A little while, and there is silence; and I see Yzore come out, barefooted, upon the moonlit balcony of her little room,—looking up and down the hushed street, looking at the sea, looking up betimes at the high flickering of stars,—moving her lips as in prayer.... And, standing there white-robed, with her rich dark hair loose-falling, there is a weird grace about her that recalls those long slim figures of guardian-angels in French religious prints....



XVI. March 6th

This morning Manm-Robert brings me something queer,—something hard tied up in a tiny piece of black cloth, with a string attached to hang it round my neck. I must wear it, she says,

—"a a ye, Manm-Robert?"

—"Pou empch ou pouend laverette," she answers. It to keep me from catching the verette!... And what is inside it?

—"Toua graines mas, pi dicamfre." (Three grains of corn, with a bit of camphor!). . .



XVII. March 8th

... Rich households throughout the city are almost helpless for the want of servants. One can scarcely obtain help at any price: it is true that young country-girls keep coming into town to fill the places of the dead; but these new-comers fall a prey to the disease much more readily than those who preceded them, And such deaths en represent more than a mere derangement in the mechanism of domestic life. The creole bonne bears a relation to the family of an absolutely peculiar sort,—a relation of which the term "house-servant" does not convey the faintest idea. She is really a member of the household: her association with its life usually begins in childhood, when she is barely strong enough to carry a dobanne of water up-stairs;—and in many cases she has the additional claim of having been born in the house. As a child, she plays with the white children,—shares their pleasures and presents. She is very seldom harshly spoken to, or reminded of the fact that she is a servitor: she has a pet name;—she is allowed much familiarity,— is often permitted to join in conversation when there is no company present, and to express her opinion about domestic affairs. She costs very little to keep; four or five dollars a year will supply her with all necessary clothing;—she rarely wears shoes;—she sleeps on a little straw mattress (paillasse) on the floor, or perhaps upon a paillasse supported upon an "elephant" (lfan)—two thick square pieces of hard mattress placed together so as to form an oblong. She is only a nominal expense to the family; and she is the confidential messenger, the nurse, the chamber-maid, the water-carrier,—everything, in short, except cook and washer-woman. Families possessing a really good bonne would not part with her on any consideration. If she has been brought up in the house-hold, she is regarded almost as a kind of adopted child. If she leave that household to make a home of her own, and have ill-fortune afterwards, she will not be afraid to return with her baby, which will perhaps be received and brought up as she herself was, under the old roof. The stranger may feel puzzled at first by this state of affairs; yet the cause is not obscure. It is traceable to the time of the formation of creole society—to the early period of slavery. Among the Latin races,—especially the French,—slavery preserved in modern times many of the least harsh features of slavery in the antique world,—where the domestic slave, entering the familia, actually became a member of it.



XVIII. March 10th.

... Yzore and her little ones are all in Manm-Robert's shop;— she is recounting her troubles,—fresh troubles: forty-seven francs' worth of work delivered on time, and no money received.... So much I hear as I enter the little boutique myself, to buy a package of "bouts."

—"Assise!" says Manm-Robert, handing me her own hair;—she is always pleased to see me, pleased to chat lith me about creole folk-lore. Then observing, a smile exchanged between myself and Mimi, she tells the children to bid me good-day:—"Alle di bonjou' Missi-a!" One after another, each holds up a velvety cheek to kiss. And Mimi, who has been asking her mother the same question over and over again for at least five minutes without being able to obtain an answer, ventures to demand of me on the strength of this introduction:—

—"Missi, oti masque-?_"

—"Y ben fou, pouloss!" the mother cries out;—"Why, the child must be going out of her senses!... Mimi pa 'mbt moune conm a!—pa ni piess masque: c'est la-vrette qui ni." (Don't annoy people like that!—there are no maskers now; there is nothing but the verette!)

[You are not annoying me at all, little Mimi; but I would not like to answer your question truthfully. I know where the maskers are,—most of them, child; and I do not think it would be well for you to know. They wear no masks now; but if you were to see them for even one moment, by some extraordinary accident, pretty Mimi, I think you would feel more frightened than you ever felt before.]...

—"Toutt lanuite y k'anni rv masque-," continues Yzore.... I am curious to know what Mimi's dreams are like;—wonder if I can coax her to tell me....



XIX.

... I have written Mimi's last dream from the child's dictation:— [22]

—"I saw a ball," she says, " I was dreaming: I saw everybody dancing with masks on;—I was looking at them, And all at once I saw that the folks who were dancing were all made of pasteboard. And I saw a commandeur: he asked me what I was doing there, I answered him: 'Why, I saw a ball, and I came to look—what of it?' He answered me:—'Since you are so curious to come and look at other folks' business, you will have to stop here and dance too!' I said to him:—'No! I won't dance with people made of pasteboard;—I am afraid of them!' ...And I ran and ran and ran, —I was so much afraid. And I ran into a big garden, where I saw a big cherry-tree that had only leaves upon it; and I saw a man sitting under the cherry-tree, He asked me:—'What are you doing here?' I said to him:—'I am trying to find my way out,' He said:—'You must stay here.' I said:—'No, no!'—and I said, in order to be able to get away:—'Go up there!—you will see a fine ball: all pasteboard people dancing there, and a pasteboard commandeur commanding them!' ... And then I got so frightened that I awoke."...

... "And why were you so afraid of them, Mimi?" I ask.

—"Pace yo t toutt vide endedans!" answers Mimi. (Because they were all hollow inside!)



XX. March 19th.

... The death-rate in St. Pierre is now between three hundred and fifty and four hundred a month. Our street is being depopulated. Every day men come with immense stretchers,— covered with a sort of canvas awning,—to take somebody away to the lazaretto. At brief intervals, also, coffins are carried into houses empty, and carried out again followed by women who cry so loud that their sobbing can be heard a great way off.

... Before the visitation few quarters were so densely peopled: there were living often in one small house as many as fifty. The poorer classes had been accustomed from birth to live as simply as animals,—wearing scarcely any clothing, sleeping on bare floors, exposing themselves to all changes of weather, eating the cheapest and coarsest food. Yet, though living under such adverse conditions, no healthier people could be found, perhaps, in the world,—nor a more cleanly. Every yard having its fountain, almost everybody could bathe daily,—and with hundreds it was the custom to enter the river every morning at daybreak, or to take a swim in the bay (the young women here swim as well as the men)....

But the pestilence, entering among so dense and unprotected a life, made extraordinarily rapid havoc; and bodily cleanliness availed little against the contagion. Now all the bathing resorts are deserted,—because the lazarettos infect the bay with refuse, and because the clothing of the sick is washed in the Roxelane.

... Guadeloupe, the sister colony, now sends aid;—the sum total is less than a single American merchant might give to a charitable undertaking: but it is a great deal for Guadeloupe to give. And far Cayenne sends money too; and the mother-country will send one hundred thousand francs.



XXI. March 20th.

... The infinite goodness of this colored population to one another is something which impresses with astonishment those accustomed to the selfishness of the world's great cities. No one is suffered to go to the pest-house who has a bed to lie upon, and a single relative or tried friend to administer remedies;— the multitude who pass through the lazarettos are strangers,— persons from the country who have no home of their own, or servants who are not permitted to remain sick in houses of employers.... There are, however, many cases where a mistress will not suffer her bonne to take the risks of the pest-house,— especially in families where there are no children: the domestic is carefully nursed; a physician hired for her, remedies purchased for her....

But among the colored people themselves the heroism displayed is beautiful, is touching,—something which makes one doubt all accepted theories about the natural egotism of mankind, and would compel the most hardened pessimist to conceive a higher idea of humanity. There is never a moment's hesitation in visiting a stricken individual: every relative, and even the most intimate friends of every relative, may be seen hurrying to the bedside. They take turns at nursing, sitting up all night, securing medical attendance and medicines, without ever thought of the danger, —nay, of the almost absolute certainty of contagion. If the patient have no means, all contribute: what the sister or brother has not, the uncle or the aunt, the godfather or godmother, the cousin, brother- in-law or sister-in-law, may be able to give. No one dreams of refusing money or linen or wine or anything possible to give, lend, or procure on credit. Women seem to forget that they are beautiful, that they are young, that they are loved,—forget everything but sense of that which they hold to be duty. You see young girls of remarkably elegant presence,—young colored girls well educated and leves-en-chapeau [23] (that is say, brought up like white creole girls, dressed and accomplished like them), voluntarily leave rich homes to nurse some poor mulatress or capresse in the indigent quarters of the town, because the sick one happens to be a distant relative. They will not trust others to perform this for them;—they feel bound to do it in person. I heard such a one say, in reply to some earnest protest about thus exposing herself (she had never been vaccinated);—"Ah! quand il s'agit du devoir, la vie ou la mort c'est pour moi la mme chose."

... But without any sanitary law to check this self-immolation, and with the conviction that in the presence of duty, or what is believed to be duty, "life or death is same thing," or ought to be so considered,—you can readily imagine how soon the city must become one vast hospital.



XXII.

... By nine o'clock, as a general rule, St. Pierre becomes silent: everyone here retires early and rises with the sun. But sometimes, when the night is exceptionally warm, people continue to sit at their doors and chat until a far later hour; and on such a night one may hear and see curious things, in this period of plague....

It is certainly singular that while the howling of a dog at night has no ghastly signification here (nobody ever pays the least attention to the sound, however hideous), the moaning and screaming of cats is believed to bode death; and in these times folks never appear to feel too sleepy to rise at any hour and drive them away when they begin their cries.... To-night—a night so oppressive that all but the sick are sitting up—almost a panic is created in our street by a screaming of cats;—and long after the creatures have been hunted out of sight and hearing, everybody who has a relative ill with the prevailing malady continues to discuss the omen with terror.

