks to his death in 
the tropics,--swiftly,--too swiftly!--and the glory of him makes 
golden all the hollow west,--and bronzes all the flickering wave-
backs.  But still the gracious phantom of the island will not 
go,--softly haunting us through the splendid haze.  And always 
the tropic wind blows soft and warm;--there is an indescribable 
caress in it!  Perhaps some such breeze, blowing from Indian 
waters, might have inspired that prophecy of Islam concerning the 
Wind of the Last Day,--that "Yellow Wind, softer than silk, 
balmier than musk,"--which is to sweep the spirits of the just to 
God in the great Winnowing of Souls....

Then into the indigo night vanishes forever from my eyes the 
ghost of Pelée; and the moon swings up,--a young and lazy moon, 
drowsing upon her back, as in a hammock....  Yet a few nights 
more, and we shall see this slim young moon erect,--gliding 
upright on her way,--coldly beautiful like a fair Northern girl.



VIII.


And ever through tepid nights and azure days the _Guadeloupe_ 
rushes on,--her wake a river of snow beneath the sun, a torrent 
of fire beneath the stars,--steaming straight for the North.

Under the peaking of Montserrat we steam,--beautiful  
Montserrat, all softly wrinkled like a robe of greenest velvet 
fallen from the waist!--breaking the pretty sleep of Plymouth 
town behind its screen of palms... young palms, slender and full 
of grace as creole children are;--

And by tall Nevis, with her trinity of dead craters purpling 
through ocean-haze;--by clouded St. Christopher's  mountain-
giant;--past ghostly St. Martin's, far-floating in  fog of gold, 
like some dream of the Saint's own Second Summer;--

Past low Antigua's vast blue harbor,--shark-haunted, bounded 
about by huddling of little hills, blue and green.

Past Santa Cruz, the "Island of the Holy Cross,"--all radiant 
with verdure though well nigh woodless,--nakedly beautiful in 
the tropic light as a perfect statue;--

Past the long cerulean reaching and heaping of Porto Rico on the 
left, and past hopeless St. Thomas on the right,--old St. 
Thomas, watching the going and the coming of the commerce that 
long since abandoned her port,--watching the ships once humbly 
solicitous for patronage now turning away to the Spanish rival, 
like ingrates forsaking a ruined patrician;--

And the vapory Vision of, St. John;--and the grey ghost of 
Tortola,--and further, fainter, still more weirdly  dim, the 
aureate phantom of Virgin Gorda.



IX.


Then only the enormous double-vision of sky and sea.

The sky: a cupola of blinding blue, shading down and paling into 
spectral green at the rim of the world,--and all fleckless, save 
at evening.  Then, with sunset, comes a light gold-drift of 
little feathery cloudlets into the West,--stippling it as with a 
snow of fire. 

The sea: no flower-tint may now make my comparison  for the splendor 
of its lucent color.  It has shifted its hue;--for we have entered 
into the Azure Stream: it has more than the magnificence of burning 
cyanogen....

But, at night, the Cross of the South appears no more.  And 
other changes come, as day succeeds to day,--a lengthening of the 
hours of light, a longer lingering  of the after-glow,--a cooling 
of the wind.  Each morning the air seems a little cooler, a 
little rarer;--each noon the sky looks a little paler, a little 
further away--always heightening, yet also more shadowy, as if 
its color, receding, were dimmed by distance,--were coming more 
faintly down from vaster altitudes.

... Mademoiselle is petted like a child by the lady passengers.  
And every man seems anxious to aid in making her voyage a 
pleasant one.  For much of which, I think, she may thank her 
eyes!



X.


A dim morning and chill;--blank sky and sunless waters: the 
sombre heaven of the North with colorless horizon rounding in a 
blind grey sea....  What a sudden weight comes to the heart with 
the touch of the cold mist, with the spectral melancholy of the 
dawn;--and then what foolish though irrepressible yearning for 
the vanished azure left behind!

... The little monkeys twitter plaintively, trembling in the 
chilly air.  The parrots have nothing to say: they look benumbed, 
and sit on their perches with eyes closed.

... A vagueness begins to shape itself along the verge of the 
sea, far to port: that long heavy clouding which indicates the 
approach of land.  And from it now floats to us something ghostly 
and frigid which makes the light filmy and the sea shadowy as a 
flood of dreams,--the fog of the Jersey coast.

