7. LA PELÉE.
I.
THE first attempt made to colonize Martinique was abandoned
almost as soon as begun, because the leaders of the expedition
found the country "too rugged and too mountainous," and were
"terrified by the prodigious number of serpents which covered its
soil." Landing on June 25, 1635, Olive and Duplessis left the
island after a few hours' exploration, or, rather, observation,
and made sail for Guadeloupe,—according to the quaint and most
veracious history of Père Dutertre, of the Order of Friars-Preachers.
A single glance at the topographical map of Martinique would
suffice to confirm the father's assertion that the country was
found to be trop haché et trop montueux: more than two-thirds of
it is peak and mountain;—even to-day only 42,445 of its supposed
98,782 hectares have been cultivated; and on page 426 of the last
"Annuaire" (1887) I find the statement that in the interior there
are extensive Government lands of which the area is "not exactly
known." Yet mountainous as a country must be which—although
scarcely forty-nine miles long and twenty miles in average
breadth—remains partly unfamiliar to its own inhabitants after
nearly three centuries of civilization (there are not half a
dozen creoles who have travelled all over it), only two elevations
in Martinique bear the name montagne. These are La Montagne
Pelée, in the north, and La Montagne du Vauclin, in the south.
The term morne, used throughout the
French West Indian colonies
to designate certain altitudes of volcanic origin, a term rather
unsatisfactorily translated in certain dictionaries as "a small
mountain," is justly applied to the majority of Martinique hills,
and unjustly sometimes even to its mightiest elevation,—called
Morne Pelé, or Montagne Pelée, or simply "La Montagne,"
according, perhaps, to the varying degree of respect it inspires in
different minds. But even in the popular nomenclature one finds the
orography of Martinique, as well as of other West Indian islands, regularly
classified by
pitons,
mornes, and
monts or
montagnes. Mornes
usually have those beautiful and curious forms which bespeak volcanic
origin even to the unscientific observer: they are most often pyramidal
or conoid up to a certain height; but have summits either rounded or
truncated;—their sides, green with the richest vegetation, rise
from valley-levels and coast-lines with remarkable abruptness,
and are apt to be curiously ribbed or wrinkled. The pitons, far
fewer in number, are much more fantastic in form;—volcanic
cones, or volcanic upheavals of splintered strata almost at right
angles,—sometimes sharp of line as spires, and mostly too steep
for habitation. They are occasionally mammiform, and so
symmetrical that one might imagine them artificial creations,—
particularly when they occur in pairs. Only a very important
mass is dignified by the name
montagne … there are, as I have
already observed, but two thus called in all Martinique,—Pelée,
the head and summit of the island; and La Montagne du Vauclin,
in the south-east. Vauclin is inferior in height and bulk to
several mornes and pitons of the north and north-west,—and owes
its distinction probably to its position as centre of a system of
ranges: but in altitude and mass and majesty, Pelée far outranks
everything in the island, and well deserves its special
appellation, "La Montagne."
No description could give the reader a just idea of what
Martinique is, configuratively, so well as the simple statement
that, although less than fifty miles in extreme length, and less
than twenty in average breadth, there are upwards of
four hundred
mountains in this little island, or of what at least might be
termed mountains elsewhere. These again are divided and
interpeaked, and bear hillocks on their slopes;—and the lowest
hillock in Martinique is fifty metres high. Some of the peaks
are said to be totally inaccessible: many mornes are so on one or
two or even three sides. Ninety-one only of the principal
mountains have been named; and among these several bear similar
appellations: for example, there are two Mornes-Rouges, one in
the north and one in the south; and there are four or five Gros-Mornes.
All the elevations belong to six great groups,
clustering about or radiating from six ancient volcanic centres,—
1. La Pelée; 2. Pitons du Carbet; 3. Roches
Carrées;
*
4. Vauclin; 5. Marin; 6. Morne de la Plaine.
Forty-two distinct mountain-masses belong to the Carbet system
alone,—that of Pelée including but thirteen; and the whole
Carbet area has a circumference of 120,000 metres,—much more
considerable than that of Pelée. But its centre is not one
enormous pyramidal mass like that of "La Montagne": it is marked
only by a group of five remarkable porphyritic cones,—the Pitons
of Carbet;—while Pelée, dominating everything, and fiIling the
north, presents an aspect and occupies an area scarcely inferior
to those of AEtna.
—Sometimes, while looking at La Pelée, I have wondered
if the enterprise of the great Japanese painter who made the Hundred Views
of Fusiyama could not be imitated by some creole artist equally proud
of his native hills, and fearless of the heat of the plains or the
snakes of the slopes. A hundred views of Pelée might certainly be made:
for the enormous mass is omnipresent to dwellers in the northern part of
the island, and can be seen from the heights of the most southern mornes.
