I.
He who first gave to Martinique its poetical name, _Le Pays des
Revenants_, thought of his wonderful island only as "The Country of
Comers-back," where Nature's unspeakable spell bewitches wandering souls
like the caress of a Circe,--never as the Land of Ghosts. Yet either
translation of the name holds equal truth: a land of ghosts it is,
this marvellous Martinique! Almost every plantation has its familiar
spirits,--its phantoms: some may be unknown beyond the particular
district in which fancy first gave them being;--but some belong to
popular song and story,--to the imaginative life of the whole people.
Almost every promontory and peak, every village and valley along the
coast, has its special folk-lore, its particular tradition. The legend
of Thomasseau of Perinnelle, whose body was taken out of the coffin
and carried away by the devil through a certain window of the
plantation-house, which cannot be closed up by human power;--the
Demarche legend of the spectral horseman who rides up the hill on bright
hot days to seek a friend buried more than a hundred years ago;--the
legend of the _Habitation Dillon_, whose proprietor was one night
mysteriously summoned from a banquet to disappear forever;--the
legend of l'Abbé Piot, who cursed the sea with the curse of perpetual
unrest;--the legend of Aimeé Derivry of Robert, captured by Barbary
pirates, and sold to become a Sultana-Validé-(she never existed,
though you can find an alleged portrait in M. Sidney Daney's history of
Martinique): these and many similar tales might be told to you even on
a journey from St. Pierre to Fort-de-France, or from Lamentin to La
Trinité, according as a rising of some peak into view, or the sudden
opening of an _anse_ before the vessel's approach, recalls them to a
creole companion.
And new legends are even now being made; for in this remote colony, to
which white immigration has long ceased,--a country so mountainous that
people are born (and buried) in the same valley without ever seeing towns
but a few hours' journey beyond their native hills, and that distinct
racial types are forming within three leagues of each other,--the memory
of an event or of a name which has had influence enough to send one echo
through all the forty-nine miles of peaks and craters is apt to create
legend within a single generation. Nowhere in the world, perhaps, is
popular imagination more oddly naive and superstitious; nowhere are
facts more readily exaggerated or distorted into unrecognizability; and
the forms of any legend thus originated become furthermore specialized
in each separate locality where it obtains a habitat. On tracing back
such a legend or tradition to its primal source, one feels amazed at the
variety of the metamorphoses which the simplest fact may rapidly assume
in the childish fancy of this people.
I was first incited to make an effort in this direction by hearing
the remarkable story of "Missié Bon." No legendary expression is more
wide-spread throughout the country than _temps coudvent Missié Bon_
(in the time of the big wind of Monsieur Bon). Whenever a hurricane
threatens, you will hear colored folks expressing the hope that it may
not be like the _coudvent Missié Bon_. And some years ago, in all the
creole police-courts, old colored witnesses who could not tell their age
would invariably try to give the magistrate some idea of it by referring
to the never-to-be-forgotten _temps coudvent Missié Bon_.
... "_Temps coudvent Missié Bon, moin té ka tété encò_" (I was a child
at the breast in the time of the big wind of Missié Bon); or "_Temps
coudvent Missié Bon, moin té toutt piti manmaill,--moin ka souvini y
pouend caiie manman moin pòté allé._" (I was a very, very little child in
the time of the big wind of Missié Bon,--but I remember it blew mamma's
cabin away.) The magistrates of those days knew the exact date of the
_coudvent_.
But all could learn about Missié Bon among the country-folk was this:
Missié Bon used to be a great slave-owner and a cruel master. He was a
very wicked man. And he treated his slaves so terribly that at last the
Good-God (_Bon-Dié_) one day sent a great wind which blew away Missié
Bon and Missié Bon's house and everybody in it, so that nothing was ever
heard of them again.
It was not without considerable research that I suceeded at last in
finding some one able to give me the true facts in the case of Monsieur
Bon. My informant was a charming old gentleman, who represents a New
York company in the city of St. Pierre, and who takes more interest in
the history of his native island than creoles usually do. He laughed
at the legend I had found, but informed me that I could trace it, with
slight variations, through nearly every canton of Martinique.
"And now" he continued "I can tell you the real history of 'Missié
Bon'--for he was an old friend of my grandfather; and my grandfather
related it to me.
"It may have been in 1809--I can give you the exact date by reference to
some old papers if necessary--Monsieur Bon was Collector of Customs at
St. Pierre: and my grandfather was doing business in the Grande Rue.
A certain captain, whose vessel had been consigned to my grandfather,
invited him and the collector to breakfast in his cabin. My grandfather
was so busy he could not accept the invitation;--but Monsieur Bon went
with the captain on board the bark."
... "It was a morning like this; the sea was just as blue and the sky as
clear. All of a sudden, while they were at breakfast, the sea began to
break heavily without a wind, and clouds came up, with every sign of a
hurricane. The captain was obliged to sacrifice his anchor; there was
no time to land his guest: he hoisted a little jib and top-gallant, and
made for open water, taking Monsieur Bon with him. Then the hurricane
came; and from that day to this nothing has ever been heard of the bark
nor of the captain nor of Monsieur Bon." [6]
"But did Monsieur Bon ever do anything to deserve the reputation he has
left among the people?" I asked.
"_Ah! le pauvre vieux corps_!... A kind old soul who never uttered a
harsh word to human being;--timid,--good-natured,--old-fashioned even
for those old-fashioned days.... Never had a slave in his life!"
II.
The legend of "Missié Bon" had prepared me to hear without surprise the
details of a still more singular tradition,--that of Father Labat....
I was returning from a mountain ramble with my guide, by way of the
Ajoupa-Bouillon road;--the sun had gone down; there remained only a
blood-red glow in the west, against which the silhouettes of the hills
took a velvety blackness indescribably soft; the stars were beginning
to twinkle out everywhere through the violet. Suddenly I noticed on the
flank of a neighboring morne--which I remembered by day as an apparently
uninhabitable wilderness of bamboos, tree-ferns, and balisiers--a
swiftly moving point of yellow light. My guide had observed it
simultaneously;--he crossed himself, and exclaimed:
"_Moin ka couè c'est fanal Pè Labatt!_" (I believe it is the lantern of
Perè Labat.)
"Does he live there?" I innocently inquired.
"Live there?--why he has been dead hundreds of years!... _Ouill!_ you
never heard of Pè Labatt?"...
"Not the same who wrote a book about Martinique?"
"Yes,--himself.... They say he comes back at night. Ask mother about
him;--she knows."...
...I questioned old Théréza as soon as we reached home; and she told
me all she knew about "Pè Labatt." I found that the father had left
a reputation far more wide-spread than the recollection of "Missié
Bon,"--that his memory had created, in fact, the most impressive legend
in all Martinique folk-lore.
