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 market-place.[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 pendant 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, coulio,
macriau, tazard, 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.
[Illustration: SUZANNE
_A creole type, pretty, graceful, raven haired, with
lovely olive golden skin and wholly likable._]
... Then you begin to look about you at the faces of the black, brown,
and yellow people who are watching you curiously from beneath their
Madras turbans, or from under the shade of mushroom-shaped hats as large
as umbrellas. And as you observe the bare backs, bare shoulders, bare
legs and arms and feet, you will find that the colors of flesh are even
more varied and surprising than the colors of fruit. Nevertheless, it is
only with fruit-colors that many of these skin-tints can be correctly
compared: the only terms of comparison used by the 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 orange
babies. There is one rare race-type, totally unlike 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 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, ho 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 new 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 higher parts of Montagne
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....
[Footnote 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 rite; and the beautiful trees have been cut down.]
[Footnote 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.]