At once the engines slacken their respiration.  The _Guadeloupe_ 
begins to utter her steam-cry of warning,--regularly at 
intervals of two minutes,--for she is now in the track of all the 
ocean vessels.  And from far away we can hear a heavy knelling,--
the booming of some great fog-bell.

... All in a white twilight.  The place of the horizon has 
vanished;--we seem ringed in by a wall of smoke.... Out of this 
vapory emptiness--very suddenly--an enormous steamer rushes, 
towering like a hill--passes so close that we can see faces, and 
disappears again, leaving  the sea heaving and frothing behind 
her.

... As I lean over the rail to watch the swirling of the wake, I 
feel something pulling at my sleeve: a hand,--a tiny black hand,
--the hand of a _sakiwinki_.  One of the little monkeys, straining to 
the full length of his string, is making this dumb appeal for 
human sympathy;--the bird-black eyes of both are fixed upon me 
with the oddest look of pleading.  Poor little tropical exiles!  
I stoop to caress them; but regret the impulse a moment later: 
they utter such beseeching cries when I find myself obliged to 
leave them again alone!...

... Hour after hour the _Guadeloupe_ glides on through the white 
gloom,--cautiously, as if feeling her way; always  sounding her 
whistle, ringing her bells, until at last some brown-winged bark 
comes flitting to us out of the mist, bearing a pilot....  How 
strange it must all seem to Mademoiselle who stands so silent 
there at the rail!--how weird this veiled world must appear to 
her, after the sapphire light of her own West Indian sky, and the 
great lazulite splendor of her own tropic sea! 

But a wind comes;--it strengthens,--begins to blow very cold.  
The mists thin before its blowing; and the wan blank sky is all 
revealed again with livid horizon around the heaving of the iron-grey sea.

... Thou dim and lofty heaven of the North,--grey sky of Odin,
--bitter thy winds and spectral all thy colors!--they that dwell 
beneath thee know not the glory of Eternal Summer's green,--the 
azure splendor of southern day!--but thine are the lightnings of 
Thought illuminating for human eyes the interspaces between sun 
and sun.  Thine the generations of might,--the strivers, the 
battlers,--the men who make Nature tame!--thine the domain of 
inspiration and achievement,--the larger heroisms, the vaster 
labors that endure, the higher knowledge, and all the witchcrafts 
of science!...

But in each one of us there lives a mysterious Something which 
is Self, yet also infinitely more than Self,--incomprehensibly 
multiple,--the complex total of sensations, impulses, timidities 
belonging to the unknown past.  And the lips of the little 
stranger from the tropics have become all white, because that 
Something within her,--ghostly bequest from generations who 
loved the light and rest and wondrous color of a more radiant 
world,--now shrinks all back about her girl's heart with fear of 
this pale grim North....  And lo!--opening mile-wide in dream-
grey majesty before us,--reaching away, through measureless mazes 
of masting, into remotenesses all vapor-veiled,--the mighty 
perspective of New York harbor!...

Thou knowest it not, this gloom about us, little maiden;--'tis  
only a magical dusk we are entering,--only that mystic dimness in 
which miracles must be wrought!...  See the marvellous shapes 
uprising,--the immensities, the astonishments!  And other greater 
wonders thou wilt behold in a little while, when we shall have 
become lost to each other forever in the surging of the City's 
million-hearted life!...  'Tis all shadow here, thou sayest?--
Ay, 'tis twilight, verily, by contrast with that glory out of 
which thou camest, Lys--twilight only,--but the Twilight of the 
Gods!...  _Adié, chè!--Bon-Dié ké bént ou!_... 





ENDNOTES



[1] Since this was written the market has been removed to the 
Savane,--to allow of the erection of a large new market-building 
on the old site; and the beautiful trees have been cut down.

[2] I subsequently learned the mystery of this very strange and 
beautiful mixed race,--many fine specimens of which may also be 
seen in Trinidad. Three widely diverse elements have combined to 
form it: European, negro, and Indian,--but, strange to say, it is 
the most savage of these three bloods which creates the peculiar 
charm....  I cannot speak of this comely and extraordinary type 
without translating a passage from Dr. J. J. J. Cornilliac, an 
eminent Martinique physician, who recently published a most 
valuable series of studies upon the ethnology, climatology, and 
history of the Antilles.  In these he writes: ... 

