CHAPTER VII.

MARTINIQUE, "LE PAYS DES REVENANTS"

I.

Beautiful, beautiful Martinique! Well named art thou, _Le Pays des Revenants_, for my spirit will ne'er rest content until I have again revisited thy marvellous treasure-trove of beauty! If I were asked where in all the West Indies I would return with greatest delight, where I would wish to remain indefinitely, where I would choose to live, I should say first and last, in fair Martinique,--Empress of the Caribbees--with, however, an occasional visit to our dear Lady Charlotte of St. Thomas.

In the brilliant morning light when the sun crept to the tip of the deep green mountains and threw its slanting streams of glory over the white walls of St. Pierre, it seemed that, for the first time, my eyes were beholding the true essence of beauty. I had never before known what colour meant, I had never seen blue before, nor azure, nor green. I was in the mixing-room of Nature, where her first, and deepest, and richest dyes were thrown together in experiment; where, freed from all schools, she let loose the riot of her senses, producing effects of colour never dreamed of in her saner moods.

It has been my desire in these sketches to reproduce, as nearly as my powers permit, the exact impression which the Islands of the Caribs have left with me. I have hoped to take you to the islands with the same surprises awaiting you which awaited me, wishing thus to cling to Nature hand to hand, and to draw the picture freshly as our eyes first beheld its wonder. This has been my desire. But now I intend to change my habits for a moment.

Instead of asking you to join us in our morning walk, in sweet innocence of what might befall the traveller were he always to go thus unprepared on the island of Martinique, I shall ask you to sit with us here upon the broad white deck of our good ship, to talk over some of the marvellous tales which have been whispered to us, sullying the name of yonder fair isle. I cannot say that it will increase our pleasure, but it will certainly heighten the interest of the morning excursion. Do you recall the warnings of our black-coated friend of last evening--warnings against "_les serpents_," as he called them? He spoke from experience. Our derisive remarks about people who are for ever looking for snakes in every brush-pile were ill-timed, to say the least.

It seems that there is upon the island a species of reptile classed by the scientists as one of the family of _Trigonocephalus_, and known to the natives as the "_Fer de Lance_." The bite of this serpent is so deadly that, unless immediate help is procured, the victim cannot recover, and even with prompt medical aid recovery is doubtful. The island, one might say, is fairly under the domination of the _Fer de Lance_.

True, the East Indian mongoose has been imported in the hope of exterminating this common enemy; but when it was found that this little rascal, after a short period of snake-hunting, preferred to content himself with eggs and chickens,--a less dangerous prey,--leaving the forest wilds and taking up quarters in the more congenial surroundings of the farmyard, the hope of help from the mongoose was abandoned. The West Indian cannot live without chickens and eggs,--at least so he thinks,--and consternation prevailed when it was discovered that instead of his deadly enemy, his pet object of diet was being imperilled. So the mongoose, however worthy, must go. Just why the tiller of the soil could not, in the face of such danger, erect fortified chicken-houses, to protect his fowls against the felonious depredations of the mongoose, I cannot quite understand, unless it was too much trouble. At all events, he prefers to keep his chickens and the _Fer de Lance_, and do away with the mongoose, rather than run the risk of an occasional raid upon the hen-coop. So now the question is, how shall he get rid of the mongoose?

The mongoose is a plucky little fellow; and so Kipling vividly pictured him as "_Rikki-tiki-tavi_,"--a bright-eyed, big, brown weasel in appearance,--very efficient in killing the dangerous snakes of India. We saw them in confinement, the snappiest, most vicious little animals one could imagine. It is inexplicable to me that the inhabitants of Martinique should be willing to give up the fight against this great danger for the sake of a few hens; for my part, I would not object if all the fowls were destroyed and the feathers flew away to far Jamaica, if only after the little robber had had his feast, he would be willing to hunt his legitimate prey, the _Fer de Lance_.

