Part 3

We stay at Roseau only long enough to land the mails, and wonder at the loveliness of the island. A beautifully wrinkled mass of green and blue and gray;--a strangely abrupt peaking and heaping of the land. Behind the green heights loom the blues; behind these the grays--all pinnacled against the sky-glow--thrusting up through gaps or behind promontories. Indescribably exquisite the foldings and hollowings of the emerald coast. In glen and vale the color of cane-fields shines like a pooling of fluid bronze, as if the luminous essence of the hill tints had been dripping down and clarifying there. Far to our left, a bright green spur pierces into the now turquoise sea; and beyond it, a beautiful mountain form, blue and curved like a hip, slopes seaward, showing lighted wrinkles here and there, of green. And from the foreground, against the blue of the softly outlined shape, cocoa-palms are curving,--all sharp and shining in the sun.

... Another hour; and Martinique looms before us. At first it appears all gray, a vapory gray; then it becomes bluish-gray; then all green.

It is another of the beautiful volcanic family: it owns the same hill shapes with which we have already become acquainted; its uppermost height is hooded with the familiar cloud; we see the same gold-yellow plains, the same wonderful varieties of verdancy, the same long green spins reaching out into the sea,--doubtless formed by old lava torrents. But all this is now repeated for us more imposingly, more grandiosely;--it is wrought upon a larger scale than anything we have yet seen. The semicircular sweep of the harbor, dominated by the eternally veiled summit of the Montagne Pelée (misnamed, since it is green to the very clouds), from which the land slopes down on either hand to the sea by gigantic undulations, is one of the fairest sights that human eye can gaze upon. Thus viewed, the whole island shape is a mass of green, with purplish streaks and shadowings here and there: glooms of forest-hollows, or moving umbrages of cloud. The city of St. Pierre, on the edge of the land, looks as if it had slid down the hill behind it, so strangely do the streets come tumbling to the port in cascades of masonry,--with a red billowing of tiled roofs over all, and enormous palms poking up through it,--higher even than the creamy white twin towers of its cathedral.

We anchor in limpid blue water; the cannon-shot is answered by a prolonged thunder-dapping of mountain echo.

Then from the shore a curious flotilla bears down upon us. There is one boat, two or three canoes; but the bulk of the craft are simply wooden frames,--flat-bottomed structures, made from shipping-cases or lard-boxes, with triangular ends. In these sit naked boys,--boys between ten and fourteen years of age,--varying in color from a fine clear yellow to a deep reddish-brown or chocolate tint. They row with two little square, flat pieces of wood for paddles, clutched in each hand; and these lid-shaped things are dipped into the water on either side with absolute precision, in perfect time,--all the pairs of little naked arms seeming moved by a single impulse. There is much unconscious grace in this paddling, as well as skill. Then all about the ship these ridiculous little boats begin to describe circles,--crossing and intercrossing so closely as almost to bring them into collision, yet never touching. The boys have simply come out to dive for coins they expect passengers to fling to them. All are chattering creole, laughing and screaming shrilly; every eye, quick and bright as a bird's, watches the faces of the passengers on deck. "'Tention-là!" shriek a dozen soprani. Some passenger's fingers have entered his vest-pocket, and the boys are on the alert. Through the air, twirling and glittering, tumbles an English shilling, and drops into the deep water beyond the little fleet. Instantly all the lads leap, scramble, topple headforemost out of their little tubs, and dive in pursuit. In the blue water their lithe figures look perfectly red,--all but the soles of their upturned feet, which show nearly white. Almost immediately they all rise again: one holds up at arm's length above the water the recovered coin, and then puts it into his mouth for safe-keeping. Coin after coin is thrown in, and as speedily brought up; a shower of small silver follows, and not a piece is lost. These lads move through the water without apparent effort, with the suppleness of fishes. Most are decidedly fine-looking boys, with admirably rounded limbs, delicately formed extremities. The best diver and swiftest swimmer, however, is a red lad;--his face is rather commonplace, but his slim body has the grace of an antique bronze.

... We are ashore in St. Pierre, the quaintest, queerest, and the prettiest withal, among West Indian cities: all stone-built and stone-flagged, with very narrow streets, wooden or zinc awnings, and peaked roofs of red tile, pierced by gabled dormers. Most of the buildings are painted in a clear yellow tone, which contrasts delightfully with the burning blue ribbon of tropical sky above; and no street is absolutely level; nearly all of them climb hills, descend into hollows, curve, twist, describe sudden angles. There is everywhere a loud murmur of running Water,--pouring through the deep gutters contrived between the paved thoroughfare and the absurd little sidewalks, varying in width from one to three feet. The architecture is quite old: it is seventeenth century, probably; and it reminds one a great deal of that characterizing the antiquated French quarter of New Orleans. All the tints, the forms, the vistas, would seem to have been especially selected or designed for aquarelle studies,--just to please the whim of some extravagant artist. The windows are frameless openings without glass; some have iron bars; all have heavy wooden shutters with movable slats, through which light and air can enter as through Venetian blinds. These are usually painted green or bright bluish-gray.

So steep are the streets descending to the harbor,--by flights of old mossy stone steps,--that looking down them to the azure water you have the sensation of gazing from a cliff. From certain openings in the main street--the Rue Victor Hugo--you can get something like a bird's-eye view of the harbor with its shipping. The roofs of the street below are under your feet, and other streets are rising behind you to meet the mountain roads. They climb at a very steep angle, occasionally breaking into stairs of lava rock, all grass-tufted and moss-lined.

The town has an aspect of great solidity: it is a creation of crag--looks almost as if it had been hewn out of one mountain fragment, instead of having been constructed stone by stone. Although commonly consisting of two stories and an attic only, the dwellings have walls three feet in thickness;--on one street, facing the sea, they are even heavier, and slope outward like ramparts, so that the perpendicular recesses of windows and doors have the appearance of being opened between buttresses. It may have been partly as a precaution against earthquakes, and partly for the sake of coolness, that the early colonial architects built thus;--giving the city a physiognomy so well worthy of its name,--the name of the Saint of the Rock.

And everywhere rushes mountain water,--cool and crystal clear, washing the streets;--from time to time you come to some public fountain flinging a silvery column to the sun, or showering bright spray over a group of black bronze tritons or bronze swarms. The Tritons on the Place Bertin you will not readily forget;--their curving torsos might have been modelled from the forms of those ebon men who toil there tirelessly all day in the great heat, rolling hogsheads of sugar or casks of rum. And often you will note, in the course of a walk, little drinking-fountains contrived at the angle of a building, or in the thick walls bordering the bulwarks or enclosing public squares: glittering threads of water spurting through lion-lips of stone. Some mountain torrent, skilfully directed and divided, is thus perpetually refreshing the city,--supplying its fountains and cooling its courts.... This is called the Gouyave water: it is not the same stream which sweeps and purifies the streets.

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 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 jewellry: immense ear-rings, 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 graven)--the wonderful _collier-choux._ Now, this glowing jewellry 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 dose 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 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.

... "_Çé 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.... "_Ça qui lè titiri?_" Minuscule fish, of which a thousand would scarcely fill a teacup;--one of the most delicate of Martinique dishes.... "_Ça qui lè cannà?--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, zhèbe-gras, bonnet-carré, zhèbe-codeinne, zhèbe-à-femme, zhèbe-à-châtte, canne-dleau, poque, fleu-papillon, laleigne_, 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 main, 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-lal--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 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 jewellry 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-capresse_ 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.

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 market-place.[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 pendant 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, coulio, macriau, tazard, 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.