In the autumn of the old feudal years, all this sea-girdled land was
one quivering splendor of sugar-cane, walled in from besieging tides
with impregnable miles of levee. But when the great decadence came,
the rude sea gathered up its barbarian might, and beat down the strong
dikes, and made waste the opulent soil, and, in Abimelech-fury, sowed
the site of its conquests with salt. Some of the old buildings are
left;--the sugar-house has been converted into an ample dining-hall;
the former slave-quarters have been remodeled and fitted up for
guests--a charming village of white cottages, shadowed by aged trees;
the sugar-pans have been turned into water-vessels for the live-stock;
and the old plantation-bell, of honest metal and pure tone, now summons
the visitor to each repast.
And all this little world, though sown with sand and salt, teems with
extraordinary exuberance of life. Night and day the foliage of the
long groves vibrates to chant of insect and feathered songster; and
beyond reckoning are the varieties of nest-builders--among whom very
often may be perceived rose-colored or flame-colored strangers of the
tropics--flown hither over the Caribbean Sea. The waters are choked
with fish; the horizon ever darkened with flights of birds; the very
soil seems to stir, to creep, to breathe. Every little bank, ditch,
creek, swarms with "fiddlers," each holding high its single huge white
claw in readiness for battle; and the dryer lands are haunted by
myriads of ghostly crustacea--phantom crabs--semi-diaphanous creatures
that flit over the land with the speed and lightness of tarantulas,
and are so pale of shell that their moving shadows first betray their
presence. There are immense choruses of tree-frogs by day, bamboulas
of water-frogs after sundown. The vast vitality of the ocean seems
to interpenetrate all that sprouts, breathes, flies. Cattle fatten
wonderfully upon the tough wire-grass; sheep multiply exceedingly. In
every chink something is trying to grow, in every orifice some tiny
life seeks to hide itself (even beneath the edge of the table on which
I wrote some queer little creatures had built three marvelous nests of
dry mud);--every substance here appears not only to maintain life but
to create it; and ideas of spontaneous generation present themselves
with irresistible force.