"Whether you really saw Pè Labatt's lantern," said old Thereza, "I
do not know;--there are a great many queer lights to be seen after
nightfall among these mornes. Some are zombi-fires; and some are
lanterns carried by living men; and some are lights burning in ajoupas
so high up that you can only see a gleam coming through the trees now
and then. It is not everybody who sees the lantern of Pè Labatt; and it
is not good-luck to see it.
"Pè Labatt was a priest who lived here hundreds of years ago; and he
wrote a book about what he saw. He was the first person to introduce
slavery into Martinique; and it is thought that is why he comes back at
night. It is his penance for having established slavery here.
"They used to say, before 1848, that when slavery should be abolished,
Pè Labatt's light would not be seen any more. But I can remember very
well when slavery was abolished; and I saw the light many a time after.
It used to move up the Morne d'Orange every clear night;--I could see it
very well from my window when I lived in St. Pierre. You knew it was Pè
Labatt, because the light passed up places where no man could walk.
But since the statue of Notre Dame de la Garde was placed on the Morne
d'Orange, people tell me that the light is not seen there any more.
"But it is seen elsewhere; and it is not good-luck to see it. Everybody
is afraid of seeing it.... And mothers tell their children, when
the little ones are naughty: '_Mi! moin ké fai Pè Labatt vini pouend
ou,--oui!_' (I will make Pè Labatt come and take you away.)"....
What old Théréza stated regarding the establishment of slavery in
Martinique by Père Labat, I knew required no investigation,--inasmuch
as slavery was a flourishing institution in the time of Père Dutertre,
another Dominican missionary and historian, who wrote his book,--a queer
book in old French, [7] --before Labat was born.
But it did not take me long to find out that such was the general belief
about Père Labat's sin and penance, and to ascertain that his name is
indeed used to frighten naughty children. _Eh! ti manmaille-là, moin
ké fai Pè Labatt vini pouend ou!_--is an exclamation often heard in the
vicinity of ajoupas just about the hour when all found a good little
children ought to be in bed and asleep.
... The first variation of the legend I heard was on a plantation in the
neighborhood of Ajoupa-Bouillon. There I was informed that Père Labat
had come to his death by the bite of a snake,--the hugest snake that
ever was seen in Martinique. Perè Labat had believed it possible to
exterminate the fer-de-lance, and had adopted extraordinary measures for
its destruction. On receiving his death-wound he exclaimed, "_C'est pè
toutt sépent qui té ka mòdé moin_" (It is the Father of all Snakes that
has bitten me); and he vowed that he would come back to destroy the
brood, and would haunt the island until there should be not one snake
left. And the light that moves about the peaks at night is the lantern
of Père Labat still hunting for snakes.
"_Ou pa pè suive ti limié-là piess!_" continued my informant. "You
cannot follow that little light at all;--when you first see it, it is
perhaps only a kilometre away; the next moment it is two, three, or four
kilometres away."
I was also told that the light is frequently seen near Grande Anse, on
the other side of the island,--and on the heights of La Caravelle, the
long fantastic promontory that reaches three leagues into the sea south
of the harbor of La Trinité. [8]
And on my return to St. Pierre I found a totally different version of
the legend;--my informant being one Manm-Robert, a kind old soul who
kept a little _boutique-lapacotte_ (a little booth where cooked food is
sold) near the precipitous Street of the Friendships.
... "_Ah! Pè Labatt, oui!_" she exclaimed, at my first question,--"Pè
Labatt was a good priest who lived here very long ago. And they did
him a great wrong here;--they gave him a wicked _coup d'langue_ (tongue
wound); and the hurt given by an evil tongue is worse than a serpent's
bite. They lied about him; they slandered him until they got him sent
away from the country. But before the Government 'embarked' him, when he
got to that quay, he took off his shoe and he shook the dust of his shoe
upon that quay, and he said: 'I curse you, 0 Martinique!--I curse you!
There will be food for nothing, and your people will not even be able
to buy it! There will be clothing material for nothing, and your people
will not be able to get so much as one dress! And the children will beat
their mothers!... You banish me;--but I will come back again.'" [9]
"And then what happened, Manm-Robert?"
"_Eh! fouinq! chè_, all that Pè Labatt said has come true. There is food
for almost nothing, and people are starving here in St. Pierre; there is
clothing for almost nothing, and poor girls cannot earn enough to buy
a dress. The pretty printed calicoes (_indiennes_) that used to be two
francs and a half the metre, now sell at twelve sous the metre; but
nobody has any money. And if you read our papers,--_Les Colonies, La
Defense Coloniale_,--you will find that there are sons wicked enough to
beat their mothers: _oui! yche ka batt manman!_ It is the malediction of
Pè Labatt."
This was all that Manm-Robert could tell me. Who had related the
story to her? Her mother. Whence had her mother obtained it? From
her grandmother.... Subsequently I found many persons to confirm the
tradition of the curse,--precisely as Manm-Robert had related it.
Only a brief while after this little interview I was invited to pass
an afternoon at the home of a gentleman residing upon the Morne d'
Orange,--the locality supposed to be especially haunted by Père Labat.
The house of Monsieur M-- stands on the side of the hill, fully five
hundred feet up, and in a grove of trees: an antiquated dwelling, with
foundations massive as the walls of a fortress, and huge broad balconies
of stone. From one of these balconies there is a view of the city, the
harbor and Pelée, which I believe even those who have seen Naples would
confess to be one of the fairest sights in the world.... Towards evening
I obtained a chance to ask my kind host some questions about the legend
of his neighborhood.
... "Ever since I was a child," observed Monsieur M--, "I heard it said
that Père Labat haunted this mountain, and I often saw what was alleged
to be his light. It looked very much like a lantern swinging in the hand
of some one climbing the hill. A queer fact was that it used to come
from the direction of Carbet, skirt the Morne d'Orange a few hundred
feet above the road, and then move up the face of what seemed a sheer
precipice. Of course somebody carried that light,--probably a negro; and
perhaps the cliff is not so inaccessible as it looks: still, we could
never discover who the individual was, nor could we imagine what his
purpose might have been.... But the light has not been seen here now for
years."
III.
And who was Père Labat,--this strange priest whose memory, weirdly
disguised by legend, thus lingers in the oral literature of the colored
people? Various encyclopedias answer the question, but far less fully
and less interestingly than Dr. Rufz, the Martinique historian, whose
article upon him in the _Etudes Statistiques et Historiques_ has
that charm of sympathetic comprehension by which a master-biographer
sometimes reveals himself a sort of necromancer,--making us feel a
vanished personality with the power of a living presence. Yet even the
colorless data given by dictionaries of biography should suffice to
convince most readers that Jean-Baptiste Labat must be ranked among the
extraordinary men of his century.
