Friedrich Kerst and Henry Edward Krehbiel - "Mozart: The Man and the Artist, as Revealed in his own Words"

John George Bourinot - "The Intellectual Development of the Canadian People"

Robert Hichens - "The Woman With The Fan"

Fulgence Marion - "Wonderfull Balloon Ascents"

Two Years in the French West Indies

L >> Lafcadio Hearn >> Two Years in the French West Indies






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



[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.

[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.

[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."

[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.

[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.]

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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"

[10] Vol. iii., p. 382-3. Edition of 1722.]

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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?"

[16] "Kiss me now!"

[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!

[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."

[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.

[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.

[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.

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