... Then I observe a colored child standing bare-footed in the moonlight, with her little round arms uplifted and hands joined above her head. A more graceful little figure it would be hard to find as she appears thus posed; but, all unconsciously, she is violating another superstition by this very attitude; and the angry mother shrieks:—

—"Ti manmaille-l!—tir lanmain-ou assous tte-ou, foute! pisse moin enc l!... Espr moin all lazarett avant mett lanmain conm a!" (Child, take down your hands from your head... because I am here yet! Wait till I go to the lazaretto before you put up your hands like that!)

For it was the savage, natural, primitive gesture of mourning,— of great despair.

... Then all begin to compare their misfortunes, to relate their miseries;—they say grotesque things,—even make jests about their troubles. One declares:—

—"Si moin t ka venne chapeau, fce moin ni malh, toutt manman s fai yche yo sans tte." (I have that ill-luck, that if I were selling hats all the mothers would have children without heads!)

—Those who sit at their doors, I observe, do not sit, a rule, upon the steps, even when these are of wood. There is a superstition which checks such a practice. "Si ou assise assous pas-lapte, ou k pouend doul toutt moune." (If you sit upon the door-step, you will take the pain of all who pass by.)



XXIII. March 30th.

Good Friday....

The bells have ceased to ring,—even the bells for the dead; the hours are marked by cannon-shots. The ships in the harbor form crosses with their spars, turn their flags upside down. And the entire colored population put on mourning:—it is a custom among them centuries old.

You will not perceive a single gaudy robe to-day, a single calendered Madras: not a speck of showy color visible through all the ways of St. Pierre. The costumes donned are all similar to those worn for the death relatives: either full mourning,—a black robe with violet foulard, and dark violet-banded headkerchief; or half-mourning,—a dark violet robe with black foulard and turban;—the half-mourning being worn only by those who cannot afford the more sombre costume. From my winndow I can see long processions climbing the mornes about the city, to visit the shrines and crucifixes, and to pray for the cessation of the pestilence.

... Three o'clock. Three cannon-shots shake the hill: it is the supposed hour of the Saviour's death. All believers—whether in the churches, on the highways, or in their homes—bow down and kiss the cross thrice, or, if there be no cross, press their lips three times to the ground or the pavement, and utter those three wishes which if expressed precisely at this traditional moment will surely, it is held, be fulfilled. Immense crowds are assembled before the crosses on the heights, and about the statue of Notre Dame de la Garde.

... There is no hubbub in the streets; there is not even the customary loud weeping to be heard as the coffins go by. One must not complain to-day, nor become angry, nor utter unkind words,—any fault committed on Good Friday is thought to obtain a special and awful magnitude in the sight of Heaven.... There is a curious saying in vogue here. If a son or daughter grow up vicious,—become a shame to the family and a curse to the parents,—it is observed of such:—"a, c'est yon pch Vendredi- Saint!" (Must be a Good-Friday sin!)

There are two other strange beliefs connected with Good Friday. One is that it always rains on that day,—that the sky weeps for the death of the Saviour; and that this rain, if caught in a vessel, will never evaporate or spoil, and will cure all diseases.

The other is that only Jesus Christ died precisely at three o'clock. Nobody else ever died exactly at that hour;—they may die a second before or a second after three, but never exactly at three.



XXIV. March 31st.

... Holy Saturday morning;—nine o'clock. All the bells suddenly ring out; the humming of the bourdon blends with the thunder of a hundred guns: this is the Gloria!... At this signal it is a religious custom for the whole coast-population to enter the sea, and for those living too far from the beach to bathe in the rivers. But rivers and sea are now alike infected;—all the linen of the lazarettos has been washed therein; and to-day there are fewer bathers than usual.

But there are twenty-seven burials. Now they are ring the dead two together: the cemeteries are over-burdened....



XXV.

... In most of the old stone houses you will occasionally see spiders of terrifying size,—measuring across perhaps as much as six inches from the tip of one out-stretched leg to the tip of its opposite fellow, as they cling to the wall. I never heard of anyone being bitten by them; and among the poor it is deemed unlucky to injure or drive them away.... But early this morning Yzore swept her house clean, and ejected through door-way quite a host of these monster insects. Manm-Robert is quite dismayed:—

—"Fesis-Maa!—ou 'l malh enc pou fai a, ch?" (You want to have still more bad luck, that you do such a thing?)

And Yzore answers:—

—"Toutt moune iitt pa ni yon sou!—gous conm a fil zagrignin, et moin pa menm mang! Epi laverette enc.... Moin cou toutt a ka pt malh!" (No one here has a sou!—heaps of cobwebs like that, and nothing to eat yet; and the verette into the bargain... I think those things bring bad luck.)

—"Ah! you have not eaten yet!" cries Manm-Robert. "Vini pi moin!" (Come with me!)

And Yzore—already feeling a little remorse for her treatment of the spiders—murmurs apologetically as she crosses over to Manm-Robert's little shop:—"Moin pa tchou yo; moin chass yo—k vini enc." (I did not kill them; I only put them out;—they will come back again.)

But long afterwards, Manm-Robert remarked to me that they never went back....



XXVI. April 5th.

—"Toutt bel bois ka all," says Manm-Robert. (All the beautiful trees are going.)... I do not understand.

—"Toutt bel bois—toutt bel moune ka alle," she adds, interpretatively. (All the "beautiful trees,"—all the handsome people,—are passing away.)... As in the speech of the world's primitive poets, so in the creole patois is a beautiful woman compared with a comely tree: nay, more than this, the name of the object is actually substituted for that of the living being. Yon bel bois may mean a fine tree: it more generally signifies a graceful woman: this is the very comparison made by Ulysses looking upon Nausicaa, though more naively expressed. ... And now there comes to me the recollection of a creole ballad illustrating the use of the phrase,—a ballad about a youth of Fort-de-France sent to St. Pierre by his father to purchase a stock of dobannes, [24] who, falling in love with a handsome colored girl, spent all his father's money in buying her presents and a wedding outfit:—

"Moin descenne Saint-Pi Achet dobannes Auli ces dobannes C'est yon bel-bois moin mennein mont!"

("I went down to Saint-Pierre to buy dobannes: instead of the dobannes, 'tis a pretty tree—a charming girl—that I bring back with me")

—"Why, who is dead now, Manm-Robert?"

—"It is little Marie, the porteuse, who has got the verette. She is gone to the lazaretto."



XXVII. April 7th.

—Toutt bel bois ka all.... News has just come that Ti Marie died last night at the lazaretto of the Fort: she was attacked by what they call the lavrette-pouff,—a form of the disease which strangles its victim within a few hours.

Ti Marie was certainly the neatest little mchanne I ever knew. Without being actually pretty, her face had a childish charm which made it a pleasure to look at her;—and she had a clear chocolate-red skin, a light compact little figure, and a remarkably symmetrical pair of little feet which had never felt the pressure of a shoe. Every morning I used to hear her passing cry, just about daybreak:—"Qui 'l caf?—qui 'l sirop?" (Who wants coffee?—who wants syrup?) She looked about sixteen, but was a mother. "Where is her husband?" I ask. "Nhomme-y m laverette 'tou." (Her man died of the verette also.) "And the little one, her yche?" "Y lazarett." (At the lazaretto.)... But only those without friends or relatives in the city are suffered to go to the lazaretto;—Ti Marie cannot have been of St. Pierre?

—"No: she was from Vauclin," answers Manrn-Robert. "You do not often see pretty red girls who are natives of St. Pierre. St. Pierre has pretty sang-mles. The pretty red girls mostly come from Vauclin. The yellow ones, who are really bel-bois, are from Grande Anse: they are banana-colored people there. At Gros-Morne they are generally black."...



XXVIII.

... It appears that the red race here, the race capresse, is particularly liable to the disease. Every family employing capresses for house-servants loses them;—one family living at the next corner has lost four in succession....

The tint is a cinnamon or chocolate color;—the skin is naturally clear, smooth, glossy: it is of the capresse especially that the term "sapota-skin" (peau-chapoti) is used,—coupled with all curious creole adjectives to express what is comely, —jojoll, beaujoll, etc. [25] The hair is long, but bushy; the limbs light and strong, and admirably shaped.... I am told that when transported to a colder climate, the capre or capresse partly loses this ruddy tint. Here, under the tropic sun, it has a beauty only possible to imitate in metal.... And because photography cannot convey any idea of this singular color, the capresse hates a photograph.—"Moin pas nou," she says; —"moin ouuge: ou fai moin nou nans ptrait-." (I am not black: I am red:—you make me black in that portrait.) It is difficult to make her pose before the camera: she is red, as she avers, beautifully red; but the malicious instrument makes her gray or black—nou conm poule-zo-nou ("black as a black- boned hen!")

... And this red race is disappearing from St. Pierre—doubtless also from other plague-stricken centres.



XXIX. April l0th.

Manm-Robert is much annoyed and puzzled because the American steamer—the _bom-mang_, as she calls does not come. It used to bring regularly so many barrels of potatoes and beans, so much lard and cheese garlic and dried pease—everything, almost, of which she keeps a stock. It is now nearly eight weeks since the cannon of a New York steamer aroused the echoes the harbor. Every morning Manm-Robert has been sending out her little servant Louis to see if there is any sign of the American packet:—"All ou Batterie d' Esnotz si bom-mang- pas vini_." But Louis always returns with same rueful answer:—

—"Manm-Robert, pa ni piess bom-mang" (there is not so much as a bit of a bom-mang).

... "No more American steamers for Martinique:" that is the news received by telegraph! The disease has broken out among the shipping; the harbors have been delared infected. United States mail-packets drop their Martinique mails at St. Kitt's or Dominica, and pass us by. There will be suffering now among the canotiers, the caboteurs, all those who live by stowing or unloading cargo;—great warehouses are being closed up, and strong men discharged, because there will be nothing for them to do.

... They are burying twenty-five verettiers per day in city.

But never was this tropic sky more beautiful;—never was this circling sea more marvellously blue;—never were the mornes more richly robed in luminous green, under a more golden day.... And it seems strange that Nature should remain so lovely....

