I.
It is only half-past four o'clock: there is the faintest blue light of
beginning day,--and little Victoire already stands at the bedside with
my wakening cup of hot black fragrant coffee. What! so early?...
Then with a sudden heart-start I remember this is my last West Indian
morning. And the child--her large timid eyes all gently luminous--is
pressing something into my hand.
Two vanilla beans wrapped in a morsel of banana-leaf,--her poor little
farewell gift!...
Other trifling souvenirs are already packed away. Almost everybody that
knows me has given me something. Manm-Robert brought me a tiny packet of
orange-seeds,--seeds of a "gift-orange": so long as I can keep these
in my vest-pocket I will never be without money. Cyrillia brought me
a package of _bouts_, and a pretty box of French matches, warranted
inextinguishable by wind. Azaline, the blanchisseuse, sent me a little
pocket looking-glass. Cerbonnie, the _màchanne_, left a little cup of
guava jelly for me last night. Mimi--dear child!--brought me a little
paper dog! It is her best toy; but those gentle black eyes would stream
with tears if I dared to refuse it.... Oh, Mimi! what am I to do with a
little paper dog? And what am I to do with the chocolate-sticks and the
cocoanuts and all the sugar-cane and all the cinnamon-apples?...
II.
... Twenty minutes past five by the clock of the Bourse. The hill
shadows are shrinking back from the shore;--the long wharves reach out
yellow into the sun;--the tamarinds of the Place Bertin, and the pharos
for half its height, and the red-tiled roofs along the bay are catching
the glow. Then, over the light-house--on the outermost line depending
from the southern yard-arm of the semaphore--a big black ball suddenly
runs up like a spider climbing its own thread.... _Steamer from the
South!_ The packet has been sighted. And I have not yet been able to
pack away into a specially purchased wooden box all the fruits and
vegetable curiosities and odd little presents sent to me. If Radice the
boatman had not come to help me, I should never be able to get ready;
for the work of packing is being continually interrupted by friends and
acquaintances coming to say good-bye. Manm-Robert brings to see me a
pretty young girl--very fair, with a violet foulard twisted about her
blonde head. It is little Basilique, who is going to make her _pouémiè
communion_. So I kiss her, according to the old colonial custom, once on
each downy cheek;--and she is to pray to _Notre Dame du Bon Port_ that
the ship shall bear me safely to far-away New York.
And even then the steamer's cannon-call shakes over the town and into
the hills behind us, which answer with all the thunder of their phantom
artillery.
III.
... There is a young white lady, accompanied by an aged negress, already
waiting on the south wharf for the boat;--evidently she is to be one
of my fellow-passengers. Quite a pleasing presence: slight graceful
figure,--a face not precisely pretty, but delicate and sensitive, with
the odd charm of violet eyes under black eye-brows....
A friend who comes to see me off tells me all about her. Mademoiselle
Lys is going to New York to be a governess,--to leave her native island
forever. A story sad enough, though not more so than that of many a
gentle creole girl. And she is going all alone, for I see her bidding
good-bye to old Titine,--kissing her. "_Adié encò, chè;--Bon-Dié ké béni
ou!_" sobs the poor servant, with tears streaming down her kind black
face. She takes off her blue shoulder-kerchief, and waves it as the boat
recedes from the wooden steps.
... Fifteen minutes later, Mademoiselle and I find ourselves under the
awnings shading the saloon-deck of the _Guadeloupe_. There are at least
fifty passengers,--many resting in chairs, lazy-looking Demerara chairs
with arm-supports immensely lengthened so as to form rests for the lower
limbs. Overhead, suspended from the awning-frames, are two tin cages
containing parrots;--and I see two little greenish monkeys, no bigger
than squirrels, tied to the wheel-hatch,--two _sakiwinkis_. These are
from the forests of British Guiana. They keep up a continual thin sharp
twittering, like birds,--all the while circling, ascending, descending,
retreating or advancing to the limit of the little ropes attaching them
to the hatch.
The _Guadeloupe_ has seven hundred packages to deliver at St. Pierre: we
have ample time,--Mademoiselle Violet-Eyes and I,--to take one last look
at the "Pays des Revenants."
I wonder what her thoughts are, feeling a singular sympathy for
her,--for I am in that sympathetic mood which the natural emotion of
leaving places and persons one has become fond of, is apt to inspire.
And now at the moment of my going,--when I seem to understand as never
before the beauty of that tropic Nature, and the simple charm of the
life to which I am bidding farewell,--the question comes to me: "Does
she not love it all as I do,--nay, even much more, because of that in
her own existence which belongs to it?" But as a child of the land,
she has seen no other skies,--fancies, perhaps, there may be brighter
ones....
... Nowhere on this earth, Violet-Eyes!--nowhere beneath this sun!...
Oh! the dawnless glory of tropic morning!--the single sudden leap of the
giant light over the purpling of a hundred peaks,--over the surging of
the mornes! And the early breezes from the hills,--all cool out of
the sleep of the forests, and heavy with vegetal odors thick, sappy,
savage-sweet!--and the wild high winds that run ruffling and crumpling
through the cane of the mountain slopes in storms of papery sound!--
And the mighty dreaming of the woods,--green-drenched with silent
pouring of creepers,--dashed with the lilac and yellow and rosy foam of
liana flowers!--
And the eternal azure apparition of the all-circling sea,--that as you
mount the heights ever appears to rise perpendicularly behind you,--that
seems, as you descend, to sink and flatten before you!--
And the violet velvet distances of eyening;--and the swaying of palms
against the orange-burning,--when all the heaven seems filled with
vapors of a molten sun!...
