I
The first attempt made to colonize Martinique was abandoned almost as
soon as begun, because the leaders of the expedition found the country
"too rugged and too mountainous," and were "terrified by the prodigious
number of serpents which covered its soil." Landing on June 25, 1635,
Olive and Duplessis left the island after a few hours' exploration, or,
rather, observation, and made sail for Guadeloupe,--according to the
quaint and most veracious history of Père Du Tertre, of the Order of
Friars-Preachers.
A single glance at the topographical map of Martinique would suffice to
confirm the father's assertion that the country was found to be _trop
haché et trop montueux_: more than two-thirds of it is peak and
mountain;--even to-day only 42,445 of its supposed 98,782 hectares have
been cultivated; and on page 426 of the last "Annuaire" (1887) I find
the statement that in the interior there are extensive Government lands
of which the area is "not exactly known." Yet mountainous as a country
must be which--although scarcely forty-nine miles long and twenty miles
in average breath--remains partly unfamiliar to its own inhabitants
after nearly three centuries of civilization (there are not half a dozen
creoles who have travelled all over it), only two elevations in
Martinique bear the name _montagne._ These are La Montagne Pelée, in
the north, and La Montagne du Vauclin, in the south. The term _morne_,
used throughout the French West Indian colonies to designate certain
altitudes of volcanic origin, a term rather unsatisfactorily translated
in certain dictionaries as "a small mountain," is justly applied to the
majority of Martinique hills, and unjustly sometimes even to its
mightiest elevation,--called Morne Pelé, or Montagne Pelée, or simply
"La Montagne," according, perhaps, to the varying degree of respect it
inspires in different minds. But even in the popular nomenclature one
finds the orography of Martinique, as well as of other West Indian
islands, regularly classified by _pitons, mornes_, and _monts_ or
_montagnes._ Mornes usually have those beautiful and curious forms which
bespeak volcanic origin even to the unscientific observer: they are most
often pyramidal or conoid up to a certain height; but have summits
either rounded or truncated;--their sides, green with the richest
vegetation, rise from valley-levels and coastlines with remarkable
abruptness, and are apt to be curiously ribbed or wrinkled. The pitons,
far fewer in number, are much more fantastic in form;--volcanic cones,
or volcanic upheavals of splintered strata almost at right
angles,--sometimes sharp of lines as spires, and mostly too steep for
habitation. They are occasionally mammiform, and so symmetrical that one
might imagine them artificial creations,--particularly when they occur
in pairs. Only a very important mass is dignified by the name
_montagne_: there are, as I have already observed, but two thus called
in all Martinique,--Pelée, the head and summit of the island; and La
Montagne du Vauclin, in the south-east. Vauclin is inferior in height
and bulk to several mornes and pitons of the north and north-west,--and
owes its distinction probably to its position as centre of a system of
ranges: but in altitude and mass and majesty. Pelée far outranks
everything in the island, and well deserves its special appellation, "La
Montagne."
No description could give the reader a just idea of what Martinique is,
configuratively, so well as the simple statement that, although less
than fifty miles in extreme length, and less than twenty in average
breadth, there are upwards of _four hundred mountains_ in this little
island, or of what at least might be termed mountains elsewhere. These
again are divided and interpeaked, and bear hillocks on their
slopes;--and the lowest hillock in Martinique is fifty metres high. Some
of the peaks are said to be totally inaccessible: many mornes are so on
one or two or even three sides. Ninety-one only of the principal
mountains have been named; and among these several bear similar
appellations: for example, there are two Mornes-Rouges, one in the north
and one in the south; and there are four or five Gros-Mornes. All the
elevations belong to six great groups, clustering about or radiating
from six ancient volcanic centres,--1. La Pelée; 2. Pitons du Carbet;
3. Roches Carrées;[29] 4. Vauclin; 5. Marin; 6. Morne de la Plaine.
Forty-two distinct mountain-masses belong to the Carbet system
alone,--that of Pelée including but thirteen; and the whole Carbet area
has a circumference of 120,000 metres,--much more considerable than that
of Pelée. But its centre is not one enormous pyramidal mass like that
of "La Montagne"; it is marked only by a group of five remarkable
porphyritic cones,--the Pitons of Carbet;--while Pelée, dominating
everything, and filling the north, presents an aspect and occupies an
area scarcely inferior to those of Ætna.
