... Everywhere crosses, little shrines, wayside 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 incantatory 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 at 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 unconsciously 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.
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
stonework, patiently, imperceptibly, yet almost irresistibly.
[Illustration: CIMETIÈRE DU MOUILLAGE, ST. PIERRE
_Under the shadow of the mountain the dead sleep as
peacefully as though nothing had happened._]
... 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 come 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....