We, too, were uncertain which way to choose, so we looked to the East, and we looked to the West, and we chose the one that we loved the best; it happened to be a side street up a very steep hill, beguiling us to a broad avenue, evidently one of the approaches to the famous Jardin des Plantes, of which our felicitous little pamphlet guide had made particular mention. For fear lest, in our delight over the novel experiences of the evening, I should forget to mention one feature of St. Pierre peculiarly and distinctly unique, we’ll stop for a moment to look down the funny little street, up which we have just laboured. You see on each side of the narrow pavement a deep stone gutter, two feet deep and nearly as wide, down which plunges a constant torrent of light bluish water, with the colour peculiar to all mountain streams; this rush and tumble of water you will see not only in this street, but in all the streets of St. Pierre. It gives one a generous sense of well-being. You feel as if you might take a bath on Monday and Tuesday, and all through the week, and the town would not be threatened with the water famine that is ever hanging over one in some of these tropical towns. How delightful for the children, too!
It is a positive relief to my mind to have finished telling you about those wayside streams, for, ever since our arrival in St. Pierre I have been followed by the thought of them, until almost in a state of distraction. Something was continually hammering into my ears: “Why don’t you tell about the aqueducts? Don’t you know they carry down the mountainside and into the city the finest water of the West Indies? Why don’t you give more information?”
But now we may go on, and would you mind if we didn’t try to learn one bit of anything more for the rest of this beautiful evening? Is it not enough to stroll idly on under the shadow of the mountainside, wild with tangled vines and interweaving foliage, black as night and deep as the sea? Would it cause you, in the rush of Western civilisation, a pang to lean with us over this high wall above the city, and watch yon bark lift her sails athwart the blood-red sun, merging his grandeur into the peace of the ocean? Let us call her the Fontabella; to be sure the Fontabella is probably a matter-of-fact, puffy, old mail-steamer and is not to arrive for days, but that’s no matter. Yonder ship is our Fontabella. We shall name her such, truly she is worthy the honour; she is getting ready for sea; her sails rise slowly with the sleepy yards and stand out in black relief against the iridescent sea of glory about her; from afar comes the faint creak of her incoming anchor-chains, and, as she rests there motionless, down drops the sun, and a ship we shall see no more fades into the night.
The Cathedral and Water-Front St. Pierre, Martinique Copyright, 1901, by Detroit Photographic Co.
The Cathedral and Water-Front
St. Pierre, Martinique
Copyright, 1901, by Detroit Photographic Co.
Stopping to inquire of a small boy if we are on the main highway, and not on some path which may lead us either to destruction or to nothing at all,—either of which events would be undesirable,—a well-dressed man, of more than middle age, offers to give us the needed information. We are so continually beset by volunteer “guides” of all classes and colours, that we have of late grown most short in our rejection of unasked-for advice; who knows how many angels we may have thus turned away unawares? This evening, our new acquaintance not only tells us where we are going, but calmly joins the party, and, taking the lead, pilots us in spite of our protestations. He speaks the French of a cultivated gentleman, and goes on leading the way and the conversation most agreeably. And so we start along the Boulevard toward the public gardens, which lie back of the town in a gorge of the mountain.
We are followed by a half dozen or so children, who, for the most part, stare at us very curiously, and then chatter among themselves in low voices; I noticed that, as our self-appointed guide walked along, he was continually knocking and poking with his long cane at stray bunches of leaves which had fallen upon the road, and now and then he would let fall a remark about “les serpents,” which he said were often on the road after nightfall.
If there is one thing above all others upon this beautiful earth which my feminine soul abhors, it is a snake; the very thought is chilling to my blood! I had no intention of running any risk of an encounter with serpents,—poisonous or otherwise,—if it could be avoided. Still we all felt that this might be something similar to the rattlesnake stories told to trusting travellers in our country, and fancied that our leader shared the popular theory that we were gullible American travellers, who supposed that all tropical forests were alive with venomous reptiles.
By this time it was night, heavily black with the deepening curtain of the mountain, hanging over us on one side, and the sombre shade of the trees on the other. Curious sounds came from the undergrowth, and long, low, melancholy whistles dropped from among the trees; heavy odours hung their narcotic spells about us, and our leader, in his long frock coat, was just visible as he strode ahead of us, sweeping the path for serpents.
Little Blue Ribbons was clinging to my hand, and her persistent whisper begged me every minute to please not go any further. I called to Daddy: “What’s the use going any further? I want to go back. I don’t see why we have to follow this man if we don’t want to.” But Daddy’s and Sister’s steps rustled among the leaves ahead, and Little Blue Ribbons went on, whispering, and we all kept following.
Taking courage, I skipped ahead of Sister, and caught up with our new friend, and very gently expressed to him our wish that he reconduct us to some place a little lighter and less deadly; but it didn’t make the least impression upon him; he simply went on and kept up a string of talk about the wonderful Botanical Garden, whither he was leading us, part of which I understood and part of which I didn’t. “But,” I exclaimed, “we do not wish, desire, expect, or hope to see the Botanical Garden in the night; we have not survived the perils of the deep to be devoured by wild animals, or poisoned by reptiles, or slain by man-eating Caribs, at this late day. All we want is to be peacefully allowed to go home in our own way.” But you might as well have talked to yonder bark asleep on the breast of the ocean as to the grim back of our black-coated companion. It was another case of the “Pied Piper of Hamelin,” and it would not have surprised me, such was the mood of the night, and the mystery of the place, had he marched us up into the side of Mount Pelée, hanging far above, and slammed the door in thunder behind us.
Lights—grateful, beautiful, heartening, most entrancing lights—finally glimmered at the end of our long détour, and we were brought to the gate of the Botanical Garden, which of course we did not enter, but, turning into another way, followed the people who were coming down this road from Morne Rouge into the city. It was remarkable to observe how the conversation revived. We talked about the island and its people, of their various occupations, their exports, their schools; we stopped to lean over the walled-in river, to see through the dark the white clothes drying on the rocks, like much-discouraged ghosts, and then we became hilarious, and as we neared the possibility of food, passed jokes and had a very jolly time. Then our friend—let us now call him “friend”—said that he must leave, that we needed but to follow the road ahead of us and we would reach the Grand Hotel; and he turned his way, and disappeared,—a very tall attenuated figure in a long, black coat.
We hurried on, still in a state of suppressed excitement, I, for one, wondering if we should ever find the Grand Hotel. But we did find it, to my relief. Why, I was so hysterically glad to see the familiar faces of our friends again that it was all I could do to refrain from embracing Herr Baron von Donnerwetter, who stood with others, sad-faced and dejected, waiting in the hope of a meal.
The usual state of things prevailed: hungry Americans were clamouring for impossible foods; helpless waiters were doing their best to pacify the ravenous demands; a feeble, unhappy host was beating the air with oratorical violence, and the Americans—always good-humoured, in spite of their clamourings—waited and waited, only to be satisfied with poor stuff at last; and finding it thus we fled.