"When, among the populations of the Antilles, we first notice those 
remarkable _métis_ whose olive skins, elegant and slender figures, 
fine straight profiles, and regular features remind us of the 
inhabitants of Madras or Pondicherry,--we ask ourselves in 
wonder, while looking at their long eyes, full of a strange and 
gentle melancholy (especially among the women), and at the black, 
rich, silky-gleaming hair curling in abundance over the temples 
and falling in profusion over the neck,--to what human race can 
belong this singular variety,--in which there is a dominant 
characteristic that seems indelible, and always shows more and 
more strongly in proportion as the type is further removed from 
the African element. It is the Carib blood--blended with blood of 
Europeans and of blacks,--which in spite of all subsequent 
crossings, and in spite of the fact that it has not been renewed 
for more than two hundred years, still conserves as markedly as 
at the time of the first interblending, the race-characteristic 
that invariably reveals  its presence in the blood of every being 
through whose veins it flows."--"Recherches chronologiques et 
historiques sur l'Origine et la Propagation de la Fièvre Jaune 
aux Antilles."  Par J. J. J. Cornilliac. Fort-de-France: 
Imprimerie du Gouvernement. 1886.

But I do not think the term "olive" always indicates the color of 
these skins, which seemed to me exactly the tint of gold; and the 
hair flashes with bluish lights, Like the plumage of certain 
black birds.

[3] _Extract from the "Story of Marie," as written from 
dictation:_

... Manman-à té ni yon gouôs jà à caïe-li.  Jà-la té 
touôp lou'de  pou Marie.  Cé té li menm manman là qui té
kallé pouend dileau.  Yon jou y pouend jà-la pou y té allé 
pouend dileau.  Lhè manman-à rivé bò la fontaine, y pa trouvé 
pésonne pou châgé y.  Y rété; y ka crié, "Toutt bon Chritien, 
vini châgé moin!"

... Lhè manman rété y ouè pa té ni piess bon Chritien pou chage
y.  Y rété; y crié: "Pouloss, si pa ni bon Chritien, ni mauvais 
Chritien! toutt mauvais Chritien vini châgé moin!"

... Lhè y fini di ça, y ouè yon diabe qui ka vini, ka di conm 
çaa, "Pou moin châgé ou, ça ou ké baill  moin?"  Manman-là di,--y
réponne, "Moin pa ni arien!"  Diabe-la réponne y, "Y fau ba moin
Marie pou moin pé châgé ou." 

This mamma had a great jar in her house.  The jar was too heavy 
for Marie.  It was this mamma herself who used to go for water.  
One day she took that jar to go for water.  When this mamma had 
got to the fountain, she could not find anyone to load her.  She 
stood there, crying out, "Any good Christian, come load me!"

As the mamma stood there she saw there was not a single good 
Christian to help her load. She stood there, and cried out: "Well,
then, if there are no good Christians, there are bad Christians.
Any bad Christian, come and load me!"

The moment she said that, she saw a devil coming, who said to her,
"If I load you, what will you give me?"  This mamma answered, and 
said, I have nothing !" The devil answered her, "Must give me Marie 
if you want me to load you."

[4] _Y batt li conm lambi_--"he beat him like a lambi"--is an 
expression that may often be heard in a creole court from 
witnesses testifying in a case of assault and battery.  One must 
have seen a lambi pounded to appreciate the terrible 
picturesqueness of the phase.

[5] Moreau de Saint-Méry writes, describing the drums of the 
negroes of Saint Domingue: "Le plus court de ces tambours est 
nommé _Bamboula_, attendu qu'il est formé quelquefois d'un très-
gros bambou."--"Description de la partie française de Saint 
Domingue, vol. i., p. 44.]

[6] What is known in the West Indies as a hurricane is happily 
rare;  it blows with the force of a cyclone, but not always 
circularly; it may come from one direction, and strengthen 
gradually for days until its highest velocity and destructive 
force are reached.  One in the time of Père Labat blew away the 
walls of a fort;--that of 1780 destroyed the lives of twenty-two 
thousand people in four islands: Martinique, Saint Lucia, St. 
Vincent, and Barbadoes.