From the various forms in which chicken appears on a West Indian table, and from the frequency of that appearance, I have come to the conclusion that, to do without fowls would be a greater grief than to be in constant peril from the bite of a snake. As for me, well--there are times when I feel that, without the least sacrifice, I could miss an occasional meal of fried eggs and stewed chicken. In fact, I am convinced that, if I had had fried eggs three hundred and sixty-three days of the year, I might not pine if the hens didn't lay the last two days. But there is no accounting for tastes. The West Indian doesn't look at it in that light.

The _Fer de Lance_ has been described as a rat-tailed, red-skinned, powerful-looking brute, from four to eight feet long; and, unlike most snakes, he is fearless, and as a rule will not get out of the way when he hears one coming. He takes his walks at night, unfortunately preferring the open road to the garden; the smooth patch before the house to the brushwood; and he even comes down into the gardens and paths about the city. This is the great danger of Martinique; yet, while it may seem more sure, more quickly certain to us, than the danger of other places, I do not know that it is so.

Wherever the foot of man finds habitation, danger goes hand in hand with beauty. Unseen danger of a thousand kinds, in poisonous vapours, in decaying flesh and vegetation, lurks hidden within the dwellings of all mankind; deeper, deadlier danger, too, than bolt of _Fer de Lance_, looks sullenly forth from the soul of God's own image--man; danger unto himself more terrible than the writhing, striking reptile of the night-shade; and, as knowledge comes only from an understanding of comparisons, I do not feel that Martinique, afflicted as she is, can vie in her troubles with the clangers which threaten mankind in some of her sister isles.

II.

The little girls and their father have all but lost their patience. "I'm ready now," I call to the beckoning eyes. "Just wait until I get the St. Thomas basket, and I'll be there." After a quick dash to the stateroom and back, I'm armed with the basket and umbrella. But after all these snake stories you would rather not join us in our morning walk? You're not nervous? That's fine; I like your spirit! Suppose we go first to the market, and then in a roundabout way to the Botanical Gardens.

There are always guide-books to be bought in every town; there are always those on shipboard who never separate themselves from a red cover; there are always those who tell you what you ought to see, and especially afterward what you ought to have seen; but we four are born dissenters; we kind o' forget about the mummies when there are live human beings to watch. We know the mummies will be there when we're tired of the rest, but we're not so sure of the people. It's such fun to find out what the natives are doing, thinking, saying; what they wear, what they eat, how they live, how they dance, and walk, and play, and work.

Here in Martinique we find the market a perfect babel of voices, all speaking a curious French _patois_.

It is next to impossible to distinguish one word from another in all that hum of highly pitched creole voices. The famous "_porteuses_"--long-limbed, slender, shapely, tall, and agile half-caste and negro girls--have brought their heavy burdens from the mountains and the country roundabout; and here they sit, like flowers in a garden, surrounded by their goods. Some have little piles of fruits, or of vegetables, cooked and ready to be eaten, wrapped in banana leaves; some have a stock of dried meats, made up into tiny portions; some sell fancy cakes; some, pies; others crouch down, fairly hidden by showy piles of calico and bright silks, with needles, threads, coarse laces, and beads scattered about them in great confusion.

And here are the sinewy men; the fishers with heaps of fish. Such beautiful fish! Does it seem credible that you can stand in a smelly fish-market, and be fairly enchanted by the colour and beauty of great trays of fish spread out upon a stone pavement? Their beauty is amazing. Here are enormous trays of flying fish, glittering silver, sweeter to the taste than any trout; here are others, all pink and red, and here are wee bits of fish sold by the glass--some sort of "white bait," maybe.

We elbow on through the babel of voices, looking, as I told you we did, for the palm salad, but there is none to be had. Still I remember its flavour, and I remember that the creole madame brought us a piece which she had bought in the market for four _sous_. It was very like a round stick of ivory, a foot and a half long and two inches in diameter. We shall have to be content with that one sight.