... Suddenly it occurs to me that I have not seen Yzore nor her children for some days; and I wonder if they have moved away.... Towards evening, passing by Manm-Robert's, I ask about them. The old woman answers me very gravely:—

—"At, mon ch, c'est Yzore qui ni laverette!"

The mother has been seized by the plague at last. But Manm-Robert will look after her; and Manm-Robert has taken charge of the three little ones, who are not now allowed to leave the house, for fear some one should tell them what it were best they should not know.... Pauv ti manmaille!



XXX. April 13th.

... Still the vrette does not attack the native whites. But the whole air has become poisoned; the sanitary condition of the city becomes unprecedentedly bad; and a new epidemic makes its appearance,—typhoid fever. And now the bks begin to go, especially the young and strong; and the bells keep sounding for them, and the tolling bourdon fills the city with its enormous hum all day and far into the night. For these are rich; and the high solemnities of burial are theirs—the coffin of acajou, and the triple ringing, and the Cross of Gold to be carried before them as they pass to their long sleep under the palms,—saluted for the last time by all the population of St. Pierre, standing bareheaded in the sun....

... Is it in times like these, when all the conditions are febrile, that one is most apt to have queer dreams?

Last night it seemed to me that I saw that Carnival dance again,—the hooded musicians, the fantastic torrent of peaked caps, and the spectral masks, and the swaying of bodies and waving of arms,—but soundless as a passing of smoke. There were figures I thought I knew;—hands I had somewhere seen reached out and touched me in silence;—and then, all suddenly, a Viewless Something seemed to scatter the shapes as leaves are blown by a wind.... And waking, I thought I heard again,—plainly as on that last Carnival afternoon,—the strange cry of fear:— "C'est Bon-Di ka pass!"...



XXXI. April 20th.

Very early yesterday morning Yzore was carried away under a covering of quick-lime: the children do not know; Manm-Robert took heed they should not see. They have been told their mother has been taken to the country to get well,—that the doctor will bring her back.... All the furniture is to be sold at auction to debts;—the landlord was patient, he waited four months; the doctor was kindly: but now these must have their due. Everything will be bidden off, except the chapelle, with its Virgin and angels of porcelain: yo pa ka p venne Bon-Di (the things of the Good-God must not be sold). And Manm-Robert will take care little ones.

The bed—a relic of former good-fortune,—a great Martinique bed of carved heavy native wood,—a lit—bateau (boat-bed), so called because shaped almost like a barge, perhaps—will surely bring three hundred francs;—the armoire, with its mirror doors, not less than two hundred and fifty. There is little else of value: the whole will not fetch enough to pay all the dead owes.



XXXII. April 28th.

—Tam-tam-tam!—tam-tam-tam!... It is the booming of the auction-drum from the Place: Yzore's furniture is about to change hands.

The children start at the sound, so vividly associated in their minds with the sights of Carnival days, with the fantastic mirth of the great processional dance: they run to the sunny street, calling to each other.—Vini ou!—they look up and down. But there is a great quiet in the Rue du Morne Mirail;—the street is empty.

... Manm-Robert enters very weary: she has been at the sale, trying to save something for the children, but the prices were too high. In silence she takes her accustomed seat at the worn counter of her little shop; the young ones gather about her, caress her;—Mimi looks up laughing into the kind brown face, and wonders why Manm-Robert will not smile. Then Mimi becomes afraid to ask where the maskers are,—why they do not come, But little Maurice, bolder and less sensitive, cries out:—

—"Manm-Robert, oti masque-?"

Manm-Robert does not answer;—she does not hear. She is gazing directly into the young faces clustered about her knee,—yet she does not see them: she sees far, far beyond them,—into the hidden years. And, suddenly, with a savage tenderness in her voice, she utters all the dark thought of her heart for them:—

—"Toua ti blancs sans lesou!—qutitt moin chch papaou qui adans cimti pou vini pouend ou tou!" (Ye three little penniless white ones!—let me go call your father, who is in the cemetery, to come and take you also away!)



CHAPTER VI. LES BLANCHISSEUSES.



I.

Whoever stops for a few months in St. Pierre is certain, sooner or later, to pass an idle half-hour in that charming place of Martinique idlers,—the beautiful Savane du Fort,—and, once there, is equally certain to lean a little while over the mossy parapet of the river-wall to watch the blanchisseuses at work. It has a curious interest, this spectacle of primitive toil: the deep channel of the Roxelane winding under the palm-crowned heights of the Fort; the blinding whiteness of linen laid out to bleach for miles upon the huge bowlders of porphyry and prismatic basalt; and the dark bronze-limbed women, with faces hidden under immense straw hats, and knees in the rushing torrent,—all form a scene that makes one think of the earliest civilizations. Even here, in this modern colony, it is nearly three centuries old; and it will probably continue thus at the Rivire des Blanchisseuses for fully another three hundred years. Quaint as certain weird Breton legends whereof it reminds you,—especially if you watch it before daybreak while the city still sleeps,—this fashion of washing is not likely to change. There is a local prejudice against new methods, new inventions, new ideas;—several efforts at introducing a less savage style of washing proved unsuccessful; and an attempt to establish a steam-laundry resulted in failure. The public were quite contented with the old ways of laundrying, and saw no benefits to be gained by forsaking them;—while the washers and ironers engaged by the laundry proprietor at higher rates than they had ever obtained before soon wearied of in-door work, abandoned their situations, and returned with a sense of relief to their ancient way of working out in the blue air and the wind of the hills, with their feet in the mountain-water and their heads in the awful sun.

... It is one of the sights of St. Pierre,—this daily scene at the River of the Washerwomen: everybody likes to watch it;—the men, because among the blanchisseuses there are not a few decidedly handsome girls; the wormen, probably because a woman feels always interested in woman's work. All the white bridges of the Roxelane are dotted with lookers-on during fine days, and particularly in the morning, when every bonne on her way to and from the market stops a moment to observe or to greet those blanchisseuses whom she knows. Then one hears such a calling and clamoring,—such an intercrossing of cries from the bridge to the river, and the river to the bridge. ... "Ouill! Nomi!"... "Coument ou y, ch?"... "Eh! Pascaline!", ..."Bonjou', Youtte!—Dede!-Fifi!— Henrillia!"... "Coument ou kall, Cyrillia?"... "Toutt douce, ch!—et Ti Mm?"... "Y bien;—oti Ninotte?"... "Bo ti manmaille pou moin, ch —ou tanne?"... But the bridge leading to the market of the Fort is the poorest point of view; for the better classes of blanchisseuses are not there: only the lazy, the weak, or non-professionals—house- servants, who do washing at the river two or three times a month as part of their family-service—are apt to get so far down. The experienced professionals and early risers secure the best places and choice of rocks; and among the hundreds at work you can discern something like a physical gradation. At the next bridge the women look better, stronger; more young faces appear; and the further you follow the river-course towards the Jardin des Plantes, the more the appearance of the blanchisseuses improves,—so that within the space of a mile you can see well exemplified one natural law of life's struggle,—the best chances to the best constitutions.



You might also observe, if you watch long enough, that among the blanchisseuses there are few sufficiently light of color to be classed as bright mulatresses;—the majority are black or of that dark copper- red race which is perhaps superior to the black creole in strength and bulk; for it requires a skin insensible to sun as well as the toughest of constitutions to be a blanchisseuse. A porteuse can begin to make long trips at nine or ten years; but no girl is strong enough to learn the washing-trade until she is past twelve. The blanchisseuse is the hardest worker among the whole population;—her daily labor is rarely less than thirteen hours; and during the greater part of that time she is working in the sun, and standing up to her knees in water that descends quite cold from the mountain peaks. Her labor makes her perspire profusely and she can never venture to cool herself by further immersion without serious danger of pleurisy. The trade is said to kill all who continue at it beyond a certain number of years:—"Nou ka m toutt dleau" (we all die of the water), one told me, replying to a question. No feeble or light-skinned person can attempt to do a single day's work of this kind without danger; and a weak girl, driven by necessity to do her own washing, seldom ventures to go to the river. Yet I saw an instance of such rashness one day. A pretty sang-mle, perhaps about eighteen or nineteen years old,—whom I afterwards learned had just lost her mother and found herself thus absolutely destitute,—began to descend one of the flights of stone steps leading to the river, with a small bundle upon her head; and two or three of the blanchisseuses stopped their work to look at her. A tall capresse inquired mischievously:—

—"Ou vini pou pouend yon bain?" (Coming to take a bath?) For the river is a great bathing-place.

—"Non; moin vini lav." (No; I am coming to wash.)

—"Ae! ae! ae!—y vini lav!_"... And all within hearing laughed together. "Are you crazy, girl?—_ess ou fou?_" The tall capresse snatched the bundle from her, opened it, threw a garment to her nearest neighbor, another to the next one, dividing the work among a little circle of friends, and said to the stranger, "Non k lav toutt a ba ou bien vite, ch,—va, amis ou!" (We'll wash this for you very quickly, dear—go and amuse yourself!) These kind women even did more for the poor girl;—they subscribed to buy her a good breakfast, when the food-seller—the mchanne-mang—made her regular round among them, with fried fish and eggs and manioc flour and bananas.



II.

All of the multitude who wash clothing at the river are not professional blanchisseuses. Hundreds of women, too poor to pay for laundrying, do their own work at the Roxelane;—and numerous bonnes there wash the linen of their mistresses as a regular part of their domestic duty. But even if the professionals did not always occupy a certain well-known portion of the channel, they could easily be distinguished from others by their rapid and methodical manner of work, by the ease with which immense masses of linen are handled by them, and, above all, by their way of whipping it against the rocks. Furthermore, the greater number of professionals are likewise teachers, mistresses (bou'geoises), and have their apprentices beside them,— young girls from twelve to sixteen years of age. Among these apprenti, as they are called in the patois, there are many attractive types, such as idlers upon the bridges like to look at.