--Sometimes, while looking at La Pelée, I have wondered if the
enterprise of the great Japanese painter who made the Hundred Views of
Fusiyama could not be imitated by some creole artist equally proud of
his native hills, and fearless of the heat of the plains or the snakes
of the slopes. A hundred views of Pelée might certainly be made: for
the enormous mass is omnipresent to dwellers in the northern part of the
island, and can be seen from the heights of the most southern mornes. It
is visible from almost any part of St. Pierre,--which nestles in a fold
of its rocky skirts. It overlooks all the island ranges, and overtops
the mighty Pitons of Carbet by a thousand feet;--you can only lose sight
of it by entering gorges, or journeying into the valleys of the
south.... But the peaked character of the whole country, and the hot
moist climate, oppose any artistic undertaking of the sort suggested:
even photographers never dream of taking views in the further interior,
nor on the east coast. Travel, moreover, is no less costly than
difficult: there are no inns or places of rest for tourists; there are,
almost daily, sudden and violent rains, which are much dreaded (since a
thorough wetting, with the pores all distended by heat, may produce
pleurisy); and there are serpents! The artist willing to devote a few
weeks of travel and study to Pelée, in spite of these annoyances and
risks, has not yet made his appearance in Martinique.[30]
Huge as the mountain looks from St. Pierre, the eye underestimates its
bulk; and when you climb the mornes about the town, Labelle, d'Orange,
or the much grander Parnasse, you are surprised to find how much vaster
Pelée appears from these summits. Volcanic hills often seem higher, by
reason of their steepness, than they really are; but Pelée deludes in
another manner. From surrounding valleys it appears lower, and from
adjacent mornes higher than it really is: the illusion in the former
case being due to the singular slope of its contours, and the remarkable
breadth of its base, occupying nearly all the northern end of the
island; in the latter, to misconception of the comparative height of the
eminence you have reached, which deceives by the precipitious pitch of
its sides. Pelée is not very remarkable in point of altitude, however:
its height was estimated by Moreau de Jonnés at 1600 metres; and by
others at between 4400 and 4500 feet. The sum of the various imperfect
estimates made justifies the opinion of Dr. Cornilliac that the extreme
summit is over 5000 feet above the sea--perhaps 5200.[31] The clouds of
the summit afford no indication to eyes accustomed to mountain scenery
in northern countries; for in these hot moist latitudes clouds hang very
low, even in fair weather. But in bulk Pelée is grandiose: it spurs out
across the island from the Caribbean to the Atlantic: the great chains
of mornes about it are merely counter-forts; the Piton Pierreux and the
Piton Pain-à-Sucre (_Sugar-loaf Peak_), and other elevations varying
from 800 to 2100 feet, are its volcanic children. Nearly thirty rivers
have their birth in its flanks,--besides many thermal springs, variously
mineralized. As the culminant point of the island. Pelée is also the
ruler of its météorologie life,--cloud-herder, lightning-forger, and
rain-maker. During clear weather you can see it drawing to itself all
the white vapors of the land,--robbing lesser eminences of their
shoulder-wraps and head-coverings;--though the Pitons of Carbet (3700
feet) usually manage to retain about their middle a cloud-clout,--a
_lantchô._ You will also see that the clouds run in a circle about
Pelée,--gathering bulk as they turn by continual accessions from other
points. If the crater be totally bare in the morning, and shows the
broken edges very sharply against the blue, it is a sign of foul rather
than of fair weather to come.[32]
Even in bulk, perhaps, Pelée might not impress those who know the
stupendous scenery of the American ranges; but none could deny it
special attractions appealing to the senses of form and color. There is
an imposing fantasticality in its configuration worth months of artistic
study: one does not easily tire of watching its slopes undulating
against the north sky,--and the strange jagging of its ridges,--and the
succession of its terraces crumbling down to other terraces, which again
break into ravines here and there bridged by enormous buttresses of
basalt: an extravaganza of lava-shapes overpitching and cascading into
sea and plain. All this is verdant wherever surfaces catch the sun: you
can divine what the frame is only by examining the dark and ponderous
rocks of the torrents. And the hundred tints of this verdure do not form
the only colorific charms of the landscape. Lovely as the long
upreaching slopes of cane are,--and the loftier bands of forest-growths,
so far off that they look like belts of moss,--and the more
tender-colored masses above, wrinkling and folding together up to the
frost-white clouds of the summit,--you will be still more delighted by
the shadow-colors,--opulent, diaphanous. The umbrages lining the
wrinkles, collecting in the hollows, slanting from sudden projections,
may become before your eyes almost as unreally beautiful as the
landscape colors of a Japanese fan;--they shift most generally during
the day from indigo-blue through violets and paler blues to final lilacs
and purples; and even the shadows of passing clouds have a faint blue
tinge when they fall on Pelée.
.... Is the great volcano dead?... Nobody knows. Less than forty years
ago it rained ashes over all the roofs of St. Pierre;--within twenty
years it has uttered mutterings. For the moment, it appears to sleep;
and the clouds have dripped into the cup of its highest crater till it
has become a lake, several hundred yards in circumference. The crater
occupied by this lake--called L'Étang, or "The Pool"--has never been
active within human memory. There are others,--difficult and dangerous
to visit because opening on the side of a tremendous gorge; and it was
one of these, no doubt, which has always been called _La Soufrière_,
that rained ashes over the city in 1851.