Before the approach of such a visitation animals manifest the 
same signs of terror they display prior to an earthquake.  Cattle 
assemble together, stamp, and roar; sea-birds fly to the 
interior; fowl seek the nearest crevice they can hide in.  Then, 
while the sky is yet clear, begins the breaking of the sea; then 
darkness comes, and after it the wind.

[7] "Histoire Générale des Antilles... habités par les Français." 
Par le R. P. Du Tertre, de l'Ordre des Frères Prescheurs.  Paris: 
1661-71.  4 vols. (with illustrations) in 4to.

[8] One of the lights seen on the Caravelle was certainly carried 
by a cattle-thief,--a colossal negro who had the reputation of 
being a sorcerer ,--a _quimboiseur_.  The greater part of the 
mountainous land forming La Caravelle promontory was at that time 
the property of a Monsieur Eustache, who used it merely for 
cattle-raising purposes. He allowed his animals to run wild in 
the hills; they multiplied exceedingly, and became very savage.  
Notwithstanding their ferocity, however, large numbers of them 
were driven away at night, and secretly slaughtered or sold, by 
somebody who used to practise the art of cattle-stealing with a 
lantern, and evidently without aid. A watch was set, and the 
thief arrested.  Before the magistrate he displayed extraordinary 
assurance, asserting that he had never stolen from a poor man--he 
had stolen only from M. Eustache who could not count his own 
cattle--_yon richard, man chè!_ "How many cows did you steal from 
him?" asked the magistrate.  "_Ess moin pè save?--moin té pouend 
yon savane toutt pleine_," replied the prisoner. (How can I 
tell?--I took a whole savanna-full.)...  Condemned on the 
strength of his own confession, he was taken to jail.  "_Moin pa 
ké rété geole_," he observed. (I shall not remain in prison.) 
They put him in irons, but on the following morning the irons 
were found lying on the floor of the cell, and the prisoner was 
gone.  He was never seen in Martinique again.

[9] Y sucoué souyé assous quai-là;--y ka di: "Moin ka maudi ou, 
Lanmatinique!--moin ka maudi ou!...Ké ni mangé pou engnien: ou pa 
ké pè menm acheté y!  Ké ni touèle pou engnien: ou pa ké pè menm 
acheté yon robe! Epi yche ké batt manman.... Ou banni moin!--moin 
ké vini encò"

[10] Vol.  iii., p. 382-3.  Edition of 1722.]

[11] The parrots of Martinique he describes as having been green, 
with slate-colored plumage on the top of the head, mixed with a 
little red, and as having a few red feathers in the wings, 
throat, and tail.

[12] The creole word _moudongue_ is said to be a corruption of  
_Mondongue_, the name of an African coast tribe who had the 
reputation of being cannibals.  A Mondongue slave on the 
plantations was generally feared by his fellow-blacks of other 
tribes; and the name of the cannibal race became transformed into 
an adjective to denote anything formidable or terrible.  A blow 
with a stick made of the wood described being greatly dreaded, 
the term was applied first to the stick, and afterward to the 
wood itself.

[13] Accounting for the origin of the trade-winds, he writes: "I 
say that the Trade-Winds do not exist in the Torrid Zone merely 
by chance; forasmuch as the cause which produces them is very 
necessary, very sure, and very continuous, since they result 
_either from the movement of the Earth around the Sun, or from 
the movement of the Sun around the Earth.  Whether it be the one 
or the other, of these two great bodies which moves..._" etc.

[14] In creole, _cabritt-bois_,--("the Wood-Kid")--a colossal 
cricket.  Precisely at half-past four in the morning it becomes 
silent; and for thousands of early risers too poor to own a 
clock, the cessation of its song is the signal to get up.

[15] --"Where dost stay, dear?"--"Affairs of the goat are not 
affairs of the rabbit."--"But why art thou dressed all in black 
thus?"--"I wear mourning for my dead soul."--"_Aïe ya 
yaïe!_...No, true!...where art thou going now?"--"Love is gone: 
I go after love."--"Ho! thou hast a Wasp [lover]--eh?"--"The 
zanoli gives a ball; the _maboya_ enters unasked."--"Tell me 
where thou art going, sweetheart?"--"As far as the River of the 
Lizard."--"_Fouinq!_--there are more than thirty kilometres!"--
"What of that?--dost thou want to come with me?"