It is visible from almost any part of St. Pierre,—which nestles
in a fold of its rocky skirts. It overlooks all the island
ranges, and overtops the mighty Pitons of Carbet by a thousand
feet;—you can only lose sight of it by entering gorges, or
journeying into the valleys of the south. …
But the peaked character of the whole country, and the hot moist
climate, oppose any artistic undertaking of the sort suggested:
even photographers never dream of taking views in the further
interior; nor on the east coast. Travel, moreover, is no less
costly than difficult: there are no inns or places of rest for
tourists; there are, almost daily, sudden and violent rains,
which are much dreaded (since a thorough wetting, with the pores
all distended by heat, may produce pleurisy); and there are
serpents! The artist willing to devote a few weeks of travel and
study to Pelée, in spite of these annoyances and risks, has not
yet made his appearance in Martinique.
*
Huge as the mountain looks from St. Pierre, the eye under-estimates
its bulk; and when you climb the mornes about the town,
Labelle, d'Orange, or the much grander Parnasse, you are
surprised to find how much vaster Pelée appears from these
summits. Volcanic hills often seem higher, by reason of their
steepness, than they really are; but Pelée deludes in another
manner. From surrounding valleys it appears lower, and from
adjacent mornes higher than it really is: the illusion in the
former case being due to the singular slope of its contours, and
the remarkable breadth of its base, occupying nearly all the
northern end of the island; in the latter, to misconception of
the comparative height of the eminence you have reached, which
deceives by the precipitous pitch of its sides. Pelée is not
very remarkable in point of altitude, however: its height was
estimated by Moreau de Jonnes at 1600 metres; and by others at
between 4400 and 4500 feet. The sum of the various imperfect
estimates made justify the opinion of Dr. Cornilliac that the
extreme summit is over 5000 feet above the sea—perhaps
5200. *
The clouds of the summit afford no indication to eyes accustomed
to mountain scenery in northern countries; for in these hot moist
latitudes clouds hang very low, even in fair weather. But in
bulk Pelée is grandiose: it spurs out across the island from the
Caribbean to the Atlantic: the great chains of mornes about it are
merely counter-forts; the Piton Pierreux and the Piton
Pain-à-Sucre (
Sugar-loaf Peak), and other elevations varying from
800 to 2100 feet, are its volcanic children. Nearly thirty
rivers have their birth in its flanks,—besides many thermal
springs, variously mineralized. As the culminant point of the
island, Pelée is also the ruler of its meteorologic life,—cloud-herder,
lightning-forger, and rain-maker. During clear weather
you can see it drawing to itself all the white vapors of the
land,—robbing lesser eminences of their shoulder-wraps and head-coverings;—though
the Pitons of Carbet (3700 feet) usually
manage to retain about their middle a cloud-clout,—a
lantchô.
You will also see that the clouds run in a circle about Pelée,
—gathering bulk as they turn by continual accessions from other points.
If the crater be totally bare in the morning, and shows the broken
edges very sharply against the blue, it is a sign of foul rather
than of fair weather to come.
*
Even in bulk, perhaps, Pelée might not impress those who know
the stupendous scenery of the American ranges; but none could
deny it special attractions appealing to the senses of form and
color. There is an imposing fantasticality in its configuraion
worth months of artistic study: one does not easily tire of
watching its slopes undulating against the north sky,—and the
strange jagging of its ridges,—and the succession of its
terraces crumbling
down to other terraces, which again break into
ravines here and there bridged by enormous buttresses of basalt:
an extravaganza of lava-shapes overpitching and cascading into
sea and plain. All this is verdant wherever surfaces catch the sun:
you can divine what the frame is only by examining the dark and
ponderous rocks of the torrents. And the hundred tints of this
verdure do not form the only colorific charms of the landscape.
Lovely as the long upreaching slopes of cane are,—and the
loftier bands of forest-growths, so far off that they look like
belts of moss,—and the more tender-colored masses above,
wrinkling and folding together up to the frost-white clouds of
the summit,—you will be still more delighted by the shadow-colors,—opulent,
diaphanous. The umbrages lining the wrinkles,
collecting in the hollows, slanting from sudden projections,
may become before your eyes almost as unreally beautiful as the
landscape colors of a Japanese fan;—they shift most generally
during the day from indigo-blue through violets and paler blues
to final lilacs and purples; and even the shadows of passing
clouds have a faint blue tinge when they fall on Pelée.
… Is the great volcano dead? … Nobody knows. Less than forty
years ago it rained ashes over all the roofs of St. Pierre;—
within twenty years it has uttered mutterings. For the moment,
it appears to sleep; and the clouds have dripped into the cup of
its highest crater till it has become a lake, several hundred
yards in circumference. The crater occupied by this lake—called
L'Étang, or "The Pool"—has never been active within human
memory. There are others,—difficult and dangerous to visit
because opening on the side of a tremendous gorge; and it was one
of these, no doubt, which has always been called La Souffrière,
that rained ashes over the city in 1851.