Nearly two hundred years ago--24th August, 1693--a traveller wearing
the white habit of the Dominican order, partly covered by a black camlet
overcoat, entered the city of Rochelle. He was very tall and robust,
with one of those faces, at once grave and keen, which bespeak great
energy and quick discernment. This was the Père Labat, a native of
Paris, then in his thirtieth year. Half priest, half layman, one might
have been tempted to surmise from his attire; and such a judgement
would not have been unjust. Labat's character was too large for
his calling,--expanded naturally beyond the fixed limits of the
ecclesiastical life; and throughout the whole active part of his strange
career we find in him this dual character of layman and monk. He had
come to Rochelle to take passage for Martinique. Previously he had
been professor of philosophy and mathematics at Nancy. While watching a
sunset one evening from the window of his study, some one placed in his
hands a circular issued by the Dominicans of the French West Indies,
calling for volunteers. Death had made many wide gaps in their ranks;
and various misfortunes had reduced their finances to such an extent
that ruin threatened all their West Indian establishments. Labat, with
the quick decision of a mind suffering from the restraints of a life
too narrow for it, had at once resigned his professorship, and engaged
himself for the missions.
... In those days, communication with the West Indies was slow,
irregular, and difficult. Labat had to wait at Rochelle six whole months
for a ship. In the convent at Rochelle, where he stayed, there were
others waiting for the same chance,--including several Jesuits and
Capuchins as well as Dominicans. These unanimously elected him their
leader,--a significant fact considering the mutual jealousy of the
various religious orders of that period, There was something in the
energy and frankness of Labat's character which seems to have naturally
gained him the confidence and ready submission of others.
... They sailed in November; and Labat still found himself in the
position of a chief on board. His account of the voyage is amusing;--in
almost everything except practical navigation, he would appear to
have regulated the life of passengers and crew. He taught the captain
mathematics; and invented amusements of all kinds to relieve the
monotony of a two months' voyage.
... As the ship approached Martinique from the north, Labat first beheld
the very grimmest part of the lofty coast,--the region of Macouba;
and the impression it made upon him was not pleasing. "The island," he
writes, "appeared to me all one frightful mountain, broken everywhere
by precipices: nothing about it pleased me except the verdure which
everywhere met the eye, and which seemed to me both novel and agreeable,
considering the time of the year."
Almost immediately after his arrival he was sent by the Superior of the
convent to Macouba, for acclimation; Macouba then being considered the
healthiest part of the island. Whoever makes the journey on horseback
thither from St. Pierre to-day can testify to the exactitude of Labat's
delightful narrative of the trip. So little has that part of the
island changed since two centuries that scarcely a line of the father's
description would need correction to adopt it bodily for an account of a
ride to Macouba in 1889.
At Macouba everybody welcomes him, pets him,--finally becomes
enthusiastic about him. He fascinates and dominates the little
community almost at first sight. "There is an inexpressible charm,"
says Rufz,--commenting upon this portion of Labat's narrative,--"in the
novelty of relations between men: no one has yet been offended, no envy
has yet been excited;--it is scarcely possible even to guess whence that
ill-will you must sooner or later provoke is going to come from;--there
are no rivals;--there are no enemies. You are everybody's friend; and
many are hoping you will continue to be only theirs."... Labat knew
how to take legitimate advantage of this good-will;--he persuaded his
admirers to rebuild the church at Macouba, according to designs made by
himself.
At Macouba, however, he was not permitted to sojourn as long as the good
people of the little burgh would have deemed even reasonable: he had
shown certain aptitudes which made his presence more than desirable at
Saint-Jacques, the great plantation of the order on the Capesterre,
or Windward coast. It was in debt for 700,000 pounds of sugar,--an
appalling condition in those days,--and seemed doomed to get more
heavily in debt every successive season. Labat inspected everything, and
set to work for the plantation, not merely as general director, but
as engineer, architect, machinist, inventor. He did really wonderful
things. You can see them for yourself if you ever go to Martinique; for
the old Dominican plantation-now Government property, and leased at an
annual rent of 50,000 francs--remains one of the most valuable in the
colonies because of Labat's work upon it. The watercourses directed by
him still excite the admiration of modern professors of hydraulics; the
mills he built or invented are still good;--the treatise he wrote on
sugar-making remained for a hundred and fifty years the best of its
kind, and the manual of French planters. In less than two years Labat
had not only rescued the plantation from bankruptcy, but had made it
rich; and if the monks deemed him veritably inspired, the test of
time throws no ridicule on their astonishment at the capacities of the
man.... Even now the advice he formulated as far back as 1720--about
secondary cultures,--about manufactories to establish,--about imports,
exports, and special commercial methods--has lost little of its value.
Such talents could not fail to excite wide-spread admiration,--nor to
win for him a reputation in the colonies beyond precedent. He was wanted
everywhere.... Auger, the Governor of Guadeloupe, sent for him to
help the colonists in fortifying and defending the island against the
English; and we find the missionary quite as much at home in this new
role-building bastions, scarps, counterterscarps, ravelins, etc.--as
he seemed to be upon the plantation of Saint-Jacques. We find him
even taking part in an engagement;--himself conducting an artillery
duel,--loading, pointing, and firing no less than twelve times after the
other French gunners had been killed or driven from their posts. After a
tremendous English volley, one of the enemy cries out to him in French:
"White Father, have they told?" (_Père Blanc, ont-ils porté?_) He
replies only after returning the fire with, a better-directed aim, and
then repeats the mocking question: "Have they told?" "Yes, they have,"
confesses the Englishman, in surprised dismay; "but we will pay you back
for that!"...
... Returning to Martinique with new titles to distinction, Labat was
made Superior of the order in that island, and likewise Vicar-Apostolic.
After building the Convent of the Mouillage, at St. Pierre, and many
other edifices, he undertook that series of voyages in the interests
of the Dominicans whereof the narration fills six ample volumes. As
a traveller Père Labat has had few rivals in his own field;--no one,
indeed, seems to have been able to repeat some of his feats. All the
French and several of the English colonies were not merely visited by
him, but were studied in their every geographical detail. Travel in
the West Indies is difficult to a degree of which strangers have little
idea; but in the time of Père Labat there were few roads,--and a far
greater variety of obstacles. I do not believe there are half a dozen
whites in Martinique who thoroughly know their own island,--who have
even travelled upon all its roads; but Labat knew it as he knew the palm
of his hand, and travelled where roads had never been made. Equally well
he knew Guadeloupe and other islands; and he learned all that it was
possible to learn in those years about the productions and resources of
the other colonies. He travelled with the fearlessness and examined
with the thoroughness of a Humboldt,--so far as his limited science
permitted: had he possessed the knowledge of modern naturalists and
geologists he would probably have left little for others to discover
after him. Even at the present time West Indian travellers are glad to
consult him for information.