[16] "Kiss me now!"

[17] Petits amoureux aux plumes, 
Enfants d'un brillant séjour, 
Vous ignorez l'amertume, 
Vous parlez souvent d'amour;... 
Vous méprisez la dorure, 
Les salons, et les bijoux; 
Vous chérissez la Nature, 
Petits oiseaux, becquetez-vous!

"Voyez làbas, dans cette église, 
Auprès d'un confessional, 
Le prêtre, qui veut faire croire à Lise, 
Qu'un baiser est un grand mal;--
Pour prouver à la mignonne 
Qu'un baiser bien fait, bien doux, 
N'a jamais damné personne 
Petits oiseaux, becquetez-vous!"

[Translation.] 

Little feathered lovers, cooing, 
Children of the radiant air, 
Sweet your speech,--the speech of wooing; 
Ye have ne'er a grief to bear! 
Gilded ease and jewelled fashion 
Never own a charm for you; 
Ye love Nature's truth with passion, 
Pretty birdlings, bill and coo!

See that priest who, Lise confessing, 
Wants to make the girl believe 
That a kiss without a blessing 
Is a fault for which to grieve! 
Now to prove, to his vexation, 
That no tender kiss and true 
Ever caused a soul's damnation, 
Pretty birdlings, bill and coo!

[18] ..."Cette danse est opposée à la pudeur.  Avec tout cela, 
elle ne lesse pas d'être tellement du goût des Espagnols Créolles 
de l'Amérique, & si fort en usage parmi eux, qu'elle fait la 
meilleure partie de leurs divertissements, & qu'elle entre même dans 
leurs devotions. Ils la dansent même dans leurs Églises & à leurs 
processions; et les Religieuses ne manquent guère de la danser la 
Nuit de Noël, sur un théatre élévé dans leur Choeur, vis-à-vis de 
leur grille, qui est ouverte, afin que le Peuple aît sa part dans la 
joye que ces bonnes âmes témoignent pour la naissance du Sauveur."

[19] During a hurricane, several years ago, a West Indian steamer 
was disabled at a dangerously brief distance from the coast of 
the island by having her propeller fouled.  Sorely broken and 
drifting rigging had become wrapped around it.  One of the crew, 
a Martinique mulatto, tied a rope about his waist, took his knife 
between his teeth, dived overboard, and in that tremendous sea 
performed the difficult feat of disengaging the propeller, and 
thus saving the steamer from otherwise certain destruction....  
This brave fellow received the Cross of the Legion of Honor.

[20] "_Bel laline, moin ka montré ti pièce moin!--ba moin làgent 
toutt temps ou ka clairé!_"...  This little invocation is 
supposed to have most power when uttered on the first appearance 
of the new moon.

[21] ... Guardian-angel, watch over me;--have pity 
upon my weakness; lie down on my little bed with me: follow me 
whithersoever I go."  ...The prayers are always said in French.  
Metaphysical and theological terms cannot be rendered in the 
patois; and the authors of creole catechisms have always been 
obliged to borrow and explain French religious phrases in order 
to make their texts comprehensible.

[22] --"Moin té ouè yon bal;--moin rêvé: moin té ka ouè toutt moune 
ka dansé masqué; moin té ka gàdé.  Et toutt-à-coup moin ka ouè 
c'est bonhomme-càton ka danse.  Et main ka ouè yon Commandè: y 
ka mandé moin ça moin ka fai là.  Moin reponne y conm ça:
--'Moin ouè yon bal, moin gàdé-coument!"  Y ka réponne moin:
--'Pisse ou si quirièse pou vini gàdé baggaïe moune, faut rété là 
pou dansé 'tou.'  Moin réponne y:--'Non! main pa dansé épi 
bonhomme-càton!--moin pè!'... Et moin ka couri, moin ka 
couri, main ka couri à fòce moin te ni pè.  Et moin rentré adans 
grand jàdin; et moin ouè gouôs pié-cirise qui té chàgé anni 
feuill; et moin ka ouè yon nhomme assise enba cirise-à.  Y 
mandé moin:--'Ça ou ka fai là?' Moin di y:--'Moin ka châché 
chimin pou moin allé.' Y di moin:--'Faut rété içitt.'  Et moin 
di y:--'Non!'--et pou chappé cò moin, moin di y:--'Allé enhaut-
là: ou ké ouè yon bel bal,--toutt bonhomme-càton ka dansé, épi yon 
Commande-en-càton ka coumandé yo.'... Epi moin levé, à fòce 
moin té pè."...]

