THE DOS D'ANE.
As our time of morning parade in that season, was about the hour of
sunrise, our march towards the mountains was a very pleasant one.
The old castle or citadel of Basse Terre, which the valiant Benbow
besieged in vain, in 1702, still jutted, with its four great
bulwarks, in grim strength into the water. Its walls were mounted by
sixty pieces of French ordnance, but now the British flag waved above
them; and as we marched on, we heard our band playing in the square,
Between St. Johnstone's and Bonnie Dundee,
I'll gar ye be fain to follow wi' me,
the old quickstep of the regiment.
A portion of this citadel was not more than thirty-five years old,
for when the British forces were there in 1759, it was blown up by
accident, and with it perished the Governor, Lieutenant-colonel
Desbrissay of Watson's Foot, the 38th or old Staffordshire regiment.
He was carried into the air, together with Major Trollop, and both
being found crushed to death, were buried in the Carmelite church,
were I saw their tombs.
Concerning the colonel, I remember Captain Glendonwyn relating an
anecdote, as we stood by his monument one day.
"Desbrissay," said he, "was a captain of infantry at the battle of
Rocaux, which was fought against Marshal Saxe, near Liege, on the
12th of October, 1746, when Sir John Ligonier, after doing all that a
brave general could, posted some British battalions in hollow squares
in rear of the _dorpts_ to secure the retreat of the army, which was
pressed by the splendid cavalry of Saxe, and which the Butcher of
Culloden was blundering by his cowardice and inability. There
Desbrissay fell wounded, and while lying on the ground was run
through the body by a French officer, whose dastardly example was
immediately followed by some Walloon infantry, thirteen of whom
planted their bayonets in his body. Yet Desbrissay did not die; he
was taken prisoner by the French, and by the skilful treatment of
their surgeons he recovered, for there are some men who possess as
many lives as a cat.
"One day, not long after his convalescence, being at dinner with
Marshal Count de Saxe, who was deemed the mirror of military honor,
and was ever kind and gentle to prisoners, the count said,--
"'Pray tell me, sir, if you know the officer who used you so
barbarously on the field of Rocaux?'
"'I do, M. le Maréchal.'
"'You do?"
"'Yes--as well as I know you, M. le Comte.'
"'Pray give me his name, that I may make him an example to all
France, by tearing the epaulettes from his shoulders, and disgracing
him in front of his regiment.'
"'Excuse me, M. le Comte,' replied the brave but gentle Desbrissay,
'I know his corps--I know his name, and I know his rank in the French
service, but I beg to decline pointing him out to you, contenting
myself with the hope, that one day I may meet him hand to hand on the
field of honour, and then, like a true English gentleman, shall I
avenge the savage wrong he and his soldiers did me on that fatal day
at Rocaux.'
"'Monsieur, you are most generous--I shall press you no further,'
said Count Saxe.
"So spoke the gallant Desbrissay, of the old 38th; but the day he
longed for never came; he was sent to serve in other lands, and
thirteen years after that shameful defeat near Liege, he perished in
Guadaloupe, and lies there interred in the church of the Carmelites."
And now, with this anecdote, we have brought the reader to the rising
ground which looks down on the town of Basse Terre, the capital of
the Isle of _Alto_, Guadaloupe, as it was named by the Spaniards,
because its _high_ mountains resembled those of the same name, which
rise in all their solemn beauty between the Tagus and the Guadiana in
the Estramadura of old Spain.
Many of those hills, towards which we marched, were covered by waving
woods, that drew down the clouds, and added to the charms of the
scenery; but when the morning sun arose, the shadows fell deep on
every rugged pass and wide and fair savannah.
And now if the reader will look back with me, from our line of march,
he may see the city of Basse Terre, with its churches of the
Carmelites and Jesuits, and its whitewashed houses, clustering round
the little bay; on the south, its old mishapen and irregular castle,
perched on a rock so lofty, that when viewed from it, our ships of
the line seemed no larger than bumboats; on the north, the heavy
bastions of Le Morne Rouge; to the eastward, wide fields of sugar,
cotton, and indigo, studded with groves, mills, and houses; to the
westward the Caribean sea, with its blue waves running merrily on
sands of silvery whiteness.
Above this border of sand, there rose green belts of sugarcane, and
over these were the hills towards which we were marching, shrouded in
the dark foliage of old primeval forests; and higher still, the
rarefied clouds that floated like gossamer webs about their peaks.
After a halt during mid-day in the thickets, we pushed on by a
circuitous route towards a cleft or gorge in the mountains named the
Dos d'Ane, which guarded the passage into Cabesterre, the more level
and fertile part of the isle, and there the outpost of Scipio's black
band was last seen, as our quadroon guide assured me. The French are
said to have given the hill its name from a fancied resemblance to
the form of an ass. The ascent was steep and rugged, as the narrow
path over which we toiled in heavy marching order, with arms loaded
and bayonets fixed--for we knew not the moment we might be
attacked--was encumbered by masses of fallen rock; by deep rents and
rifts in the cliffs of limestone and basalt, and through these
runnels of warm and sulphureous water were trickling under the broad
and fibrous leaves of the giant tropical weeds. Thick vapours rose
here and there from stagnant pools which were shrouded by dwarf
mangroves; but beyond this gorge which was so gloomy, that one might
fancy it led to the putrid lake of Avernus, rose mountain slopes
covered by velvet-green, and trees of every kind.
A profound and melancholy silence reigned here; at least, we heard
only the croak of the huge frogs that squatted in the marshy pools,
or the voice of the mocking-bird in a grove of fern-palms; and now as
evening began to fall, and we penetrated deeper into the gloomy gorge
of the Dos d'Ane, our guide warned me that we were within a short
distance of the camp of the black insurgents--less than a mile, he
thought.
A few hundred yards further on we found a deep and wooded ravine
opening to the right of the narrow path. Therein I concealed the
whole company, and so soon as the dusk favoured, went forward to
reconnoitre, leaving my men orders to maintain the strictest silence
until my return. Guided by the quadroon, I advanced through the
cleft in the mountains, and ere long, by the various strange and
tumultuous sounds which woke their echoes, I found that we were
approaching the camp of Scipio.
Lest the guide might play me false--for we had no great faith in men
of colour--I had shown him significantly a pair of loaded pistols,
that were stuck somewhat ostentatiously in my waist-belt; but the
poor fellow proved every way faithful, and here, for the benefit of
the uninitiated, I may mention that a quadroon is the child of a
white and a mulatto, who is the child of a pure black and a European;
but there are also black as well as white Creoles--the former being
the children of slaves, born and reared in degradation and slavery.