These duties involved prodigious physical and mental exertion, in a
climate deadly to Europeans. They also involved much voyaging in waters
haunted by filibusters and buccaneers. But nothing appears to daunt
Labat. As for the filibusters, he becomes their comrade and personal
friend;--he even becomes their chaplain, and does not scruple to make
excursions with them. He figures in several sea-fights;--on one occasion
he aids in the capture of two English vessels,--and then occupies
himself in making the prisoners, among whom are several ladies, enjoy
the event like a holiday. On another voyage Labat's vessel is captured
by a Spanish ship. At one moment sabres are raised above his head, and
loaded muskets levelled at his breast;--the next, every Spaniard is on
his knees, appalled by a cross that Labat holds before the eyes of the
captors,--the cross worn by officers of the Inquisition,--the terrible
symbol of the Holy Office. "It did not belong to me," he says, "but to
one of our brethren who had left it by accident among my effects." He
seems always prepared in some way to meet any possible emergency.
No humble and timid monk this: he has the frame and temper of those
medieval abbots who could don with equal indifference the helmet or
the cowl. He is apparently even more of a soldier than a priest.
When English corsairs attempt a descent on the Martinique coast at
Sainte-Marie they find Père Labat waiting for them with all the negroes
of the Saint-Jacques plantation, to drive them back to their ships.
For other dangers he exhibits absolute unconcern. He studies the
phenomena of hurricanes with almost pleasurable interest, while his
comrades on the ship abandon hope. When seized with yellow-fever, then
known as the Siamese Sickness (_mal de Siam_), he refuses to stay in bed
the prescribed time, and rises to say his mass. He faints at the altar;
yet a few days later we hear of him on horseback again, travelling over
the mountains in the worst and hottest season of the year....
... Labat was thirty years old when he went to the Antilles;--he was
only forty-two when his work was done. In less than twelve years he
made his order the most powerful and wealthy of any in the West
Indies,--lifted their property out of bankruptcy to rebuild it upon
a foundation of extraordinary prosperity. As Rufz observes without
exaggeration, the career of Père Labat in the Antilles seems to more
than realize the antique legend of the labors of Hercules. Whithersoever
he went,--except in the English colonies,--his passage was memorialized
by the rising of churches, convents, and schools,--as well as mills,
forts, and refineries. Even cities claim him as their founder. The
solidity of his architectural creations is no less remarkable than their
excellence of design;--much of what he erected still remains; what has
vanished was removed by human agency, and not by decay; and when the old
Dominican church at St. Pierre had to be pulled down to make room for
a larger edifice, the workmen complained that the stones could not be
separated,--that the walls seemed single masses of rock. There can be
no doubt, moreover, that he largely influenced the life of the colonies
during those years, and expanded their industrial and commercial
capacities.
He was sent on a mission to Rome after these things had been done,
and never returned from Europe. There he travelled more or less in
after-years; but finally settled at Paris, where he prepared and
published the voluminous narrative of his own voyages, and other curious
books;--manifesting as a writer the same tireless energy he had shown
in so many other capacities. He does not, however, appear to have
been happy. Again and again he prayed to be sent back to his beloved
Antilles, and for some unknown cause the prayer was always refused. To
such a character, the restraint of the cloister must have proved a slow
agony; but he had to endure it for many long years. He died at Paris in
1738, aged seventy-five.
... It was inevitable that such a man should make bitter enemies: his
preferences, his position, his activity, his business shrewdness, his
necessary self-assertion, yet must have created secret hate and jealousy
even when open malevolence might not dare to show itself. And to
the these natural results of personal antagonism or opposition were
afterwards superadded various resentments--irrational, perhaps, but
extremely violent,--caused by the father's cynical frankness as a
writer. He spoke freely about the family origin and personal failings of
various colonists considered high personages in their own small world;
and to this day his book has an evil reputation undeserved in those old
creole communities, but where any public mention of a family scandal is
never just forgiven or forgotten.... But probably even before his work
appeared it had been secretly resolved that he should never be permitted
to return to Martinique or Guadeloupe after his European mission.
The exact purpose of the Government in this policy remains a
mystery,--whatever ingenious writers may have alleged to the contrary.
We only know that M. Adrien Dessalles,--the trustworthy historian of
Martinique,--while searching among the old _Archives de la Marine_,
found there a ministerial letter to the Intendant de Vaucresson in which
this statement occurs;--
... "Le Père Labat shall never be suffered to return to the colonies,
whatever efforts he may make to obtain permission."
IV.
One rises from the perusal of the "Nouveau Voyage aux Isles de
l'Amêrique" with a feeling approaching regret; for although the six
pursy little volumes composing it--full of quaint drawings, plans, and
odd attempts at topographical maps--reveal a prolix writer, Père
Labat is always able to interest. He reminds you of one of those slow,
precise, old-fashioned conversationalists who measure the weight of
every word and never leave anything to the imagination of the audience,
yet who invariably reward the patience of their listeners sooner or
later by reflections of surprising profundity or theories of a totally
novel description. But what particularly impresses the reader of these
volumes is not so much the recital of singular incidents and facts as
the revelation of the author's personality. Reading him, you divine a
character of enormous force,--gifted but unevenly balanced; singularly
shrewd in worldly affairs, and surprisingly credulous in other respects;
superstitious and yet cynical; unsympathetic by his positivism, but
agreeable through natural desire to give pleasure; just by nature, yet
capable of merciless severity; profoundly devout, but withal tolerant
for his calling and his time. He is sufficiently free from petty bigotry
to make fun of the scruples of his brethren in the matter of employing
heretics; and his account of the manner in which he secured the services
of a first-class refiner for the Martinique plantation at the Fond
Saint-Jacques is not the least amusing page in the book. He writes: "The
religious who had been appointed Superior in Guadeloupe wrote me that
he would find it difficult to employ this refiner because the man was
a Lutheran. This scruple gave me pleasure, as I had long wanted to have
have him upon our plantation in the Fond Saint-Jacques, but did not know
how I would be able to manage it! I wrote to the Superior at once that
all he had to do was to send the man to me, because it was a matter
of indifference to me whether the sugar he might make were Catholic or
Lutheran sugar, provided it were very white." [10]
He displays equal frankness in confessing an error or a discomfiture. He
acknowledges that while Professor of Mathematics and Philosophy, he used
to teach that there were no tides in the tropics; and in a discussion as
to whether the _diablotin_ (a now almost extinct species of West Indian
nocturnal bird) were fish flesh, and might or might not be eaten in
Lent, he tells us that he was fairly worsted,--(although he could cite
the celebrated myth of the "barnacle-geese" as a "fact" in justification
of one's right to doubt the nature of diablotins).