IV.
How beautiful the mornes and azure-shadowed hollows in the jewel
clearness of this perfect morning! Even Pelée wears only her very
lightest head-dress of gauze; and all the wrinklings of her green robe
take unfamiliar tenderness of tint from the early sun. All the quaint
peaking of the colored town--sprinkling the sweep of blue bay with red
and yellow and white-of-cream--takes a sharpness in this limpid light as
if seen through a diamond lens; and there above the living green of the
familiar hills I can see even the faces of the statues--the black Christ
on his white cross, and the White Lady of the Morne d'Orange--among
curving palms.... It is all as though the island were donning its utmost
possible loveliness, exerting all its witchery,--seeking by supremest
charm to win back and hold its wandering child,--Violet-Eyes over
there!... She is looking too.
I wonder if she sees the great palms of the Voie du Parnasse,--curving
far away as to bid us adieu, like beautiful bending women. I wonder if
they are not trying to say something to her; and I try myself to fancy
what that something is:--
--"Child, wilt thou indeed abandon all who love thee!... Listen!--'tis
a dim grey land thou goest unto,--a land of bitter winds,--a land of
strange gods,--a land of hardness and barrenness, where even Nature may
not live through half the cycling of the year! Thou wilt never see us
there.... And there, when thou shalt sleep thy long sleep, child--that
land will have no power to lift thee up;--vast weight of stone will
press thee down forever;--until the heavens be no more thou shalt not
awake!... But here, darling, our loving roots would seek for thee, would
find thee: thou shouldst live again!--we lift, like Aztec priests, the
blood of hearts to the Sun."...
IV.
... It is very hot.... I hold in my hand a Japanese paper-fan with a
design upon it of the simplest sort: one jointed green bamboo, with a
single spurt of sharp leaves, cutting across a pale blue murky double
streak that means the horizon above a sea. That is all. Trivial to my
Northern friends this design might seem; but to me it causes a pleasure
bordering on pain.... I know so well what the artist means; and they
could not know, unless they had seen bamboos,--and bamboos peculiarly
situated. As I look at this fan I know myself descending the Morne
Parnasse by the steep winding road; I have the sense of windy heights
behind me, and forest on either hand, and before me the blended azure of
sky and sea with one bamboo-spray swaying across it at the level of
my eyes. Nor is this all;--I have the every sensation of the very
moment,--the vegetal odors, the mighty tropic light, the wamrth, the
intensity of irreproducible color.... Beyond a doubt, the artist who
dashed the design on this fan with his miraculous brush must have had a
nearly similar experience to that of which the memory is thus aroused in
me, but which I cannot communicate to others.
... And it seems to me now that all which I have tried to write about
the _Pays des Revenants_ can only be for others, who have never beheld
it,--vague like the design upon this fan.
VI.
_Brrrrrrrrrrr!_... The steam-winch is lifting the anchor; and the
_Guadeloupe_ trembles through every plank as the iron torrent of her
chain-cable rumbles through the hawse-holes.... At last the quivering
ceases;--there is a moment's silence; and Violet-Eyes seems trying to
catch a last glimpse of her faithful _bonne_ among the ever-thickening
crowd upon the quay.... Ah! there she is--waving her foulard.
Mademoiselle Lys is waving a handkerchief in reply....
Suddenly the shock of the farewell gun shakes heavily through our
hearts, and over the bay,--where the tall mornes catch the flapping
thunder, and buffet it through all their circle in tremendous mockery.
Then there is a great whirling and whispering of whitened water behind
the steamer--another,--another; and the whirl becomes a foaming stream:
the mighty propeller is playing!.... All the blue harbor swings slowly
round;--and the green limbs of the land are pushed out further on the
left, shrink back upon the right;--and the mountains are moving their
shoulders. And then the many-tinted façades,--and the tamarinds of the
Place Bertin,--and the light-house,--and the long wharves with their
throng of turbaned women,--and the cathedral towers,--and the fair
palms,--and the statues of the hills,--all veer, change place, and begin
to float away... steadily, very swiftly.
[Illustration: BASSE-TERRE ST. KITTS.]
Farewell, fair city,--sun-kissed city,--many-fountained city!--dear
yellow-glimmering streets,--white pavements learned by heart,--and faces
ever looked for,--and voices ever loved! Farewell, white towers with
your golden-throated bells!--farewell, green steeps, bathed in the light
of summer everlasting!--craters with your coronets of forest!--bright
mountain paths upwinding 'neath pomp of fern and angelin and feathery
bamboo!--and gracious palms that drowse above the dead! Farewell,
soft-shadowing majesty of valleys unfolding to the sun,--green golden
cane-fields ripening to the sea!...
... The town vanishes. The island slowly becomes a green silhouette. So
might Columbus first have seen it from the deck of his caravel,--nearly
four hundred years ago. At this distance there are no more signs of life
upon it than when it first became visible to his eyes: yet there are
cities there,--and toiling,--and suffering,--and gentle hearts that
knew me.... Now it is turning blue,--the beautiful shape!--becoming a
dream....