If, after one year of instruction, the apprentice fails to prove a good washer, it is not likely she will ever become one; and there are some branches of the trade requiring a longer period of teaching and of practice. The young girl first learns simply to soap and wash the linen in the river, which operation is called "rubbing" (frott in creole);— after she can do this pretty well, she is taught the curious art of whipping it (fess). You can hear the sound of the fesse a great way off, echoing and re-echoing among the mornes: it is not a sharp smacking noise, as the name might seem to imply, but a heavy hollow sound exactly like that of an axe splitting dry timber. In fact, it so closely resembles the latter sound that you are apt on first hearing it to look up at the mornes with the expectation of seeing woodmen there at work. And it is not made by striking the linen with anything, but only by lashing it against the sides of the rocks.... After a piece has been well rubbed and rinsed, it is folded up into a peculiar sheaf- shape, and seized by the closely gathered end for the fess. Then the folding process is repeated on the reverse, and the other end whipped. This process expels suds that rinsing cannot remove: it must be done very dexterously to avoid tearing or damaging the material. By an experienced hand the linen is never torn; and even pearl and bone buttons are much less often broken than might be supposed. The singular echo is altogether due to the manner of folding the article for the fess.

After this, all the pieces are spread out upon the rocks, in the sun, for the "first bleaching" (poumi lablanie). In the evening they are gathered into large wooden trays or baskets, and carried to what is called the "lye-house" (lacae lessive)—overlooking the river from a point on the fort bank opposite to the higher end of the Savane. There each blanchisseuse hires a small or a large vat, or even several,— according to the quantity of work done,—at two, three, or ten sous, and leaves her washing to steep in lye (coul is the creole word used) during the night. There are watchmen to guard it. Before daybreak it is rinsed in warm water; then it is taken back to the river,—is rinsed again, bleached again, blued and starched. Then it is ready for ironing. To press and iron well is the most difficult part of the trade. When an apprentice is able to iron a gentleman's shirt nicely, and a pair of white pantaloons, she is considered to have finished her time;—she becomes a journey-woman (ouvouy).

Even in a country where wages are almost incredibly low, the blanchisseuse earns considerable money. There is no fixed scale of prices: it is even customary to bargain with these women beforehand. Shirts and white pantaloons figure at six and eight cents in laundry bills; but other washing is much cheaper. I saw a lot of thirty-three pieces—including such large ones as sheets, bed-covers, and several douillettes (the long Martinique trailing robes of one piece from neck to feet)—for which only three francs was charged. Articles are frequently stolen or lost by house-servants sent to do washing at the river; but very seldom indeed by the regular blanchisseuses. Few of them can read or write or understand owners' marks on wearing apparel; and when you see at the river the wilderness of scattered linen, the seemingly enormous confusion, you cannot understand how these women manage to separate and classify it all. Yet they do this admirably,— and for that reason perhaps more than any other, are able to charge fair rates;—it is false economy to have your washing done by the house-servant;—with the professionals your property is safe. And cheap as her rates are, a good professional can make from twenty-five to thirty francs a week; averaging fully a hundred francs a month,—as much as many a white clerk can earn in the stores of St. Pierre, and quite as much (considering local differences in the purchasing power of money) as $60 per month would represent in the United States.

Probably the ability to earn large wages often tempts the blanchisseuse to continue at her trade until it kills her. The "water- disease," as she calls it (maladie-dleau), makes its appearance after middle-life: the feet, lower limbs, and abdomen swell enormously, while the face becomes almost fleshless;—then, gradually tissues give way, muscles yield, and the whole physical structure crumbles. Nevertheless, the blanchisseuse is essentially a sober liver,—never a drunkard. In fact, she is sober from rigid necessity: she would not dare to swallow one mouthful of spirits while at work with her feet in the cold water; —everybody else in Martinique, even the little children, can drink rum; the blanchisseuse cannot, unless she wishes to die of a congestion. Her strongest refreshment is mabi,—a mild, effervescent, and, I think, rather disagreeable, beer made from molasses.



III.

Always before daybreak they rise to work, while the vapors of the mornes fill the air with scent of mouldering vegetation,—clayey odors,—grassy smells: there is only a faint gray light, and the water of the river is very chill. One by one they arrive, barefooted, under their burdens built up tower-shape on their trays;—silently as ghosts they descend the steps to the river-bed, and begin to unfold and immerse their washing. They greet each other as they come, then become silent again; there is scarcely any talking: the hearts of all are heavy with the heaviness of the hour. But the gray light turns yellow; the sun climbs over the peaks: light changes the dark water to living crystal; and all begin to chatter a little. Then the city awakens; the currents of its daily life circulate again,—thinly and slowly at first, then swiftly and strongly,—up and down every yellow street, and through the Savane, and over the bridges of the river. Passers-by pause to look down, and cry "bonjou', che!" Idle men stare at some pretty washer, till she points at them and cries:—"Gad Missie- ka guett nou!—anh!—anh!—anh!" And all the others look up and repeat the groan—"anh!—anh!—anh!" till the starers beat a retreat. The air grows warmer; the sky blue takes fire: the great light makes joy for the washers; they shout to each other from distance to distance, jest, laugh, sing. Gusty of speech these women are: long habit of calling to one another through the roar of the torrent has given their voices a singular sonority and force: it is well worth while to hear them sing. One starts the song,—the next joins her; then another and another, till all the channel rings with the melody from the bridge of the Jardin des Plantes to the Pont-bois:-

"C'est main qui t ka lav, Pass, raccommod: Y t nf h disou Ou mett moin derh,— Yche main assous bouas moin;— Laplie t ka tomb— Lfan moin assous tte moin! Doudoux, ou m'abandonne! Moin pa ni psonne pou soign moin." [26]

... A melancholy chant—originally a Carnival improvisation made to bring public shame upon the perpetrator of a cruel act;—but it contains the story of many of these lives—the story of industrious affectionate women temporarily united to brutal and worthless men in a country where legal marriages are rare. Half of the creole songs which I was able to collect during a residence of nearly two years in the island touch upon the same sad theme. Of these, "Ch Manman Moin," a great favorite still with the older blanchisseuses, has a simple pathos unrivalled, I believe, in the oral literature of this people. Here is an attempt to translate its three rhymeless stanzas into prose; but the childish sweetness of the patois original is lost:—

CH MANMAN MOIN.

I.

... "Dear mamma, once you were young like I;—dear papa, you also have been young;—dear great elder brother, you too have been young. Ah! let me cherish this sweet friendship!—so sick my heart is—yes, 'tis very, very ill, this heart of mine: love, only love can make it well again."...

II.

"0 cursed eyes he praised that led me to him! 0 cursed lips of mine which ever repeated his name! 0 cursed moment in which I gave up my heart to the ingrate who no longer knows how to love."...

III.

"Doudoux, you swore to me by heaven!—doudoux, you swore to me by your faith!... And now you cannot come to me? ... Oh! my heart is withering with pain!... I was passing by the cemetery;—I saw my name upon a stone—all by itself. I saw two white roses; and in a moment one faded and fell before me.... So my forgotten heart will be!"...

The air is not so charming, however, as that of a little song which every creole knows, and which may be often heard still at the river: I think it is the prettiest of all creole melodies. "To-to-to" (patois for the French toc) is an onomatope for the sound of knocking at a door.

"To, to, to!—a qui l?' —'C'est moin-mnme, lanmou;— Ouv lapott ba moin!'

"To, to, to!—a qui l?' —'C'est moin-mnme lanmou, Qui ka ba ou kh moin!'

"To, to, to!—a qui l?' —'C'est moin-mnme lanmou, Laplie ka mouill moin!'"

[To-to-to... "Who taps there?"—"'Tis mine own self Love: open the door for me." To-to-to... "Who taps there?"—"'Tis mine own self Love, who give my heart to thee." To-to-to... "Who taps there?"—" 'Tis mine own self Love: open thy door to me;—the rain is wetting me!"]

... But it is more common to hear the blanchisseuses singing merry, jaunty, sarcastic ditties,—Carnival compositions,—in which the African sense of rhythmic melody is more marked:—"Marie-Clmence maudi," "Loma tomb," "Quand ou ni ti mari jojoll."

—At mid-day the mchanne-mang comes, with her girls,—carrying trays of fried fish, and _akras_, and cooked beans, and bottles of mabi. The blanchisseuses buy, and eat with their feet in the water, using rocks for tables. Each has her little tin cup to drink her mabi in... Then the washing and the chanting and the booming of the fess begin again. Afternoon wanes;—school-hours close; and children of many beautiful colors come to the river, and leap down the steps crying, "_Eti! manman!"—"Ss!"—"Nenneine!" calling their elder sisters, mothers, and godmothers: the little boys strip naked to play in the water a while.... Towards sunset the more rapid and active workers begin to gather in their linen, and pile it on trays. Large patches of bald rock appear again.... By six o'clock almost the whole bed of the river is bare;—the women are nearly all gone. A few linger a while on the Savane, to watch the last-comer. There is always a great laugh at the last to leave the channel: they ask her if she has not forgotten "to lock up the river."

—"Ou fm lapte larivi, ch-anh?"

—"Ah! oui, ch!—moin fm y, ou tanne?—moin ni lacl-!" (Oh yes, dear. I locked it up,—you hear?—I've got the key!)

But there are days and weeks when they do not sing,—times of want or of plague, when the silence of the valley is broken only by the sound of linen beaten upon the rocks, and the great voice of the Roxelane, which will sing on when the city itself shall have ceased to be, just as it sang one hundred thousand years ago....