One has reason to suspect that Père Labat, notwithstanding his
references to the decision of the Church that diablotins were not birds,
felt quite well assured within himself that they were. There is a sly
humor in his story of these controversies, which would appear to imply
that while well pleased at the decision referred to, he knew all
about diablotins. Moreover, the father betrays certain tendencies
to gormandize not altogether in harmony with the profession of an
ascetic.... There were parrots in nearly all of the French Antilles in
those days [11] and Père Labat does not attempt to conceal his fondness
for cooked parrots. (He does not appear to have cared much for them as
pets: if they could not talk well, he condemned them forthwith to the
pot.) "They all live upon fruits and seeds," he writes, "and their flesh
contracts the odor and color of that particular fruit or seed they feed
upon. They become exceedingly fat in the season when the guavas are
ripe; and when they eat the seeds of the _Bois d'Inde_ they have an odor
of nutmeg and cloves which is delightful (_une odeur de muscade et
de girofle qui fait plaisir_)." He recommends four superior ways of
preparing them, as well as other fowls, for the table, of which the
first and the best way is "to pluck them alive, then to make them
swallow vinegar, and then to strangle them while they have the vinegar
still in their throats by twisting their necks"; and the fourth way is
"to skin them alive" (_de les écorcher tout en vie_).... "It is certain,"
he continues, "that these ways are excellent, and that fowls that have
to be cooked in a hurry thereby obtain an admirable tenderness (_une
tendreté admirable_)." Then he makes a brief apology to his readers,
not for the inhumanity of his recipes, but for a display of culinary
knowledge scarcely becoming a monk, and acquired only through those
peculiar necessities which colonial life in the tropics imposed upon all
alike. The touch of cruelty here revealed produces an impression which
there is little in the entire work capable of modifying. Labat seems to
have possessed but a very small quantity of altruism; his cynicism on
the subject of animal suffering is not offset by any visible sympathy
with human pain;--he never compassionates: you may seek in vain through
all his pages for one gleam of the goodness of gentle Père Du Tertre,
who, filled with intense pity for the condition of the blacks, prays
masters to be merciful and just to their slaves for the love of God.
Labat suggests, on the other hand, that slavery is a good means of
redeeming negroes from superstition and saving their souls from hell:
he selects and purchases them himself for the Saint-Jacques plantation,
never makes a mistake or a bad bargain, and never appears to feel a
particle of commiseration for their lot. In fact, the emotional feeling
displayed by Père Du Tertre (whom he mocks slyly betimes) must have
seemed to him rather condemnable than praiseworthy; for Labat regarded
the negro as a natural child of the devil,--a born sorcerer,--an evil
being wielding occult power.
Perhaps the chapters on negro sorcery are the most astonishing in the
book, displaying on the part of this otherwise hard and practical nature
a credulity almost without limit. After having related how he had a
certain negro sent out of the country "who predicted the arrival of
vessels and other things to come,--in so far, at least, as the devil
himself was able to know and reveal these matters to him," he plainly
states his own belief in magic as follows:
"I know there are many people who consider as pure imagination, and
as silly stories, or positive false-hoods, all that is related about
sorcerers and their compacts with the devil. I was myself for a long
time of this opinion. Moreover, I am aware that what is said on this
subject is frequently exaggerated; but I am now convinced it must be
acknowledged that all which has been related is not entirely false,
although perhaps it may not be entirely true."...
Therewith he begins to relate stories upon what may have seemed
unimpeachable authority in those days. The first incident narrated
took place, he assures us, in the Martinique Dominican convent, shortly
before his arrival in the colony. One of the fathers, Père Fraise, had
had brought to Martinique, "from the kingdom of Juda (?) in Guinea," a
little negro about nine or ten years old. Not long afterwards there was
a serious drought, and the monks prayed vainly for rain. Then the negro
child, who had begun to understand and speak a little French, told his
masters that he was a Rain-maker, that he could obtain them all the rain
they wanted. "This proposition," says Père Labat, "greatly astonished
the fathers: they consulted together, and at last, curiosity overcoming
reason, they gave their consent that this unbaptized child should make
some rain fall on their garden." The unbaptized child asked them if
they wanted "a big or a little rain"; they answered that a moderate rain
would satisfy them. Thereupon the little negro got three oranges,
and placed them on the ground in a line at a short distance from one
another, and bowed down before each of them in turn, muttering words
in an unknown tongue. Then he got three small orange-branches, stuck
a branch in each orange, and repeated his prostrations and
mutterings;--after which he took one of the branches, stood up, and
watched the horizon. A small cloud appeared, and he pointed the branch
at it. It approached swiftly, rested above the garden, and sent down
a copious shower of rain. Then the boy made a hole in the ground, and
buried the oranges and the branches. The fathers were amazed to find
that not a single drop of rain had fallen outside their garden. They
asked the boy who had taught him this sorcery, and he answered them
that among the blacks on board the slave-ship which had brought him
over there were some Rain-makers who had taught him. Père Labat declares
there is no question as to the truth of the occurrence: he cites the
names of Père Fraise, Père Rosié, Père Temple, and Père Bournot,--all
members of his own order,--as trust-worthy witnesses of this incident.
Père Labat displays equal credulity in his recital of a still more
extravagant story told him by Madame la Comtesse du Gênes. M. le Comte
du Gênes, husband of the lady in question, and commander of a French
squadron, captured the English fort of Gorea in 1696, and made
prisoners of all the English slaves in the service of the factory there
established. But the vessel on which these were embarked was unable to
leave the coast, in spite of a good breeze: she seemed bewitched. Some
of the the slaves finally told the captain there was a negress on board
who had enchanted the ship, and who had the power to "dry up the hearts"
of all who refused to obey her. A number of deaths taking place among
the blacks, the captain ordered autopsies made, and it was found that
the hearts of the dead negroes were desiccated. The negress was taken
on deck, tied to a gun and whipped, but uttered no cry;--the ship's
surgeon, angered at her stoicism, took a hand in the punishment, and
flogged her "with all his force." Thereupon she told him that inasmuch
as he had abused her without reason, his heart also should be "dried
up." He died next day; and his heart was found in the condition
predicted. All this time the ship could not be made to move in any
direction; and the negress told the captain that until he should put her
and her companions on shore he would never be able to sail. To convince
him of her power she further asked him to place three fresh melons in a
chest, to lock the chest and put a guard over it; when she should tell
him to unlock it, there would be no melons there. The capttain made the
experiment. When the chest was opened, the melons appeared to be there;
but on touching them it was found that only the outer rind remained:
the interior had been dried up,--like the surgeon's heart. Thereupon
the captain put the witch and her friends all ashore, and sailed away
without further trouble.
