Two Years in the French West Indies Part 23

II.

From St. Pierre, trips to Pelee can be made by several routes;--the most popular is that by way of Morne Rouge and the Caleba.s.se; but the summit can be reached in much less time by making the ascent from different points along the coast-road to Au Precheur,--such as the Morne St.

Martin, or a well-known path further north, pa.s.sing near the celebrated hot springs (_Fontaines Chaudes_). You drive towards Au Precheur, and begin the ascent on foot, through cane-plantations.... The road by which you follow the north-west coast round the skirts of Pelee is very picturesque:--you cross the Roxelane, the Riviere des Peres, the Riviere Seche (whose bed is now occupied only by a motionless torrent of rocks);--pa.s.sing first by the suburb of Fond-Corre, 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 Pelee'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 ca.s.sia-trees with long pods pending and blackening from every branch, and hedges of _campeche_, or logwood, and calabash-trees, and mult.i.tudes of the pretty shrubs bearing the fruit called in creole _raisins-b-lanme_, or "sea-side grapes." Then you reach Au Precheur: 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 Riviere du Precheur, a little further on, you can obtain a fine view of the coast, which, rising suddenly to a grand alt.i.tude, 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 sh.o.r.e 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 ash.o.r.e 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 Pelee 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 s.h.i.+fts 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 diminis.h.i.+ng, 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 alt.i.tude, like that of Pelee 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 surpa.s.ses 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 pa.s.s 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 Parna.s.se, heavily timbered to the top;--while on your left the valley of the Roxelane shallows up, and Pelee shows less and less of its tremendous base. Then you pa.s.s 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 pa.s.sed half an hour before undulating far below, looking narrow as a tape-line,--and of the gorge of the Roxelane,--and of Pelee, 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 b.u.t.tressed 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 Pelee'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 Pelee, 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 Pelee, 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 bra.s.s becomes green; steel crumbles into red powder; wood-work rots with astonis.h.i.+ng 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: VILLAGE OF MORNE ROUGE, MARTINIQUE]

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 (_irisees_, 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 Gele.

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 Caleba.s.se, overtopping everything but Pelee shadowing behind it;--and a gra.s.s-grown road leads up westward from the national highway towards the volcano.

This is the Caleba.s.se route to Pelee.

III.

We must be very sure of the weather before undertaking the ascent of Pelee; 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 Pelee: 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 Pelee'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 Secheresse_. 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 fraiche_. December to March. Rainfall, about 475 millimetres. 2. _Saison chaude et seche_. 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 seche_ 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,--Pelee 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 Pelee's western counterforts. We drive north along the sh.o.r.e 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 Pelee itself in the middle, but sinking down to the sea-level westward. There are a number of extraordinary ac.u.minations; but the most impressive shape is the nearest,--a tremendous conoidal ma.s.s 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 Pelee 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 Pelee.

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 cutla.s.s 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 Pelee. Cultivated fields end at last; the ascending path is through wild cane, wild guavas, guinea-gra.s.s 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 cutla.s.s. 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 sepent-sale_);--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 _c.r.a.paud-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 pa.s.sed 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 cla.s.s 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 cutla.s.ses 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 cutla.s.sers 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 cutla.s.ses 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 cutla.s.s under his arm. I ask one of our guides what the cry is:--

--"_Y ka coumande yo pouend gade pou sepent_," he replies. (He is telling them to keep watch for serpents.) The nearer the cutla.s.sers approach the end of their task, the greater the danger: for the reptiles, retreating before them to the last clump of cane, become ma.s.sed 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-gla.s.s 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 inters.p.a.ces 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 Pelee and Carbet, or penetrate into the mountains of the interior.

[Ill.u.s.tration: LA MONTAGNE PELeE, AS SEEN FROM GRANDE ANSE.]

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 sh.o.r.e 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 cutla.s.s. 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 _cha.s.seurs-de-choux_ (cabbage-hunters),--the negro mountaineers who live by furnis.h.i.+ng 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 cha.s.seurs-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 cha.s.seurs-de-choux that in these woods few reach a height of even twelve feet before being cut.

... Walking becomes more difficult;--there seems no termination to the grands-bois: always the same faint green light, the same rude natural stair-way of slippery roots,--half the time hidden by fern leaves and vines. Sharp ammoniacal scents are in the air; a dew, cold as ice-water, drenches our clothing. Unfamiliar insects make trilling noises in dark places; and now and then a series of soft clear notes ring out, almost like a thrush's whistle: the chant of a little tree-frog. The path becomes more and more overgrown; and but for the constant excursions of the cabbage-hunters, we should certainly have to cutla.s.s every foot of the way through creepers and brambles. More and more amazing also is the interminable interweaving of roots: the whole forest is thus spun together--not underground so much as overground. These tropical trees do not strike deep, although able to climb steep slopes of porphyry and basalt: they send out great far-reaching webs of roots,--each such web interknotting with others all round it, and these in turn with further ones;--while between their reticulations lianas ascend and descend: and a nameless mult.i.tude of shrubs as tough as india-rubber push up, together with mosses, gra.s.ses, and ferns. Square miles upon square miles of woods are thus interlocked and interbound into one ma.s.s solid enough to resist the pressure of a hurricane; and where there is no path already made, entrance into them can only be effected by the most dexterous cutla.s.sing.

