The Jardin des Plantes is not absolutely secure from the visits of the
serpent; for the trigonocephalus goes everywhere,--mounting to the very
summits of the cocoa-palms, swimming rivers, ascending walls, hiding in
palm-thatched roofs, breeding in bagasse heaps. But, despite what has
been printed to the contrary, this reptile fears man and hates light: it
rarely shows itself voluntarily during the day. Therefore, if you desire
to obtain some conception of the magnificence of Martinique vegetation,
without incurring the risk of entering the high woods, you can do so by
visiting the Jardin des Plantes,--only taking care to use your eyes well
while climbing over fallen trees, or picking your way through dead
branches. The garden is less than a mile from the city, on the slopes of
the Morne Parnasse; and the primitive forest itself has been utilized in
the formation of it,--so that the greater part of the garden is a
primitive growth. Nature has accomplished here infinitely more than art
of man (though such art has done much to lend the place its charm),--and
until within a very recent time the result might have been deemed,
without exaggeration, one of the wonders of the world.
A moment after passing the gate you are in twilight, though the sun may
be blinding on the white road without. All about you is a green
gloaming, up through which you see immense trunks rising. Follow the
first path that slopes up on your left as you proceed, if you wish to
obtain the best general view of the place in the shortest possible time.
As you proceed, the garden on your right deepens more and more into a
sort of ravine;--on your left rises a sort of foliage-shrouded cliff;
and all this in a beautiful crepuscular dimness, made by the foliage of
great trees meeting overhead. Palms rooted a hundred feet below you hold
their heads a hundred feet above you; yet they can barely reach the
light.... Farther on the ravine widens to frame in two tiny lakes,
dotted with artificial islands, which are miniatures of Martinique,
Guadeloupe, and Dominica: these are covered with tropical plants, many
of which are total strangers even here: they are natives of India,
Senegambia, Algeria, and the most eastern East. Arborescent ferns of
unfamiliar elegance curve up from path-verge or lake-brink; and the
great _arbre-du-voyageur_ outspreads its colossal fan. Giant lianas
droop down over the way in loops and festoons; tapering green cords,
which are creepers descending to take root, hang everywhere; and
parasites with stems thick as cables coil about the trees like boas.
Trunks shooting up out of sight, into the green wilderness above,
display no bark; you cannot guess what sort of trees they are; they are
so thickly wrapped in creepers as to seem pillars of leaves. Between you
and the sky, where everything is fighting for sun, there is an almost
unbroken vault of leaves, a cloudy green confusion in which nothing
particular is distinguishable.
[Illustration: ROAD TO MORNE ROUGE
_A riot of green fading off into distant grays, and
nearly always a glint of blue ocean in the distance._]
You come to breaks now and then in the green steep to your
left,--openings created for cascades pouring down from one mossed basin
of brown stone to another,--or gaps occupied by flights of stone steps,
green with mosses, and chocolate-colored by age. These steps lead to
loftier paths; and all the stone-work,--the grottos, bridges, basins,
terraces, steps,--are darkened by time and velveted with mossy
things.... It is of another century, this garden: special ordinances
were passed concerning it during the French Revolution (_An. II._);--it
is very quaint; it suggests an art spirit as old as Versailles, or
older; but it is indescribably beautiful even now.
... At last you near the end, to hear the roar of falling water;--there
is a break in the vault of green above the bed of a river below you; and
at a sudden turn you come in sight of the cascade. Before you is the
Morne itself; and against the burst of descending light you discern a
precipice-verge. Over it, down one green furrow in its brow, tumbles the
rolling foam of a cataract, like falling smoke, to be caught below in a
succession of moss-covered basins. The first dear leap of the water is
nearly seventy feet.... Did Josephine ever rest upon that shadowed bench
near by?... She knew all these paths by heart: surely they must have
haunted her dreams in the after-time!
Returning by another path, you may have a view of other cascades--though
none so imposing. But they are beautiful; and you will not soon forget
the effect of one,--flanked at its summit by white-stemmed palms which
lift their leaves so high into the light that the loftiness of them
gives the sensation of vertigo.... Dizzy also the magnificence of the
great colonnade of palmistes and angelins, two hundred feet high,
through which you pass if you follow the river-path from the
cascade,--the famed _Allée des duels_....
The vast height, the pillared solemnity of the ancient trees in the
green dimness, the solitude, the strangeness of shapes but half
seen,--suggesting fancies of silent aspiration, or triumph, or
despair,--all combine to produce a singular impression of awe.... You
are alone; you hear no human voice,--no sounds but the rushing of the
river over its volcanic rocks, and the creeping of millions of lizards
and tree-frogs and little toads. You see no human face; but you see all
around you the labor of man being gnawed and devoured by nature,--broken
bridges, sliding steps, fallen arches, strangled fountains with empty
basins;--and everywhere arises the pungent odor of decay. This
omnipresent odor affects one unpleasantly;--it never ceases to remind
you that where Nature is most puissant to charm, there also is she
mightiest to destroy.
The beautiful garden is now little more than a wreck of what it once
was: since the fall of the Empire it has been shamefully abused and
neglected. Some _agronome_ sent out to take charge of it by the
Republic, began its destruction by cutting down acres of enormous and
magnificent trees,--including a superb alley of palms,--for the purpose
of experimenting with roses. But the rose-trees would not be cultivated
there; and the serpents avenged the demolition by making the
experimental garden unsafe to enter;--they always swarm into underbrush
and shrubbery after forest-trees have been cleared away.... Subsequently
the garden was greatly damaged by storms and torrential rains; the
mountain river overflowed, carrying bridges away and demolishing
stone-work. No attempt was made to repair these destructions; but
neglect alone would not have ruined the loveliness of the
place;--barbarism was necessary! Under the present negro-radical régime
orders have been given for the wanton destruction of trees older than
the colony itself;--and marvels that could not be replaced in a hundred
generations were cut down and converted into charcoal for the use of
public institutions.