The explosion was almost concomitant with the last
of a series
of earthquake shocks, which began in the middle of May and ended in
the first week of August,—all much more severe in Guadeloupe
than in Martinique. In the village Au Prêcheur, lying at the foot of
the western slope of Pelée, the people had been for some time
complaining of an oppressive stench of sulphur,—or, as chemists
declared it, sulphuretted hydrogen,—when, on the 4th of August,
much trepidation was caused by a long and appalling noise from
the mountain,—a noise compared by planters on the neighboring
slopes to the hollow roaring made by a packet blowing off steam,
but infinitely louder. These sounds continued through intervals
until the following night, sometimes deepening into a rumble like
thunder. The mountain guides declared: "
C'est la Souffrière qui
bout!" (the Souffrière is boiling); and a panic seized the negroes
of the neighboring plantations. At 11 P.M. the noise was terrible
enough to fill all St. Pierre with alarm; and on the morning of the
6th the city presented an unwonted aspect, compared by creoles who
had lived abroad to the effect of a great hoar-frost. All the roofs,
trees, balconies, awnings, pavements, were covered with a white
layer of ashes. The same shower blanched the roofs of Morne
Rouge, and all the villages about the chief city,—Carbet, Fond-
Corré, and Au Prêcheur; also whitening the neighboring country:
the mountain was sending up columns of smoke or vapor; and it was
noticed that the Rivière Blanche, usually of a glaucous color,
ran black into the sea like an outpouring of ink, staining its
azure for a mile. A committee appointed to make an
investigation, and prepare an official report, found that a
number of rents had either been newly formed, or suddenly become
active, in the flank of the mountain: these were all situated in
the immense gorge sloping westward from that point now known as
the Morne de la Croix. Several were visited with much
difficulty,—members of the
commission being obliged to lower
themselves down a succession of precipices with cords of lianas;
and it is noteworthy that their researches were prosecuted in
spite of the momentary panic created by another outburst. It was
satisfactorily ascertained that the main force of the explosion
had been exerted within a perimeter of about one thousand yards;
that various hot springs had suddenly gushed out,—the temperature
of the least warm being about 37° Réaumur (116° F.);—that there
was no change in the configuration of the mountain;—and that the
terrific sounds had been produced only by the violent outrush of
vapor and ashes from some of the rents. In hope of allaying the
general alarm, a creole priest climbed the summit of the volcano,
and there planted the great cross which gives the height its name
and still remains to commemorate the event.
There was an extraordinary emigration of serpents from the high woods,
and from the higher to the lower plantations,—where they were killed by
thousands. For a long time Pelée continued to send up an immense column of
white vapor; but there were no more showers of ashes; and the
mountain gradually settled down to its present state of quiescence.
[_]
* Also called La
Barre de 'Isle,—a long high mountain-wall
interlinking the northern and southern system of ranges,—and
only two metres broad at the summit. The "Roches-Carrées",
display a geological formation unlike anything discovered in the
rest of the Antillesian system, excepting in Grenada,—columnar
or prismatic basalts. … In the plains of Marin curious
petrifactions exist;—I saw a honey-comb so perfect that the eye
alone could scarcely divine the transformation.
[_]
* Thibault de Chanvallon, writing of Martinique in 1751,
declared:—"All possible hinderances to study are encountered
here (tout s'oppose à l'etude): if the Americans [creoles] do
not devote themselves to research, the fact must not be
attributed solely to indifference or indolence. On the one hand,
the overpowering and continual heat,—the perpetual succession of
mornes and acclivities,—the difficulty of entering forests
rendered almost inaccessible by the lianas interwoven across all
openings, and the prickly plants which oppose a barrier to the
naturalist,—the continual anxiety and fear inspired by serpents
also;—on the othelr hand, the disheartening necessity of having
to work alone, and the discouragement of being unable to
communicate one's ideas or discoveries to persons having similar
tastes. And finally, it must be remembered that these
discouragements and dangers are never mitigated by the least hope
of personal consideration, or by the pleasure of emulation,—since
such study is necessarily unaccompanied either by the one or the
other in a country where nobody undertakes it."—(Voyage à la
Martinique.) … The conditions have scarcely changed since
De Chanvallon's day, despite the creation of Government roads, and
the thinning of the high woods.
[_]
* Humboldt believed the height to be not less than 800 toises
(1 toise=6 ft. 4.73 inches), or about 5115 feet.