"Why do they not sing to-day?" I once asked during the summer of 1887,

—a year of pestilence. "Yo ka pens toutt lanmiz yo,—toutt lapeine yo," I was answered. (They are thinking of all their trouble, all their misery.) Yet in all seasons, while youth and strength stay with them, they work on in wind and sun, mist and rain, washing the linen of the living and the dead,—white wraps for the newly born, white robes for the bride, white shrouds for them that pass into the Great Silence. And the torrent that wears away the ribs of the perpetual hills wears away their lives,—sometimes slowly, slowly as black basalt is worn, —sometimes suddenly,—in the twinkling of an eye.

For a strange danger ever menaces the blanchisseuse,—the treachery of the stream!... Watch them working, and observe how often they turn their eyes to the high north-east, to look at Pele. Pele gives them warning betimes. When all is sunny in St. Pierre, and the harbor lies blue as lapis-lazuli, there may be mighty rains in the region of the great woods and the valleys of the higher peaks; and thin streams swell to raging floods which burst suddenly from the altitudes, rolling down rocks and trees and wreck of forests, uplifting crags, devastating slopes. And sometimes, down the ravine of the Roxelane, there comes a roar as of eruption, with a rush of foaming water like a moving mountain-wall; and bridges and buildings vanish with its passing. In 1865 the Savane, high as it lies above the river-bed, was flooded;—and all the bridges were swept into the sea.

So the older and wiser blanchisseuses keep watch upon Pele; and if a blackness gather over it, with lightnings breaking through, then— however fair the sun shine on St. Pierre—the alarm is given, the miles of bleaching linen vanish from the rocks in a few minutes, and every one leaves the channel. But it has occasionally happened that Pele gave no such friendly signal before the river rose: thus lives have been lost. Most of the blanchisseuses are swimmers, and good ones,—I have seen one of these girls swim almost out of sight in the harbor, during an idle hour;—but no swimmer has any chances in a rising of the Roxelane: all overtaken by it are stricken by rocks and drift;—yo craz, as a creole term expresses it,—a term signifying to crush, to bray, to dash to pieces.

... Sometimes it happens that one who has been absent at home for a brief while returns to the river only to meet her comrades fleeing from it,—many leaving their linen behind them. But she will not abandon the linen intrusted to her: she makes a run for it,—in spite of warning screams,—in spite of the vain clutching of kind rough fingers. She gains the river-bed;—the flood has already reached her waist, but she is strong; she reaches her linen,—snatches it up, piece by piece, scattered as it is—"one!—two!—five!—seven!"—there is a roaring in her ears—"eleven!—thirteen!" she has it all... but now the rocks are moving! For one instant she strives to reach the steps, only a few yards off;—another, and the thunder of the deluge is upon her,—and the crushing crags,—and the spinning trees....

Perhaps before sundown some canotier may find her floating far in the bay,—drifting upon her face in a thousand feet of water,—with faithful dead hands still holding fast the property of her employer.



CHAPTER VII. LA PELE.



I.

The first attempt made to colonize Martinique was abandoned almost as soon as begun, because the leaders of the expedition found the country "too rugged and too mountainous," and were "terrified by the prodigious number of serpents which covered its soil." Landing on June 25, 1635, Olive and Duplessis left the island after a few hours' exploration, or, rather, observation, and made sail for Guadeloupe,—according to the quaint and most veracious history of Pre Dutertre, of the Order of Friars- Preachers.

A single glance at the topographical map of Martinique would suffice to confirm the father's assertion that the country was found to be trop hach et trop montueux: more than two-thirds of it is peak and mountain;—even to-day only 42,445 of its supposed 98,782 hectares have been cultivated; and on page 426 of the last "Annuaire" (1887) I find the statement that in the interior there are extensive Government lands of which the area is "not exactly known." Yet mountainous as a country must be which—although scarcely forty-nine miles long and twenty miles in average breadth—remains partly unfamiliar to its own inhabitants after nearly three centuries of civilization (there are not half a dozen creoles who have travelled all over it), only two elevations in Martinique bear the name montagne. These are La Montagne Pele, in the north, and La Montagne du Vauclin, in the south. The term morne, used throughout the French West Indian colonies to designate certain altitudes of volcanic origin, a term rather unsatisfactorily translated in certain dictionaries as "a small mountain," is justly applied to the majority of Martinique hills, and unjustly sometimes even to its mightiest elevation,—called Morne Pel, or Montagne Pele, or simply "La Montagne," according, perhaps, to the varying degree of respect it inspires in different minds. But even in the popular nomenclature one finds the orography of Martinique, as well as of other West Indian islands, regularly classified by pitons, mornes, and monts or montagnes. Mornes usually have those beautiful and curious forms which bespeak volcanic origin even to the unscientific observer: they are most often pyramidal or conoid up to a certain height; but have summits either rounded or truncated;—their sides, green with the richest vegetation, rise from valley-levels and coast-lines with remarkable abruptness, and are apt to be curiously ribbed or wrinkled. The pitons, far fewer in number, are much more fantastic in form;—volcanic cones, or volcanic upheavals of splintered strata almost at right angles,—sometimes sharp of line as spires, and mostly too steep for habitation. They are occasionally mammiform, and so symmetrical that one might imagine them artificial creations,— particularly when they occur in pairs. Only a very important mass is dignified by the name montagne... there are, as I have already observed, but two thus called in all Martinique,—Pele, the head and summit of the island; and La Montagne du Vauclin, in the south-east. Vauclin is inferior in height and bulk to several mornes and pitons of the north and north-west,—and owes its distinction probably to its position as centre of a system of ranges: but in altitude and mass and majesty, Pele far outranks everything in the island, and well deserves its special appellation, "La Montagne."

No description could give the reader a just idea of what Martinique is, configuratively, so well as the simple statement that, although less than fifty miles in extreme length, and less than twenty in average breadth, there are upwards of four hundred mountains in this little island, or of what at least might be termed mountains elsewhere. These again are divided and interpeaked, and bear hillocks on their slopes;—and the lowest hillock in Martinique is fifty metres high. Some of the peaks are said to be totally inaccessible: many mornes are so on one or two or even three sides. Ninety-one only of the principal mountains have been named; and among these several bear similar appellations: for example, there are two Mornes-Rouges, one in the north and one in the south; and there are four or five Gros- Mornes. All the elevations belong to six great groups, clustering about or radiating from six ancient volcanic centres,— 1. La Pele; 2. Pitons du Carbet; 3. Roches Carres; [27] 4. Vauclin; 5. Marin; 6. Morne de la Plaine. Forty-two distinct mountain-masses belong to the Carbet system alone,—that of Pele including but thirteen; and the whole Carbet area has a circumference of 120,000 metres,—much more considerable than that of Pele. But its centre is not one enormous pyramidal mass like that of "La Montagne": it is marked only by a group of five remarkable porphyritic cones,—the Pitons of Carbet;—while Pele, dominating everything, and fiIling the north, presents an aspect and occupies an area scarcely inferior to those of AEtna.

—Sometimes, while looking at La Pele, I have wondered if the enterprise of the great Japanese painter who made the Hundred Views of Fusiyama could not be imitated by some creole artist equally proud of his native hills, and fearless of the heat of the plains or the snakes of the slopes. A hundred views of Pele might certainly be made: for the enormous mass is omnipresent to dwellers in the northern part of the island, and can be seen from the heights of the most southern mornes. It is visible from almost any part of St. Pierre,—which nestles in a fold of its rocky skirts. It overlooks all the island ranges, and overtops the mighty Pitons of Carbet by a thousand feet;—you can only lose sight of it by entering gorges, or journeying into the valleys of the south.... But the peaked character of the whole country, and the hot moist climate, oppose any artistic undertaking of the sort suggested: even photographers never dream of taking views in the further interior; nor on the east coast. Travel, moreover, is no less costly than difficult: there are no inns or places of rest for tourists; there are, almost daily, sudden and violent rains, which are much dreaded (since a thorough wetting, with the pores all distended by heat, may produce pleurisy); and there are serpents! The artist willing to devote a few weeks of travel and study to Pele, in spite of these annoyances and risks, has not yet made his appearance in Martinique. [28]



Huge as the mountain looks from St. Pierre, the eye under- estimates its bulk; and when you climb the mornes about the town, Labelle, d'Orange, or the much grander Parnasse, you are surprised to find how much vaster Pele appears from these summits. Volcanic hills often seem higher, by reason of their steepness, than they really are; but Pele deludes in another manner. From surrounding valleys it appears lower, and from adjacent mornes higher than it really is: the illusion in the former case being due to the singular slope of its contours, and the remarkable breadth of its base, occupying nearly all the northern end of the island; in the latter, to misconception of the comparative height of the eminence you have reached, which deceives by the precipitous pitch of its sides. Pele is not very remarkable in point of altitude, however: its height was estimated by Moreau de Jonnes at 1600 metres; and by others at between 4400 and 4500 feet. The sum of the various imperfect estimates made justify the opinion of Dr. Cornilliac that the extreme summit is over 5000 feet above the sea—perhaps 5200. [29] The clouds of the summit afford no indication to eyes accustomed to mountain scenery in northern countries; for in these hot moist latitudes clouds hang very low, even in fair weather. But in bulk Pele is grandiose: it spurs out across the island from the Caribbean to the Atlantic: the great chains of mornes about it are merely counter-forts; the Piton Pierreux and the Piton Pain—Sucre (Sugar-loaf Peak), and other elevations varying from 800 to 2100 feet, are its volcanic children. Nearly thirty rivers have their birth in its flanks,—besides many thermal springs, variously mineralized. As the culminant point of the island, Pele is also the ruler of its meteorologic life,—cloud- herder, lightning-forger, and rain-maker. During clear weather you can see it drawing to itself all the white vapors of the land,—robbing lesser eminences of their shoulder-wraps and head- coverings;—though the Pitons of Carbet (3700 feet) usually manage to retain about their middle a cloud-clout,—a lantch. You will also see that the clouds run in a circle about Pele, —gathering bulk as they turn by continual accessions from other points. If the crater be totally bare in the morning, and shows the broken edges very sharply against the blue, it is a sign of foul rather than of fair weather to come. [30]

Even in bulk, perhaps, Pele might not impress those who know the stupendous scenery of the American ranges; but none could deny it special attractions appealing to the senses of form and color. There is an imposing fantasticality in its configuraion worth months of artistic study: one does not easily tire of watching its slopes undulating against the north sky,—and the strange jagging of its ridges,—and the succession of its terraces crumbling down to other terraces, which again break into ravines here and there bridged by enormous buttresses of basalt: an extravaganza of lava-shapes overpitching and cascading into sea and plain. All this is verdant wherever surfaces catch the sun: you can divine what the frame is only by examining the dark and ponderous rocks of the torrents. And the hundred tints of this verdure do not form the only colorific charms of the landscape. Lovely as the long upreaching slopes of cane are,—and the loftier bands of forest-growths, so far off that they look like belts of moss,—and the more tender-colored masses above, wrinkling and folding together up to the frost-white clouds of the summit,—you will be still more delighted by the shadow- colors,—opulent, diaphanous. The umbrages lining the wrinkles, collecting in the hollows, slanting from sudden projections, may become before your eyes almost as unreally beautiful as the landscape colors of a Japanese fan;—they shift most generally during the day from indigo-blue through violets and paler blues to final lilacs and purples; and even the shadows of passing clouds have a faint blue tinge when they fall on Pele.