VII.
And Dominica draws nearer,--sharply massing her hills against the vast
light in purple nodes and gibbosities and denticulations. Closer and
closer it comes, until the green of its heights breaks through the
purple here and there,--in flashings and ribbings of color. Then
it remains as if motionless a while;--then the green lights go out
again,--and all the shape begins to recede sideward towards the south.
... And what had appeared a pearl-grey cloud in the north slowly
reveals itself as another island of mountains,--hunched and horned and
mammiform: Guadeloupe begins to show her double profile. But Martinique
is still visible;--Pelée still peers high over the rim of the south....
Day wanes;--the shadow of the ship lengthens over the flower-blue water.
Pelée changes aspect at last,--turns pale as a ghost,--but will not fade
away....
... The sun begins to sink as he always sinks to his death in the
tropics,--swiftly,--too swiftly!--and the glory of him makes golden all
the hollow west,--and bronzes all the flickering wave-backs. But still
the gracious phantom of the island will not go,--softly haunting us
through the splendid haze. And always the tropic wind blows soft and
warm;--there is an indescribable caress in it! Perhaps some such breeze,
blowing from Indian waters, might have inspired that prophecy of Islam
concerning the Wind of the Last Day,--that "Yellow Wind, softer than
silk, balmier than musk,"--which is to sweep the spirits of the just to
God in the great Winnowing of Souls....
Then into the indigo night vanishes forever from my eyes the ghost of
Pelée; and the moon swings up,--a young and lazy moon, drowsing upon her
back, as in a hammock.... Yet a few nights more, and we shall see this
slim young moon erect,--gliding upright on her way,--coldly beautiful
like a fair Northern girl.
VIII.
And ever through tepid nights and azure days the _Guadeloupe_ rushes
on,--her wake a river of snow beneath the sun, a torrent of fire beneath
the stars,--steaming straight for the North.
Under the peaking of Montserrat we steam,--beautiful Montserrat,
all softly wrinkled like a robe of greenest velvet fallen from the
waist!--breaking the pretty sleep of Plymouth town behind its screen
of palms... young palms, slender and full of grace as creole children
are;--
And by tall Nevis, with her trinity of dead craters purpling through
ocean-haze;--by clouded St. Christopher's mountain-giant;--past ghostly
St. Martin's, far-floating in fog of gold, like some dream of the
Saint's own Second Summer;--
Past low Antigua's vast blue harbor,--shark-haunted, bounded about by
huddling of little hills, blue and green.
Past Santa Cruz, the "Island of the Holy Cross,"--all radiant with
verdure though well nigh woodless,--nakedly beautiful in the tropic
light as a perfect statue;--
Past the long cerulean reaching and heaping of Porto Rico on the left,
and past hopeless St. Thomas on the right,--old St. Thomas, watching
the going and the coming of the commerce that long since abandoned
her port,--watching the ships once humbly solicitous for patronage now
turning away to the Spanish rival, like ingrates forsaking a ruined
patrician;--
And the vapory Vision of, St. John;--and the grey ghost of Tortola,--and
further, fainter, still more weirdly dim, the aureate phantom of Virgin
Gorda.
IX.
Then only the enormous double-vision of sky and sea.
The sky: a cupola of blinding blue, shading down and paling into
spectral green at the rim of the world,--and all fleckless, save at
evening. Then, with sunset, comes a light gold-drift of little feathery
cloudlets into the West,--stippling it as with a snow of fire.
The sea: no flower-tint may now make my comparison for the splendor of
its lucent color. It has shifted its hue;--for we have entered into the
Azure Stream: it has more than the magnificence of burning cyanogen....
But, at night, the Cross of the South appears no more. And other changes
come, as day succeeds to day,--a lengthening of the hours of light, a
longer lingering of the after-glow,--a cooling of the wind. Each morning
the air seems a little cooler, a little rarer;--each noon the sky looks
a little paler, a little further away--always heightening, yet also
more shadowy, as if its color, receding, were dimmed by distance,--were
coming more faintly down from vaster altitudes.
... Mademoiselle is petted like a child by the lady passengers. And
every man seems anxious to aid in making her voyage a pleasant one. For
much of which, I think, she may thank her eyes!
X.
A dim morning and chill;--blank sky and sunless waters: the sombre
heaven of the North with colorless horizon rounding in a blind grey
sea.... What a sudden weight comes to the heart with the touch of the
cold mist, with the spectral melancholy of the dawn;--and then what
foolish though irrepressible yearning for the vanished azure left
behind!
... The little monkeys twitter plaintively, trembling in the chilly air.
The parrots have nothing to say: they look benumbed, and sit on their
perches with eyes closed.
... A vagueness begins to shape itself along the verge of the sea, far
to port: that long heavy clouding which indicates the approach of land.
And from it now floats to us something ghostly and frigid which makes
the light filmy and the sea shadowy as a flood of dreams,--the fog of
the Jersey coast.
At once the engines slacken their respiration. The _Guadeloupe_ begins
to utter her steam-cry of warning,--regularly at intervals of two
minutes,--for she is now in the track of all the ocean vessels. And
from far away we can hear a heavy knelling,--the booming of some great
fog-bell.
