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

spins 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 Pelée (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 slid 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-dapping of mountain echo.

[Illustration: BELLE FONTAINE, MARTINIQUE

_In every cove tiny villages nestle. Nets ere drying

in the sun. There is no sound. Utter peace broods

in the shadows._]

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 headforemost 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.

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 swarms. 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.

[Illustration: ST. PIERRE--THE CUT TO-DAY

_The new town is slowly growing in the sinister shadow

of La Montagne, which seems innocent enough in its

cap of clouds._]

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....