Another story of African sorcery for the truth of which Père Labat
earnestly vouches is the following:
A negro was sentenced to be burned alive for witchcraft at St. Thomas
in 1701;--his principal crime was "having made a little figure of baked
clay to speak." A certain creole, meeting the negro on his way to the
place of execution, jeeringly observed, "Well, you cannot make your
little figure talk any more now;--it has been broken." "If the gentleman
allow me," replied the prisoner," I will make the cane he carries in his
hand speak." The creole's curiosity was strongly aroused: he prevailed
upon the guards to halt a few minutes, and permit the prisoner to make
the experiment. The negro then took the cane, stuck it into the ground
in the middle of the road, whispered something to it, and asked the
gentleman what he wished to know. "I, would like to know," answered the
latter, "whether the ship has yet sailed from Europe, and when she will
arrive." "Put your ear to the head of the cane," said the negro. On
doing so the creole distinctly heard a thin voice which informed him
that the vessel in question had left a certain French port on such a
date; that she would reach St. Thomas within three days; that she had
been delayed on her voyage by a storm which had carried away her foretop
and her mizzen sail; that she had such and such passengers on board
(mentioning the names), all in good health.... After this incident the
negro was burned alive; but within three days the vessel arrived in
port, and the prediction or divination was found to have been absolutely
correct in every particular.
... Père Labat in no way disapproves the atrocious sentence inflicted
upon the wretched negro: in his opinion such predictions were made by
the power and with the personal aid of the devil; and for those who
knowingly maintained relations with the devil, he could not have
regarded any punishment too severe. That he could be harsh enough
himself is amply shown in various accounts of his own personal
experience with alleged sorcerers, and especially in the narration of
his dealings with one--apparently a sort of African doctor--who was a
slave on a neighboring plantation, but used to visit the Saint-Jacques
quarters by stealth to practise his art. One of the slaves of the order,
a negress, falling very sick, the wizard was sent for; and he came with
all his paraphernalia--little earthen pots and fetiches, etc.--during
the night. He began to practise his incantations, without the least
suspicion that Père Labat was watching him through a chink; and, after
having consulted his fetiches, he told the woman she would die within
four days. At this juncture the priest suddenly burst in the door and
entered, followed by several powerful slaves. He dashed to pieces the
soothsayer's articles, and attempted to reassure the frightened negress,
by declaring the prediction a lie inspired by the devil. Then he had the
sorcerer stripped and flogged in his presence.
"I had him given," he calmly observes, "about (_environ_) three hundred
lashes, which flayed him (_l'écorchait_) from his shoulders to his
knees. He screamed like a madman. All the negroes trembled, and assured
me that the devil would cause my death.... Then I had the wizard put in
irons, after having had him well washed with a _pimentade_,--that is to
say, with brine in which pimentos and small lemons have been crushed.
This causes a horrible pain to those skinned by the whip; but it is a
certain remedy against gangrene."...
And then he sent the poor wretch back to his master with a note
requesting the latter to repeat the punishment,--a demand that seems
to have been approved, as the owner of the negro was "a man who feared
God." Yet Père Labat is obliged to confess that in spite of all his
efforts, the sick negress died on the fourth day,--as the sorcerer had
predicted. This fact must have strongly confirmed his belief that the
devil was at the bottom of the whole affair, and caused him to doubt
whether even a flogging of about three hundred lashes, followed by a
pimentade, were sufficient chastisement for the miserable black. Perhaps
the tradition of this frightful whipping may have had something to do
with the terror which still attaches to the name of the Dominican in
Martinique. The legal extreme punishment was twenty-nine lashes.
Père Labat also avers that in his time the negroes were in the habit of
carrying sticks which had the power of imparting to any portion of
the human body touched by them a most severe chronic pain. He at first
believed, he says, that these pains were merely rheumatic; but after all
known remedies for rheumatism had been fruitlessly applied, he became
convinced there was something occult and diabolical in the manner of
using and preparing these sticks.... A fact worthy of note is that this
belief is still prevalent in Martinique!
One hardly ever meets in the country a negro who does not carry either
a stick or a cutlass, or both. The cutlass is indispensable to those who
work in the woods or upon plantations; the stick is carried both as
a protection against snakes and as a weapon of offence and defence in
village quarrels, for unless a negro be extraordinarily drunk he will
not strike his fellow with a cutlass. The sticks are usually made of
a strong dense wood: those most sought after of a material termed
_moudongue_, [12] almost as tough, but much lighter than, our hickory.
On inquiring whether any of the sticks thus carried were held to possess
magic powers, I was assured by many country people that there were men
who knew a peculiar method of "arranging" sticks so that to touch any
person with them even lightly, _and through any thickness of clothing_,
would produce terrible and continuous pain.
Believing in these things, and withal unable to decide whether the sun
revolved about the earth, or the earth about the sun, [13] Père Labat
was, nevertheless, no more credulous and no more ignorant than the
average missionary of his time: it is only by contrast with his
practical perspicacity in other matters, his worldly rationalism and
executive shrewdness, that this superstitious naïveté impresses one as
odd. And how singular sometimes is the irony of Time! All the wonderful
work the Dominican accomplished has been forgotten by the people; while
all the witchcrafts that he warred against survive and flourish
openly; and his very name is seldom uttered but in connection with
superstitions,--has been, in fact, preserved among the blacks by the
power of superstition alone, by the belief in zombis and goblins....
"_Mi! ti manmaille-là, moin ké fai Pè Labatt vini pouend ou!_"...
V.
Few habitants of St. Pierre now remember that the beautiful park behind
the cathedral used to be called the Savanna of the White Fathers,--and
the long shadowed meadow beside the Roxelane, the Savanna of the Black
Fathers: the Jesuits. All the great religious orders have long since
disappeared from the colony: their edifices have been either converted
to other uses or demolished; their estates have passed into other
hands.... Were their labors, then, productive of merely ephemeral
results?--was the colossal work of a Père Labat all in vain, so far as
the future is concerned? The question is not easily answered; but it is
worth considering.