The man of the family had, it seems, been quietly reading the signs as we first wandered up into St. Pierre, and the name of a modest little inn had stuck well in his memory; but, manlike, he kept still about it. So with his bump of locality well in evidence, we followed his sturdy steps; in short, found the place in question, and entered a dark, covered, arched passageway, which opened into a number of dimly lighted apartments.
The room we first entered was a kind of salle à manger and salon combined, for it had a sofa—a very hard, rock-like affair—a number of chairs, a quaint old sideboard, a table in the centre, and a lamp on the wall which gave a feeble, flickering light.
Do you remember about the children who followed us so silently on our long walk? Well, when our tall friend left us, the children kept right along, and, as soon as it was discovered that we were trying to find a place all on our own responsibility, their number was augmented by others—big grown men, black men—whose services being rejected, quietly but firmly joined the procession.
The keeper of the inn was a magnificent, great creole woman, well on in years, with a pleasant, winning smile, and an air of hospitality more for the guest than the purse. She said, if we could wait for awhile until the noisy students in the adjoining rooms were pacified, she would do her best for us, but she feared she had nothing suitable.
Ah, friends, how humble doth an empty stomach make the human animal! We told her that we adored fried eggs. In fact we could not picture to ourselves anything more delectable. (We hadn’t had fried eggs at every turn in the West Indies for nothing, our stomachs were becoming acclimated.) Whereupon she bowed her gracefully turbaned head and leisurely left the room. Then the process began, and we may as well keep you right in the room, for to adequately appreciate the repast that followed, good appetite must be seasoned by hilarity and waited upon by patience.
We had on the table a red oilcloth cover, various well-used salt-cellars, and a motley array of knives and forks. Two long-limbed negresses began to arrange our feast, speaking as usual one of their home-made languages, impossible to comprehend as a whole and difficult even in part. These two black cupbearers began, as I said, to arrange the feast, and we sat by, looking on, hungrier every moment, as the prospect grew less promising. After a while some bread, several big chunks,—or loaves, I suppose I ought to say,—were laid on the table. They were shaped like small turtles with heads pulled out at both ends. Next came a bottle of red wine (from the old country!) and the glasses. Then we sat there and sat there fully three-quarters of an hour.
The dusky nymphs had flippety-flapped off; the hostess with the smile had also disappeared, and there was silence. I began to think that, perhaps, the bread and wine was the first course, that so things were served in St. Pierre; and besides there wasn’t even a whiff of garlic anywhere. I was confident that no creole cooking was going on; and, the more I thought, the more I became convinced that we ought to begin. But Daddy thought we ought to wait, and Sister and Blue Ribbons thought so, too, they are such proper lassies. Why did they ever have a mother who would be so unconventional? But I was famished and that bread turtle was put there to eat. I knew it. So in awful silence, with the family holding its bated breath, I began to pull at the bread. I got one of the heads off the turtle, and poured forth the ruddy nectar into the pressed-glass goblet, and took my first delightsome taste of French wine in Martinique. I was just about to continue, when into the room sauntered the black waitress with a steaming dish of soup, and as she discovered my glass of wine well begun, she set her bowl down on the table, fastened a reproving look on me, and putting her arms akimbo, exclaimed:
“Oh, lá, la!”
Then the other black heathen came in, and with her eye upon me, added her astonished:
“Oh, lá, la!”
And then the head of the family said, in a “told you so” tone:
“Oh, lá, la!”
And then the youngsters joined with a choice duet of:
“Oh, lá, la!”
And I said, “Why, certainly, ‘Oh, lá, la,’” and took another swallow of wine.
I felt perfectly justified in my conduct under the circumstances, but no amount of explanation, I am convinced, could have ever placed me in the proper light in the minds of those two black women. I had even some difficulty in explaining the matter satisfactorily to my own family.
I do not think there are in all the French language three small words which can express quite the scorn and derision of “Oh, lá, la!” From the high courts of justice to the dim little dining-room of a Martinique inn, “Oh, lá, la!” withers and humiliates. So I took my bowl of soup very meekly, and said: “Merci, mille fois,” and went to work. After the soup, we waited again long, and, with appetite appeased, more patiently.
A noise in the dark passageway caused me to look in that direction, and I saw, leaning one at each side of the doorway, two big, black negroes—two of the crowd of an hour before. They stood there silent and motionless; they had “standing-room only,” but they were there to see the finish.
“What are these?” I exclaimed.
“Cherubs,” replied his lordship.
“Go ’way!” I say. “We don’t want you!”
Then comes a humble voice from the dark: “Gif me dol’ an’ half. Gif me dol’ an’ half!”
“Go ’way, go ’way, Cherub! We don’t want you!” again we cry out.
“Gif me two cents! Gif me two cents!” comes from the cherub.
What a fall, my countrymen! At that juncture, her Royal Highness, the big landlady, swept through, her very presence clearing the premises, and peace was restored.
Then the dinner progressed through the invariable course of eggs and the delicious sidedish of fried bananas, until we came to the salad, which, I confess, has been my inspiration for many pages.
Now, here was a case where the wholly unexpected created a sensation which no amount of information, regarding the relative merits of the dish in question could produce. In a way, I rather expected to find in the West Indies all manner of curious fruits and vegetables, but I did not expect to eat immature palm-leaf fans with French dressing.
We had finished with our bananas, and were waiting with that good humour which characterises the third course of dinner, when the black heathen appeared, flanked by the entire retinue of kitchen retainers, the big creole hostess bringing up the rear, bearing in her hand a deep dish, in which she had prepared our salad. It was none less than the famous palm salad, about which so many travellers have told. We, too, must add our encomiums. It is taken from the centre of the palm head when the inner leaves are very young. It looked very much like fine cabbage as our hostess sliced it in long strips for salad; in colour it was creamy-white, and in flavour as delicate as a rose. It was so tender that it seemed to melt in the month, having none of the tough qualities of either lettuce or watercress or cabbage. The taste is something I could never describe, for it was a combination of such sweet flavours that even those who partook thereof were at a loss afterward to recall its peculiar delicacy.
The following day, we tried to buy some palm in the market and went from one group to another, asking for palm salad; but it had all been sold early in the morning, and, as I recall the experience, I am quite content that we were not successful in our morning’s marketing, for who knows but the dressing had something to do with the irresistible palm salad—or perchance even the surroundings—and who but those replete with the blood of many sunny races could give that touch?
Guava jelly made by the madame herself, black coffee from berries roasted freshly for us; ripe, mellow, richly flavoured mangoes, sweet honey oranges, and star-apples finished the dinner.
Do you think we noticed the red oilcloth table cover, the dingy lamp, and the rock-bottom sofa?
There are so many different ways of seeing things!
BEAUTIFUL, beautiful Martinique! Well named art thou, Le Pays des Revenants, for my spirit will ne’er rest content until I have again revisited thy marvellous treasure-trove of beauty! If I were asked where in all the West Indies I would return with greatest delight, where I would wish to remain indefinitely, where I would choose to live, I should say first and last, in fair Martinique,—Empress of the Caribbees—with, however, an occasional visit to our dear Lady Charlotte of St. Thomas.