[_]
* There used to be a strange popular belief that however
heavily veiled by clouds the mountain might be prior to an
earthquake, these would always vanish with the first shock. But
Thibault de Chanvallon took pains to examine into the truth of
this alleged phenomenon; and found that during a number of
earthquake shocks the clouds remained over the crater precisely
as usual. … There was more foundation, however, for another
popular belief, which still exists,—that the absolute purity of
the atmosphere about Pelée, and the perfect exposure of its
summit for any considerable time, might be regarded as an omen of
hurricane.
II.
FROM St. Pierre, trips to Pelée can be made by several routes;
—the most popular is that by way of Morne Rouge and the
Calebasse; but the summit can be reached in much less time by
making the ascent from different points along the coast-road to
Au Prêcheur,—such as the Morne St. Martin, or a well-known path
further north, passing near the celebrated hot springs (Fontaines
Chaudes). You drive towards Au Prêcheur, and begin the ascent on
foot, through cane-plantations. … The road by which you follow
the north-west coast round the skirts
of Pelée is very
picturesque:—you cross the Roxelane, the Rivière des Pères, the
Rivière Sèche (whose bed is now occupied only by a motionless torrent
of rocks);—passing first by the suburb of Fond-Corré, 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 Pelée's lava robe. The drive ultimately
rises and lowers over the undulations of the cliff, and is well
shadowed along the greater part of its course: you will admire
many huge
fromagers, or silk-cotton trees, various heavy lines of
tamarinds, and groups of
flamboyants with thick dark feathery foliage,
and cassia-trees with long pods pending and blackening from every branch,
and hedges of
campêche, or logwood, and calabash-trees, and multitudes
of the pretty shrubs bearing the fruit called in creole
raisins-bó-lanmè,
or "sea-side grapes." Then you reach Au Prêcheur: 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 Rivière du Prêcheur, a little
further on, you can obtain a fine view of the coast, which, rising suddenly
to a grand altitude, sweeps round in a semicircle over the Village of
the Abysses (
Aux Abymes),—whose name was doubtless suggested by the
immense depth of the sea at that point. … It was under the
shadow of those cliffs that the Confederate cruiser
Alabama
once hid herself, as a fish hides in the shadow of a rock, and
escaped from her pursuer, the
Iroquois. She had long been
blockaded in the harbor of St. Pierre by the Northern man-of-war,—anxiously
awaiting a chance to pounce upon her the instant she
should leave French waters;—and various Yankee vessels in port were
to send up rocket-signals should the
Alabama attempt to escape under
cover of darkness. But one night the privateer took a creole pilot on
board, and steamed out southward, with all her lights masked,
and her
chimneys so arranged that neither smoke nor sparks could betray her to
the enemy in the offing. However, some Yankee vessels near enough to discern
her movements through the darkness at once shot rockets south; and the
Iroquois gave chase. The
Alabama hugged the high
shore as far as Carbet,
remaining quite invisible in the shadow of it: then she suddenly turned and
recrossed the harbor. Again Yankee rockets betrayed her
manreuvre to the
Iroquois; but she gained Aux Abymes, laid
herself close to the enormous black cliff, and there remained
indistinguishable; the
Iroquois steamed by north without seeing
her. Once the Confederate cruiser found her enemy well out of
sight, she put her pilot ashore and escaped into the Dominica
channel. The pilot was a poor mulatto, who thought himself well
paid with five hundred francs!
… The more popular route to Pelée by way of Morne Rouge is
otherwise interesting … Anybody not too much afraid of the
tropic sun must find it a delightful experience to follow the
mountain roads leading to the interior from the city, as all the
mornes traversed by them command landscapes of extraordinary
beauty. According to the zigzags of the way, the scenery shifts
panoramically. At one moment you are looking down into valleys a
thousand feet below, at another, over luminous leagues of meadow
or cane-field, you see some far crowding of cones and cratered
shapes;—sharp as the teeth of a saw, and blue as sapphire,—with
further eminences ranging away through pearline color to high-peaked
remotenesses of vapory gold. As you follow the windings
of such a way as the road of the Morne Labelle, or the Morne
d'Orange, the city disappears and reappears many times,—always
diminishing, till at last it looks no bigger than a chess-board.
Simultaneously distant mountain shapes appear to unfold and
lengthen;—and always, always the sea rises with your rising.
Viewed at first from
the bulwark (
boulevard) commanding the
roofs of the town, its horizon-line seemed straight and keen as
a knife-edge;—but as you mount higher, it elongates, begins to
curve; and gradually the whole azure expanse of water broadens
out roundly like a disk. From certain very lofty summits further
inland you behold the immense blue circle touching the sky all round
you,—except where a still greater altitude, like that of Pelée or
the Pitons, breaks the ring; and this high vision of the sea has a
phantasmal effect hard to describe, and due to vapory conditions of the
atmosphere. There are bright cloudless days when, even as seen
from the city, the ocean-verge has a spectral vagueness; but on
any day, in any season, that you ascend to a point dominating the
sea by a thousand feet, the rim of the visible world takes a
ghostliness that startles,—because the prodigious light gives to
all near shapes such intense sharpness of outline and vividness
of color.