[23] Lit.,--"brought-up-in-a-hat."  To wear the madras is to acknowledge
oneself of color;--to follow the European style of dressing the hair,
and adopt the costume of the white creoles indicates a desire to
affiliate with the white class.

[24] Red earthen-ware jars for keeping drinking-water cool.  The 
origin of the word is probably to be sought in the name of the 
town, near Marseilles, where they are made,--Aubagne.

[25] I may cite in this relation one stanza of a creole song--very 
popular in St. Pierre--celebrating the charms of a little 
capresse:--

"...Moin toutt jeine,
Gouôs, gouâs, vaillant,
Peau,di chapoti 
Ka fai plaisi;--
Lapeau moin 
Li bien poli; 
Et moin ka plai 
Mênm toutt nhomme grave!"

--Which might be freely rendered thus:--

"...I am dimpled, young, 
Round-limbed, and strong, 
With sapota-skin 
That is good to see: 
All glossy-smooth 
Is this skin of mine; 
And the gravest men 
Like to look at me!"

[26] It was I who washed and ironed and mended;--at nine o'clock at night 
thou didst put me out-of-doors, with my child in my arms,--the rain 
was falling,--with my poor straw mattress upon my head! ... Doudoux! 
thou dost abandon me! ... I have none to care for me.

[27] Also called _La Barre de 'Isle_,--a long high mountain-wall  
interlinking the northern and southern system of ranges,--and  
only two metres broad at the summit.  The "Roches-Carrées",  
display a geological formation unlike anything discovered in the  
rest of the Antillesian system, excepting in Grenada,--columnar  
or prismatic basalts....  In the plains of Marin curious  
petrifactions exist;--I saw a honey-comb so perfect that the eye  
alone could scarcely divine the transformation.

[28] Thibault de Chanvallon, writing of Martinique in 1751,  
declared:--"All possible hinderances to study are encountered  
here (_tout s'oppose à l'etude_): if the Americans [creoles] do  
not devote themselves to research, the fact must not be  
attributed solely to indifference or indolence.  On the one hand,  
the overpowering and continual heat,--the perpetual succession of  
mornes and acclivities,--the difficulty of entering forests  
rendered almost inaccessible by the lianas interwoven across all  
openings, and the prickly plants which oppose a barrier to the  
naturalist,--the continual anxiety and fear inspired by serpents  
also;--on the othelr hand, the disheartening necessity of having  
to work alone, and the discouragement of being unable to  
communicate one's ideas or discoveries to persons having similar 
tastes.  And finally, it must be remembered that these 
discouragements and dangers are never mitigated by the least hope
of personal consideration, or by the pleasure of emulation,--since
such study is necessarily unaccompanied either by the one or the
other in a country where nobody undertakes it."--(_Voyage à la
Martinique_.) ...The conditions have scarcely changed since
De Chanvallon's day, despite the creation of Government roads, and
the thinning of the high woods.

[29] Humboldt believed the height to be not less than 800 _toises_ 
(1  toise=6 ft. 4.73 inches), or about 5115 feet.

[30] There used to be a strange popular belief that however  
heavily veiled by clouds the mountain might be prior to an  
earthquake, these would always vanish with the first shock.  But  
Thibault de Chanvallon took pains to examine into the truth of  
this alleged phenomenon; and found that during a number of  
earthquake shocks the clouds remained over the crater precisely  
as usual....  There was more foundation, however, for another  
popular belief, which still exists,--that the absolute purity of  
the atmosphere about Pelée, and the perfect exposure of its  
summit for any considerable time, might be regarded as an omen of  
hurricane.