... All in a white twilight. The place of the horizon has vanished;--we
seem ringed in by a wall of smoke.... Out of this vapory emptiness--very
suddenly--an enormous steamer rushes, towering like a hill--passes
so close that we can see faces, and disappears again, leaving the sea
heaving and frothing behind her.
... As I lean over the rail to watch the swirling of the wake, I feel
something pulling at my sleeve: a hand,--a tiny black hand,--the hand of
a _sakiwinki_. One of the little monkeys, straining to the full length
of his string, is making this dumb appeal for human sympathy;--the
bird-black eyes of both are fixed upon me with the oddest look of
pleading. Poor little tropical exiles! I stoop to caress them; but
regret the impulse a moment later: they utter such beseeching cries when
I find myself obliged to leave them again alone!...
... Hour after hour the _Guadeloupe_ glides on through the white
gloom,--cautiously, as if feeling her way; always sounding her whistle,
ringing her bells, until at last some brown-winged bark comes flitting
to us out of the mist, bearing a pilot.... How strange it must all seem
to Mademoiselle who stands so silent there at the rail!--how weird this
veiled world must appear to her, after the sapphire light of her own
West Indian sky, and the great lazulite splendor of her own tropic sea!
But a wind comes;--it strengthens,--begins to blow very cold. The mists
thin before its blowing; and the wan blank sky is all revealed again
with livid horizon around the heaving of the iron-grey sea.
... Thou dim and lofty heaven of the North,--grey sky of Odin,--bitter
thy winds and spectral all thy colors!--they that dwell beneath thee
know not the glory of Eternal Summer's green,--the azure splendor of
southern day!--but thine are the lightnings of Thought illuminating for
human eyes the interspaces between sun and sun. Thine the generations
of might,--the strivers, the battlers,--the men who make Nature
tame!--thine the domain of inspiration and achievement,--the larger
heroisms, the vaster labors that endure, the higher knowledge, and all
the witchcrafts of science!...
But in each one of us there lives a mysterious Something which is Self,
yet also infinitely more than Self,--incomprehensibly multiple,--the
complex total of sensations, impulses, timidities belonging to the
unknown past. And the lips of the little stranger from the tropics have
become all white, because that Something within her,--ghostly bequest
from generations who loved the light and rest and wondrous color of a
more radiant world,--now shrinks all back about her girl's heart
with fear of this pale grim North.... And lo!--opening mile-wide in
dream-grey majesty before us,--reaching away, through measureless mazes
of masting, into remotenesses all vapor-veiled,--the mighty perspective
of New York harbor!...
Thou knowest it not, this gloom about us, little maiden;--'tis only
a magical dusk we are entering,--only that mystic dimness in which
miracles must be wrought!... See the marvellous shapes uprising,--the
immensities, the astonishments! And other greater wonders thou wilt
behold in a little while, when we shall have become lost to each other
forever in the surging of the City's million-hearted life!... 'Tis all
shadow here, thou sayest?--Ay, 'tis twilight, verily, by contrast
with that glory out of which thou camest, Lys--twilight only,--but the
Twilight of the Gods!... _Adié, chè!--Bon-Dié ké bént ou!_...
ENDNOTES
[Footnote 1: Since this was written the market has been removed to the
Savane,--to allow of the erection of a large new market-building on the
old site; and the beautiful trees have been cut down.]
[Footnote 2: I subsequently learned the mystery of this very strange and
beautiful mixed race,--many fine specimens of which may also be seen
in Trinidad. Three widely diverse elements have combined to form it:
European, negro, and Indian,--but, strange to say, it is the most savage
of these three bloods which creates the peculiar charm.... I cannot
speak of this comely and extraordinary type without translating a
passage from Dr. J. J. J. Cornilliac, an eminent Martinique physician,
who recently published a most valuable series of studies upon the
ethnology, climatology, and history of the Antilles. In these he
writes:...]
"When, among the populations of the Antilles, we first notice those
remarkable _métis_ whose olive skins, elegant and slender figures, fine
straight profiles, and regular features remind us of the inhabitants
of Madras or Pondicherry,--we ask ourselves in wonder, while looking
at their long eyes, full of a strange and gentle melancholy (especially
among the women), and at the black, rich, silky-gleaming hair curling in
abundance over the temples and falling in profusion over the neck,--to
what human race can belong this singular variety,--in which there is a
dominant characteristic that seems indelible, and always shows more
and more strongly in proportion as the type is further removed from the
African element. It is the Carib blood--blended with blood of Europeans
and of blacks,--which in spite of all subsequent crossings, and in
spite of the fact that it has not been renewed for more than two
hundred years, still conserves as markedly as at the time of the first
interblending, the race-characteristic that invariably reveals
its presence in the blood of every being through whose veins it
flows."--"Recherches chronologiques et historiques sur l'Origine et la
Propagation de la Fièvre Jaune aux Antilles." Par J. J. J. Cornilliac.
Fort-de-France: Imprimerie du Gouvernement. 1886.
But I do not think the term "olive" always indicates the color of these
skins, which seemed to me exactly the tint of gold; and the hair flashes
with bluish lights, Like the plumage of certain black birds.]