Yet wonderful as are the perspective beauties of those mountain
routes from which one can keep St. Pierre in view, the road to
Morne Rouge surpasses them, notwithstanding that it almost
immediately leaves the city behind, and out of sight. Excepting
only La Trace,—the long route winding over mountain ridges and
between primitive forests south to Fort-de-France,—there is
probably no section of national highway in the island more
remarkable than the Morne Rouge road. Leaving the Grande Rue by
the public conveyance, you drive out through the Savane du Fort,
with its immense mango and tamarind trees, skirting the Roxelane.
Then reaching the boulevard, you pass high Morne Labelle,—and
then the Jardin des Plantes on the right, where white-stemmed
palms are lifting their heads two hundred feet,—and beautiful
Parnasse, heavily timbered to the top;—while on your left the
valley of the Roxelane shallows up, and Pelée shows less and less
of its tremendous
base. Then you pass through the sleepy, palmy,
pretty Village of the Three Bridges (
Trois Ponts),—where a Fahrenheit
thermometer shows already three degrees of temperature lower than
at St. Pierre;—and the national road, making a sharp turn to the
right, becomes all at once very steep—so steep that the horses
can mount only at a walk. Around and between the wooded hills it
ascends by zigzags,—occasionally overlooking the sea,—sometimes
following the verges of ravines. Now and then you catch glimpses
of the road over which you passed half an hour before undulating far
below, looking narrow as a tape-line,—and of the gorge of the
Roxelane,—and of Pelée, always higher, now thrusting out long spurs
of green and purple land into the sea. You drive under cool shadowing
of mountain woods—under waving bamboos like enormous ostrich feathers
dyed green,—and exquisite tree-ferns thirty to forty feet high,—and
imposing ceibas, with strangely buttressed trunks,—and all
sorts of broad-leaved forms: cachibous, balisiers, bananiers. …
Then you reach a plateau covered with cane, whose yellow expanse
is bounded on the right by a demilune of hills sharply angled as
crystals;—on the left it dips seaward; and before you Pelée'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 Pelée, 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 Pelée,
these often create a dismal fog; and Morne Rouge is certainly one
of the rainiest places in the world. When it is dry everywhere else,
it rains at Morne Rouge. It rains at least three hundred and sixty
days and three hundred and sixty nights of the year. It rains almost
invariably once in every twenty-four hours; but oftener five or
six times. The dampness is phenomenal. All mirrors become
patchy; linen moulds in one day; leather turns while woollen
goods feel as if saturated with moisture; new brass becomes
green; steel crumbles into red powder; wood-work rots with
astonishing rapidity; salt is quickly transformed into brine; and
matches, unless kept in a very warm place, refuse to light.
Everything moulders and peels and decomposes; even the frescos of
the church-interior lump out in immense blisters; and a
microscopic vegetation, green or brown, attacks all exposed
surfaces of timber or stone. At night it is often really cold;—
and it is hard to understand how, with all this dampness and
coolness and mouldiness, Morne Rouge can be a healthy place. But
it is so, beyond any question: it is the great Martinique resort
for invalids; strangers debilitated by the climate of Trinidad or
Cayenne come to it for recuperation.
Leaving the village by the still uprising road, you will be
surprised, after a walk of twenty minutes northward, by a
magnificent view,—the vast valley of the Champ-Flore, watered
by many torrents, and bounded south and west by double, triple,
and quadruple surging of mountains,—mountains broken, peaked,
tormented-looking, and tinted (irisées, 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 Gélé. All the valley-expanse
of rich land is checkered with alternations of meadow and
cane and cacao,—except northwestwardly, where woods billow out of
sight beyond a curve. Facing this landscape, on your left, are mornes
of various heights,—among which you will notice La Calebasse,
overtopping everything but Pelée shadowing behind it;—and a
grass-grown road leads up westward from the national highway
towards the volcano. This is the Calebasse route to Pelée.
III.
WE must be very sure of the weather before undertaking the ascent
of Pelée; 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 Pelée: 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 Pelée'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
Sécheresse. 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 fraîche. December to March. Rainfall, about 475
millimetres.
2.
- Saison chaude et sèche. 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 sèche 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,—Pelée 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 Pelée's western counterforts. We drive north along the shore
for about half an hour; then, leaving the coast behind, pursue a
winding mountain road, leading to the upper plantations, between
leagues of cane. The sky begins to brighten as we ascend, and a
steely glow announces that day has begun on the other side of the island. Miles up, the crest of the volcano cuts sharp as a saw-edge
against the growing light: there is not a cloud visible.