But what is the use in going to a market unless we can buy something? So we stop in front of a _porteuse_ as she squats behind her pile of fruit on the market floor, and buy oranges, and get almost a pint of coppers in change for one silver piece; but not without grave doubts on the part of the seller. She looks at our silver and shakes her head, and all her neighbours come together, and the colours of their bright turbans and the little funny ends of handkerchiefs tied so that they stand up on top of the head like plumes,--all these ends flutter and bob as they comment in their funny French, while we tell the women that our money is good, good silver. Finally a big-eyed, handsome girl comes elbowing along and proudly explains to her doubting sisters that we are right; then at last we get our change, distribute it in our various pockets, take our oranges, and leave the market.

III.

Eager as the children are to reach _Le Jardin des Plantes_, the famous Botanical Gardens of Martinique, we must stop on our way for a closer inspection of one of these bright birds of the forest,--the Martinique _porteuse_.

The women of the tropics have an affinity for nature such as we of the North cannot comprehend. As the forest and the flowers and the birds and the insects abound in marvellous hues, so do these children of the sun love to bedeck themselves in all the schemes of colour known to the dyer's art. Let us, just for the sake of the picture it will give us, stop this woman coming and make excuse to buy one of the green cocoanuts of which she seems to carry a great load on her head. Look at her! Isn't she magnificent!

Have you heard of the feats of endurance which these young girls perform? How they will carry upon their heads, over one hundred pounds out from St. Pierre across the mountains, a distance of fifty miles in one day? And this while barefooted and at all times of the year, through all kinds of weather, through dry seasons and wet seasons. Not only on such days as these, when the air is sweet and cool in the shade, but days when the sun scorches and withers, even under the deep recesses of vine-clad porch and lattice. She is the ever-willing burden-bearer, the unloader of ships, the handler of cargoes, the welcome carrier of bread for the early breakfast in mountain homes, the vender of all stuffs and utensils by the roadside where no cart could well be taken; where even the patient donkey might refuse to go. Agile, nimble, erect of body, motionless of head, with eyes that pierce into every crook and turn of the way, and poised like a queen, she is the dweller among the green, yellow, red, and purple of the forest, and in her love of colour she follows in her adornments the strong instincts of nature. She it is whose burden is so great that were she herself to attempt to lift it or take it from her head, it might mean a rupture, a dislocation, or a broken vein; she it is whom all men, from the richest to the poorest, help to unload, so great is the respect in which she is held.

And yet we talk of the idleness, the weakness bred in the tropics! It is true that continual summer enervates, and necessitates slow methods of living; but I can truthfully say, that (outside of Haïti), I saw less vagabond-age, less indolence, in the West Indies, than in any of our Southern States. We were constantly witnessing most remarkable feats of endurance in both men and women. In these countries the horse is scarce, and the donkey costs money, so that the human back becomes the carry-all for the plunder of man.

This motionless bronze statue before us, with the great tray of fruit, appears--to one unaccustomed--more than indifferent whether we buy or not, for she stands there, mute, her fruits higher than our own heads; she is tall to begin with, and the great tray itself is six inches higher, and the head pad on which it rests is more than an inch thick; so, altogether, it is so high that we can only make a guess at the fruit she carries, from the fringe on the edge and the pyramid on top. This is our first experience with _la porteuse_, and we wait for her to stoop, camel-like, to unload. But not she! She knows too well the possible penalty of such rashness, and quietly stands with her quick eyes questioning us, and we stand wondering what she wants us to do.

The kerchief about her shoulders over a light chemise rivals the rainbow. I try to fix my eyes on some predominating colour, but when I decide that it is yellow, in will blaze a green stronger than the yellow, and then huge red roses splash their lurid colour into the yellow and green, and royal purple and blue daisies and magenta buttercups career around in wild indifference as to conventional form and tint. A loose calico frock hangs to her ankles, with the bare, tireless feet, straight, shapely and well-formed, showing beneath.

Intelligence dawns upon us at last, and the tall man reaches for a green cocoanut, just toppling on the edge of the tray, for we realise we must reach for the fruit if we want it. This cocoanut, encased in its green husk, is just about the size of a small melon, and has a striated, light-green, smooth skin. A vender near by, interested in the purchase, and charitable to the strangers, takes the cocoanut, and, with a sharp knife, dexterously pares off one end, and with a slash straight across the top, cuts through the still soft shell, and hands it to us ready to quench our thirst with a long pull, for there is as yet no meat in the cocoanut, only a quantity of the rich milk. I cannot say that it is particularly good, or particularly bad; it has an inoffensive sweet taste, is said to be perfectly harmless, and is one of the few fruits of the tropics that the uninitiated can eat with impunity. After we have all drunk, there seems to be quite a bit of the milk left. So it goes to the most insistent of the crowd of small boys, who are, as usual, escorting us with much enjoyment, and a constant merry chatter of French.

