Wang Xu - "Wenyuange Sikuquanshu"

Charles W. Sanders - "Sanders' Union Fourth Reader"

Rutherford Platt - "First Book of Adam and Eve"

Lawrence J. Leslie - "The Strange Cabin on Catamount Island"

Two Years in the French West Indies

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




Picturesqueness and color: these are the particular and the
unrivalled charms of St. Pierre. As you pursue the Grande Rue,
or Rue Victor Hugo,--which traverses the town through all its
length, undulating over hill-slopes and into hollows and over a
bridge,--you become more and more enchanted by the contrast of
the yellow-glowing walls to right and left with the jagged strip
of gentian-blue sky overhead. Charming also it is to watch
the cross-streets climbing up to the fiery green of the
mountains behind the town. On the lower side of the main
thoroughfare other streets open in wonderful bursts of blue-warm
blue of horizon and sea. The steps by which these ways descend
towards the bay are black with age, and slightly mossed close to
the wall on either side: they have an alarming steepness,--one
might easily stumble from the upper into the lower street.
Looking towards the water through these openings from the Grande
Rue, you will notice that the sea-line cuts across the blue space
just at the level of the upper story of the house on the lower
street-corner. Sometimes, a hundred feet below, you see a ship
resting in the azure aperture,--seemingly suspended there in sky-
color, floating in blue light. And everywhere and always, through
sunshine or shadow, comes to you the scent of the city,--the
characteristic odor of St. Pierre;--a compound odor suggesting
the intermingling of sugar and garlic in those strange tropical
dishes which creoles love....



XII.


... A population fantastic, astonishing,--a population of the
Arabian Nights. It is many-colored; but the general dominant
tint is yellow, like that of the town itself--yellow in the
interblending of all the hues characterizing _mulâtresse,
capresse, griffe, quarteronne, métisse, chabine,_--a general
effect of rich brownish yellow. You are among a people of half-
breeds,--the finest mixed race of the West Indies.

Straight as palms, and supple and tall, these colored women and
men impress one powerfully by their dignified carriage and easy
elegance of movement. They walk without swinging of the
shoulders;--the perfectly set torso seems to remain rigid; yet
the step is a long full stride, and the whole weight is springily
poised on the very tip of the bare foot. All, or nearly all, are
without shoes: the treading of many naked feet over the heated
pavement makes a continuous whispering sound.

... Perhaps the most novel impression of all is that produced by
the singularity and brilliancy of certain of the women's
costumes. These were developed, at least a hundred years ago, by
some curious sumptuary law regulating the dress of slaves and
colored people of free condition,--a law which allowed
considerable liberty as to material and tint, prescribing chiefly
form. But some of these fashions suggest the Orient: they offer
beautiful audacities of color contrast; and the full-dress
coiffure, above all, is so strikingly Eastern that one might be
tempted to believe it was first introduced into the colony by
some Mohammedan slave. It is merely an immense Madras
handkerchief, which is folded about the head with admirable art,
like a turban;--one bright end pushed through at the top in
front, being left sticking up like a plume. Then this turban,
always full of bright canary-color, is fastened with golden
brooches,--one in front and one at either side. As for the
remainder of the dress, it is simple enough: an embroidered, low-
cut chemise with sleeves; a skirt or _jupe_, very long behind,
but caught up and fastened in front below the breasts so as to
bring the hem everywhere to a level with the end of the long
chemise; and finally a _foulard_, or silken kerchief, thrown over
the shoulders. These _jupes_ and _foulards_, however, are
exquisite in pattern and color: bright crimson, bright yellow,
bright blue, bright green,--lilac, violet, rose,--sometimes
mingled in plaidings or checkerings or stripings: black with
orange, sky-blue with purple. And whatever be the colors of the
costume, which vary astonishingly, the coiffure must be yellow-
brilliant, flashing yellow--the turban is certain to have yellow
stripes or yellow squares. To this display add the effect of
costly and curious jewellery: immense earrings, each pendant being
formed of five gold cylinders joined together (cylinders sometimes
two inches long, and an inch at least in circumference);--a necklace
of double, triple, quadruple, or quintuple rows of large hollow gold
beads (sometimes smooth, but generally ally graven)--the wonderful
_collier-choux_. Now, this glowing jewellery is not a mere
imitation of pure metal: the ear-rings are worth one hundred and
seventy-five francs a pair; the necklace of a Martinique quadroon
may cost five hundred or even one thousand francs.... It may be
the gift of her lover, her _doudoux_, but such articles are
usually purchased either on time by small payments, or bead by
bead singly until the requisite number is made up.