Then the light slowly yellows behind the vast cone; and one of
the most beautiful dawns I ever saw reveals on our right an
immense valley through which three rivers flow. This deepens
very quickly as we drive; the mornes about St. Pierre, beginning
to catch the light, sink below us in distance; and above them,
southwardly, an amazing silouette begins to rise,—all blue,—a
mountain wall capped with cusps and cones, seeming high as Pelée
itself in the middle, but sinking down to the sea-level westward.
There are a number of extraordinary acuminations; but the most
impressive shape is the nearest,—a tremendous conoidal mass
crowned with a group of peaks, of which two, taller than the
rest, tell their name at once by the beauty of their forms,—
the Pitons of Carbet.
They wear their girdles of cloud, though
Pelée 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 Pelée.
Reaching the last plantation, we draw rein in a village of small wooden
cottages,—the quarters of the field hands,—and receive from the
proprietor, a personal friend of my friends, the kindest welcome. At
his house we change clothing and prepare for the journey;—he provides
for our horses, and secures experienced guides for us,—two young colored
men belonging to the plantation. Then we begin the ascent. The
guides walk before, barefoot, each carrying a cutlass in his hand
and a package on his head—our provisions, photographic
instruments, etc.
The mountain is cultivated in spots up to twenty-five hundred
feet; and for three-quarters of an hour after leaving the
planter's residence we still traverse fields of cane and of
manioc. The light is now strong in the valley; but we are in the
shadow of Pelée. Cultivated fields end at last; the ascending
path is through wild cane, wild guavas, guinea-grass run mad, and
other tough growths, some bearing pretty pink blossoms. The
forest is before us. Startled by our approach, a tiny fer-de-
lance glides out from a bunch of dead wild-cane, almost under the
bare feet of our foremost guide, who as instantly decapitates it
with a touch of his cutlass. It is not quite fifteen inches
long, and almost the color of the yellowish leaves under which it
had been hiding. … The conversation turns on snakes as we make
our first halt at the verge of the woods.
Hundreds may be hiding around us; but a snake never shows
himself by daylight except under the pressure of sudden alarm.
We are not likely, in the opinion of
all present, to meet with another.
Every one in the party, except myself, has some curious experience to
relate. I hear for the first time, about the alleged inability of the
trigonocephalus to wound except at a distance from his enemy of
not less than one-third of his length;—about M. A—, a former
director of the Jardin des Plantes, who used to boldly thrust his
arm into holes where he knew snakes were, and pull them out,—
catching them just behind the head and wrapping the tail round
his arm,—and place them alive in a cage without ever getting
bitten;—about M. B—, who, while hunting one day, tripped in the
coils of an immense trigonocephalus, and ran so fast in his
fright that the serpent, entangled round his leg, could not bite
him;—about M. C—, who could catch a fer-de-lance by the tail,
and "crack it like a whip" until the head would fly off ;—about
an old white man living in the Champ-Flore, whose diet was snake-meat,
and who always kept in his ajoupa "a keg of salted serpents"
(
yon ka sèpent-salé);—about a monster eight feet long which
killed, near Morne Rouge, M. Charles Fabre's white cat, but was
also killed by the cat after she had been caught in the folds of
the reptile;—about the value of snakes as protectors of the
sugar-cane and cocoa-shrub against rats;—about an unsuccessful
effort made, during a plague of rats in Guadeloupe, to introduce
the fer-de-lance there;—about the alleged power of a monstrous
toad, the
crapaud-ladre, to cause the death of the snake that
swallows it;—and, finally, about the total absence of the
idyllic and pastoral elements in Martinique literature, as due to
the presence of reptiles everywhere. "Even the flora and fauna
of the country remain to a large extent unknown,"—adds the last
speaker, an amiable old physician of St. Pierre,—"because the
existence of the fer-de-lance renders all serious research
dangerous in the extreme."
My own experiences do not justify my taking part in such a
conversation;—I never saw alive but two very small specimens of
the trigonocephalus. People who have passed even a considerable
time in Martinique may have never seen a fer-de-lance except in a
jar of alcohol, or as exhibited by negro snake-catchers, tied
fast to a bamboo, But this is only because strangers rarely
travel much in the interior of the country, or find themselves on
country roads after sundown. It is not correct to suppose that
snakes are uncommon even in the neighborhood of St. Pierre: they
are often killed on the bulwarks behind the city and on the verge
of the Savane; they have been often washed into the streets by
heavy rains; and many washer-women at the Roxelane have been
bitten by them. It is considered very dangerous to walk about
the bulwarks after dark;—for the snakes, which travel only at
night, then descend from the mornes towards the river, The Jardin
des Plantes shelters great numbers of the reptiles; and only a
few days prior to the writing of these lines a colored laborer in
the garden was stricken and killed by a fer-de-lance measuring
one metre and sixty-seven centimetres in length. In the interior
much larger reptiles are sometimes seen: I saw one freshly killed
measuring six feet five inches, and thick as a man's leg in the
middle. There are few planters in the island who have not some of
their hands bitten during the cane-cutting and cocoa-gathering
seasons;—the average annual mortality among the class of
travailleurs from serpent bite alone is probably
fifty, *
—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.