... Is the great volcano dead? ... Nobody knows. Less than forty years ago it rained ashes over all the roofs of St. Pierre;— within twenty years it has uttered mutterings. For the moment, it appears to sleep; and the clouds have dripped into the cup of its highest crater till it has become a lake, several hundred yards in circumference. The crater occupied by this lake—called L'tang, or "The Pool"—has never been active within human memory. There are others,—difficult and dangerous to visit because opening on the side of a tremendous gorge; and it was one of these, no doubt, which has always been called La Souffrire, that rained ashes over the city in 1851.

The explosion was almost concomitant with the last of a series of earthquake shocks, which began in the middle of May and ended in the first week of August,—all much more severe in Guadeloupe than in Martinique. In the village Au Prcheur, lying at the foot of the western slope of Pele, the people had been for some time complaining of an oppressive stench of sulphur,—or, as chemists declared it, sulphuretted hydrogen,—when, on the 4th of August, much trepidation was caused by a long and appalling noise from the mountain,—a noise compared by planters on the neighboring slopes to the hollow roaring made by a packet blowing off steam, but infinitely louder. These sounds continued through intervals until the following night, sometimes deepening into a rumble like thunder. The mountain guides declared: "C'est la Souffrire qui bout!" (the Souffrire is boiling); and a panic seized the negroes of the neighboring plantations. At 11 P.M. the noise was terrible enough to fill all St. Pierre with alarm; and on the morning of the 6th the city presented an unwonted aspect, compared by creoles who had lived abroad to the effect of a great hoar-frost. All the roofs, trees, balconies, awnings, pavements, were covered with a white layer of ashes. The same shower blanched the roofs of Morne Rouge, and all the villages about the chief city,—Carbet, Fond- Corr, and Au Prcheur; also whitening the neighboring country: the mountain was sending up columns of smoke or vapor; and it was noticed that the Rivire Blanche, usually of a glaucous color, ran black into the sea like an outpouring of ink, staining its azure for a mile. A committee appointed to make an investigation, and prepare an official report, found that a number of rents had either been newly formed, or suddenly become active, in the flank of the mountain: these were all situated in the immense gorge sloping westward from that point now known as the Morne de la Croix. Several were visited with much difficulty,—members of the commission being obliged to lower themselves down a succession of precipices with cords of lianas; and it is noteworthy that their researches were prosecuted in spite of the momentary panic created by another outburst. It was satisfactorily ascertained that the main force of the explosion had been exerted within a perimeter of about one thousand yards; that various hot springs had suddenly gushed out,—the temperature of the least warm being about 37 Raumur (116 F.);—that there was no change in the configuration of the mountain;—and that the terrific sounds had been produced only by the violent outrush of vapor and ashes from some of the rents. In hope of allaying the general alarm, a creole priest climbed the summit of the volcano, and there planted the great cross which gives the height its name and still remains to commemorate the event.

There was an extraordinary emigration of serpents from the high woods, and from the higher to the lower plantations,—where they were killed by thousands. For a long time Pele continued to send up an immense column of white vapor; but there were no more showers of ashes; and the mountain gradually settled down to its present state of quiescence.



II.

From St. Pierre, trips to Pele can be made by several routes; —the most popular is that by way of Morne Rouge and the Calebasse; but the summit can be reached in much less time by making the ascent from different points along the coast-road to Au Prcheur,—such as the Morne St. Martin, or a well-known path further north, passing near the celebrated hot springs (Fontaines Chaudes). You drive towards Au Prcheur, and begin the ascent on foot, through cane-plantations.... The road by which you follow the north-west coast round the skirts of Pele is very picturesque:—you cross the Roxelane, the Rivire des Pres, the Rivire Sche (whose bed is now occupied only by a motionless torrent of rocks);—passing first by the suburb of Fond-Corr, with its cocoa groves, and broad beach of iron-gray sand,—a bathing resort;—then Pointe Prince, and the Fond de Canonville, somnolent villages that occupy wrinkles in the hem of Pele's lava robe. The drive ultimately rises and lowers over the undulations of the cliff, and is well shadowed along the greater part of its course: you will admire many huge fromagers, or silk-cotton trees, various heavy lines of tamarinds, and groups of flamboyants with thick dark feathery foliage, and cassia-trees with long pods pending and blackening from every branch, and hedges of campche, or logwood, and calabash-trees, and multitudes of the pretty shrubs bearing the fruit called in creole raisins-b-lanm, or "sea-side grapes." Then you reach Au Prcheur: a very antiquated village, which boasts a stone church and a little public square with a fountain in it. If you have time to cross the Rivire du Prcheur, a little further on, you can obtain a fine view of the coast, which, rising suddenly to a grand altitude, sweeps round in a semicircle over the Village of the Abysses (Aux Abymes),—whose name was doubtless suggested by the immense depth of the sea at that point.... It was under the shadow of those cliffs that the Confederate cruiser Alabama once hid herself, as a fish hides in the shadow of a rock, and escaped from her pursuer, the Iroquois. She had long been blockaded in the harbor of St. Pierre by the Northern man-of- war,—anxiously awaiting a chance to pounce upon her the instant she should leave French waters;—and various Yankee vessels in port were to send up rocket-signals should the Alabama attempt to escape under cover of darkness. But one night the privateer took a creole pilot on board, and steamed out southward, with all her lights masked, and her chimneys so arranged that neither smoke nor sparks could betray her to the enemy in the offing. However, some Yankee vessels near enough to discern her movements through the darkness at once shot rockets south; and the Iroquois gave chase. The Alabama hugged the high shore as far as Carbet, remaining quite invisible in the shadow of it: then she suddenly turned and recrossed the harbor. Again Yankee rockets betrayed her manreuvre to the Iroquois; but she gained Aux Abymes, laid herself close to the enormous black cliff, and there remained indistinguishable; the Iroquois steamed by north without seeing her. Once the Confederate cruiser found her enemy well out of sight, she put her pilot ashore and escaped into the Dominica channel. The pilot was a poor mulatto, who thought himself well paid with five hundred francs!

... The more popular route to Pele by way of Morne Rouge is otherwise interesting... Anybody not too much afraid of the tropic sun must find it a delightful experience to follow the mountain roads leading to the interior from the city, as all the mornes traversed by them command landscapes of extraordinary beauty. According to the zigzags of the way, the scenery shifts panoramically. At one moment you are looking down into valleys a thousand feet below, at another, over luminous leagues of meadow or cane-field, you see some far crowding of cones and cratered shapes;—sharp as the teeth of a saw, and blue as sapphire,—with further eminences ranging away through pearline color to high- peaked remotenesses of vapory gold. As you follow the windings of such a way as the road of the Morne Labelle, or the Morne d'Orange, the city disappears and reappears many times,—always diminishing, till at last it looks no bigger than a chess-board. Simultaneously distant mountain shapes appear to unfold and lengthen;—and always, always the sea rises with your rising. Viewed at first from the bulwark (boulevard) commanding the roofs of the town, its horizon-line seemed straight and keen as a knife-edge;—but as you mount higher, it elongates, begins to curve; and gradually the whole azure expanse of water broadens out roundly like a disk. From certain very lofty summits further inland you behold the immense blue circle touching the sky all round you,—except where a still greater altitude, like that of Pele or the Pitons, breaks the ring; and this high vision of the sea has a phantasmal effect hard to describe, and due to vapory conditions of the atmosphere. There are bright cloudless days when, even as seen from the city, the ocean-verge has a spectral vagueness; but on any day, in any season, that you ascend to a point dominating the sea by a thousand feet, the rim of the visible world takes a ghostliness that startles,—because the prodigious light gives to all near shapes such intense sharpness of outline and vividness of color.