In the brilliant morning light when the sun crept to the tip of the deep green mountains and threw its slanting streams of glory over the white walls of St. Pierre, it seemed that, for the first time, my eyes were beholding the true essence of beauty. I had never before known what colour meant, I had never seen blue before, nor azure, nor green. I was in the mixing-room of Nature, where her first, and deepest, and richest dyes were thrown together in experiment; where, freed from all schools, she let loose the riot of her senses, producing effects of colour never dreamed of in her saner moods.
It has been my desire in these sketches to reproduce, as nearly as my powers permit, the exact impression which the Islands of the Caribs have left with me. I have hoped to take you to the islands with the same surprises awaiting you which awaited me, wishing thus to cling to Nature hand to hand, and to draw the picture freshly as our eyes first beheld its wonder. This has been my desire. But now I intend to change my habits for a moment.
Instead of asking you to join us in our morning walk, in sweet innocence of what might befall the traveller were he always to go thus unprepared on the island of Martinique, I shall ask you to sit with us here upon the broad white deck of our good ship, to talk over some of the marvellous tales which have been whispered to us, sullying the name of yonder fair isle. I cannot say that it will increase our pleasure, but it will certainly heighten the interest of the morning excursion. Do you recall the warnings of our black-coated friend of last evening—warnings against “les serpents,” as he called them? He spoke from experience. Our derisive remarks about people who are for ever looking for snakes in every brush-pile were ill-timed, to say the least.
It seems that there is upon the island a species of reptile classed by the scientists as one of the family of Trigonocephalus, and known to the natives as the “Fer de Lance.” The bite of this serpent is so deadly that, unless immediate help is procured, the victim cannot recover, and even with prompt medical aid recovery is doubtful. The island, one might say, is fairly under the domination of the Fer de Lance.
The City and Roadstead St. Pierre, Martinique
The City and Roadstead
St. Pierre, Martinique
True, the East Indian mongoose has been imported in the hope of exterminating this common enemy; but when it was found that this little rascal, after a short period of snake-hunting, preferred to content himself with eggs and chickens,—a less dangerous prey,—leaving the forest wilds and taking up quarters in the more congenial surroundings of the farmyard, the hope of help from the mongoose was abandoned. The West Indian cannot live without chickens and eggs,—at least so he thinks,—and consternation prevailed when it was discovered that instead of his deadly enemy, his pet object of diet was being imperilled. So the mongoose, however worthy, must go. Just why the tiller of the soil could not, in the face of such danger, erect fortified chicken-houses, to protect his fowls against the felonious depredations of the mongoose, I cannot quite understand, unless it was too much trouble. At all events, he prefers to keep his chickens and the Fer de Lance, and do away with the mongoose, rather than run the risk of an occasional raid upon the hen-coop. So now the question is, how shall he get rid of the mongoose?
The mongoose is a plucky little fellow; and so Kipling vividly pictured him as “Rikki-tiki-tavi,”—a bright-eyed, big, brown weasel in appearance,—very efficient in killing the dangerous snakes of India. We saw them in confinement, the snappiest, most vicious little animals one could imagine. It is inexplicable to me that the inhabitants of Martinique should be willing to give up the fight against this great danger for the sake of a few hens; for my part, I would not object if all the fowls were destroyed and the feathers flew away to far Jamaica, if only after the little robber had had his feast, he would be willing to hunt his legitimate prey, the Fer de Lance.
From the various forms in which chicken appears on a West Indian table, and from the frequency of that appearance, I have come to the conclusion that, to do without fowls would be a greater grief than to be in constant peril from the bite of a snake. As for me, well—there are times when I feel that, without the least sacrifice, I could miss an occasional meal of fried eggs and stewed chicken. In fact, I am convinced that, if I had had fried eggs three hundred and sixty-three days of the year, I might not pine if the hens didn’t lay the last two days. But there is no accounting for tastes. The West Indian doesn’t look at it in that light.
The Fer de Lance has been described as a rat-tailed, red-skinned, powerful-looking brute, from four to eight feet long; and, unlike most snakes, he is fearless, and as a rule will not get out of the way when he hears one coming. He takes his walks at night, unfortunately preferring the open road to the garden; the smooth patch before the house to the brushwood; and he even comes down into the gardens and paths about the city. This is the great danger of Martinique; yet, while it may seem more sure, more quickly certain to us, than the danger of other places, I do not know that it is so.
Wherever the foot of man finds habitation, danger goes hand in hand with beauty. Unseen danger of a thousand kinds, in poisonous vapours, in decaying flesh and vegetation, lurks hidden within the dwellings of all mankind; deeper, deadlier danger, too, than bolt of Fer de Lance, looks sullenly forth from the soul of God’s own image—man; danger unto himself more terrible than the writhing, striking reptile of the night-shade; and, as knowledge comes only from an understanding of comparisons, I do not feel that Martinique, afflicted as she is, can vie in her troubles with the clangers which threaten mankind in some of her sister isles.
The little girls and their father have all but lost their patience. “I’m ready now,” I call to the beckoning eyes. “Just wait until I get the St. Thomas basket, and I’ll be there.” After a quick dash to the stateroom and back, I’m armed with the basket and umbrella. But after all these snake stories you would rather not join us in our morning walk? You’re not nervous? That’s fine; I like your spirit! Suppose we go first to the market, and then in a roundabout way to the Botanical Gardens.
There are always guide-books to be bought in every town; there are always those on shipboard who never separate themselves from a red cover; there are always those who tell you what you ought to see, and especially afterward what you ought to have seen; but we four are born dissenters; we kind o’ forget about the mummies when there are live human beings to watch. We know the mummies will be there when we’re tired of the rest, but we’re not so sure of the people. It’s such fun to find out what the natives are doing, thinking, saying; what they wear, what they eat, how they live, how they dance, and walk, and play, and work.
Here in Martinique we find the market a perfect babel of voices, all speaking a curious French patois.
It is next to impossible to distinguish one word from another in all that hum of highly pitched creole voices. The famous “porteuses”—long-limbed, slender, shapely, tall, and agile half-caste and negro girls—have brought their heavy burdens from the mountains and the country roundabout; and here they sit, like flowers in a garden, surrounded by their goods. Some have little piles of fruits, or of vegetables, cooked and ready to be eaten, wrapped in banana leaves; some have a stock of dried meats, made up into tiny portions; some sell fancy cakes; some, pies; others crouch down, fairly hidden by showy piles of calico and bright silks, with needles, threads, coarse laces, and beads scattered about them in great confusion.
And here are the sinewy men; the fishers with heaps of fish. Such beautiful fish! Does it seem credible that you can stand in a smelly fish-market, and be fairly enchanted by the colour and beauty of great trays of fish spread out upon a stone pavement? Their beauty is amazing. Here are enormous trays of flying fish, glittering silver, sweeter to the taste than any trout; here are others, all pink and red, and here are wee bits of fish sold by the glass—some sort of “white bait,” maybe.