But few are thus richly attired: the greater number of the women
carrying burdens on their heads,--peddling vegetables, cakes,
fruit, ready-cooked food, from door to door,--are very simply
dressed in a single plain robe of vivid colors (_douillette_)
reaching from neck to feet, and made with a train, but generally
girded well up so as to sit close to the figure and leave the
lower limbs partly bare and perfectly free. These women can walk
all day long up and down hill in the hot sun, without shoes,
carrying loads of from one hundred to one hundred and fifty
pounds on their heads; and if their little stock sometimes fails
to come up to the accustomed weight stones are added to make it
heavy enough. Doubtless the habit of carrying everything in this
way from childhood has much to do with the remarkable vigor and
erectness of the population.... I have seen a grand-piano
carried on the heads of four men. With the women the load is
very seldom steadied with the hand after having been once placed
in position. The head remains almost most motionless; but the
black, quick, piercing eyes flash into every window and door-way
to watch for a customer's signal. And the creole street-cries,
uttered in a sonorous, far-reaching high key, interblend and
produce random harmonies very pleasant to hear.

..._"Çe moune-là, ça qui lè bel mango?"_ Her basket of mangoes
certainly weighs as much as herself.... _"Ça qui lè bel avocat?,"_
The alligator-pear--cuts and tastes like beautiful green cheese...
_"Ça qui lè escargot?"_ Call her, if you like snails.... _"Ca qui lè
titiri?"_ Minuscule fish, of which a thousand would scarcely
fill a tea-cup;--one of the most delicate of Martinique
dishes.... _"Ça qui lè canna?--Ça qui lè charbon?--Ça qui lè di pain
aubè?" (Who wants ducks, charcoal, or pretty little loaves
shaped like cucumbers.)... _"Ça qui lè pain-mi?"_ A sweet maize
cake in the form of a tiny sugar-loaf, wrapped in a piece of
banana leaf.... _"Ça qui lè fromassé" (pharmacie) "lapotécai
créole?"_ She deals in creole roots and herbs, and all the
leaves that make _tisanes_ or poultices or medicines:
_matriquin, feuill-corossol, balai-doux, manioc-chapelle, Marie-
Perrine, graine-enba-feuill, bois d'lhomme, zhèbe-gras, bonnet-
carré, zhèbe-codeinne, zhèbe-à-femme, zhèbe-à-châtte, canne-
dleau, poque, fleu-papillon, lateigne,_ and a score of others
you never saw or heard of before.... _"Ça qui lè dicaments?"_
(overalls for laboring-men).... _"Çé moune-là, si ou pa lè
acheté canari-à dans lanmain moin, moin ké crazé y."_ The vender
of red clay cooking-pots;--she has only one left, if you do not
buy it she will break it!