Yet wonderful as are the perspective beauties of those mountain routes from which one can keep St. Pierre in view, the road to Morne Rouge surpasses them, notwithstanding that it almost immediately leaves the city behind, and out of sight. Excepting only La Trace,—the long route winding over mountain ridges and between primitive forests south to Fort-de-France,—there is probably no section of national highway in the island more remarkable than the Morne Rouge road. Leaving the Grande Rue by the public conveyance, you drive out through the Savane du Fort, with its immense mango and tamarind trees, skirting the Roxelane. Then reaching the boulevard, you pass high Morne Labelle,—and then the Jardin des Plantes on the right, where white-stemmed palms are lifting their heads two hundred feet,—and beautiful Parnasse, heavily timbered to the top;—while on your left the valley of the Roxelane shallows up, and Pele shows less and less of its tremendous base. Then you pass through the sleepy, palmy, pretty Village of the Three Bridges (Trois Ponts),—where a Fahrenheit thermometer shows already three degrees of temperature lower than at St. Pierre;—and the national road, making a sharp turn to the right, becomes all at once very steep—so steep that the horses can mount only at a walk. Around and between the wooded hills it ascends by zigzags,—occasionally overlooking the sea,—sometimes following the verges of ravines. Now and then you catch glimpses of the road over which you passed half an hour before undulating far below, looking narrow as a tape-line,—and of the gorge of the Roxelane,—and of Pele, always higher, now thrusting out long spurs of green and purple land into the sea. You drive under cool shadowing of mountain woods—under waving bamboos like enormous ostrich feathers dyed green,—and exquisite tree-ferns thirty to forty feet high,—and imposing ceibas, with strangely buttressed trunks,—and all sorts of broad-leaved forms: cachibous, balisiers, bananiers.... Then you reach a plateau covered with cane, whose yellow expanse is bounded on the right by a demilune of hills sharply angled as crystals;—on the left it dips seaward; and before you Pele's head towers over the shoulders of intervening mornes. A strong cool wind is blowing; and the horses can trot a while. Twenty minutes, and the road, leaving the plateau, becomes steep again; —you are approaching the volcano over the ridge of a colossal spur. The way turns in a semicircle,—zigzags,—once more touches the edge of a valley,—where the clear fall might be nearly fifteen hundred feet. But narrowing more and more, the valley becomes an ascending gorge; and across its chasm, upon the brow of the opposite cliff, you catch sight of houses and a spire seemingly perched on the verge, like so many birds'-nests,—the village of Morne Rouge. It is two thousand feet above the sea; and Pele, although looming high over it, looks a trifle less lofty now.

One's first impression of Morne Rouge is that of a single straggling street of gray-painted cottages and shops (or rather booths), dominated by a plain church, with four pursy-bodied palmistes facing the main porch. Nevertheless, Morne Rouge is not a small place, considering its situation;—there are nearly five thousand inhabitants; but in order to find out where they live, you must leave the public road, which is on a ridge, and explore the high-hedged lanes leading down from it on either side. Then you will find a veritable city of little wooden cottages,—each screened about with banana-trees, Indian-reeds, and pommiers- roses. You will also see a number of handsome private residences—country-houses of wealthy merchants; and you will find that the church, though uninteresting exteriorly, is rich and impressive within: it is a famous shrine, where miracles are alleged to have been wrought. Immense processions periodically wend their way to it from St. Pierre,—starting at three or four o'clock in the morning, so as to arrive before the sun is well up.... But there are no woods here,—only fields. An odd tone is given to the lanes by a local custom of planting hedges of what are termed roseaux d' Inde, having a dark-red foliage; and there is a visible fondness for ornamental plants with crimson leaves. Otherwise the mountain summit is somewhat bare; trees have a scrubby aspect. You must have noticed while ascending that the palmistes became smaller as they were situated higher: at Morne Rouge they are dwarfed,—having a short stature, and very thick trunks.

In spite of the fine views of the sea, the mountain-heights, and the valley-reaches, obtainable from Morne Rouge, the place has a somewhat bleak look. Perhaps this is largely owing to the universal slate-gray tint of the buildings,—very melancholy by comparison with the apricot and banana yellows tinting the walls of St. Pierre. But this cheerless gray is the only color which can resist the climate of Morne Rouge, where people are literally dwelling in the clouds. Rolling down like white smoke from Pele, these often create a dismal fog; and Morne Rouge is certainly one of the rainiest places in the world. When it is dry everywhere else, it rains at Morne Rouge. It rains at least three hundred and sixty days and three hundred and sixty nights of the year. It rains almost invariably once in every twenty-four hours; but oftener five or six times. The dampness is phenomenal. All mirrors become patchy; linen moulds in one day; leather turns while woollen goods feel as if saturated with moisture; new brass becomes green; steel crumbles into red powder; wood-work rots with astonishing rapidity; salt is quickly transformed into brine; and matches, unless kept in a very warm place, refuse to light. Everything moulders and peels and decomposes; even the frescos of the church-interior lump out in immense blisters; and a microscopic vegetation, green or brown, attacks all exposed surfaces of timber or stone. At night it is often really cold;— and it is hard to understand how, with all this dampness and coolness and mouldiness, Morne Rouge can be a healthy place. But it is so, beyond any question: it is the great Martinique resort for invalids; strangers debilitated by the climate of Trinidad or Cayenne come to it for recuperation.



Leaving the village by the still uprising road, you will be surprised, after a walk of twenty minutes northward, by a magnificent view,—the vast valley of the Champ-Flore, watered by many torrents, and bounded south and west by double, triple, and quadruple surging of mountains,—mountains broken, peaked, tormented-looking, and tinted (irises, as the creoles say) with all those gem-tones distance gives in a West Indian atmosphere. Particularly impressive is the beauty of one purple cone in the midst of this many-colored chain: the Piton Gl. All the valley- expanse of rich land is checkered with alternations of meadow and cane and cacao,—except northwestwardly, where woods billow out of sight beyond a curve. Facing this landscape, on your left, are mornes of various heights,—among which you will notice La Calebasse, overtopping everything but Pele shadowing behind it;—and a grass-grown road leads up westward from the national highway towards the volcano. This is the Calebasse route to Pele.



III.

We must be very sure of the weather before undertaking the ascent of Pele; for if one merely selects some particular leisure day in advance, one's chances of seeing anything from the summit are considerably less than an astronomer's chances of being able to make a satisfactory observation of the next transit of Venus. Moreover, if the heights remain even partly clouded, it may not be safe to ascend the Morne de la Croix,—a cone-point above the crater itself, and ordinarily invisible from below. And a cloudless afternoon can never be predicted from the aspect of deceitful Pele: when the crater edges are quite clearly cut against the sky at dawn, you may be tolerably certain there will be bad weather during the day; and when they are all bare at sundown, you have no good reason to believe they will not be hidden next morning. Hundreds of tourists, deluded by such appearances, have made the weary trip in vain,—found themselves obliged to return without having seen anything but a thick white cold fog. The sky may remain perfectly blue for weeks in every other direction, and Pele's head remain always hidden. In order to make a successful ascent, one must not wait for a period of dry weather,—one might thus wait for years! What one must look for is a certain periodicity in the diurnal rains,—a regular alternation of sun and cloud; such as characterizes a certain portion of the hivernage, or rainy summer season, when mornings and evenings are perfectly limpid, with very heavy sudden rains in the middle of the day. It is of no use to rely on the prospect of a dry spell. There is no really dry weather, notwithstanding there recurs—in books—a Saison de la Scheresse. In fact, there are no distinctly marked seasons in Martinique:—a little less heat and rain from October to July, a little more rain and heat from July to October: that is about all the notable difference! Perhaps the official notification by cannon-shot that the hivernage, the season of heavy rains and hurricanes, begins on July 15th, is no more trustworthy than the contradictory declarations of Martinique authors who have attempted to define the vague and illusive limits of the tropic seasons. Still, the Government report on the subject is more satisfactory than any: according to the "Annuaire," there are these seasons:— 1. Saison frache. December to March. Rainfall, about 475 millimetres. 2. Saison chaude et sche. April to July. Rainfall, about 140 millimetres. 3. Saison chaude et pluvieuse. July to November. Rainfall average, 121 millimetres.

Other authorities divide the saison chaude et sche into two periods, of which the latter, beginning about May, is called the Renouveau; and it is at least true that at the time indicated there is a great burst of vegetal luxuriance. But there is always rain, there are almost always clouds, there is no possibility of marking and dating the beginnings and the endings of weather in this country where the barometer is almost useless, and the thermometer mounts in the sun to twice the figure it reaches in the shade. Long and patient observation has, however, established the fact that during the hivernage, if the heavy showers have a certain fixed periodicity,—falling at midday or in the heated part of the afternoon,—Pele is likely to be clear early in the morning; and by starting before daylight one can then have good chances of a fine view from the summit.



IV.

At five o'clock of a September morning, warm and starry, I leave St. Pierre in a carriage with several friends, to make the ascent by the shortest route of all,—that of the Morne St. Martin, one of Pele's western counterforts. We drive north along the shore for about half an hour; then, leaving the coast behind, pursue a winding mountain road, leading to the upper plantations, between leagues of cane. The sky begins to brighten as we ascend, and a steely glow announces that day has begun on the other side of the island. Miles up, the crest of the volcano cuts sharp as a saw- edge against the growing light: there is not a cloud visible. Then the light slowly yellows behind the vast cone; and one of the most beautiful dawns I ever saw reveals on our right an immense valley through which three rivers flow. This deepens very quickly as we drive; the mornes about St. Pierre, beginning to catch the light, sink below us in distance; and above them, southwardly, an amazing silouette begins to rise,—all blue,—a mountain wall capped with cusps and cones, seeming high as Pele itself in the middle, but sinking down to the sea-level westward. There are a number of extraordinary acuminations; but the most impressive shape is the nearest,—a tremendous conoidal mass crowned with a group of peaks, of which two, taller than the rest, tell their name at once by the beauty of their forms,— the Pitons of Carbet. They wear their girdles of cloud, though Pele is naked to-day. All this is blue: the growing light only deepens the color, does not dissipate it;—but in the nearer valleys gleams of tender yellowish green begin to appear. Still the sun has not been able to show himself;—it will take him some time yet to climb Pele.

Reaching the last plantation, we draw rein in a village of small wooden cottages,—the quarters of the field hands,—and receive from the proprietor, a personal friend of my friends, the kindest welcome. At his house we change clothing and prepare for the journey;—he provides for our horses, and secures experienced guides for us,—two young colored men belonging to the plantation. Then we begin the ascent. The guides walk before, barefoot, each carrying a cutlass in his hand and a package on his head—our provisions, photographic instruments, etc.