[_]
* "De la piqure du serpent de la Martinique," par Auguste
Charriez, Medecin de la Marine. Paris: Moquet, 1875]
V.
… WE look back over the upreaching yellow fan-spread of cane-fields,
and winding of tortuous valleys, and the sea expanding
beyond an opening in the west. It has already broadened
surprisingly, the sea appears to have risen up, not as a
horizontal plane, but like an immeasurable azure precipice: what
will it look like when we shall have reached the top? Far down we
can distinguish a line of field-hands—the whole atelier, as it
is called, of a plantation slowly descending a slope, hewing the
canes as they go. There is a woman to every two men, a binder
(amarreuse): she gathers the canes as they are cut down; binds
them with their own tough long leaves into a sort of sheaf, and
carries them away on her head;—the men wield their cutlasses so
beautifully that it is a delight to watch them. One cannot often
enjoy such a spectacle nowadays; for the introduction of the
piece-work system has destroyed the picturesqueness of plantation
labor throughout the island, with rare exceptions. Formerly the
work of cane-cutting resembled the march of an army;—first
advanced the cutlassers in line, naked to the waist; then the
amareuses, the women who tied and carried; and behind these the
ka, the drum,—with a paid crieur or crieuse to lead the song;—
and lastly the black Commandeur, for general. And in the old
days, too, it was not unfrequent that the sudden descent of an
English corsair on the coast converted this soldiery of labor
into veritable military: more than one attack was repelled by the
cutlasses of a plantation atelier.
At this height the chatting and chanting can be heard, though
not distinctly enough to catch the words. Suddenly a voice,
powerful as a bugle, rings out,—the voice of the Commandeur: he
walks along the line, looking, with his cutlass under his arm. I
ask one of our guides what the cry is:—
—"Y ka coumandé yo pouend gàde pou sèpent," he replies. (He is
telling them to keep watch for serpents.) The nearer the
cutlassers approach the end of their task, the greater the
danger: for the reptiles, retreating before them to the last
clump of cane, become massed there, and will fight desperately.
Regularly as the ripening-time, Death gathers his toll of human
lives from among the workers. But when one falls, another steps
into the vacant place,—perhaps the Commandeur himself: these
dark swordsmen never retreat; all the blades swing swiftly as
before; there is hardly any emotion; the travailleur is a
fatalist. … *
[_]
* M. Francard Bayardelle, overseer of the Prèsbourg plantation
at Grande Anse, tells me that the most successful treatment of
snake bite consists in severe local cupping and bleeding; the
immediate application of twenty to thirty leeches (when these
can be obtained), and the administration of alkali as an
internal medicine. He has saved several lives by these methods.
The negro panseur method is much more elaborate and, to some
extent, mysterious. He cups and bleeds, using a small couï, or
half-calabash, in lieu of a grass; and then applies cataplasms
of herbs,—orange-leaves, cinnamon-leaves, clove-leaves, chardon-béni,
charpentier, perhaps twenty other things, all mingled
together;—this poulticing being continued every day for a month.
Meantime the patient is given all sorts of absurd things to
drink, in tafia and sour-orange juice—such as old clay pipes
ground to powder, or the head of the fer-de-lance itself, roasted
dry and pounded. … The plantation negro has no faith in any
other system of cure but that of the panseur;—he refuses to let
the physician try to save him, and will scarcely submit to be
treated even by an experienced white over-seer.
VI.
… WE enter the grands-bois,—the primitive forest,—the "high
woods."
As seen with a field-glass from St. Pierre, these woods present
only the appearance of a band of moss belting the volcano, and
following all its corrugations,—so densely do the leafy crests
intermingle. But on actually entering them, you find yourself at
once in green twilight, among lofty trunks uprising everywhere
like huge pillars wrapped with vines;—and the interspaces
between these bulks are all occupied by lianas and parasitic
creepers,—some monstrous,—veritable parasite-trees,—ascending
at all angles, or dropping straight down from the tallest crests
to take root again. The effect in the dim light is that of
innumerable black ropes and cables of varying thicknesses
stretched taut from the soil to the tree-tops, and also from
branch to branch, like rigging. There are rare and remarkable
trees here,—acomats, courbarils, balatas, ceibas or fromagers,
acajous, gommiers;—hundreds have been cut down by charcoal-makers;
but the forest is still grand. It is to be regretted
that the Government has placed no restriction upon the barbarous
destruction of trees by the charbonniers, which is going on
throughout the island. Many valuable woods are rapidly
disappearing. The courbaril, yielding a fine-grained, heavy,
chocolate-colored timber; the balata, giving a wood even heavier,
denser, and darker; the acajou, producing a rich red wood, with a
strong scent of cedar; the bois-de-fer; the bois d'Inde; the
superb acomat,—all used to flourish by tens of thousands upon
these volcanic slopes, whose productiveness is eighteen times
greater than that of the richest European soil. All Martinique
furniture used to be made of native woods; and the colored
cabinet-makers still produce work which would probably astonish
New York or London manufacturers.