[31] "De la piqure du serpent de la Martinique," par Auguste  
Charriez, Medecin de la Marine.  Paris: Moquet, 1875]

[32] M. Francard Bayardelle, overseer of the Prèsbourg plantation 
at  Grande Anse, tells me that the most successful treatment of 
snake bite consists in severe local cupping and bleeding; the 
immediate  application of twenty to thirty leeches (when these 
can be obtained), and the administration of alkali as an 
internal medicine.  He has saved several lives by these methods.

The negro panseur method is much more elaborate and, to some 
extent, mysterious.  He cups and bleeds, using a small _couï_, or 
half-calabash, in lieu of a grass; and then applies cataplasms 
of herbs,--orange-leaves, cinnamon-leaves, clove-leaves, _chardon-
béni_, _charpentier_, perhaps twenty other things, all mingled 
together;--this poulticing being continued every day for a month.  
Meantime the patient is given all sorts of absurd things to 
drink, in tafia and sour-orange juice--such as old clay pipes 
ground to powder, or _the head of the fer-de-lance itself_, roasted 
dry and pounded....  The plantation negro has no faith in any 
other system of cure but that of the panseur;--he refuses to let 
the physician try to save him, and will scarcely submit to be 
treated even by an experienced white over-seer.

[33] The sheet-lightnings which play during the nights of July and  
August are termed in creole _Zéclai-titiri_, or "titiri- 
lightnings";--it is believed these give notice that the titiri  
have begun to swarn in the rivers.  Among the colored population  
there exists an idea of some queer relation between the lightning  
and the birth of the little fish ,--it is commonly said, "_Zéclai- 
a ka fai yo écloré_" (the lightning hatches them).

[34] Dr. E. Rufz: "Études historiques," vol. i., p. 189.

[35] The brightly colored douillettes are classified by the people 
according to the designs of the printed calico:--_robe-à-bambou_,--
_robe-à-bouquet_,--_robe-arc-en-ciel_,--robe-à-carreau_,--etc., 
according as the pattern is in stripes, flower-designs, "rainbow" 
bands of different tints, or plaidings.  _Ronde-en-ronde_ means a 
stuff printed with disk-patterns, or link-patterns of different 
colors,--each joined with the other.  A robe of one color only is 
called a _robe-uni_.

The general laws of contrasts observed in the costume require the 
silk foulard, or shoulder-kerchief, to make a sharp relief with 
the color of the robe, thus:-

Robe.                   Foulard. 
Yellow                  Blue. 
Dark blue               Yellow. 
Pink                    Green. 
Violet                  Bright red. 
Red                     Violet. 
Chocolate (cacoa)       Pale blue. 
Sky blue                 Pale rose.

These refer, of course, to dominant or ground colors, as there 
are usually several tints in the foulard as well as the robe.  
The painted Madras should always be bright yellow.  According to 
popular ideas of good dressing, the different tints of skin 
should be relieved by special choice of color in the robe, as 
follows:--

_Capresse_ (a clear red skin) should wear.... Pale yellow. 
_Mulatresse_ (according to shade).... Rose. Blue. Green.
_Negresse_.... White. Scarlet, or any violet color.

[36] ... "Vouèla Cendrillon evec yon bel ròbe velou grande 
lakhè.  ... Ça té ka bail ou mal ziè.  Li té tini bel 
zanneau dans zòreill li, quate-tou-chou, bouoche,
bracelet, tremblant,--toutt sòte bel baggaïe conm
ça."...--[_Conte Cendrillon,--d'après Turiault.]

--"There was Cendrillon with a beautiful long trailing robe of 
velvet on her!... It was enough to hurt one's eyes to look at
her!  She had beautiful rings in her ears, and a collier-choux 
of four rows, brooches, _tremblants_, bracelets,--everything 
fine of that sort."--[Story of Cinderella in Turinault's 
Creole Grammar.

[37]  It is quite possible, however, that the slaves of Dutertre's 
time belonged for the most part to the uglier African tribes; and 
that later supplies may have been procured from other parts of 
the slave coast. Writing half a century later, Père Labat 
declares having seen freshly disembarked blacks handsome enough 
to inspire an artist:--"_J'en ai vu des deux sexes faits à 
peindre, et beaux par merveille_" (vol. iv. chap, vii,).  He adds 
that their skin was extremely fine, and of velvety softness;--"_le 
velours n'est pas plus doux_."...  Among the 30,000 blacks 
yearly shipped to the French colonies, there were doubtless many 
representatives of the finer African races.