We elbow on through the babel of voices, looking, as I told you we did, for the palm salad, but there is none to be had. Still I remember its flavour, and I remember that the creole madame brought us a piece which she had bought in the market for four sous. It was very like a round stick of ivory, a foot and a half long and two inches in diameter. We shall have to be content with that one sight.
But what is the use in going to a market unless we can buy something? So we stop in front of a porteuse as she squats behind her pile of fruit on the market floor, and buy oranges, and get almost a pint of coppers in change for one silver piece; but not without grave doubts on the part of the seller. She looks at our silver and shakes her head, and all her neighbours come together, and the colours of their bright turbans and the little funny ends of handkerchiefs tied so that they stand up on top of the head like plumes,—all these ends flutter and bob as they comment in their funny French, while we tell the women that our money is good, good silver. Finally a big-eyed, handsome girl comes elbowing along and proudly explains to her doubting sisters that we are right; then at last we get our change, distribute it in our various pockets, take our oranges, and leave the market.
Eager as the children are to reach Le Jardin des Plantes, the famous Botanical Gardens of Martinique, we must stop on our way for a closer inspection of one of these bright birds of the forest,—the Martinique porteuse.
The women of the tropics have an affinity for nature such as we of the North cannot comprehend. As the forest and the flowers and the birds and the insects abound in marvellous hues, so do these children of the sun love to bedeck themselves in all the schemes of colour known to the dyer’s art. Let us, just for the sake of the picture it will give us, stop this woman coming and make excuse to buy one of the green cocoanuts of which she seems to carry a great load on her head. Look at her! Isn’t she magnificent!
Have you heard of the feats of endurance which these young girls perform? How they will carry upon their heads, over one hundred pounds out from St. Pierre across the mountains, a distance of fifty miles in one day? And this while barefooted and at all times of the year, through all kinds of weather, through dry seasons and wet seasons. Not only on such days as these, when the air is sweet and cool in the shade, but days when the sun scorches and withers, even under the deep recesses of vine-clad porch and lattice. She is the ever-willing burden-bearer, the unloader of ships, the handler of cargoes, the welcome carrier of bread for the early breakfast in mountain homes, the vender of all stuffs and utensils by the roadside where no cart could well be taken; where even the patient donkey might refuse to go. Agile, nimble, erect of body, motionless of head, with eyes that pierce into every crook and turn of the way, and poised like a queen, she is the dweller among the green, yellow, red, and purple of the forest, and in her love of colour she follows in her adornments the strong instincts of nature. She it is whose burden is so great that were she herself to attempt to lift it or take it from her head, it might mean a rupture, a dislocation, or a broken vein; she it is whom all men, from the richest to the poorest, help to unload, so great is the respect in which she is held.
Near the Landing-Place St. Pierre, Martinique
Near the Landing-Place
St. Pierre, Martinique
And yet we talk of the idleness, the weakness bred in the tropics! It is true that continual summer enervates, and necessitates slow methods of living; but I can truthfully say, that (outside of Haïti), I saw less vagabond-age, less indolence, in the West Indies, than in any of our Southern States. We were constantly witnessing most remarkable feats of endurance in both men and women. In these countries the horse is scarce, and the donkey costs money, so that the human back becomes the carry-all for the plunder of man.
This motionless bronze statue before us, with the great tray of fruit, appears—to one unaccustomed—more than indifferent whether we buy or not, for she stands there, mute, her fruits higher than our own heads; she is tall to begin with, and the great tray itself is six inches higher, and the head pad on which it rests is more than an inch thick; so, altogether, it is so high that we can only make a guess at the fruit she carries, from the fringe on the edge and the pyramid on top. This is our first experience with la porteuse, and we wait for her to stoop, camel-like, to unload. But not she! She knows too well the possible penalty of such rashness, and quietly stands with her quick eyes questioning us, and we stand wondering what she wants us to do.
The kerchief about her shoulders over a light chemise rivals the rainbow. I try to fix my eyes on some predominating colour, but when I decide that it is yellow, in will blaze a green stronger than the yellow, and then huge red roses splash their lurid colour into the yellow and green, and royal purple and blue daisies and magenta buttercups career around in wild indifference as to conventional form and tint. A loose calico frock hangs to her ankles, with the bare, tireless feet, straight, shapely and well-formed, showing beneath.
Intelligence dawns upon us at last, and the tall man reaches for a green cocoanut, just toppling on the edge of the tray, for we realise we must reach for the fruit if we want it. This cocoanut, encased in its green husk, is just about the size of a small melon, and has a striated, light-green, smooth skin. A vender near by, interested in the purchase, and charitable to the strangers, takes the cocoanut, and, with a sharp knife, dexterously pares off one end, and with a slash straight across the top, cuts through the still soft shell, and hands it to us ready to quench our thirst with a long pull, for there is as yet no meat in the cocoanut, only a quantity of the rich milk. I cannot say that it is particularly good, or particularly bad; it has an inoffensive sweet taste, is said to be perfectly harmless, and is one of the few fruits of the tropics that the uninitiated can eat with impunity. After we have all drunk, there seems to be quite a bit of the milk left. So it goes to the most insistent of the crowd of small boys, who are, as usual, escorting us with much enjoyment, and a constant merry chatter of French.
Let us move on now up the clean stone street, up, and up, and up, passing many a walled recess where sparkling jets of water fill the jars brought to the fountain by barefooted girls,—up and on, on and up, past votive shrines—les chapelles—and high-walled gardens, coming finally to the broad avenue leading to the Botanical Garden,—the same road from which we were so glad to escape the night before. We follow the white, dusty road in the bright sunlight, with now and then glimpses of the mountains above, and come at last to the broad stone gateway of Le Jardin des Plantes, which, entering, plunges us at once into the deep shades and marvellous beauty of a tropical forest.
Oh, that I had words and power and skill to paint even a shadow of the beauty before me to a likeness of itself! Here Nature defies all art of pen, of thought, and brush of man! She seems to glory in the impossible loveliness of her face and form—impossible to reproduce through art or reason. Here one should find new words—words more intense, more poignant, more vividly keen to cut into the heart of the matchless colours and shades. No description can ever bring accurately to the mind the wealth, the magnificent beauty of such a spot upon God’s earth.
With skilful art, the French have utilised the hand of Nature in the formation of this wonderful garden to such a degree of perfection that none can tell, unless a master, where the two fair sisters, Art and Nature, first embraced. The natural tropical forest, running up a great ravine into the mountains, is intersected by broad and winding paths that lead from one fair view to another by mossy flights of rough stone steps. Through a rift in the hillside, down an abyss of heavy, wet foliage of a green so intense that the eye can scarcely conceive its depth of colour, cataracts of water leap through the abiding shade, through the ever-growing, ever-dying processes of nature, down into a pool whose depths reflect the blue glimmering sky and the vivid green of over-hanging vines in opalescent sheen. Great clumps of bamboo, with long, slim, arrow-shaped leaves, hang gracefully, waving like giant grass, over the walk; and an ancient bridge, ablaze with purple vines, reaches out from under the rustling thickets and spans a branch of the Rivière Roxelane, a delicious mountain stream which murmurs on through the forest, filling one with poetic musings as to whence came its romantic name.