Let us move on now up the clean stone street, up, and up, and up, passing many a walled recess where sparkling jets of water fill the jars brought to the fountain by barefooted girls,--up and on, on and up, past votive shrines--_les chapelles_--and high-walled gardens, coming finally to the broad avenue leading to the Botanical Garden,--the same road from which we were so glad to escape the night before. We follow the white, dusty road in the bright sunlight, with now and then glimpses of the mountains above, and come at last to the broad stone gateway of _Le Jardin des Plantes_, which, entering, plunges us at once into the deep shades and marvellous beauty of a tropical forest.

IV.

Oh, that I had words and power and skill to paint even a shadow of the beauty before me to a likeness of itself! Here Nature defies all art of pen, of thought, and brush of man! She seems to glory in the impossible loveliness of her face and form--impossible to reproduce through art or reason. Here one should find new words--words more intense, more poignant, more vividly keen to cut into the heart of the matchless colours and shades. No description can ever bring accurately to the mind the wealth, the magnificent beauty of such a spot upon God's earth.

With skilful art, the French have utilised the hand of Nature in the formation of this wonderful garden to such a degree of perfection that none can tell, unless a master, where the two fair sisters, Art and Nature, first embraced. The natural tropical forest, running up a great ravine into the mountains, is intersected by broad and winding paths that lead from one fair view to another by mossy flights of rough stone steps. Through a rift in the hillside, down an abyss of heavy, wet foliage of a green so intense that the eye can scarcely conceive its depth of colour, cataracts of water leap through the abiding shade, through the ever-growing, ever-dying processes of nature, down into a pool whose depths reflect the blue glimmering sky and the vivid green of over-hanging vines in opalescent sheen. Great clumps of bamboo, with long, slim, arrow-shaped leaves, hang gracefully, waving like giant grass, over the walk; and an ancient bridge, ablaze with purple vines, reaches out from under the rustling thickets and spans a branch of the _Rivière Roxelane_, a delicious mountain stream which murmurs on through the forest, filling one with poetic musings as to whence came its romantic name.

On we sauntered heedless as to time, sheltered from the sun by the impenetrable shade of arborescent ferns and towering palms, and lured ever deeper into the forest, into the wonders of God's marvellous creation by some unspeakable burst of beauty just beyond.

Here we find not only the trees indigenous to the soil, but trees native to all tropical climates, from all parts of the world, for this garden is the pride of the island and a wonder of the Indies. The names and habitations of foreign trees are most skilfully marked on enamelled plates fastened to the trees, part of the plate bearing the carefully engraved botanical name, the lower part containing a coloured map, indicating the country to which the tree is native.

What a pitiably weak understanding we have of God's unending and infinite creation! However much we read of life in remoter countries the mind, like a rubber ball, ever reverts with persistent force to its original point of view. So that we, the dwellers in the North, in the land of ice and snow, of pines and duller hues, where Nature bestows her gifts with somewhat sparing hand,--we of the North forget the limitless power of creative energy, and when we come into such an overwhelming feast of colour as in this mighty forest, sighing and breathing for very burden of beauty, we try in vain to reconcile our former crude conceptions of the Creator with this new, vast revelation of his unspeakable power.