[38] "Leur sueur n'est pas fétide comme celle des nègres de la 
Guinée," writes the traveller Dauxion-Lavaysse, in 1813.

[39] Dr. E. Rufz: "Études historiques et statistiques sur la 
population de la Martinique." St. Pierre: 1850.  Vol. i., 
pp. 148-50. 

It has been generally imagined that the physical constitution 
of the black race was proof against the deadly climate of the 
West Indies. The truth is that the freshly imported Africans 
died of fever by thousands and tens-of-thousands;--the 
creole-negro race, now so prolific, represents only the fittest 
survivors in the long and terrible struggle of the slave element 
to adapt itself to the new environment. Thirty thousand negroes 
a year were long needed to supply the French colonies.  Between 
1700 and 1789 no less than 900,000 slaves were imported by San 
Domingo alone;--yet there were less than half that number left in 
1789. (See Placide Justin's history of Santo Domingo, p. 147.) 
The entire slave population of Barbadoes had to be renewed every 
sixteen years, according to estimates: the loss to planters by 
deaths of slaves (reckoning the value of a slave at only £20 sterling) 
during the same period was £1,600,000 ($8,000,000).  (Burck's 
"History of European Colonies," vol. ii., p. 141; French edition of 1767.)

[40] Rufz: "Études," vol. i., p. 236.

[41] I am assured it has now fallen to a figure not exceeding 
5000.

[42] Rufz: "Études," vol. ii., pp. 311, 312.

[43] Rufz: "Études," vol. i., p.  237.

[44] _La race de sang-mêlé, issue des blancs et des noirs, est 
éminement civilizable.  Comme types physiques, elle fournit 
dans beaucoup d'individus, dans ses femmes en général, les plus 
beaux specimens de la race humaine_.--"Le Préjugé de Race aux 
Antilles Françaises." Par G. Souquet-Basiège.  St. Pierre, 
Martinique: 1883. pp. 661-62.

[45] Turiault: "Étude sur le langage Créole de la Martinique." 
Brest: 1874....  On page 136 he cites the following pretty verses 
in speaking of the _fille-de-couleur_:--

L'Amour prit soin de la former 
Tendre, naïve, et caressante, 
Faite pour plaire, encore plus pour aimer. 
Portant tous les traits précieux 
Du caractère d'une amante, 
Le plaisir sur sa bouche et l'amour dans ses yeux.

[46] A sort of land-crab;--the female is selected for food, and, 
properly cooked, makes a delicious dish;--the male is almost 
worthless.

[47] "Voyage à la Martinique," Par J.  R., Général de Brigade. 
Paris: An, XII., 1804.  Page 106.

[48] According to the Martinique "Annuaire" for 1887, there were 
even then, out of a total population of 173,182, no less than 
12,366 able to read and write.

[49] There is record of an attempt to manufacture bread with one 
part manioc flour to three of wheat flour.  The result was 
excellent; but no serious effort was ever made to put the manioc 
bread on the market.

[50] I must mention a surreptitious dish, _chatt_;--needless to say 
the cats are not sold, but stolen.  It is true that only a small 
class of poor people eat cats; but they eat so many cats that 
cats have become quite rare in St. Pierre.  The custom is purely 
superstitious: it is alleged that if you eat cat seven times, or 
if you eat seven cats, no witch, wizard, or _quimboiseur_ can ever 
do you any harm; and the cat ought to be eaten on Christmas Eve 
in order that the meal be perfectly efficacious....  The mystic 
number "seven", enters into another and a better creole 
superstition;--if you kill a serpent, seven great sins are 
forgiven to you: _ou ké ni sept grands péchés effacé_.

[51]  Rufz remarks that the first effect of this climate of the 
Antilles is a sort of general physical excitement, an exaltation, 
a sense of unaccustomed strength,--which begets the desire of 
immediate action to discharge the surplus of nervous force.  "Then 
all distances seem brief;--the greatest fatigues are braved 
without hesitation."-- _Études_.

[52] In the patois, "_yon rafale yche_,"--a "whirlwind of 
children."




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