The mountain is cultivated in spots up to twenty-five hundred feet; and for three-quarters of an hour after leaving the planter's residence we still traverse fields of cane and of manioc. The light is now strong in the valley; but we are in the shadow of Pele. Cultivated fields end at last; the ascending path is through wild cane, wild guavas, guinea-grass run mad, and other tough growths, some bearing pretty pink blossoms. The forest is before us. Startled by our approach, a tiny fer-de- lance glides out from a bunch of dead wild-cane, almost under the bare feet of our foremost guide, who as instantly decapitates it with a touch of his cutlass. It is not quite fifteen inches long, and almost the color of the yellowish leaves under which it had been hiding.... The conversation turns on snakes as we make our first halt at the verge of the woods.

Hundreds may be hiding around us; but a snake never shows himself by daylight except under the pressure of sudden alarm. We are not likely, in the opinion of all present, to meet with another. Every one in the party, except myself, has some curious experience to relate. I hear for the first time, about the alleged inability of the trigonocephalus to wound except at a distance from his enemy of not less than one-third of his length;—about M. A—, a former director of the Jardin des Plantes, who used to boldly thrust his arm into holes where he knew snakes were, and pull them out,— catching them just behind the head and wrapping the tail round his arm,—and place them alive in a cage without ever getting bitten;—about M. B—, who, while hunting one day, tripped in the coils of an immense trigonocephalus, and ran so fast in his fright that the serpent, entangled round his leg, could not bite him;—about M. C—, who could catch a fer-de-lance by the tail, and "crack it like a whip" until the head would fly off ;—about an old white man living in the Champ-Flore, whose diet was snake- meat, and who always kept in his ajoupa "a keg of salted serpents" (_yon ka spent-sal);—about a monster eight feet long which killed, near Morne Rouge, M. Charles Fabre's white cat, but was also killed by the cat after she had been caught in the folds of the reptile;—about the value of snakes as protectors of the sugar-cane and cocoa-shrub against rats;—about an unsuccessful effort made, during a plague of rats in Guadeloupe, to introduce the fer-de-lance there;—about the alleged power of a monstrous toad, the _crapaud-ladre_, to cause the death of the snake that swallows it;—and, finally, about the total absence of the idyllic and pastoral elements in Martinique literature, as due to the presence of reptiles everywhere. "Even the flora and fauna of the country remain to a large extent unknown,"—adds the last speaker, an amiable old physician of St. Pierre,—"because the existence of the fer-de-lance renders all serious research dangerous in the extreme."

My own experiences do not justify my taking part in such a conversation;—I never saw alive but two very small specimens of the trigonocephalus. People who have passed even a considerable time in Martinique may have never seen a fer-de-lance except in a jar of alcohol, or as exhibited by negro snake-catchers, tied fast to a bamboo, But this is only because strangers rarely travel much in the interior of the country, or find themselves on country roads after sundown. It is not correct to suppose that snakes are uncommon even in the neighborhood of St. Pierre: they are often killed on the bulwarks behind the city and on the verge of the Savane; they have been often washed into the streets by heavy rains; and many washer-women at the Roxelane have been bitten by them. It is considered very dangerous to walk about the bulwarks after dark;—for the snakes, which travel only at night, then descend from the mornes towards the river, The Jardin des Plantes shelters great numbers of the reptiles; and only a few days prior to the writing of these lines a colored laborer in the garden was stricken and killed by a fer-de-lance measuring one metre and sixty-seven centimetres in length. In the interior much larger reptiles are sometimes seen: I saw one freshly killed measuring six feet five inches, and thick as a man's leg in the middle. There are few planters in the island who have not some of their hands bitten during the cane-cutting and cocoa-gathering seasons;—the average annual mortality among the class of travailleurs from serpent bite alone is probably fifty, [31] —always fine young men or women in the prime of life. Even among the wealthy whites deaths from this cause are less rare than might be supposed: I know one gentleman, a rich citizen of St, Pierre, who in ten years lost three relatives by the trigonocephalus,—the wound having in each case been received in the neighborhood of a vein. When the vein has been pierced, cure is impossible.



V.

... We look back over the upreaching yellow fan-spread of cane- fields, and winding of tortuous valleys, and the sea expanding beyond an opening in the west. It has already broadened surprisingly, the sea appears to have risen up, not as a horizontal plane, but like an immeasurable azure precipice: what will it look like when we shall have reached the top? Far down we can distinguish a line of field-hands—the whole atelier, as it is called, of a plantation slowly descending a slope, hewing the canes as they go. There is a woman to every two men, a binder (amarreuse): she gathers the canes as they are cut down; binds them with their own tough long leaves into a sort of sheaf, and carries them away on her head;—the men wield their cutlasses so beautifully that it is a delight to watch them. One cannot often enjoy such a spectacle nowadays; for the introduction of the piece-work system has destroyed the picturesqueness of plantation labor throughout the island, with rare exceptions. Formerly the work of cane-cutting resembled the march of an army;—first advanced the cutlassers in line, naked to the waist; then the amareuses, the women who tied and carried; and behind these the ka, the drum,—with a paid crieur or crieuse to lead the song;— and lastly the black Commandeur, for general. And in the old days, too, it was not unfrequent that the sudden descent of an English corsair on the coast converted this soldiery of labor into veritable military: more than one attack was repelled by the cutlasses of a plantation atelier.

At this height the chatting and chanting can be heard, though not distinctly enough to catch the words. Suddenly a voice, powerful as a bugle, rings out,—the voice of the Commandeur: he walks along the line, looking, with his cutlass under his arm. I ask one of our guides what the cry is:—

—"Y ka coumand yo pouend gde pou spent," he replies. (He is telling them to keep watch for serpents.) The nearer the cutlassers approach the end of their task, the greater the danger: for the reptiles, retreating before them to the last clump of cane, become massed there, and will fight desperately. Regularly as the ripening-time, Death gathers his toll of human lives from among the workers. But when one falls, another steps into the vacant place,—perhaps the Commandeur himself: these dark swordsmen never retreat; all the blades swing swiftly as before; there is hardly any emotion; the travailleur is a fatalist.... [32]



VI.

... We enter the grands-bois,—the primitive forest,—the "high woods."

As seen with a field-glass from St. Pierre, these woods present only the appearance of a band of moss belting the volcano, and following all its corrugations,—so densely do the leafy crests intermingle. But on actually entering them, you find yourself at once in green twilight, among lofty trunks uprising everywhere like huge pillars wrapped with vines;—and the interspaces between these bulks are all occupied by lianas and parasitic creepers,—some monstrous,—veritable parasite-trees,—ascending at all angles, or dropping straight down from the tallest crests to take root again. The effect in the dim light is that of innumerable black ropes and cables of varying thicknesses stretched taut from the soil to the tree-tops, and also from branch to branch, like rigging. There are rare and remarkable trees here,—acomats, courbarils, balatas, ceibas or fromagers, acajous, gommiers;—hundreds have been cut down by charcoal- makers; but the forest is still grand. It is to be regretted that the Government has placed no restriction upon the barbarous destruction of trees by the charbonniers, which is going on throughout the island. Many valuable woods are rapidly disappearing. The courbaril, yielding a fine-grained, heavy, chocolate-colored timber; the balata, giving a wood even heavier, denser, and darker; the acajou, producing a rich red wood, with a strong scent of cedar; the bois-de-fer; the bois d'Inde; the superb acomat,—all used to flourish by tens of thousands upon these volcanic slopes, whose productiveness is eighteen times greater than that of the richest European soil. All Martinique furniture used to be made of native woods; and the colored cabinet-makers still produce work which would probably astonish New York or London manufacturers. But to-day the island exports no more hard woods: it has even been found necessary to import much from neighboring islands;—and yet the destruction of forests still goes on. The domestic fabrication of charcoal from forest-trees has been estimated at 1,400,000 hectolitres per annum. Primitive forest still covers the island to the extent of 21.37 per cent; but to find precious woods now, one must climb heights like those of Pele and Carbet, or penetrate into the mountains of the interior.



Most common formerly on these slopes were the gommiers, from which canoes of a single piece, forty-five feet long by seven wide, used to be made. There are plenty of gommiers still; but the difficulty of transporting them to the shore has latterly caused a demand for the gommiers of Dominica. The dimensions of canoes now made from these trees rarely exceed fifteen feet in length by eighteen inches in width: the art of making them is an inheritance from the ancient Caribs. First the trunk is shaped to the form of the canoe, and pointed at both ends; it is then hollowed out. The width of the hollow does not exceed six inches at the widest part; but the cavity is then filled with wet sand, which in the course of some weeks widens the excavation by its weight, and gives the boat perfect form. Finally gunwales of plank are fastened on; seats are put in—generally four;—and no boat is more durable nor more swift.

... We climb. There is a trace rather than a foot-path;—no visible soil, only vegetable detritus, with roots woven over it in every direction. The foot never rests on a flat surface,— only upon surfaces of roots; and these are covered, like every protruding branch along the route, with a slimy green moss, slippery as ice. Unless accustomed to walking in tropical woods, one will fall at every step. In a little while I find it impossible to advance. Our nearest guide, observing my predicament, turns, and without moving the bundle upon his head, cuts and trims me an excellent staff with a few strokes of his cutlass. This staff not only saves me from dangerous slips, but also serves at times to probe the way; for the further we proceed, the vaguer the path becomes. It was made by the chasseurs-de-choux (cabbage-hunters),—the negro mountaineers who live by furnishing heads of young cabbage- palm to the city markets; and these men also keep it open,— otherwise the woods would grow over it in a month. Two chasseurs-de-choux stride past us as we advance, with their freshly gathered palm-salad upon their heads, wrapped in cachibou or balisier leaves, and tied with lianas. The palmiste-franc easily reaches a stature of one hundred feet; but the young trees are so eagerly sought for by the chasseurs-de-choux that in these woods few reach a height of even twelve feet before being cut.