One whose ideas of the people of Grande Anse had been formed only by
observing the young porteuses of the region on their way to the other
side of the island, might expect on reaching this little town to find
its population yellow as that of a Chinese city. But the dominant hue is
much darker, although the mixed element is everywhere visible; and I was
at first surprised by the scarcity of those clear bright skins I
supposed to be so numerous. Some pretty children--notably a pair of
twin-sisters, and perhaps a dozen school-girls from eight to ten years
of age--displayed the same characteristics I have noted in the adult
porteuses of Grande Anse; but within the town itself this brighter
element is in the minority. The predominating race element of the whole
commune is certainly colored (Grande Anse is even memorable because of
the revolt of its _hommes de couleur_ some fifty years ago);--but the
colored population is not concentrated in the town; it belongs rather to
the valleys and the heights surrounding the _chef-lieu._ Most of the
porteuses are country girls, and I found that even those living in the
village are seldom visible on the streets except when departing upon a
trip or returning from one. An artist wishing to study the type might,
however, pass a day at the bridge of the Rivière Falaise to advantage,
as all the carrier-girls pass it at certain hours of the morning and
evening.
But the best possible occasion on which to observe what my friend the
baker called _la belle jeunesse_, is a confirmation day,--when the
bishop drives to Grande Anse over the mountains, and all the population
turns out in holiday garb, and the bells are tapped like tam-tams, and
triumphal arches--most awry to behold!--span the road-way, bearing in
clumsiest lettering the welcome. _Vive Monseigneur._ On that event, the
long procession of young girls to be confirmed--all in white robes,
white veils, and white satin slippers--is a numerical surprise. It is a
moral surprise also,--to the stranger at least; for it reveals the
struggle of a poverty extraordinary with the self-imposed obligations of
a costly ceremonialism.
[Illustration: CATHEDRAL, FORT-DE-FRANCE
_Services begin at daybreak. All day long the ringing
bells mark the joys and sorrows of creole and white
alike._]
No white children ever appear in these processions: there are not half a
dozen white families in the whole urban population of about seven
thousand souls; and those send their sons and daughters to St. Pierre or
Morne Rouge for their religious training and education. But many of the
colored children look very charming in their costume of
confirmation;--you could not easily recognize one of them as the same
little bonne who brings your morning cup of coffee, or another as the
daughter of a plantation _commandeur_ (overseer's assistant),--a brown
slip of a girl who will probably never wear shoes again. And many of
those white shoes and white veils have been obtained only by the hardest
physical labor and self-denial of poor parents and relatives: fathers,
brothers, and mothers working with cutlass and hoe in the snake-swarming
cane-fields;--sisters walking bare-footed every day to St. Pierre and
back to earn a few francs a month.
... While watching such a procession it seemed to me that I could
discern in the features and figures of the young confirmants something
of a prevailing type and tint, and I asked an old planter beside me if
he thought my impression correct.
"Partly," he answered; "there is certainly a tendency towards an
attractive physical type here, but the tendency itself is less stable
than you imagine; it has been changed during the last twenty years
within my own recollection. In different parts of the island particular
types appear and disappear with a generation. There is a sort of
race-fermentation going on, which gives no fixed result of a positive
sort for any great length of time. It is true that certain elements
continue to dominate in certain communes, but the particular
characteristics come and vanish in the most mysterious way. As to color,
I doubt if any correct classification can be made, especially by a
stranger. Your eyes give you general ideas about a red type, a yellow
type, a brown type; but to the more experienced eyes of a creole,
accustomed to live in the country districts, every individual of mixed
race appears to have a particular color of his own. Take, for instance,
the so-called capre type, which furnishes the finest physical examples
of all,--you, a stranger, are at once impressed by the general red tint
of the variety; but you do not notice the differences of that tint in
different persons, which are more difficult to observe than
shade-differences of yellow or brown. Now, to me, every capre or
capresse has an individual color; and I do not believe that in all
Martinique there are two half-breeds--not having had the same father and
mother--in whom the tint is precisely the same."