_"Hé! zenfants-la!--en deho'!"_ Run out to meet her, little
children, if you like the sweet rice-cakes.... _"Hé! gens pa'
enho', gens pa' enbas, gens di galtas, moin ni bel gououôs
poisson!"_ Ho! people up-stairs, people down-stairs, and all ye
good folks who dwell in the attics,--know that she has very big
and very beautiful fish to sell!... _"Hé! ça qui lé mangé
yonne?"_--those are "akras,"--flat yellow-brown cakes, made of
pounded codfish, or beans, or both, seasoned with pepper and
fried in butter.... And then comes the pastry-seller, black as
ebony, but dressed all in white, and white-aproned and white.
capped like a French cook, and chanting half in French, half in
creole, with a voice like a clarinet:

_"C'est louvouier de la pâtisserie qui passe,
Qui té ka veillé pou' gagner son existence,
Toujours content,
Toujours joyeux.
Oh, qu'ils sont bons!--
Oh, qu'ils sont doux!"_

It is the pastryman passing by, who has been up all night to
gain his livelihood,--always content,--always happy.... Oh, how
good they are (the pies)!--Oh, how sweet they are!

... The quaint stores bordering both sides of the street bear no
names and no signs over their huge arched doors;--you must look
well inside to know what business is being done. Even then you
will scarcely be able to satisfy yourself as to the nature of the
commerce;--for they are selling gridirons and frying-pans in the
dry goods stores, holy images and rosaries in the notion stores,
sweet-cakes and confectionery in the crockery stores, coffee and
stationery in the millinery stores, cigars and tobacco in the
china stores, cravats and laces and ribbons in the jewellery
stores, sugar and guava jelly in the tobacco stores! But of all
the objects exposed for sale the most attractive, because the
most exotic, is a doll,--the Martinique _poupée_. There are two
kinds,--the _poupée-capresse_, of which the body is covered with
smooth reddish-brown leather, to imitate the tint of the capresse
race; and the _poupée-négresse_, covered with black leather. When
dressed, these dolls range in price from eleven to thirty-five
francs,--some, dressed to order, may cost even more; and a good
_poupée-négresse_ is a delightful curiosity. Both varieties of
dolls are attired in the costume of the people; but the _négresse_
is usually dressed the more simply. Each doll has a broidered
chemise, a tastefully arranged _jupe_ of bright hues; a silk _foulard_,
a _collier-choux_, ear-rings of five cylinders (_zanneaux-à-clous_),
and a charming little yellow-banded Madras turban. Such a doll is a
perfect costume-model,--a perfect miniature of Martinique fashions, to
the smallest details of material and color: it is almost too artistic
for a toy.

[Illustration: ITINERANT PASTRY-SELLER. "Tourjours content,
Toujours joyeux."]

These old costume-colors of Martinique-always relieved by
brilliant yellow stripings or checkerings, except in the special
violet dresses worn on certain religious occasions--have an
indescribable luminosity,--a wonderful power of bringing out the
fine warm tints of this tropical flesh. Such are the hues of
those rich costumes Nature gives to her nearest of kin and her
dearest,--her honey-lovers--her insects: these are wasp-colors.
I do not know whether the fact ever occurred to the childish
fancy of this strange race; but there is a creole expression
which first suggested it to me;--in the patois, _pouend guêpe_,
"to catch a wasp," signifies making love to a pretty colored
girl. ... And the more one observes these costumes, the more one
feels that only Nature could .have taught such rare comprehension
of powers and harmonies among colors,--such knowledge of
chromatic witchcrafts and chromatic laws.

... This evening, as I write, La Pelée is more heavily coiffed
than is her wont. Of purple and lilac cloud the coiffure is,--a
magnificent Madras, yellow-banded by the sinking sun. La Pelée
is in _costume de fête_, like a _capresse_ attired for a baptism
or a ball; and in her phantom turban one great star glimmers for
a brooch.



XIII.


Following the Rue Victor Hugo in the direction of the Fort,--
crossing the Rivière Roxelane, or Rivière des Blanchisseuses,
whose rocky bed is white with unsoaped linen far as the eye can
reach,--you descend through some tortuous narrow streets into the
principal marketplace. [1]

A square--well paved and well shaded--with a fountain in the
midst. Here the dealers are seated in rows;--one half of the
market is devoted to fruits and vegetables; the other to the
sale of fresh fish and meats. On first entering you are confused
by the press and deafened by the storm of creole chatter;--then
you begin to discern some order in this chaos, and to observe
curious things.