On we sauntered heedless as to time, sheltered from the sun by the impenetrable shade of arborescent ferns and towering palms, and lured ever deeper into the forest, into the wonders of God’s marvellous creation by some unspeakable burst of beauty just beyond.
Here we find not only the trees indigenous to the soil, but trees native to all tropical climates, from all parts of the world, for this garden is the pride of the island and a wonder of the Indies. The names and habitations of foreign trees are most skilfully marked on enamelled plates fastened to the trees, part of the plate bearing the carefully engraved botanical name, the lower part containing a coloured map, indicating the country to which the tree is native.
What a pitiably weak understanding we have of God’s unending and infinite creation! However much we read of life in remoter countries the mind, like a rubber ball, ever reverts with persistent force to its original point of view. So that we, the dwellers in the North, in the land of ice and snow, of pines and duller hues, where Nature bestows her gifts with somewhat sparing hand,—we of the North forget the limitless power of creative energy, and when we come into such an overwhelming feast of colour as in this mighty forest, sighing and breathing for very burden of beauty, we try in vain to reconcile our former crude conceptions of the Creator with this new, vast revelation of his unspeakable power.
As we penetrate deeper and ever deeper into the forest, the mind reels under the effort to grasp the marvels of plant and tree and earth. Vines hang in long festoons from tree to tree, and drop down before the face in thousands of living ropes, which seem to have the power of returning upon themselves and growing up again without any visible support. Parasites, air-plants, and orchids—not singly, but in millions—cover giant trunks so that the tree itself is lost in the growth external. Off through a break in the deepest green, I see for the first time that queen of the tropics, the Amherstia nobilis, called—and well named, indeed—“the Flamboyant,” the most magnificent flowering tree in the world: tall and heavenly leafed, of graceful form, its top covered by a mass of brilliant flowers so vividly red and of such size as to seem like a blaze of fire in the forest shade. And taller than all the others of its kind, the Royal Palm lifts its regal head out into the freedom of light and air, and sways its majestic plumes in rhythmic motion. How well the Spanish do to call it “the palm,” in distinction from all others.
Everywhere about you, life, life ever coming, ever going. A deep, impenetrable wall of green, denser, thicker than any fretwork, keeps you to the path. A native lad springs into the black, green, brown depth, and you shudder involuntarily; there might be danger. The two figures—hand in hand, Life and Death—haunt the dim green shadows about you.
We are joined by friends as we wander on, following the sound of tumbling water. It comes to us as a surprise, for the forest has been wrapped in a deep silence; its slumberous shade has not been broken by a single bird-note; all animal life is quiescent. A few steps more and we come to a cleft in the mountain, an opening in the green vault, and a veil of glistening water drops between us and a wall of cool, sweet ferns. The spell of the forest is about us. We turn down a steep path in silent awe before so great a masterpiece.
Our party separate, we linger behind while our friends stroll on and are lost in an abrupt turn of the path. The straight noonday sun makes white patches upon the walk; strange heavy odours, as of earth dead a thousand years lifting up her soul again in rebellion against her long, deep sleep, steal about us. Suddenly from the deathlike stillness of the forest there comes a shriek, followed by sounds of commotion. We run quickly in the direction of the voices. My friend’s white face tells the story; it was the Fer de Lance. We could see nothing. The flight had been swift; it was impossible for her to say how it ever came there, whether it had dropped from the limb of a tree, as she thought, or had sprung from a bush, but suddenly it was there, lying in a double coil at her feet. It made a strange rapping sound upon the earth, and darted swiftly off into the undergrowth. A few of us, much affrighted, lead the way most precipitately down the ravine to the gateway. We carry our umbrellas aloft in spite of the shade, and, shuddering, secretly envy the one who saw the Fer de Lance.
After all, I am glad that we did not accept the offer of a carriage for Morne Rouge, for it is a long drive to the summit of the mountain,—fully four hours there and back,—and had we gone, the journey must needs be made with great haste; so we chose rather to leave before satiety deadened our enjoyment. But there will come other days in Martinique—there must come other days, for is not this Le Pays des Revenants? Must we not see Gros Morne, Capot, Marigot, and La Grande Anse, hidden away in the mountains, asleep in their sunlit valleys, and the wild forest—le grand bois—and La Pelée, the old volcano with the queer lake in its extinct crater, and the cavern-like opening in its cleft side, where it is said that even yet there may be occasionally heard strange groanings and fearsome hissings—shall we not come some day to see all this?
The Rivière Roxelane Near St. Pierre, Martinique
The Rivière Roxelane
Near St. Pierre, Martinique
We take the road to the left and follow down the Rivière Roxelane to St. Pierre. As we join our friends returning from the mountain, they share with us a calabash of wild red strawberries which they bought by the roadside. The berries have that rare, delicious bouquet found only in the wild fruits, and, as one would naturally suppose, have their own funny way of growing; small and pointed and very compact. We hover around the one who holds the calabash until all are gone, and then indolently follow the stream, passing a group of women under a shady mango-tree, spreading heaps of cacao (chocolate) beans on the ground to dry; where we linger, tasting the beans and trying to chat, ever fascinated by the natives and their ways; and then wander on toward the stony pavements and narrow streets of the city; and thence down to the landing-place.
Night draws over. The quickly falling luminous night of the tropics. How can I bring again the witchery of that vision? The greenly liquid sky, the great yellow moon, the near, the brilliant stars, and the deep, dark Morne, covering her wild luxuriance with violet clouds, and back of all “La Montagne”—Pelée, the sleeping; the sounds—distant, low, mellow; the moving, glistening phosphorescent water, and Martinique, in white slumber, fading astern.
“I’SE here, Missus; I’se here, waitin’ fo’ you” (from one of a crowd of chattering Spanish, English, French, Portuguese creoles, outnumbered by the ever-present black, in every shade, from deep chocolate to light saffron), greets us as we step on land at Port of Spain, Trinidad.
We do not feel quite sure which particular one, in all that pushing, scrambling, good-natured crowd, is waiting for us; whether it is the man with the two monkeys, or the man with the green and blue parrot, or the woman with the baskets, or the boy with the shells; but whichever one it is, he’s there, and all his friends are there, with everything salable they possess, strung around them, fastened to them, hitched to them, in some fashion—any way to allow them free use of their arms.
“Well, we’re glad you’re waiting, Sambo. We fully expected to find you here. It wouldn’t be Trinidad without a monkey or a parrot. We’ll buy later. Oh, no! Not the monkey; we have one at home, and Heaven knows that’s enough! But maybe, by and by, we’ll see about a basket.”
If there is one thing in the world Sister and I can never resist, it’s a basket. That distressing mania breaks forth at the slightest provocation; it doesn’t seem to make any difference where we are, or how impossible it is to gratify it; difficulties only whet the appetite. The more inopportune the occasion, the more we want the basket.