An inexperienced stranger might be puzzled to understand how this cutla.s.sing is done. It is no easy feat to sever with one blow a liana thick as a man's arm; the trained cutla.s.ser does it without apparent difficulty: moreover, he cuts horizontally, so as to prevent the severed top presenting a sharp angle and proving afterwards dangerous. He never appears to strike hard,--only to give light taps with his blade, which flickers continually about him as he moves. Our own guides in cutla.s.sing are not at all inconvenienced by their loads; they walk perfectly upright, never stumble, never slip, never hesitate, and do not even seem to perspire: their bare feet are prehensile. Some creoles in our party, habituated to the woods, walk nearly as well in their shoes; but they carry no loads.

... At last we are rejoiced to observe that the trees are becoming smaller;--there are no more colossal trunks;--there are frequent glimpses of sky: the sun has risen well above the peaks, and sends occasional beams down through the leaves. Ten minutes, and we reach a clear s.p.a.ce,--a wild savane, very steep, above which looms a higher belt of woods. Here we take another short rest.

Northward the view is cut off by a ridge covered with herbaceous vegetation;--but to the south-west it is open, over a gorge of which both sides are shrouded in sombre green-crests of trees forming a solid curtain against the sun. Beyond the outer and lower cliff valley-surfaces appear miles away, flinging up broad gleams of cane-gold; further off greens disappear into blues, and the fantastic ma.s.ses of Carbet loom up far higher than before. St. Pierre, in a curve of the coast, is a little red-and-yellow semicircular streak, less than two inches long. The inters.p.a.ces between far mountain chains,--ma.s.ses of pyramids, cones, single and double humps, queer blue angles as of raised knees under coverings,--resemble misty lakes: they are filled with brume;--the sea-line has vanished altogether. Only the horizon, enormously heightened, can be discerned as a circling band of faint yellowish light,--auroral, ghostly,--almost on a level with the tips of the Pitons. Between this vague horizon and the sh.o.r.e, the sea no longer looks like sea, but like a second hollow sky reversed. All the landscape has unreal beauty:--there are no keen lines; there are no definite beginnings or endings; the tints are half-colors only;--peaks rise suddenly from mysteries of bluish fog as from a flood; land melts into sea the same hue. It gives one the idea of some great aquarelle unfinished,--abandoned before tones were deepened and details brought out.

VII.

We are overlooking from this height the birthplaces of several rivers; and the rivers of Pelee are the clearest and the coolest of the island.

From whatever direction the trip be undertaken, the ascent of the volcano must be made over some one of those many immense ridges sloping from the summit to the sea west, north, and east,--like b.u.t.tresses eight to ten miles long,--formed by ancient lava-torrents. Down the deep gorges between them the cloud-fed rivers run,--receiving as they descend the waters of countless smaller streams gus.h.i.+ng from either side of the ridge. There are also cold springs,--one of which furnishes St. Pierre with her _Eau-de-Gouyave_ (guava-water), which is always sweet, clear, and cool in the very hottest weather. But the water of almost everyone of the seventy-five princ.i.p.al rivers of Martinique is cool and clear and sweet. And these rivers are curious in their way. Their average fall has been estimated at nine inches to every six feet;--many are cataracts;--the Riviere de Case-Navire has a fall of nearly 150 feet to every fifty yards of its upper course. Naturally these streams cut for themselves channels of immense depth. Where they flow through forests and between mornes, their banks vary from 1200 to 1600 feet high,--so as to render their beds inaccessible; and many enter the sea through a channel of rock with perpendicular walls from 100 to 200 feet high.

Their waters are necessarily shallow in normal weather; but during rain-storms they become torrents thunderous, and terrific beyond description. In order to comprehend their sudden swelling, one must know what tropical rain is. Col. Boyer Peyreleau, in 1823, estimated the annual rainfall in these colonies at 150 inches on the coast, to 350 on the mountains,--while the annual fall at Paris was only eighteen inches.

The character of such rain is totally different from that of rain in the temperate zone: the drops are enormous, heavy, like hailstones,--one will spatter over the circ.u.mference of a saucer;--and the shower roars so that people cannot hear each other speak without shouting. When there is a true storm, no roofing seems able to shut out the cataract; the best-built houses leak in all directions; and objects but a short distance off become invisible behind the heavy curtain of water. The ravages of such rain may be imagined! Roads are cut away in an hour; trees are overthrown as if blown down;--for there are few West Indian trees which plunge their roots even as low as two feet; they merely extend them over a large diameter; and isolated trees will actually slide under rain. The swelling of rivers is so sudden that washer-women at work in the Roxelane and other streams have been swept away and drowned without the least warning of their danger; the shower occurring seven or eight miles off.

Most of these rivers are well stocked with fish, of which the _tetart_, _banane_, _loche_, and _dormeur_ are the princ.i.p.al varieties. The tetart (best of all) and the loche climb the torrents to the height of 2500 and even 3000 feet: they have a kind of pneumatic sucker, which enables them to cling to rocks. Under stones in the lower basins crawfish of the most extraordinary size are taken; some will measure thirty-six inches from claw to tail. And at all the river-mouths, during July and August, are caught vast numbers of "_t.i.tiri_" [33] --tiny white fish, of which a thousand might be put into one teacup. They are delicious when served in oil,--infinitely more delicate than the sardine. Some regard them as a particular species: others believe them to be only the fry of larger fish,--as their periodical appearance and disappearance would seem to indicate. They are often swept by millions into the city of St. Pierre, with the flow of mountain-water which purifies the streets: then you will see them swarming in the gutters, fountains, and bathing-basins;--and on Sat.u.r.days, when the water is temporarily shut off to allow of the pipes being cleansed, the t.i.tiri may die in the gutters in such numbers as to make the air offensive.