[Footnote 3: _Extract from the "Story of Marie," as written from dictation:_
... Manman-à té ni yon gouôs jà à caïe-li. Jà-la té touôp lou'de pou
Marie. Cé té li menm manman là qui té kallé pouend dileau. Yon jou
y pouend jà-la pou y té allé pouend dileau. Lhè manman-à rivé bò la
fontaine, y pa trouvé pésonne pou châgé y. Y rété; y ka crié, "Toutt bon
Chritien, vini châgé moin!"
... Lhè manman rété y ouè pa té ni piess bon Chritien pou chage y. Y
rété; y crié: "Pouloss, si pa ni bon Chritien, ni mauvais Chritien!
toutt mauvais Chritien vini châgé moin!"
... Lhè y fini di ça, y ouè yon diabe qui ka vini, ka di conm çaa, "Pou
moin châgé ou, ça ou ké baill moin?" Manman-là di,--y réponne, "Moin pa
ni arien!" Diabe-la réponne y, "Y fau ba moin Marie pou moin pé châgé
ou."
This mamma had a great jar in her house. The jar was too heavy for
Marie. It was this mamma herself who used to go for water. One day she
took that jar to go for water. When this mamma had got to the fountain,
she could not find anyone to load her. She stood there, crying out, "Any
good Christian, come load me!"
As the mamma stood there she saw there was not a single good Christian
to help her load. She stood there, and cried out: "Well, then, if there
are no good Christians, there are bad Christians. Any bad Christian,
come and load me!"
The moment she said that, she saw a devil coming, who said to her, "If I
load you, what will you give me?" This mamma answered, and said, "I have
nothing!" The devil answered her, "Must give me Marie if you want me to
load you."]
[Footnote 4: _Y batt li conm lambi_--"he beat him like a lambi"--is an expression
that may often be heard in a creole court from witnesses testifying in
a case of assault and battery. One must have seen a lambi pounded to
appreciate the terrible picturesqueness of the phase.]
[Footnote 5: Moreau de Saint-Méry writes, describing the drums of the negroes
of Saint Domingue: "Le plus court de ces tambours est nommé
_Bamboula_, attendu qu'il est formé quelquefois d'un très-gros
bambou."--"Description de la partie française de Saint Domingue", vol.
i., p. 44.]
[Footnote 6: What is known in the West Indies as a hurricane is happily rare;
it blows with the force of a cyclone, but not always circularly; it may
come from one direction, and strengthen gradually for days until its
highest velocity and destructive force are reached. One in the time of
Père Labat blew away the walls of a fort;--that of 1780 destroyed the
lives of twenty-two thousand people in four islands: Martinique, Saint
Lucia, St. Vincent, and Barbadoes.
Before the approach of such a visitation animals manifest the same signs
of terror they display prior to an earthquake. Cattle assemble together,
stamp, and roar; sea-birds fly to the interior; fowl seek the nearest
crevice they can hide in. Then, while the sky is yet clear, begins the
breaking of the sea; then darkness comes, and after it the wind.]
[Footnote 7: "Histoire Générale des Antilles... habités par les Français." Par
le R. P. Du Tertre, de l'Ordre des Frères Prescheurs. Paris: 1661-71. 4
vols. (with illustrations) in 4to.]
[Footnote 8: One of the lights seen on the Caravelle was certainly carried by
a cattle-thief,--a colossal negro who had the reputation of being a
sorcerer,--a _quimboiseur_. The greater part of the mountainous land
forming La Caravelle promontory was at that time the property of a
Monsieur Eustache, who used it merely for cattle-raising purposes.
He allowed his animals to run wild in the hills; they multiplied
exceedingly, and became very savage. Notwithstanding their ferocity,
however, large numbers of them were driven away at night, and secretly
slaughtered or sold, by somebody who used to practise the art of
cattle-stealing with a lantern, and evidently without aid. A watch
was set, and the thief arrested. Before the magistrate he displayed
extraordinary assurance, asserting that he had never stolen from a poor
man--he had stolen only from M. Eustache who could not count his own
cattle--_yon richard, man chè!_ "How many cows did you steal from him?"
asked the magistrate. "_Ess moin pè save?--moin té pouend yon savane
toutt pleine_," replied the prisoner. (How can I tell?--I took a whole
savanna-full.)... Condemned on the strength of his own confession, he
was taken to jail. "_Moin pa ké rété geole_," he observed. (I shall not
remain in prison.) They put him in irons, but on the following morning
the irons were found lying on the floor of the cell, and the prisoner
was gone. He was never seen in Martinique again.]
[Footnote 9: Y sucoué souyé assous quai-là;--y ka di: "Moin ka maudi ou,
Lanmatinique!--moin ka maudi ou!...Ké ni mangé pou engnien: ou pa ké
pè menm acheté y! Ké ni touèle pou engnien: ou pa ké pè menm acheté yon
robe! Epi yche ké batt manman.... Ou banni moin!--moin ké vini encò"]
[Footnote 10: Vol. iii., p. 382-3. Edition of 1722.]
[Footnote 11: The parrots of Martinique he describes as having been green, with
slate-colored plumage on the top of the head, mixed with a little red,
and as having a few red feathers in the wings, throat, and tail.]