In the middle of the paved square, about the market fountain,
are lying boats filled with fish, which have been carried up from
the water upon men's shoulders,--or, if very heavy, conveyed on
rollers.... Such fish!--blue, rosy, green, lilac, scarlet, gold:
no spectral tints these, but luminous and strong like fire. Here
also you see heaps of long thin fish looking like piled bars of
silver,--absolutely dazzling,--of almost equal thickness from
head to tail;--near by are heaps of flat pink creatures;--beyond
these, again, a mass of azure backs and golden bellies. Among
the stalls you can study the monsters,--twelve or fifteen feet
long,--the shark, the _vierge_, the sword fish, the _tonne_,--or
the eccentricities. Some are very thin round disks, with long,
brilliant, wormy feelers in lieu of fins, flickering in all
directions like a moving pendent silver fringe;--others bristle
with spines;--others, serpent-bodied, are so speckled as to
resemble shapes of red polished granite. These are _moringues_.
The _balaou, couliou, macriau, lazard, tcha-tcha, bonnique_, and
_zorphi_ severally represent almost all possible tints of blue
and violet. The _souri_ is rose-color and yellow; the
_cirurgien_ is black, with yellow and red stripes; the _patate_,
black and yellow; the _gros-zié_ is vermilion; the _couronné_,
red and black. Their names are not less unfamiliar than their
shapes and tints;-the _aiguille-de-mer_, or sea-needle, long and
thin as a pencil;-the _Bon-Dié-manié-moin_ ("the Good-God
handled me"), which has something like finger-marks upon it;--
the _lambi_, a huge sea-snail;--the _pisquette_, the _laline_
(the Moon);--the _crapaud-de-mer_, or sea-toad, with a dangerous
dorsal fin;--the _vermeil_, the _jacquot_, the _chaponne_, and
fifty others.... As the sun gets higher, banana or balisier
leaves are laid over the fish.

Even more puzzling, perhaps, are the astonishing varieties of
green, yellow, and parti-colored vegetables,--and fruits of all
hues and forms,--out of which display you retain only a confused
general memory of sweet smells and luscious colors. But there
are some oddities which impress the recollection in a particular
way. One is a great cylindrical ivory-colored thing,--shaped
like an elephant's tusk, except that it is not curved: this is
the head of the cabbage-palm, or palmiste,--the brain of one of
the noblest trees in the tropics, which must be totally destroyed
to obtain it. Raw or cooked, it is eaten in a great variety of
ways,--in salads, stews, fritters, or _akras_. Soon after this
compact cylinder of young germinating leaves has been removed,
large worms begin to appear in the hollow of the dead tree,--the
_vers-palmiste_. You may see these for sale in the market,
crawling about in bowls or cans: they are said, when fried alive,
to taste like almonds, and are esteemed as a great luxury.

... Then you begin to look about you at the faces of
the black, brown, and yellow people who are watching at you
curiously from beneath their Madras turbans, or from under the
shade of mushroom-shaped hats as large as umbrellas. And as you
observe the bare backs, bare shoulders, bare legs and arms and
feet, you will find that the colors of flesh are even more varied
and surprising than the colors of fruit. Nevertheless, it is
only with fruit-colors that many of these skin-tints can be
correctly be compared; the only terms of comparison used by the
colored people themselves being terms of this kind,--such as
_peau-chapotille_, "sapota-skin." The _sapota_ or _sapotille_ is
a juicy brown fruit with a rind satiny like a human cuticle, and
just the color, when flushed and ripe, of certain half-breed
skins. But among the brighter half-breeds, the colors, I think,
are much more fruit-like;--there are banana-tints, lemon-tones,
orange-hues, with sometimes such a mingling of ruddiness as in
the pink ripening of a mango. Agreeable to the eye the darker
skins certainly are, and often very remarkable--all clear tones
of bronze being represented; but the brighter tints are
absolutely beautiful. Standing perfectly naked at door-ways, or
playing naked in the sun, astonishing children may sometimes be
seen,--banana-colored or gulf orange babies, There is one rare
race-type, totally unseen like the rest: the skin has a perfect
gold-tone, an exquisite metallic yellow the eyes are long, and
have long silky lashes;--the hair is a mass of thick, rich,
glossy the curls that show blue lights in the sun. What mingling
of races produced this beautiful type?--there is some strange
blood in the blending,--not of coolie, nor of African, nor of
Chinese, although there are Chinese types here of indubitable
beauty. [2]

