In every season, in almost every weather, the porteuse makes her
journey,--never heeding rain;--her goods being protected by double and
triple water-proof coverings well bound down over her trait. Yet these
tropical rains, coming suddenly with a cold wind upon her heated and
almost naked body, are to be feared. To any European or unacclimated
white such a wetting, while the pores are all open during a profuse
perspiration, would probably prove fatal: even for white natives the
result is always a serious and protracted illness. But the porteuse
seldom suffers in consequences: she seems proof against fevers,
rheumatisms, and ordinary colds. When she does break down, however, the
malady is a frightful one,--a pneumonia that carries off the victim
within forty-eight hours. Happily, among her class, these fatalities are
very rare.
And scarcely less rare than such sudden deaths are instances of failure
to appear on time. In one case, the employer, a St. Pierre shopkeeper,
on finding his marchande more than an hour late, felt so certain
something very extraordinary must have happened that he sent out
messengers in all directions to make inquiries. It was found that the
woman had become a mother when only half-way upon her journey home....
The child lived and thrived;--she is now a pretty chocolate-colored girl
of eight, who follows her mother every day from their mountain ajoupa
down to the city, and back again,--bearing a little trait upon her head.
[Illustration: THE ROAD TO ST. PIERRE
"_A hillside covered with huge green feathers... tree-ferns
whose every young plume, in a spiral from the
hud, at first assumes the shape of a crozier,--a crozier
of emerald!_"]
Murder for purposes of robbery is not an unknown crime in Martinique;
but I am told the porteuses are never molested. And yet some of these
girls carry merchandise to the value of hundreds of francs; and all
carry money,--the money received for goods sold, often a considerable
sum. This immunity may be partly owing to the fact that they travel
dining the greater part of the year only by day,--and usually in
company. A very pretty girl is seldom suffered to journey unprotected:
she has either a male escort or several experienced and powerful women
with her. In the cacao season--when carriers start from Grande Anse as
early as two o'clock in the morning, so as to reach St. Pierre by
dawn--they travel in strong companies of twenty or twenty-five, singing
on the way. As a general rule the younger girls at all times go two
together,--keeping step perfectly as a pair of blooded fillies; only the
veterans, or women selected for special work by reason of extraordinary
physical capabilities, go alone. To the latter class belong certain
girls employed by the great bakeries of Fort-de-France and St. Pierre:
these are veritable caryatides. They are probably the heaviest-laden of
all, carrying baskets of astounding size far up into the mountains
before daylight, so as to furnish country families with fresh bread at
an early hour; and for this labor they receive about four dollars
(twenty francs) a month and one loaf of bread per diem.... While
stopping at a friend's house among the hills, some two miles from
Fort-de-France, I saw the local bread-carrier halt before our porch one
morning, and a finer type of the race it would be difficult for a
sculptor to imagine. Six feet tall,--strength and grace united
throughout her whole figure from neck to heel; with that clear black
skin which is beautiful to any but ignorant or prejudiced eyes; and the
smooth, pleasing, solemn features of a sphinx,--she looked to me, as she
towered there in the gold light, a symbolic statue of Africa. Seeing me
smoking one of those long thin Martinique cigars called _bouts_, she
begged one; and, not happening to have another, I gave her the price of
a bunch of twenty,--ten sous. She took it without a smile, and went her
way. About an hour and a half later she came back and asked for me,--to
present me with the finest and largest mango I had ever seen, a monster
mango. She said she wanted to see me eat it, and sat down on the ground
to look on. While eating it, I learned that she had walked a whole mile
out of her way under that sky of fire, just to bring her little gift of
gratitude.