[Footnote 12: The creole word _moudongue_ is said to be a corruption of
_Mondongue_, the name of an African coast tribe who had the reputation
of being cannibals. A Mondongue slave on the plantations was generally
feared by his fellow-blacks of other tribes; and the name of the
cannibal race became transformed into an adjective to denote anything
formidable or terrible. A blow with a stick made of the wood described
being greatly dreaded, the term was applied first to the stick, and
afterward to the wood itself.]
[Footnote 13: Accounting for the origin of the trade-winds, he writes: "I say
that the Trade-Winds do not exist in the Torrid Zone merely by chance;
forasmuch as the cause which produces them is very necessary, very sure,
and very continuous, since they result _either from the movement of the
Earth around the Sun, or from the movement of the Sun around the Earth.
Whether it be the one or the other, of these two great bodies which
moves..._" etc.]
[Footnote 14: In creole, _cabritt-bois_,--("the Wood-Kid")--a colossal cricket.
Precisely at half-past four in the morning it becomes silent; and for
thousands of early risers too poor to own a clock, the cessation of its
song is the signal to get up.]
[Footnote 15: --"Where dost stay, dear?"--"Affairs of the goat are not affairs
of the rabbit."--"But why art thou dressed all in black thus?"--"I wear
mourning for my dead soul."--"_Aïe ya yaïe!_...No, true!...where art
thou going now?"--"Love is gone: I go after love."--"Ho! thou hast
a Wasp [lover]--eh?"--"The zanoli gives a ball; the _maboya_ enters
unasked."--"Tell me where thou art going, sweetheart?"--"As far as
the River of the Lizard."--"_Fouinq!_--there are more than thirty
kilometres!"--"What of that?--dost thou want to come with me?"]
[Footnote 16: "Kiss me now!"]
[Footnote 17: Petits amoureux aux plumes, Enfants d'un brillant séjour, Vous
ignorez l'amertume, Vous parlez souvent d'amour;... Vous méprisez la
dorure, Les salons, et les bijoux; Vous chérissez la Nature, Petits
oiseaux, becquetez-vous!
"Voyez làbas, dans cette église, Auprès d'un confessional, Le prêtre,
qui veut faire croire à Lise, Qu'un baiser est un grand mal;--Pour
prouver à la mignonne Qu'un baiser bien fait, bien doux, N'a jamais
damné personne Petits oiseaux, becquetez-vous!"
Translation:
Little feathered lovers, cooing, Children of the radiant air, Sweet your
speech,--the speech of wooing; Ye have ne'er a grief to bear! Gilded
ease and jewelled fashion Never own a charm for you; Ye love Nature's
truth with passion, Pretty birdlings, bill and coo!
See that priest who, Lise confessing, Wants to make the girl believe
That a kiss without a blessing Is a fault for which to grieve! Now
to prove, to his vexation, That no tender kiss and true Ever caused a
soul's damnation, Pretty birdlings, bill and coo!]
[Footnote 18: "Cette danse est opposée à la pudeur. Avec tout cela, elle ne
lesse pas d'être tellement du goût des Espagnols Créolles de l'Amérique,
& si fort en usage parmi eux, qu'elle fait la meilleure partie de leurs
divertissements, & qu'elle entre même dans leurs devotions. Ils
la dansent même dans leurs Églises & à leurs processions; et les
Religieuses ne manquent guère de la danser la Nuit de Noël, sur un
théatre élévé dans leur Choeur, vis-à-vis de leur grille, qui est
ouverte, afin que le Peuple aît sa part dans la joye que ces bonnes âmes
témoignent pour la naissance du Sauveur."]
[Footnote 19: During a hurricane, several years ago, a West Indian steamer was
disabled at a dangerously brief distance from the coast of the island
by having her propeller fouled. Sorely broken and drifting rigging had
become wrapped around it. One of the crew, a Martinique mulatto, tied a
rope about his waist, took his knife between his teeth, dived overboard,
and in that tremendous sea performed the difficult feat of disengaging
the propeller, and thus saving the steamer from otherwise certain
destruction.... This brave fellow received the Cross of the Legion of
Honor.]
[Footnote 20: "_Bel laline, moin ka montré ti pièce moin!--ba moin làgent toutt
temps ou ka clairé!_"... This little invocation is supposed to have most
power when uttered on the first appearance of the new moon.]
[Footnote 21: "Guardian-angel, watch over me;--have pity upon my weakness;
lie down on my little bed with me: follow me whithersoever I go."...The
prayers are always said in French. Metaphysical and theological terms
cannot be rendered in the patois; and the authors of creole catechisms
have always been obliged to borrow and explain French religious phrases
in order to make their texts comprehensible.]
[Footnote 22: --"Moin té ouè yon bal;--moin rêvé: moin té ka ouè toutt moune
ka dansé masqué; moin té ka gàdé. Et toutt-à-coup moin ka ouè c'est
bonhomme-càton ka danse. Et main ka ouè yon Commandè: y ka mandé moin
ça moin ka fai là. Moin reponne y conm ça:--'Moin ouè yon bal, moin
gàdé-coument!' 'Y ka réponne moin:--'Pisse ou si quirièse pou vini gàdé
baggaïe moune, faut rété là pou dansé 'tou.' Moin réponne y:--'Non! main
pa dansé épi bonhomme-càton!--moin pè!'... Et moin ka couri, moin ka
couri, main ka couri à fòce moin te ni pè. Et moin rentré adans grand
jàdin; et moin ouè gouôs pié-cirise qui té chàgé anni feuill; et moin ka
ouè yon nhomme assise enba cirise-à. Y mandé moin:--'Ça ou ka fai là?'