... All this population is vigorous, graceful, healthy: all you
see passing by are well made--there are no sickly faces, no
scrawny limbs. If by some rare chance you encounter a person who
has lost an arm or a leg, you can be almost certain you are
looking at a victim of the fer-de-lance,--the serpent whose venom
putrefies living tissue.... Without fear of exaggerating facts,
I can venture to say that the muscular development of the
working-men here is something which must be seen in order to
be believed;--to study fine displays of it, one should watch the
blacks and half-breeds working naked to the waist,--on the
landings, in the gas-houses and slaughter-houses or on the
nearest plantations. They are not generally large men, perhaps
not extraordinarily powerful; but they have the aspect of
sculptural or even of anatomical models; they seem absolutely
devoid of adipose tissue; their muscles stand out with a saliency
that astonishes the eye. At a tanning-yard, while I was watching
a dozen blacks at work, a young mulatto with the mischievous face
of a faun walked by, wearing nothing but a clout (_lantcho_)
about his loins; and never, not even in bronze, did I see so
beautiful a play of muscles. A demonstrator of anatomy could
have used him for a class-model;--a sculptor wishing to shape a
fine Mercury would have been satisfied to take a cast of such a
body without thinking of making one modification from neck to
heel. "Frugal diet is the cause of this physical condition," a
young French professor assures me; "all these men," he says,
"live upon salt codfish and fruit." But frugal living alone could
never produce such symmetry and saliency of muscles: race-
crossing, climate, perpetual exercise, healthy labor--many
conditions must have combined to cause it. Also it is certain
that this tropical sun has a tendency to dissolve spare flesh, to
melt away all superfluous tissue, leaving the muscular fibre
dense and solid as mahogany.

At the _mouillage_, below a green _morne_, is the bathing-
place. A rocky beach rounding away under heights of tropical
wood;--palms curving out above the sand, or bending half-way
across it. Ships at anchor in blue water, against golden-yellow
horizon. A vast blue glow. Water clear as diamond, and lukewarm.

It is about one hour after sunrise; and the high parts of
Montaigne Pelée are still misty blue. Under the
palms and among the lava rocks, and also in little cabins
farther up the slope, bathers are dressing or undressing: the
water is also dotted with heads of swimmers. Women and girls
enter it well robed from feet to shoulders;--men go in very
sparsely clad;--there are lads wearing nothing. Young boys--
yellow and brown little fellows--run in naked, and swim out to
pointed rocks that jut up black above the bright water. They
climb up one at a time to dive down. Poised for the leap upon
the black lava crag, and against the blue light of the sky, each
lithe figure, gilded by the morning sun, has a statuesqueness and
a luminosity impossible to paint in words. These bodies seem to
radiate color; and the azure light intensifies the hue: it is
idyllic, incredible;--Coomans used paler colors in his Pompeiian
studies, and his figures were never so symmetrical. This flesh
does not look like flesh, but like fruit-pulp....



XIV.


