I had long been anxious to see the city of the porteuses, when the
opportunity afforded itself to make the trip with a friend obliged to go
thither on some important business;--I do not think I should have ever
felt resigned to undertake it alone. With a level road the distance
might be covered very quickly, but over mountains the journey is slow
and wearisome in the perpetual tropic heat. Whether made on horseback or
in a carriage, it takes between four and five hours to go from St.
Pierre to Grande Anse, and it requires a longer time to return, as the
road is then nearly all uphill. The young porteuse travels almost as
rapidly; and the barefooted black postman, who carries the mails in a
square box at the end of a pole, is timed on leaving Morne Rouge at 4
A.M. to reach Ajoupa-Bouillon a little after six, and leaving
Ajoupa-Bouillon at half-past six to reach Grande Anse at half-past
eight, including many stoppages and delays on the way.
Going to Grande Anse from the chief city, one can either hire a horse or
carriage at St. Pierre, or ascend to Morne Rouge by the public
conveyance, and there procure a vehicle or animal, which latter is the
cheaper and easier plan. About a mile beyond Morne Rouge, where the old
Calebasse road enters the public highway, you reach the highest point of
the journey,--the top of the enormous ridge dividing the north-east from
the western coast, and cutting off the trade-winds from sultry St.
Pierre. By climbing the little hill, with a tall stone cross on its
summit, overlooking the Champ-Flore just here, you can perceive the sea
on both sides of the bland at once--_lapis lazuli_ blue. From this
elevation the road descends by a hundred windings and lessening
undulations to the eastern shore. It sinks between monies wooded to
their summits,--bridges a host of torrents and ravines,--passes gorges
from whence colossal trees tower far overhead, through heavy streaming
of lianas, to mingle their green crowns in magnificent gloom. Now and
then you hear a low long sweet sound like the deepest tone of a silver
flute,--a bird-call, the cry of the _siffleur-de-montagne_; then all is
stillness. You are not like'y to see a white face again for hours, but
at intervals a porteuse passes, walking very swiftly, or a field-hand
heavily laden; and these salute you either by speech or a lifting of the
hand to the head.... And it b very pleasant to hear the greetings
and to see the smiles of those who thus pass,--the fine brown girls
bearing trays, the dark laborers bowed under great burdens of
bamboo-grass,--_Bonjou', Missié!_ Then you should reply, if the speaker
be a woman and pretty, "Good-day, dear" (_bonjou', chè_), or,
"Good-day, my daughter" (_mafi_) even if she be old; while if the
passer-by be a man, your proper reply is, "Good-day, my son"
(_monfi_).... They are less often uttered now than in other years, these
kindly greetings, but they still form part of the good and true creole
manners.
The feathery beauty of the tree-ferns shadowing each brook, the grace of
bamboo and arborescent grasses, seem to decrease as the road
descends,--but the palms grow taller. Often the way skirts a precipice
dominating some marvellous valley prospect; again it is walled in by
high green banks or shrubby slopes which cut off the view; and always it
serpentines so that you cannot see more than a few hundred feet of the
white track before you. About the fifteenth kilometre a glorious
landscape opens to the right, reaching to the Atlantic;--the road still
winds very high; forests are billowing hundreds of yards below it, and
rising miles away up the slopes of mornes, beyond which, here and there,
loom strange shapes of mountain,--shading off from misty green to violet
and faintest gray. And through one grand opening in this multicolored
surging of hills and peaks you perceive the gold-yellow of cane-fields
touching the sky-colored sea. Grande Anse lies somewhere in that
direction.... At the eighteenth kilometre you pass a cluster of little
country cottages, a church, and one or two large buildings framed in
shade-trees--the hamlet of Ajoupa-Bouillon. Yet a little farther, and
you find you have left all the woods behind you. But the road continues
its bewildering curves around and between low monies covered with cane
or cocoa plants: it dips down very low, rises again, dips once
more;--and you perceive the soil is changing color; it is taking a red
tint like that of the land of the American cotton-belt. Then you pass
the Rivière Falaise (marked _Filasse_ upon old maps),--with its shallow
crystal torrent flowing through a very deep and rocky channel,--and the
Capote and other streams; and over the yellow rim of cane-hills the long
blue bar of the sea appears, edged landward with a dazzling fringe of
foam. The heights you have passed are no longer verdant, but purplish or
gray,--with Pelée's cloud-wrapped enormity overtopping all. A very
strong warm wind is blowing upon you--the trade-wind, always driving the
clouds west: this is the sunny side of Martinique, where gray days and
heavy rains are less frequent. Once or twice more the sea disappears and
reappears, always over canes; and then, after passing a bridge and
turning a last curve, the road suddenly drops down to the shore and into
the burgh of Grande Anse.