Moin di y:--'Moin ka châché chimin pou moin allé.' Y di moin:--'Faut
rété içitt.' Et moin di y:--'Non!'--et pou chappé cò moin, moin di
y:--'Allé enhaut-là: ou ké ouè yon bel bal,--toutt bonhomme-càton ka
dansé, épi yon Commande-en-càton ka coumandé yo.'... Epi moin levé, à
fòce moin té pè."...]
[Footnote 23: Lit.,--"brought-up-in-a-hat." To wear the madras is to acknowledge
oneself of color;--to follow the European style of dressing the hair,
and adopt the costume of the white creoles indicates a desire to
affiliate with the white class.]
[Footnote 24: Red earthen-ware jars for keeping drinking-water cool. The origin
of the word is probably to be sought in the name of the town, near
Marseilles, where they are made,--Aubagne.]
[Footnote 25: I may cite in this relation one stanza of a creole song--very
popular in St. Pierre--celebrating the charms of a little capresse:--
"...Moin toutt jeine,
Gouôs, gouâs, vaillant,
Peau,di chapoti
Ka fai plaisi;--Lapeau moin
Li bien poli;
Et moin ka plai
Mênm toutt nhomme grave!"
--Which might be freely rendered thus:--
"...I am dimpled, young, Round-limbed, and strong, With sapota-skin That
is good to see: All glossy-smooth Is this skin of mine; And the gravest
men Like to look at me!"]
[Footnote 26: It was I who washed and ironed and mended;--at nine o'clock at
night thou didst put me out-of-doors, with my child in my arms,--the
rain was falling,--with my poor straw mattress upon my head!... Doudoux!
thou dost abandon me!... I have none to care for me.]
[Footnote 27: Also called _La Barre de '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 28: Thibault de Chanvallon, writing of Martinique in 1751,
declared:--"All possible hinderances to study are encountered here
(_tout s'oppose à l'etude_): 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 othelr 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 29: Humboldt believed the height to be not less than 800 _toises_ (1
toise=6 ft. 4.73 inches), or about 5115 feet.]
[Footnote 30: 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 time, might be regarded as an omen of
hurricane.]
[Footnote 31: "De la piqure du serpent de la Martinique," par Auguste Charriez,
Medecin de la Marine. Paris: Moquet, 1875]
[Footnote 32: M. Francard Bayardelle, overseer of the Prèsbourg plantation at
Grande Anse, tells me that the most successful treatment of snake bite
consists in severe local cupping and bleeding; the immediate application
of twenty to thirty leeches (when these can be obtained), and the
administration of alkali as an internal medicine. He has saved several
lives by these methods.
The negro panseur method is much more elaborate and, to some extent,
mysterious. He cups and bleeds, using a small _couï_, or
half-calabash, in lieu of a grass; and then applies cataplasms of
herbs,--orange-leaves, cinnamon-leaves, clove-leaves, _chardon-béni_,
_charpentier_, perhaps twenty other things, all mingled together;--this
poulticing being continued every day for a month. Meantime the patient
is given all sorts of absurd things to drink, in tafia and sour-orange
juice--such as old clay pipes ground to powder, or _the head of the
fer-de-lance itself_, roasted dry and pounded.... The plantation negro
has no faith in any other system of cure but that of the panseur;--he
refuses to let the physician try to save him, and will scarcely submit
to be treated even by an experienced white over-seer.]
[Footnote 33: The sheet-lightnings which play during the nights of July and
August are termed in creole _Zéclai-titiri_, or "titiri-lightnings";--it
is believed these give notice that the titiri have begun to swarn in the
rivers. Among the colored population there exists an idea of some queer
relation between the lightning and the birth of the little fish,--it
is commonly said, "_Zéclai-a ka fai yo écloré_" (the lightning hatches
them).]
[Footnote 34: Dr. E. Rufz: "Études historiques," vol. i., p. 189.]
[Footnote 35: The brightly colored douillettes are classified by the
people according to the designs of the printed
calico:--_robe-à-bambou_,--_robe-à-bouquet_,--_robe-arc-en-ciel_,
--_robe-à-carreau_,--etc., according as the pattern is in stripes,
flower-designs, "rainbow" bands of different tints, or plaidings.
_Ronde-en-ronde_ means a stuff printed with disk-patterns, or
link-patterns of different colors,--each joined with the other.
A robe of one color only is called a _robe-uni_.
The general laws of contrasts observed in the costume require the silk
foulard, or shoulder-kerchief, to make a sharp relief with the color
of the robe, thus:-- Robe. Foulard. Yellow Blue. Dark blue Yellow. Pink
Green. Violet Bright red. Red Violet. Chocolate (cacoa) Pale blue. Sky
blue Pale rose.
These refer, of course, to dominant or ground colors, as there are
usually several tints in the foulard as well as the robe. The painted
Madras should always be bright yellow. According to popular ideas of
good dressing, the different tints of skin should be relieved by special
choice of color in the robe, as follows:--
_Capresse_ (a clear red skin) should wear.... Pale yellow. _Mulatresse_
(according to shade).... Rose. Blue. Green. _Negresse_.... White.
