You are not at first undeceived;--the disillusion is long delayed.
Doubtless you have read the delicious idyl of Bernardin de Saint-Pierre
(this is not Mauritius, but the old life of Mauritius was wellnigh the
same); and you look for idyllic personages among the beautiful humanity
about you,--for idyllic scenes among the mornes shadowed by primeval
forest, and the valleys threaded by a hundred brooks. I know not whether
the faces and forms that you seek will be revealed to you;--but you
will not be able to complain for the lack of idyllic loveliness in the
commonest landscape. Whatever artistic knowledge you possess will merely
teach you the more to wonder at the luxuriant purple of the sea, the
violet opulence of the sky, the violent beauty of foliage greens, the
lilac tints of evening, and the color-enchantments distance gives in
an atmosphere full of iridescent power,--the amethysts and agates, the
pearls and ghostly golds, of far mountainings. Never, you imagine,
never could one tire of wandering through those marvellous valleys,--of
climbing the silent roads under emeraldine shadow to heights from which
the city seems but a few inches long, and the moored ships tinier than
gnats that cling to a mirror,--or of swimming in that blue bay whose
clear flood stays warm through all the year.[53] Or, standing alone,
in some aisle of colossal palms, where humming-birds are flashing and
shooting like a showering of jewel-fires, you feel how weak the skill
of poet or painter to fix the sensation of that white-pillared imperial
splendor;--and you think you know why creoles exiled by necessity to
colder lands may sicken for love of their own,--die of home-yearning, as
did many a one in far Louisiana, after the political tragedies of 1848....
[Illustration: DIDIER SPRINGS
_At the end of a gorgeous ride, in a deep ravine we
found the spring--warm, effervescent water gushing
from the depths of the earth._]
... But you are not a creole, and must pay tribute of suffering to the
climate of the tropics. You will have to learn that a temperature of
90° Fahr. in the tropics is by no means the same thing as 90° Fahr. in
Europe or the United States;--that the mornes cannot be climbed with
safety during the hotter hours of the afternoon;--that by taking a long
walk you incur serious danger of catching a fever;--that to enter the
high woods, a path must be hewn with the cutlass through the creepers
and vines and undergrowth,--among snakes, venomous insects, venomous
plants, and malarial exhalations;--that the finest blown dust is full
of irritant and invisible enemies;--that it is folly to seek repose on
a sward, or in the shade of trees,--particularly under tamarinds. Only
after you have by experience become well convinced of these facts can
you begin to comprehend something general in regard to West Indian
conditions of life.
[Footnote 53: Rufz remarks that the first effect of this climate of the
Antilles is a sort of general physical excitement, an exaltation, a
sense of unaccustomed strength,--which begets the desire of immediate
action to discharge the surplus of nervous force. "Then all
distances seem brief;--the greatest fatigues are braved without
hesitation."--_Études._]