... Everywhere crosses, little shrines, way-side chapels,
statues of saints. You will see crucifixes and statuettes even
in the forks or hollows of trees shadowing the high-roads. As
you ascend these towards the interior you will see, every mile or
half-mile, some chapel, or a cross erected upon a pedestal of
masonry, or some little niche contrived in a wall, closed by a
wire grating, through which the image of a Christ or a Madonna is
visible. Lamps are kept burning all night before these figures.
But the village of Morne Rouge--some two thousand feet above the
sea, and about an hour's drive from St. Pierre--is chiefly
remarkable for such displays: it is a place of pilgrimage as well
as a health resort. Above the village, upon the steep slope of a
higher morne, one may note a singular succession of little
edifices ascending to the summit,--fourteen little tabernacles,
each containing a _relievo_ representing some incident of Christ's
Passion. This is called _Le Calvaire_: it requires more than a feeble
piety to perform the religious exercise of climbing the height,
and saying a prayer before each little shrine on the way. From
the porch of the crowning structure the village of Morne Rouge
appears so far below that it makes one almost dizzy to look at
it; but even for the profane one ascent is well worth making, for
the sake of the beautiful view. On all the neighboring heights
around are votive chapels or great crucifixes.

St. Pierre is less peopled with images than Morne Rouge; but it
has several colossal ones, which may be seen from any part of the
harbor. On the heights above the middle quarter, or _Centre_, a
gigantic Christ overlooks the bay; and from the Morne d'Orange,
which bounds the city on the south, a great white Virgin-Notre
Dame de la Garde, patron of mariners--watches above the ships at
anchor in the mouillage.

... Thrice daily, from the towers of the white cathedral, a
superb chime of bells rolls its _carillon_ through the town. On
great holidays the bells are wonderfully rung;--the ringers are
African, and something of African feeling is observable in their
impressive but in cantatory manner of ringing. The _bourdon_
must have cost a fortune. When it is made to speak, the effect
is startling: all the city vibrates to a weird sound difficult to
describe,--an abysmal, quivering moan, producing unfamiliar
harmonies as the voices of the smaller bells are seized and
interblended by it. ...One will not easily forget the ringing of
a _bel-midi_.

... Behind the cathedral, above the peaked city roofs, and at
the foot of the wood-clad Morne d'Orange, is the _Cimetière du
Mouillage_. ... It is full of beauty,--this strange tropical
cemetery. Most of the low tombs are covered with small square
black and white tiles, set exactly after the fashion of the
squares on a chess-board; at the foot of each grave stands a black
cross, bearing on its centre a little white plaque, on which the
name is graven in delicate and tasteful lettering. So pretty these
little tombs are, that you might almost believe yourself in a toy
cemetery. Here and there, again, are miniature marble chapels built
over the dead,--containing white Madonnas and Christs and little
angels,--while flowering creepers climb and twine about the
pillars. Death seems so luminous here that one thinks of it
unconciously as a soft rising from this soft green earth,--like a
vapor invisible,--to melt into the prodigious day. Everything is
bright and neat and beautiful; the air is sleepy with jasmine
scent and odor of white lilies; and the palm--emblem of
immortality--lifts its head a hundred feet into the blue light.
There are rows of these majestic and symbolic trees;--two
enormous ones guard the entrance;--the others rise from among the
tombs,--white-stemmed, out-spreading their huge parasols of
verdure higher than the cathedral towers.

[Illustration: IN THE CIMETÈRE DU MOUILLAGE, ST. PIERRE.]

Behind all this, the dumb green life of the morne seems striving
to descend, to invade the rest of the dead. It thrusts green
hands over the wall,--pushes strong roots underneath;--it attacks
every joint of the stone-work, patiently, imperceptibly, yet
almost irresistibly.

... Some day there may be a great change in the little city of
St. Pierre;--there may be less money and less zeal and less
remembrance of the lost. Then from the morne, over the bulwark,
the green host will move down unopposed;--creepers will prepare
the way, dislocating the pretty tombs, pulling away the checkered
tiling;--then will corne the giants, rooting deeper,--feeling
for the dust of hearts, groping among the bones;--and all that
love has hidden away shall be restored to Nature,--absorbed into
the rich juices of her verdure,--revitalized in her bursts of
color,--resurrected in her upliftings of emerald and gold to the
great sun....

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