The explosion was almost concomitant with the last of a series of
earthquake shocks, which began in the middle of May and ended in the
first week of August,--all much more severe in Guadeloupe than in
Martinique. In the village Au Prêcheur, lying at the foot of the
western slope of Pelée, the people had been for some time complaining
of an oppressive stench of sulphur,--or, as chemists declared it,
sulphuretted hydrogen,--when, on the 4th of August, much trepidation was
caused by a long and appalling noise from the mountain,--a noise
compared by planters on the neighboring slopes to the hollow roaring
made by a packet blowing off steam, but infinitely louder. These sounds
continued through intervals until the following night, sometimes
deepening into a rumble like thunder. The mountain guides declared:
"_C'est la Soufrière qui bout!_" (the Souffrière is boiling); and a
panic seized the negroes of the neighboring plantations. At 11 P.M. the
noise was terrible enough to fill all St. Pierre with alarm; and on the
morning of the 6th the city presented an unwonted aspect, compared by
creoles who had lived abroad to the effect of a great hoar-frost. All
the roofs, trees, balconies, awnings, pavements, were covered with a
white layer of ashes. The same shower blanched the roofs of Monte Rouge,
and all the villages about the chief city,--Carbet, Fond-Corré, and Au
Prêcheur; also whitening the neighboring country: the mountain was
sending up columns of smoke or vapor; and it was noticed that the
Rivière Blanche, usually of a glaucous color, ran black into the sea
like an outpouring of ink, staining its azure for a mile. A committee
appointed to make an investigation, and prepare an official report,
found that a number of rents had either been newly formed, or suddenly
become active, in the flank of the mountain: these were all situated in
the immense gorge sloping westward from that point now known as the
Morne de la Croix. Several were visited with much difficulty,--members
of the commission being obliged to lower themselves down a succession of
precipices with cords of lianas; and it is noteworthy that their
researches were prosecuted in spite of the momentary panic created by
another outburst. It was satisfactorily ascertained that the main force
of the explosion had been exerted within a perimeter of about one
thousand yards; that various hot springs had suddenly gushed out,--the
temperature of the least warm being about 37° Réaumur (116°
F.);--that there was no change in the configuration of the
mountain;--and that the terrific sounds had been produced only by the
violent outrush of vapor and ashes from some of the rents. In hope of
allaying the general alarm, a creole priest climbed the summit of the
volcano, and there planted the great cross which gives the height its
name and still remains to commemorate the event.
There was an extraordinary emigration of serpents from the high woods,
and from the higher to the lower plantations,--where they were killed by
thousands. For a long time Pelée continued to send up an immense column
of white vapor; but there were no more showers of ashes; and the
mountain gradually settled down to its present state of quiescence.
[Footnote 29: Also called _La Barre de l'Isle_,--a long high
mountain-wall interlinking the northern and southern system of
ranges,--and only two metres broad at the summit. The "Roches-Carrées"
display a geological formation unlike anything discovered in the rest of
the Antillesian system, excepting in Grenada,--columnar or prismatic
basalts.... In the plains of Marin curious petrifactions exist;--I saw a
honey-comb so perfect that the eye alone could scarcely divine the
transformation.]
[Footnote 30: Thibault de Chanvallon, writing of Martinique in 1751,
declared:--"All possible hindrances to study are encountered here (_tout
s'oppose à l'étude_): if the Americans (creoles) do not devote
themselves to research, the fact must not be attributed solely to
indifference or indolence. On the one hand, the overpowering and
continual heat,--the perpetual succession of mornes and
acclivities,--the difficulty of entering forests rendered almost
inaccessible by the lianas interwoven across all openings, and the
prickly plants which oppose a barrier to the naturalist,--the continual
anxiety and fear inspired by serpents also;--on the other hand, the
disheartening necessity of having to work alone, and the discouragement
of being unable to communicate one's ideas or discoveries to persons
having similar tastes. And finally, it must be remembered that these
discouragements and dangers are never mitigated by the least hope of
personal consideration, or by the pleasure of emulation,--since such
study is necessarily unaccompanied either by the one or the other in a
country where nobody undertakes it."--(_Voyage à la Martinique._)...
The conditions have scarcely changed since De Chanvallon's day, despite
the creation of Government roads, and the thinning of the high woods.]
[Footnote 31: Humboldt believed the height to be not less than 800 taint
(1 toise=6 feet 4.73 inches), or about 5115 feet.]
[Footnote 32: There used to be a strange popular belief that however
heavily veiled by clouds the mountain might be prior to an earthquake,
these would always vanish with the first shock. But Thibault de
Chanvallon took pains to examine into the truth of this alleged
phenomenon; and found that during a number of earthquake shocks the
clouds remained over the crater precisely as usual.... There was more
foundation, however, for another popular belief, which still
exists,--that the absolute purity of the atmosphere about Pelée, and
the perfect exposure of its summit for any considerable tinny might be
regarded as an omen of hurricane.]