Of course the material prosperity which such men toiled to obtain for
their order represented nothing more, even to their eyes, than the means
of self-maintenance, and the accumulation of force necessary for the
future missionary labors of the monastic community. The real ultimate
purpose was, not the acquisition of power for the order, but for the
Church, of which the orders represented only a portion of the force
militant; and this purpose did not fail of accomplishment. The orders
passed away only when their labors had been completed,--when Martinique
had become (exteriorly, at least) more Catholic than Rome itself,--after
the missionaries had done all that religious zeal could do in moulding
and remoulding the human material under their control. These men could
scarcely have anticipated those social and political changes which the
future reserved for the colonies, and which no ecclesiastical sagacity
could, in any event, have provided against. It is in the existing
religious condition of these communities that one may observe and
estimate the character and the probable duration of the real work
accomplished by the missions.
... Even after a prolonged residence in Martinique, its visible
religious condition continues to impress one as somethmg phenomenal. A
stranger, who has no opportunity to penetrate into the home life of
the people, will not, perhaps, discern the full extent of the religious
sentiment; but, nevertheless, however brief his stay, he will observe
enough of the extravagant symbolism of the cult to fill him with
surprise. Wherever he may choose to ride or to walk, he is certain to
encounter shrines, statues of saints, or immense crucifixes. Should he
climb up to the clouds of the peaks, he will find them all along the
way;--he will perceive them waiting for him, looming through the mists
of the heights; and passing through the loveliest ravines, he will
see niches hollowed out in the volcanic rocks, above and below him,
or contrived in the trunks of trees bending over precipices, often in
places so difficult of access that he wonders how the work could have
been accomplished. All this has been done by the various property-owners
throughout the country: it is the traditional custom to do it--brings
good-luck! After a longer stay in the island, one discovers also that in
almost every room of every dwelling--stone residence, wooden cottage,
or palm-thatched ajoupa--there is a _chapelle_: that is, a sort of large
bracket fastened to the wall, on which crosses or images are placed,
with vases of flowers, and lamps or wax-tapers to be burned at
night. Sometimes, moreover, statues are placed in windows, or above
door-ways;--and all passers-by take off their hats to these. Over the
porch of the cottage in a mountain village, where I lived for some
weeks, there was an absurd little window contrived,--a sort of purely
ornamental dormer,--and in this a Virgin about five inches high had
been placed. At a little distance it looked like a toy,--a child's doll
forgotten there; and a doll I always supposed it to be, until one day
that I saw a long procession of black laborers passing before the house,
every, one of whom took off his hat to it.... My bedchamber in the same
cottage resembled a religious museum. On the chapelle there were no less
than eight Virgins, varying in height from one to sixteen inches,--a St.
Joseph,--a St. John,--a crucifix,--and a host of little objects in
the shape of hearts or crosses, each having some special religious
significance;--while the walls were covered with framed certificates
of baptism, "first-communion," confirmation, and other documents
commemorating the whole church life of the family for two generations.
[Illustration: A WAYSIDE SHRINE, OR CHAPELLE.]
... Certainly the first impression created by this perpetual display of
crosses, statues, and miniature chapels is not pleasing,--particularly
as the work is often inartistic to a degree bordering upon the
grotesque, and nothing resembling art is anywhere visible. Millions
of francs must have been consumed in these creations, which have
the rudeness of mediaevalism without its emotional sincerity, and
which--amid the loveliness of tropic nature, the grace of palms, the
many-colored fire of liana blossoms--jar on the aesthetic sense with
an almost brutal violence. Yet there is a veiled poetry in these silent
populations of plaster and wood and stone. They represent something
older than the Middle Ages, older than Christianity,--something
strangely distorted and transformed, it is true, but recognizably
conserved by the Latin race from those antique years when every home had
its beloved ghosts, when every wood or hill or spring had its gracious
divinity, and the boundaries of all fields were marked and guarded by
statues of gods.
Instances of iconoclasm are of course highly rare in a country of which
no native--rich or poor, white or half-breed--fails to doff his hat
before every shrine, cross, or image he may happen to pass. Those
merchants of St. Pierre or of Fort-de-France living only a few miles out
of the city must certainly perform a vast number of reverences on their
way to or from business;--I saw one old gentleman uncover his white head
about twenty times in the course of a fifteen minutes' walk. I never
heard of but one image-breaker in Martinique; and his act was the result
of superstition, not of any hostility to popular faith or custom: it
was prompted by the same childish feeling which moves Italian fishermen
sometimes to curse St. Antony or to give his image a ducking in bad
weather. This Martinique iconoclast was a negro cattle-driver who
one day, feeling badly in need of a glass of tafia, perhaps, left the
animals intrusted to him in care of a plaster image of the Virgin, with
this menace (the phrase is on record):--
"_Moin ka quitté bef-la ba ou pou gàdé ba moin. Quand moin vini, si moin
pa trouvé compte-moin, moin ké fouté ou vingt-nèf coudfouètt!_" (I leave
these cattle with you to take care of for me. When I come back, if I
don't find them all here, I'll give you twenty-nine lashes.)
Returning about half an hour later, he was greatly enraged to find his
animals scattered in every direction;--and, rushing at the statue,
he broke it from the pedestal, flung it upon the ground, and gave it
twenty-nine lashes with his bull-whip. For this he was arrested, tried,
and sentenced to imprisonment, with hard labor, for life! In those days
there were no colored magistrates;--the judges were all _békés_.
"Rather a severe sentence," I remarked to my informant, a planter who
conducted me to the scene of the alleged sacrilege.
"Severe, yes," he answered;--"and I suppose the act would seem to you
more idiotic than criminal. But here, in Martinique, there were large
questions involved by such an offence. Relying, as we have always done
to some extent, upon religious influence as a factor in the maintenance
of social order, the negro's act seemed a dangerous example."...
That the Church remains still rich and prosperous in Martinique there
can be no question; but whether it continues to wield any powerful
influence in the maintenance of social order is more than doubtful. A
Polynesian laxity of morals among the black and colored population, and
the history of race-hatreds and revolutions inspired by race-hate, would
indicate that neither in ethics nor in politics does it possess any
preponderant authority. By expelling various religious orders; by
establishing lay schools, lycées, and other educational institutions
where the teaching is largely characterized by aggressive antagonism
to Catholic ideas;--by the removal of crucifixes and images from public
buildings, French Radicalism did not inflict any great blow upon
Church interests. So far as the white, and, one may say, the wealthy,
population is concerned, the Church triumphs in her hostility to the
Government schools; and to the same extent she holds an educational
monopoly. No white creole would dream of sending his children to a lay
school or a lycée--notwithstanding the unquestionable superiority of the
educational system in the latter institutions;--and, although obliged,
as the chief tax-paying class, to bear the burden of maintaining these
establishments, the whites hold them in such horror that the Government
professors are socially ostracized. No doubt the prejudice or pride
which abhors mixed schools aids the Church in this respect; she herself
recognizes race-feeling, keeps her schools unmixed, and even in her
convents, it is said, obliges the colored nuns to serve the white! For
more than two centuries every white generation has been religiously
moulded in the seminaries and convents; and among the native whites one
never hears an overt declaration of free-thought opinion. Except among
the colored men educated in the Government schools, or their foreign
professors, there are no avowed free-thinkers;--and this, not because
the creole whites, many of whom have been educated in Paris, are
naturally narrow-minded, or incapable of sympathy with the mental
expansion of the age, but because the religious question at Martinique
has become so intimately complicated with the social and political one,
concerning which there can be no compromise whatever, that to divorce
the former from the latter is impossible. Roman Catholicism is an
element of the cement which holds creole society together; and it is
noteworthy that other creeds are not represented. I knew only of one
Episcopalian and one Methodist in the island,--and heard a sort
of legend about a solitary Jew whose whereabouts I never could
discover;--but these were strangers.