The Dragon’s Mouth, Entrance to Gulf of Paria Between South America and Trinidad
The Dragon’s Mouth, Entrance to Gulf of Paria
Between South America and Trinidad
So we stood there on the quay at Port of Spain, with the lofty headlands of grand old South America away to the south of us, taking their morning bath among the clouds, and off in the north the mountain sweep of Trinidad, watching the queer old city at its feet, and betwixt the two, the Gulf of Paria, loosened from the Dragon’s Mouth, spreading and expanding, with its waters a commingling of the blue of the Caribbean and the brown of the near-by Orinoco, washing the outstretched feet of the great mother and child; and we stood there, with all this grandeur ablaze in the first light of the morning, wondering if we would better buy the basket right then, on the spot, or whether we should wait until our return.
To be sure, we had one big basket—and a beauty, too—from St. Thomas, but it was always full, a sort of catch-all for our curious leaves, and seeds, and coral, and beads, and newspapers, and precious bills of fare,—treasured reminders of old balconies and lingering melodies; and it really seemed to be our duty to provide a number two size to carry to market. We could use it in so many ways, and then we wanted another basket. But, before we had time to strike a bargain,—for it’s a half-day’s work in these ideal lands to buy anything,—some one cried out: “If you are going to the Coolie Village, you’d better come right now, or the carriages will all be taken!”
“Who are the coolies?” Blue Ribbons asked, as we rattled along up Frederick Street. The answer to her question was squatting not far distant, where some cars, just arrived from San Fernando, were being unloaded. His hands were clasped around his thin bare legs; his face, serious, dark, immovable; his hair, black as ink, and straight; on his head, a voluminous white turban bespoke the worshipper of Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva. It was with mingled sensations of awe and fear that I beheld this unexpected Hindoo. His apparent unconcern of mundane affairs recalled not only deeply treasured teachings from his great masters, but, in his eyes, there was the black, unforgotten story of Lucknow. It was hard to reconcile the two.
It seems that the Hindoo “coolie” is imported by the ship-load into Trinidad, and indentured for a period of ten years; at the expiration of which time he may return to India at his company’s expense, if he so chooses (and he usually does choose to do so, taking home with him a goodly store of gold). He makes a most valuable and reliable labourer, and has really been the salvation of the vast sugar and cacao estates on the island. It has been next to impossible to exact any continuous labour from the negro, without some system of slavery, and had it not been for the Hindoo, the resources of Trinidad would have been practically undeveloped.
The coolies were in evidence everywhere. In fact, they seemed to form a considerable proportion of the population. We do not wonder any longer at the emaciated pictures of the famine-stricken East Indians, for here, in a land of plenty, where food, almost ready cooked, is only waiting to drop, the Hindoo is the sparest, leanest creature imaginable. His ever-bare legs are not like flesh and blood, but small-boned and thin to emaciation, and almost devoid of calves below the knee; they have the hard statuesque look of bronze stilts. And the arms, too, are thin, and terminate in slender little hands that seem incapable of heavy and prolonged labour.
Port of Spain, compactly, squarely built, and well paved, extends for quite a distance over a flat, alluvial plain to a grassy savannah, two and a half miles wide; one side of which, facing the Botanical Garden and the Governor’s Mansion, brings you to the base of the mountain.
The city is neither beautiful nor clean. Its architecture, dominated by the taste of the Englishman, is about as unattractive as that of our own country. The business streets are dusty, shadeless, and devoid of cleaners, except for the vulture, who, with his long, bare legs, his skinny neck and head, and huge black body, plays the part of city scavenger. These ungainly, hideous, repulsive creatures stalk around everywhere; they are under the horses’ feet; they roost on the eave troughs asleep in the sun, sit reflectively on chimney-tops, or come swooping down after some horrible piece of carrion in the street.
How can a civilised people be willing to turn the civic house-cleaning over to a lot of vultures? No wonder that plagues and fevers rage upon these beautiful islands. Under existing conditions, they surely have the right of way.
The Business Section Port of Spain, Trinidad Copyright, 1901, by Detroit Photographic Co.
The Business Section
Port of Spain, Trinidad
Copyright, 1901, by Detroit Photographic Co.
Did I understand you to say that the carriages were all gone when you came ashore? Come in with us! There, the front seat with the driver is just waiting for you, and really, to walk is hardly safe under this vertical sun. Would you mind if we make a stop or two on the way out to the village, for the man of the family must have some fresh white ducks to wear in South America; let us wait for him here in the carriage.
It seems pleasant to-day not to make any exertion. I’ve no doubt we can get a lot of information from the driver, if we question him. He responds, oh! yes, he responds with great ardour, but with what result? One word in ten, we recognise. He thinks, of course, he’s speaking English, and I suppose we might better let him think so, but, bless you, if that’s English, what are we speaking? It’s just another of the West Indian surprises. You come to a country which has been under the beneficent English rule for over one hundred years, and you find the natives—the men who drive for you, who row you ashore, who carry your plunder, the women in the market—all speaking an almost unintelligible jargon of French, Spanish, Portuguese, English, with a little Hindustani and Chinese thrown in. Try the native on your best French, and at every five or six words he brightens up with understanding. Take any of the other languages and you have the same result; for your Trinidadian understands when he wants to, but woe betide you when you ask a question and want to know the answer. The native in Trinidad is bright and quick; he is not like his big lazy lout of a brother down in our Southland. He is a mix-up of many people, intelligent and active, and his language tells what a conglomerate he is, and what a happy-go-lucky life he leads.
What can be keeping the shoppers so long? We shall certainly have to hunt them up; let us look inside.
I have often wondered what our mammoth cheap stores of the North do with their leftover plush albums, china shepherdesses, antiquated ready-made clothing, tin jewelry, their untold unnumbered tons of clap-traps; and now I know. It’s all dumped right here in the West Indies. From South America to Cuba, there is one vast collection of trash imported to catch the pennies of these long-suffering people. It is always difficult to obtain any of the native work; we have to go among the natives themselves for that. One glance at Port of Spain’s emporium, the Great Colonial Stores of Blank and Co. Limited, is enough!
“Mother,” said Sister, “I have an idea! Let’s try the deaf and dumb sign-language on the cabby.” And she does. It works like a charm. Off we swing for the savannah, a great, green, grassy plain, the playground for the Trinidadians. Here, they have their horse-racing and golf and cricket and polo under the fierce, tropical sun; here, the merry-go-round and pop-stands burst forth every Saturday afternoon; here the inevitable “picnic” is held, and as we happen here on a festival day, we see the children—big and little—gathering from every direction. There is something indestructible about the customs of an Englishman. He does not change his methods of living, as do other races, but, wherever he goes, he carries from pole to equator the customs and habits of his own country. So he plays golf and cricket and polo in Trinidad, when, at its mildest, the heat is about equal to our August.