As we penetrate deeper and ever deeper into the forest, the mind reels under the effort to grasp the marvels of plant and tree and earth. Vines hang in long festoons from tree to tree, and drop down before the face in thousands of living ropes, which seem to have the power of returning upon themselves and growing up again without any visible support. Parasites, air-plants, and orchids--not singly, but in millions--cover giant trunks so that the tree itself is lost in the growth external. Off through a break in the deepest green, I see for the first time that queen of the tropics, the _Amherstia nobilis_, called--and well named, indeed--"the Flamboyant," the most magnificent flowering tree in the world: tall and heavenly leafed, of graceful form, its top covered by a mass of brilliant flowers so vividly red and of such size as to seem like a blaze of fire in the forest shade. And taller than all the others of its kind, the Royal Palm lifts its regal head out into the freedom of light and air, and sways its majestic plumes in rhythmic motion. How well the Spanish do to call it "_the palm_," in distinction from all others.

Everywhere about you, life, life ever coming, ever going. A deep, impenetrable wall of green, denser, thicker than any fretwork, keeps you to the path. A native lad springs into the black, green, brown depth, and you shudder involuntarily; there might be danger. The two figures--hand in hand, Life and Death--haunt the dim green shadows about you.

V.

We are joined by friends as we wander on, following the sound of tumbling water. It comes to us as a surprise, for the forest has been wrapped in a deep silence; its slumberous shade has not been broken by a single bird-note; all animal life is quiescent. A few steps more and we come to a cleft in the mountain, an opening in the green vault, and a veil of glistening water drops between us and a wall of cool, sweet ferns. The spell of the forest is about us. We turn down a steep path in silent awe before so great a masterpiece.

Our party separate, we linger behind while our friends stroll on and are lost in an abrupt turn of the path. The straight noonday sun makes white patches upon the walk; strange heavy odours, as of earth dead a thousand years lifting up her soul again in rebellion against her long, deep sleep, steal about us. Suddenly from the deathlike stillness of the forest there comes a shriek, followed by sounds of commotion. We run quickly in the direction of the voices. My friend's white face tells the story; it was the _Fer de Lance_. We could see nothing. The flight had been swift; it was impossible for her to say how it ever came there, whether it had dropped from the limb of a tree, as she thought, or had sprung from a bush, but suddenly it was there, lying in a double coil at her feet. It made a strange rapping sound upon the earth, and darted swiftly off into the undergrowth. A few of us, much affrighted, lead the way most precipitately down the ravine to the gateway. We carry our umbrellas aloft in spite of the shade, and, shuddering, secretly envy the one who saw the _Fer de Lance_.

VI.

After all, I am glad that we did not accept the offer of a carriage for Morne Rouge, for it is a long drive to the summit of the mountain,--fully four hours there and back,--and had we gone, the journey must needs be made with great haste; so we chose rather to leave before satiety deadened our enjoyment. But there will come other days in Martinique--there must come other days, for is not this _Le Pays des Revenants_? Must we not see Gros Morne, Capot, Marigot, and La Grande Anse, hidden away in the mountains, asleep in their sunlit valleys, and the wild forest--_le grand bois_--and _La Pelée_, the old volcano with the queer lake in its extinct crater, and the cavern-like opening in its cleft side, where it is said that even yet there may be occasionally heard strange groanings and fearsome hissings--shall we not come some day to see all this?

We take the road to the left and follow down the _Rivière Roxelane_ to St. Pierre. As we join our friends returning from the mountain, they share with us a calabash of wild red strawberries which they bought by the roadside. The berries have that rare, delicious _bouquet_ found only in the wild fruits, and, as one would naturally suppose, have their own funny way of growing; small and pointed and very compact. We hover around the one who holds the calabash until all are gone, and then indolently follow the stream, passing a group of women under a shady mango-tree, spreading heaps of cacao (chocolate) beans on the ground to dry; where we linger, tasting the beans and trying to chat, ever fascinated by the natives and their ways; and then wander on toward the stony pavements and narrow streets of the city; and thence down to the landing-place.

Night draws over. The quickly falling luminous night of the tropics. How can I bring again the witchery of that vision? The greenly liquid sky, the great yellow moon, the near, the brilliant stars, and the deep, dark Morne, covering her wild luxuriance with violet clouds, and back of all "_La Montagne_"--_Pelée_, the sleeping; the sounds--distant, low, mellow; the moving, glistening phosphorescent water, and Martinique, in white slumber, fading astern.