Two Years in the French West Indies Part 2

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 pa.s.s 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 pa.s.s 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 pa.s.sed--one dominant height, with ma.s.sing of bright crater shapes about it, and ranges of green hills linked together by low valleys. About its highest summit also hovers a flock of clouds. At the foot of the vast hill nestles the little white and red town of Plymouth.

The single salute of our gun is answered by a stupendous broadside of echoes.

Plymouth is more than half hidden in the rich foliage that fringes the wonderfully wrinkled green of the hills at their base;--it has a curtain of palms before it. Approaching, you discern only one or two facades above the sea-wall, and the long wharf projecting through an opening ing in the masonry, over which young palms stand thick as canes on a sugar plantation. But on reaching the street that descends towards the heavily bowldered sh.o.r.e 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 pa.s.senger ash.o.r.e; 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 phosph.o.r.escence.

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 ma.s.s 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 ma.s.s 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 sh.o.r.e 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 pa.s.sengers 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 pa.s.sengers on deck. "'Tention-la!" shriek a dozen soprani. Some pa.s.senger'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 ash.o.r.e 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 gla.s.s; 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 gra.s.s-tufted and moss-lined.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 b.u.t.tresses. 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 s.p.a.ce just at the level of the upper story of the house on the lower street-corner. Sometimes, a hundred feet below, you see a ship resting in the azure aperture,--seemingly suspended there in sky-color, floating in blue light. And everywhere and always, through sunshine or shadow, comes to you the scent of the city,--the characteristic odor of St. Pierre;--a compound odor suggesting the intermingling of sugar and garlic in those strange tropical dishes which creoles love....

XII.

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

Straight as palms, and supple and tall, these colored women and men impress one powerfully by their dignified carriage and easy elegance of movement. They walk without swinging of the shoulders;--the perfectly set torso seems to remain rigid; yet the step is a long full stride, and the whole weight is springily poised on the very tip of the bare foot.

All, or nearly all, are without shoes: the treading of many naked feet over the heated pavement makes a continuous whispering sound.

... Perhaps the most novel impression of all is that produced by the singularity and brilliancy of certain of the women's costumes. These were developed, at least a hundred years ago, by some curious sumptuary law regulating the dress of slaves and colored people of free condition,--a law which allowed considerable liberty as to material and tint, prescribing chiefly form. But some of these fashions suggest the Orient: they offer beautiful audacities of color contrast; and the full-dress coiffure, above all, is so strikingly Eastern that one might be tempted to believe it was first introduced into the colony by some Mohammedan slave. It is merely an immense Madras handkerchief, which is folded about the head with admirable art, like a turban;--one bright end pushed through at the top in front, being left sticking up like a plume.

Then this turban, always full of bright canary-color, is fastened with golden brooches,--one in front and one at either side. As for the remainder of the dress, it is simple enough: an embroidered, low-cut chemise with sleeves; a skirt or _jupe_, very long behind, but caught up and fastened in front below the b.r.e.a.s.t.s 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 circ.u.mference);--a necklace of double, triple, quadruple, or quintuple rows of large hollow gold beads (sometimes smooth, but generally ally graven)--the wonderful _collier-choux_.

Now, this glowing jewellery is not a mere imitation of pure metal: the ear-rings are worth one hundred and seventy-five francs a pair; the necklace of a Martinique quadroon may cost five hundred or even one thousand francs.... It may be the gift of her lover, her _doudoux_, but such articles are usually purchased either on time by small payments, or bead by bead singly until the requisite number is made up.

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

..._"ce moune-la, ca qui le bel mango?"_ Her basket of mangoes certainly weighs as much as herself.... _"ca qui le bel avocat?,"_ The alligator-pear--cuts and tastes like beautiful green cheese... _"ca qui le escargot?"_ Call her, if you like snails.... _"Ca qui le t.i.tiri?"_ Minuscule fish, of which a thousand would scarcely fill a tea-cup;--one of the most delicate of Martinique dishes.... _"ca qui le canna?--ca qui le charbon?--ca qui le di pain aube?_" (Who wants ducks, charcoal, or pretty little loaves shaped like cuc.u.mbers.)... _"ca qui le pain-mi?"_ A sweet maize cake in the form of a tiny sugar-loaf, wrapped in a piece of banana leaf.... _"ca qui le froma.s.se" (pharmacie) "lapotecai creole?"_ She deals in creole roots and herbs, and all the leaves that make _tisanes_ or poultices or medicines: _matriquin, feuill-corossol, balai-doux, manioc-chapelle, Marie-Perrine, graine-enba-feuill, bois d'lhomme, zhebe-gras, bonnet-carre, zhebe-codeinne, zhebe-a-femme, zhebe-a-chatte, canne-dleau, poque, fleu-papillon, lateigne,_ and a score of others you never saw or heard of before.... _"ca qui le dicaments?"_ (overalls for laboring-men).... _"ce moune-la, si ou pa le achete canari-a dans lanmain moin, moin ke craze y."_ The vender of red clay cooking-pots;--she has only one left, if you do not buy it she will break it!

_"He! zenfants-la!--en deho'!"_ Run out to meet her, little children, if you like the sweet rice-cakes.... _"He! gens pa' enho', gens pa' enbas, gens di galtas, moin ni bel gououos poisson!"_ Ho! people up-stairs, people down-stairs, and all ye good folks who dwell in the attics,--know that she has very big and very beautiful fish to sell!... _"He! ca qui le mange yonne?"_--those are "akras,"--flat yellow-brown cakes, made of pounded codfish, or beans, or both, seasoned with pepper and fried in b.u.t.ter.... And then comes the pastry-seller, black as ebony, but dressed all in white, and white-ap.r.o.ned and white-capped like a French cook, and chanting half in French, half in creole, with a voice like a clarinet:

_"C'est louvouier de la patisserie qui pa.s.se, Qui te ka veille pou' gagner son existence, Toujours content, Toujours joyeux.

Oh, qu'ils sont bons!--Oh, qu'ils sont doux!"_

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

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

[Ill.u.s.tration: ITINERANT PASTRY-SELLER. "Tourjours content, Toujours joyeux."]

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

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