It is on this savannah that we have our first good opportunity of viewing the mighty ceiba tree near at hand. You remember it was a great ceiba to which Columbus made fast his ships on the bank of the Ozama River in Santo Domingo? The ceiba may not be the largest tree in the tropics. I do not wish to say it is, for it would seem then that one was limiting to a given scale the grandeur of the tropical tree. There is apparently no limit to anything in the way of size or beauty under these skies. There may be greater trees in the “High Wood” than the ceiba, but, in our experience, it was by far the most wide-stretching of anything we had yet seen. One stands before it awed, stupefied by its immensity, its age, its strange manner of growing. And we think over all the words we know to express its size and beauty, and we feel so poor and powerless in expression.
A Village Greeting San Fernando, Trinidad
A Village Greeting
San Fernando, Trinidad
The ceiba on the wide savannah has endless room in which to spread. It is perfect in form, like a mammoth gray and green umbrella, and reaches out its immense branches toward every side in perfect symmetry. And such branches! They alone are as large as our forest oaks, and they throw themselves out from the trunk horizontally, in stupendous strength. Its foliage is rather thin; the power of the tree seems to be spent in trunk and branch. Its bark is like an elephant’s hide, and its trunk has a strange way of buttressing out its side in huge wings. It is even said to be the worshipped tree of the superstitious black natives—a mysterious sort of fetich, the mighty, silk-cotton ceiba.
Fine residences skirt the savannah, each garden a marvel of beauty, in palms and trees whose names we do not know. Each little villa, has its English name plastered upon the gateway. This part of the city is clean, and the road is fine, so we will try to forgive and forget the shabby appearance of the lower town. We pass countless gardens, and then the houses grow fewer, and the gardens turn into banana patches, and the people begin to look different; the negroes disappear, and we are in the beginning of the “Coolie Village,” where a row of thatched roofs, supported by bamboo poles, ranges on either side of a long street, which disappears under an avenue of palms and breadfruit-trees, quite out of sight.
And here are the Hindoo men and women,—quiet, serious people, displaying very little curiosity about us, going on with their work, just as if we were not near them. What a relief from the hideous faces of the negro are these straight-featured, well-poised East Indians!
The men dress in white and are not overly clean. It does not look to me as if shirt and turban were often washed, but as their artisans work sitting on the ground, there is really small chance for immaculate linen. It is upon the women that the Hindoo displays his sensuous love for colour and jewels. She is his savings-bank. Every bit of silver or gold earned is taken to the jeweller to be fashioned into ornaments for her.
Let us leave the carriage and wander about among these interesting, silent people. Little Blue Ribbons would like to carry away one of those curious silver bracelets the women wear, and as if our thoughts are divined, we are in no time surrounded by a lot of girls who are simply covered with silver and gold. They wear as many as twenty bracelets on each arm, of different designs, some very beautifully twisted into serpents’ coils and heads, others engraved with intricate arabesques, others merely crude bands, with a few ornamental lines. Every part of the body, where a ring can hang, is covered with ornaments; head, ears, nose, fingers, arms, waist, ankles, toes. And some of the dear little brown babies, from two to five years old, were dressed only in pretty silver whistles, tied about the waist with a black string.
We examine many bracelets. The arms held out are more beautiful than any bits of silver about them, and the women have low, sweet voices, and their eyes are brilliant, and their skin is lustrous, and the fascination of the Orient is about them. The Hindoo women may have a hard time of it in some ways, perhaps, off in East India where the missionaries are, but here in Trinidad they have every appearance of being well cared for.
Daddy is the one who buys the trinkets. He has a way of finding always the most curious and the most beautiful things, and the Hindoo women crowding about him, and the little girls, too, seem to have suspected his talent. After examining the wealth of a dozen arms, two silver bands are selected, which, after being carefully washed by a very particular Daddy, are snapped about the white wrists of the expectant girlies. He has not only a way with him for finding beautiful curios, but, alas! I must confess he has a decided talent also for discovering beautiful women. My only consolation in the matter is his catholicity of taste, for he shows no preference, as a rule. His is a universal admiration, the simple homage to beauty of an artistic soul, and that comforts me. There is safety in numbers!
So it did not surprise me, while we are prowling around back of the huts, in search of some Hindoo needlework, to return and discover him chatting in a one-sided conversation with a little girl, about the age of Little Blue Ribbons. She was leaning in a dreamy attitude in the doorway of a shop—the most prosperous one in the village.
Just then he spies hanging in the shop some odd pipes made of clay. He goes in and buys one or two. The proprietor and his wife are standing behind the counter; she, fat and comfortable, a mass of silver bracelets, smiled at us as we approached; but he, thin as a churchwarden pipe, and solemn, my! solemn enough to be Buddha himself, with long, gray hair, curled up at the end, and impassive face, answered our questions about the pipes in precise, curiously clipped Oriental English, without once looking at us. His eyes were fixed on something beyond us, and they were the eyes that speak but rarely, and then terribly. Daddy praises the shop, the wife’s ornaments, and finally the little girl, and asks if he may take her picture. The mother smiles a “Yes;” the father just looks outside. Immediately the little one is called into an inner room by her mother. She stands in the doorway so we can see what is going on. I cannot tell you how much the mother loads upon her.
The straight, low forehead is covered by three circlets of gold and silver; the little ears are weighed down by filigree hoops of gold, reaching to her shoulders; her pretty pierced nostrils hold a delicately fashioned gold plate, which drops below the sweet red lips; a tiny jewelled rose screws into the side of her straight little nose; her graceful neck is loaded with chain after chain, hung with many silver dollars of different countries, while one necklace is of twenty-dollar United States gold pieces. Ten of these necklaces drop from the round throat to the slender waist. A band of silver, two inches wade, spans her upper arm, and from the tapering wrist to the shapely little elbow, the brown, soft skin is covered with bracelets. A bright silk skirt falls to the ankles, which, in turn, are encircled by bracelets or anklets, while little rings are fitted to each toe of her slender, shapely feet; and then, to cap the climax, the mother brings out a long yellow scarf and starts to wind it about the little one’s head.
That was too much. Daddy begs the mother off. He wanted to catch the beautiful oval outline of that little head. So the yellow scarf was discarded, and the little one came outside, and stood under the porch against a green, leafy background, and her small hands were folded before her very demurely, and she looked at us with her father’s black, serious eyes. All the while, he stands within, like a motionless gray shadow,—absolutely unmoved by our admiration of his daughter.
A few feet beyond there is the goldsmith, squatting cross-legged on the ground outside the door of his shanty. This is his shop,—this dirt floor. Here, on a bit of cloth, are his wares, very beautiful some of them, masterful pieces of work, and this diminutive bed of charcoal is his furnace, these tiny hammers and pincers are his tools, and that little black anvil is the scene of his daily toil. Can it be that, with these few crude tools, he can fashion so wonderfully? His pattern is the insect that hovers for an instant on its flight at noonday; or the sleeping serpent, hidden under the bamboo; or the palm above the village; or the spider’s web over the doorway. Nature close to him—dear to him—is the master of his art.