It was only through the establishment of universal suffrage, which
placed the white population at the mercy of its former slaves, that
the Roman Church sustained any serious injury. All local positions are
filled by blacks or men of color; no white creole can obtain a public
office or take part in legislation; and the whole power of the black
vote is ungenerously used against the interests of the class thus
politically disinherited. The Church suffers in consequence: her power
depended upon her intimate union with the wealthy and dominant class;
and she will never be forgiven by those now in power for her sympathetic
support of that class in other years. Politics yearly intensify this
hostility; and as the only hope for the restoration of the whites to
power, and of the Church to its old position, lies in the possibility of
another empire or a revival of the monarchy, the white creoles and their
Church are forced into hostility against republicanism and the republic.
And political newspapers continually attack Roman Catholicism,--mock its
tenets and teachings,--ridicule its dogmas and ceremonies,--satirize its
priests.
In the cities and towns the Church indeed appears to retain a large
place in the affection of the poorer classes;--her ceremonies are always
well attended; money pours into her coffers; and one can still wittness
the curious annual procession of the "converted,"--aged women of
color and negresses going to communion for the first time, all wearing
snow-white turbans in honor of the event. But among the country people,
where the dangerous forces of revolution exist, Christian feeling is
almost stifled by ghastly beliefs of African origin;--the images and
crucifixes still command respect, but this respect is inspired by a
feeling purely fetichistic. With the political dispossession of the
whites, certain dark powers, previously concealed or repressed, have
obtained, formidable development. The old enemy of Père Labat, the
wizard (the _quimboiseur_), already wields more authority than the
priest, exercises more terror than the magistrate, commands more
confidence than the physician. The educated mulatto class may affect
to despise him;--but he is preparing their overthrow in the dark.
Astonishing is the persistence with which the African has clung to these
beliefs and practices, so zealously warred upon by the Church and so
mercilessly punished by the courts for centuries. He still goes to mass,
and sends his children to the priest; but he goes more often to the
quimboiseur and the "_magnetise_." He finds use for both beliefs,
but gives large preference to the savage one,--just as he prefers
the pattering of his tam tam to the music of the military band at the
_Savane du Fort_.... And should it come to pass that Martinique be
ever totally abandoned by its white population,--an event by no
means improbable in the present order of things,--the fate of the
ecclesiastical fabric so toilsomely reared by the monastic orders is not
difficult to surmise.
VI.
From my window in the old Rue du Bois-Morin,--which climbs the foot of
Morne Labelle by successions of high stone steps,--all the southern
end of the city is visible as in a bird's-eye view. Under me is a long
peaking of red-scaled roofs,--gables and dormer-windows,--with clouds
of bright green here and there,--foliage of tamarind and
corossolier;--westward purples and flames the great circle of the
Caribbean Sea;--east and south, towering to the violet sky, curve the
volcanic hills, green-clad from base to summit;--and right before me
the beautiful Morne d'Orange, all palm-plumed and wood-wrapped, trends
seaward and southward. And every night, after the stars come out, I see
moving lights there,--lantern fires guiding the mountain-dwellers home;
but I look in vain for the light of Père Labat.
And nevertheless,--although no believer in ghosts,--I see thee very
plainly sometimes, thou quaint White Father, moving through winter-mists
in the narrower Paris of another century; musing upon the churches
that arose at thy bidding under tropic skies; dreaming of the primeval
valleys changed by thy will to green-gold seas of cane,--and the strong
mill that will bear thy name for two hundred years (it stands solid unto
this day),--and the habitations made for thy brethren in pleasant palmy
places,--and the luminous peace of thy Martinique convent,--and odor
of roasting parrots fattened upon _grains de bois d'Inde_ and
guavas,--"_l'odeur de muscade et de girofle qui fait plaisir_."...
Eh, _Père Labat_!--what changes there have been since thy day! The White
Fathers have no place here now; and the Black Fathers, too, have been
driven from the land, leaving only as a memory of them the perfect and
ponderous architecture of the Perinnelle plantation-buildings, and the
appellation of the river still known as the Rivière des Pères. Also the
Ursulines are gone, leaving only their name on the corner of a crumbling
street. And there are no more slaves; and there are new races and colors
thou wouldst deem scandalous though beautiful; and there are no more
parrots; and there are no more diablotins. And the grand woods thou
sawest in their primitive and inviolate beauty, as if fresh from the
Creator's touch in the morning of the world, are passing away; the
secular trees are being converted into charcoal, or sawn into timber for
the boat-builders: thou shouldst see two hundred men pulling some forest
giant down to the sea upon the two-wheeled screaming thing they call a
"devil" (_yon diabe_),--cric-crac!--cric-crac!--all chanting together;--
"_Soh-soh!--yaïe-yah!
Rhâlé bois-canot!_"
And all that ephemeral man has had power to change has been
changed,--ideas, morals, beliefs, the whole social fabric. But the
eternal summer remains,--and the Hesperian magnificence of azure sky
and violet sea,--and the jewel-colors of the perpetual hills;--the same
tepid winds that rippled thy cane-fields two hundred years ago still
blow over Sainte-Marie;--the same purple shadows lengthen and dwindle
and turn with the wheeling of the sun. God's witchery still fills this
land; and the heart of the stranger is even yet snared by the beauty of
it; and the dreams of him that forsakes it will surely be haunted--even
as were thine own, Père Labat--by memories of its Eden-summer: the
sudden leap of the light over a thousand peaks in the glory of tropic
dawn,--the perfumed peace of enormous azure noons,--and shapes of
palm wind-rocked in the burning of colossal sunsets,--and the silent
flickering of the great fire-flies through the lukewarm darkness, when
mothers call their children home... "_Mi fanal Pè Labatt!--mi Pè Labatt
ka vini pouend ou!_"