Scarlet, or any violet color.]
[Footnote 36: "Vouèla Cendrillon evec yon bel ròbe velou grande lakhè....
Ça té ka bail ou mal ziè. Li té tini bel zanneau dans zòreill li,
quate-tou-chou, bouoche, bracelet, tremblant,--toutt sòte bel baggaïe
conm ça."...--(_Conte Cendrillon_,--d'après Turiault.)
--"There was Cendrillon with a beautiful long trailing robe of velvet
on her!... It was enough to hurt one's eyes to look at her! She had
beautiful rings in her ears, and a collier-choux of four rows, brooches,
_tremblants_, bracelets,--everything fine of that sort."--(Story of
Cinderella in Turinault's Creole Grammar).]
[Footnote 37: It is quite possible, however, that the slaves of Dutertre's time
belonged for the most part to the uglier African tribes; and that later
supplies may have been procured from other parts of the slave coast.
Writing half a century later, Père Labat declares having seen freshly
disembarked blacks handsome enough to inspire an artist:--"_J'en ai vu
des deux sexes faits à peindre, et beaux par merveille_" (vol. iv.
chap, vii,). He adds that their skin was extremely fine, and of velvety
softness;--"_le velours n'est pas plus doux_."... Among the 30,000
blacks yearly shipped to the French colonies, there were doubtless many
representatives of the finer African races.]
[Footnote 38: "Leur sueur n'est pas fétide comme celle des nègres de la Guinée,"
writes the traveller Dauxion-Lavaysse, in 1813.]
[Footnote 39: Dr. E. Rufz: "Études historiques et statistiques sur la population
de la Martinique." St. Pierre: 1850. Vol. i., pp. 148-50.
It has been generally imagined that the physical constitution of the
black race was proof against the deadly climate of the West Indies. The
truth is that the freshly imported Africans died of fever by thousands
and tens-of-thousands;--the creole-negro race, now so prolific,
represents only the fittest survivors in the long and terrible struggle
of the slave element to adapt itself to the new environment. Thirty
thousand negroes a year were long needed to supply the French colonies.
Between 1700 and 1789 no less than 900,000 slaves were imported by San
Domingo alone;--yet there were less than half that number left in 1789.
(See Placide Justin's history of Santo Domingo, p. 147.) The entire
slave population of Barbadoes had to be renewed every sixteen years,
according to estimates: the loss to planters by deaths of slaves
(reckoning the value of a slave at only £20 sterling) during the same
period was £1,600,000 ($8,000,000). (Burck's "History of European
Colonies," vol. ii., p. 141; French edition of 1767.)]
[Footnote 40: Rufz: "Études," vol. i., p. 236.]
[Footnote 41: I am assured it has now fallen to a figure not exceeding 5000.]
[Footnote 42: Rufz: "Études," vol. ii., pp. 311, 312.]
[Footnote 43: Rufz: "Études," vol. i., p. 237.]
[Footnote 44: _La race de sang-mêlé, issue des blancs et des noirs, est
éminement civilizable. Comme types physiques, elle fournit dans beaucoup
d'individus, dans ses femmes en général, les plus beaux specimens de
la race humaine_.--"Le Préjugé de Race aux Antilles Françaises." Par G.
Souquet-Basiège. St. Pierre, Martinique: 1883. pp. 661-62.]
[Footnote 45: Turiault: "Étude sur le langage Créole de la Martinique." Brest:
1874.... On page 136 he cites the following pretty verses in speaking of
the _fille-de-couleur_:--
L'Amour prit soin de la former Tendre, naïve, et caressante, Faite pour
plaire, encore plus pour aimer. Portant tous les traits précieux Du
caractère d'une amante, Le plaisir sur sa bouche et l'amour dans ses
yeux.]
[Footnote 46: A sort of land-crab;--the female is selected for food, and,
properly cooked, makes a delicious dish;--the male is almost worthless.]
[Footnote 47: "Voyage à la Martinique," Par J. R., Général de Brigade. Paris: An,
XII., 1804. Page 106.]
[Footnote 48: According to the Martinique "Annuaire" for 1887, there were even
then, out of a total population of 173,182, no less than 12,366 able to
read and write.]
[Footnote 49: There is record of an attempt to manufacture bread with one part
manioc flour to three of wheat flour. The result was excellent; but no
serious effort was ever made to put the manioc bread on the market.]
[Footnote 50: I must mention a surreptitious dish, _chatt_;--needless to say the
cats are not sold, but stolen. It is true that only a small class of
poor people eat cats; but they eat so many cats that cats have become
quite rare in St. Pierre. The custom is purely superstitious: it is
alleged that if you eat cat seven times, or if you eat seven cats, no
witch, wizard, or _quimboiseur_ can ever do you any harm; and the cat
ought to be eaten on Christmas Eve in order that the meal be perfectly
efficacious.... The mystic number "seven", enters into another and a
better creole superstition;--if you kill a serpent, seven great sins are
forgiven to you: _ou ké ni sept grands péchés effacé_.]
[Footnote 51: 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_.]
[Footnote 52: In the patois, "_yon rafale yche_,"--a "whirlwind of children."]