Two Years in the French West Indies Part 11

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

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

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

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

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

"It may have been in 1809--I can give you the exact date by reference to some old papers if necessary--Monsieur Bon was Collector of Customs at St. Pierre: and my grandfather was doing business in the Grande Rue.

A certain captain, whose vessel had been consigned to my grandfather, invited him and the collector to breakfast in his cabin. My grandfather was so busy he could not accept the invitation;--but Monsieur Bon went with the captain on board the bark."

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

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

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

II.

The legend of "Missie Bon" had prepared me to hear without surprise the details of a still more singular tradition,--that of Father Labat....

I was returning from a mountain ramble with my guide, by way of the Ajoupa-Bouillon road;--the sun had gone down; there remained only a blood-red glow in the west, against which the silhouettes of the hills took a velvety blackness indescribably soft; the stars were beginning to twinkle out everywhere through the violet. Suddenly I noticed on the flank of a neighboring morne--which I remembered by day as an apparently uninhabitable wilderness of bamboos, tree-ferns, and balisiers--a swiftly moving point of yellow light. My guide had observed it simultaneously;--he crossed himself, and exclaimed:

"_Moin ka coue c'est fa.n.a.l Pe Labatt!_" (I believe it is the lantern of Pere Labat.)

"Does he live there?" I innocently inquired.

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

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

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

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

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

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

"They used to say, before 1848, that when slavery should be abolished, Pe Labatt's light would not be seen any more. But I can remember very well when slavery was abolished; and I saw the light many a time after.

It used to move up the Morne d'Orange every clear night;--I could see it very well from my window when I lived in St. Pierre. You knew it was Pe Labatt, because the light pa.s.sed up places where no man could walk.

But since the statue of Notre Dame de la Garde was placed on the Morne d'Orange, people tell me that the light is not seen there any more.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

... "_Ah! Pe Labatt, oui!_" she exclaimed, at my first question,--"Pe Labatt was a good priest who lived here very long ago. And they did him a great wrong here;--they gave him a wicked _coup d'langue_ (tongue wound); and the hurt given by an evil tongue is worse than a serpent's bite. They lied about him; they slandered him until they got him sent away from the country. But before the Government 'embarked' him, when he got to that quay, he took off his shoe and he shook the dust of his shoe upon that quay, and he said: 'I curse you, 0 Martinique!--I curse you!

There will be food for nothing, and your people will not even be able to buy it! There will be clothing material for nothing, and your people will not be able to get so much as one dress! And the children will beat their mothers!... You banish me;--but I will come back again.'" [9]

"And then what happened, Manm-Robert?"

"_Eh! fouinq! che_, all that Pe Labatt said has come true. There is food for almost nothing, and people are starving here in St. Pierre; there is clothing for almost nothing, and poor girls cannot earn enough to buy a dress. The pretty printed calicoes (_indiennes_) that used to be two francs and a half the metre, now sell at twelve sous the metre; but n.o.body has any money. And if you read our papers,--_Les Colonies, La Defense Coloniale_,--you will find that there are sons wicked enough to beat their mothers: _oui! yche ka batt manman!_ It is the malediction of Pe Labatt."

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

Only a brief while after this little interview I was invited to pa.s.s an afternoon at the home of a gentleman residing upon the Morne d'

Orange,--the locality supposed to be especially haunted by Pere Labat.

The house of Monsieur M-- stands on the side of the hill, fully five hundred feet up, and in a grove of trees: an antiquated dwelling, with foundations ma.s.sive as the walls of a fortress, and huge broad balconies of stone. From one of these balconies there is a view of the city, the harbor and Pelee, which I believe even those who have seen Naples would confess to be one of the fairest sights in the world.... Towards evening I obtained a chance to ask my kind host some questions about the legend of his neighborhood.

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

III.

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

Nearly two hundred years ago--24th August, 1693--a traveller wearing the white habit of the Dominican order, partly covered by a black camlet overcoat, entered the city of Roch.e.l.le. He was very tall and robust, with one of those faces, at once grave and keen, which bespeak great energy and quick discernment. This was the Pere Labat, a native of Paris, then in his thirtieth year. Half priest, half layman, one might have been tempted to surmise from his attire; and such a judgement would not have been unjust. Labat's character was too large for his calling,--expanded naturally beyond the fixed limits of the ecclesiastical life; and throughout the whole active part of his strange career we find in him this dual character of layman and monk. He had come to Roch.e.l.le to take pa.s.sage 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 Roch.e.l.le six whole months for a ship. In the convent at Roch.e.l.le, 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 pa.s.sengers and crew. He taught the captain mathematics; and invented amus.e.m.e.nts 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 exact.i.tude 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 apt.i.tudes which made his presence more than desirable at Saint-Jacques, the great plantation of the order on the Capesterre, or Windward coast. It was in debt for 700,000 pounds of sugar,--an appalling condition in those days,--and seemed doomed to get more heavily in debt every successive season. Labat inspected everything, and set to work for the plantation, not merely as general director, but as engineer, architect, machinist, inventor. He did really wonderful things. You can see them for yourself if you ever go to Martinique; for the old Dominican plantation-now Government property, and leased at an annual rent of 50,000 francs--remains one of the most valuable in the colonies because of Labat's work upon it. The watercourses directed by him still excite the admiration of modern professors of hydraulics; the mills he built or invented are still good;--the treatise he wrote on sugar-making remained for a hundred and fifty years the best of its kind, and the manual of French planters. In less than two years Labat had not only rescued the plantation from bankruptcy, but had made it rich; and if the monks deemed him veritably inspired, the test of time throws no ridicule on their astonishment at the capacities of the man.... Even now the advice he formulated as far back as 1720--about secondary cultures,--about manufactories to establish,--about imports, exports, and special commercial methods--has lost little of its value.

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