The road on through the village is too beautiful to leave; we must go farther, deeper down among this strangely silent, mysterious people; and we drive on to where the palms meet over our heads, and we get glimpses of the blue and green Gulf beyond, and some one tells us—or have we dreamed it?—that, farther on, we shall come to the Big White House, and we wonder if we are really ourselves, or some one very unreal out of a book.
Surely we shall soon awake and rub our eyes and find that we have just been asleep in the library corner, and that we never reached the Leper House, and never heard the whispering of Hindoo feet; that it was all a daydream, a sweet heavenly dream, made long by some good fairy; but, no, we look at one another, and it must be true, for we hear the waves lapping the beach near by, and the brown, naked coolie babies look wonderingly at us, and we jog along under the fitful showers and sun, and Blue Ribbons raises the white umbrella, and Sister looks ruefully at the sad, discouraged, rain-bespattered ribbons, so it must be real.
Yes, real; and yet to see the Big White House, now visible through the mangoes, and know that within its walls live victims of the most awful disease of all time,—a disease whose origin is lost in the dim vistas of antiquity,—to come thus unexpectedly, in the twentieth century, upon a manifestation of the “sins of the fathers” of thousands of years, we cannot make it seem real to us. Had we been off in the South Seas, sailing toward Molokai, or had we been looking over the hills of Galilee, it might have seemed more probable. But to find a leper settlement here, not three miles from a thickly peopled modern city,—a settlement which must be a constant and deadly menace to society,—was beyond my powers of credence.
I remember so well, in reading Stevenson’s account of his visit to the leper settlement in the Sandwich Islands, that I wondered how he dared go among them, for even so great an object as the vindication of Father Damien, and lo, here we were, without any warning, almost in the midst of the same plague. Although fully aware that leprosy did exist, just as we know that the moon must have form and solidity, it still seemed an uncertain, far-removed possibility,—in a way half-legendary, half fact, a tradition of the far East, a memory of the days of the Holy One of Nazareth; not a tangible awful reality, to be met and battled with all the force of modern knowledge. I could not convince myself that within a stone’s throw were lepers whom we might see, to whom we might speak, and I wondered if it would be safe to enter the enclosure. All this time we drew nearer to the gateway, while the white house in the centre of a large, shady park, fenced in by high iron pickets, seemed to us like the great Cross on Calvary, raised for the sins of the world.
In various parts of the yard, inside that fence, groups of men are sitting on the grass under the shade of great trees. It is white noon. It cannot be possible that these men, lolling about and visiting together, are lepers, for, from a distance, they bear no signs of disease about them. They look like the rest of the people we have been amongst all day. They are mostly Hindoos (some with a touch of negro blood), very dark of skin, and apparently in good health, that is, viewed at a distance. I must confess that a terrible feeling comes over me as the man of the family—for here we are at the gate, with the horse’s head facing the sad white house—suggests that we enter the enclosure. I remember how it was said that the lepers in olden time must cry out: “Unclean!” “Unclean!” and that he whose garments but swept the shadow of one thus afflicted must undergo a long purification before he could be allowed intercourse with the world once more.
As these old stories recur to my memory, and beseech me for my life not to take so great a risk,—but how long it takes to tell it all!—a big, jolly-faced black gatekeeper quiets my apprehensions by saying that we would not be exposed to the least danger whatever; that some of the labourers and attendants have been employed to work among the lepers for years with no bad results. With this comfortable assurance of a doubtful safety from the gateman, the driver whips up, and we move on into the yard, and up the avenue to the hospital, made gruesome by horrid buzzards perching on its roof and eaves in grim expectancy.
But it is the coming closer into the deep shade which reveals to us its true significance. From without, this white house is long and low and restful to the eye, and the trees bending over it, with clinging arms, seem to breathe only life and beauty, and the white-coated men here and there under the shade are the labourers resting during the still noon hour.
But a nearer approach and a closer acquaintance changes the whole scene. Was it upon such wrecks of life that the gentle Saviour gazed in pitying love? These are not men; they are pieces,—parts of men, hung together by the long-suffering cord of life.
The first leper we see near at hand seems to take an interest in us. The others we have passed lie around in a dull, listless way. I presume they see us, but they evidence no concern other than keeping in the shade. But this leper—I hardly know how to designate him—has more life in him than the others; he is walking about and nods to us as we pass. He has strange, unnatural ears; they are twice the normal size and have nodules on the outer edge. His face is swollen into mushroom-like patches, and deeply seamed by ridges, and yet the skin has apparently the same appearance it had in a state of health, except a little grayer and more lifeless looking. Another patient hobbles toward us, and we find that he is walking on stumps of feet, without toe. We throw some pennies to another group, and the one nearest the coin picks it up by making a scoop of his flipper-like palm. His fingers are gone, only little points are left, as if they had been whittled off with a jack-knife. An old man looks at us with one eye, the other eye, eaten away by the relentless advance of the disease, has commenced to run out. These are only the moderately sick patients.
Where the Lepers Live and Die Trinidad
Where the Lepers Live and Die
Trinidad
As we drive nearer to the hospital, a dozen or so horrible-looking creatures crowd to the end of an upper gallery and stand there, leaning out over the railing, a ghastly picture of misery. I scarcely dare look at them, their faces have been so mutilated by the disease; and others worse there are inside, whom the heroic Sisters—Romish and Protestant—care for and comfort until the living hideous death is at an end and life begins.
We move slowly along up the drive, and come quite near to the great archway which leads into the courtyard. There we call to the cabby to stop, and the tall man, who is never afraid of anything, gets out, and his leaving the carriage becomes, unwittingly to us, a signal for the poor lepers to approach. One hurries away from his companion—an emaciated, becrutched Hindoo—and comes to within a few feet of us, and just as he does so, our protector turns to me and says: “Did you ever think I would find myself talking to a leper just three feet from me?” and, interesting as the experience is, I recoil within myself for fear that the money which we want to give them may necessitate a closer proximity than we desire. But the unfortunate victim understands the situation and keeps his distance, while the tall man coming back to us, stands there with one foot on the carriage-step, still turning toward the leper.
By a certain sort of mental telepathy, I know that he cannot say good-bye without leaving some word of cheer for the poor fellow, and just what to say, how to say it, how to express a wish which we know can never be fulfilled, makes a moment’s very embarrassing silence. If you had ever been in the presence of such a living, unpitying death, such a picture of horrible hopelessness, and felt it your duty to make the burden easier by some word of cheer, when you had all things—life, health, and happiness—about you, and he only the refuse of a rotten body, if you must presume to tell such a martyr to be brave and all that sort of thing, when you know that his absolutely uncomplaining silence is greater bravery than you, in all your health and vigour, know how to comprehend—well, I tell you it’s no use! However optimistic by nature, it’s hard to find the words. Why, even a parson would be dumb!
And so he lingers there uneasily. He looks at the two dear little sweet-faced maidens at my side, so white and clean and fresh and young, and then at the gray, misshapen, mutilated silent figure before him, living his lonely death of agony each day, and says, with a choke, “Good-bye,”—that is all. Tell me, what would you have said?
END OF VOLUME I.