But to-day the island exports
no more hard woods: it has even been found necessary to import much
from neighboring islands;—and yet the destruction of forests still
goes on. The domestic fabrication of charcoal from forest-trees
has been estimated at 1,400,000 hectolitres per annum. Primitive
forest still covers the island to the extent of 21.37 per cent;
but to find precious woods now, one must climb heights like those
of Pelée and Carbet, or penetrate into the mountains of the
interior.
Most common formerly on these slopes were the gommiers, from
which canoes of a single piece, forty-five feet long by seven
wide, used to be made. There are plenty of gommiers still; but
the difficulty of transporting them to the shore has latterly
caused a demand for the gommiers of Dominica. The dimensions of
canoes now made from these trees rarely exceed fifteen feet in
length by eighteen inches in width: the art of making them is an
inheritance from the ancient Caribs. First the trunk is shaped
to the form of the canoe, and pointed at both ends; it is then
hollowed out. The width of the hollow does not exceed six inches
at the widest part; but the cavity is then filled with wet sand,
which in the course of some weeks widens the excavation by its
weight, and gives the boat perfect form. Finally gunwales of
plank are fastened on; seats are put in—generally four;—and no
boat is more durable nor more swift.
… We climb. There is a trace rather than a foot-path;—no
visible soil, only vegetable detritus, with roots woven over it
in every direction. The foot never rests on a flat surface,—
only upon surfaces of roots; and these are covered, like every
protruding branch along the route, with a slimy green moss,
slippery as ice. Unless accustomed to walking in tropical woods,
one will fall at every step. In a little while I find it
impossible to advance.
Our nearest guide, observing my predicament,
turns, and without moving the bundle upon his head, cuts and trims
me an excellent staff with a few strokes of his cutlass. This staff
not only saves me from dangerous slips, but also serves at times to
probe the way; for the further we proceed, the vaguer the path becomes.
It was made by the
chasseurs-de-choux (cabbage-hunters),—the
negro mountaineers who live by furnishing heads of young cabbage-palm
to the city markets; and these men also keep it open,—
otherwise the woods would grow over it in a month. Two
chasseurs-de-choux stride past us as we advance, with their
freshly gathered palm-salad upon their heads, wrapped in cachibou
or balisier leaves, and tied with lianas. The palmiste-franc
easily reaches a stature of one hundred feet; but the young trees
are so eagerly sought for by the chasseurs-de-choux that in these
woods few reach a height of even twelve feet before being cut.
… 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 cutlass 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
multitude of shrubs as tough as india-rubber push up, together with
mosses, grasses, and ferns. Square miles upon square miles of
woods are thus interlocked and interbound into one mass 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 cutlassing.
An inexperienced stranger might be puzzled to understand how
this cutlassing is done. It is no easy feat to sever with one
blow a liana thick as a man's arm; the trained cutlasser 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 cutlassing
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 space,—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 masses 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 interspaces
between far mountain chains,—masses 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 shore, 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 Pelée 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 buttresses 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 gushing 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 principal 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 Rivière 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 circumference 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
tétart, banane, loche, and dormeur are the principal varieties.
The tétart (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 "titiri" *
—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 Saturdays, when the water
is temporarily shut off to allow of the pipes being cleansed, the
titiri may die in the gutters in such numbers as to make the air
offensive.
The mountain-crab, celebrated for its periodical migrations,
is also found at considerable heights. Its numbers appear to
have been diminished extraordinarily by its consumption as an
article of negro diet; but in certain islands those armies of
crabs described by the old writers are still occasionally to be
seen. The Père Dutertre relates that in 1640, at St. Christophe,
thirty sick emigrants, temporarily left on the beach, were
attacked and devoured alive during the night by a similar species
of crab. "They descended from the mountains in such multitude,"
he tells us, "that they were heaped higher than houses over the
bodies of the poor wretches … whose bones were picked so clean
that not one speck of flesh could be found upon them." …
[_]
* The sheet-lightnings which play during the nights of July and
August are termed in creole Zéclai-titiri, or "titiri-
lightnings";—it is believed these give notice that the titiri
have begun to swarn in the rivers. Among the colored population
there exists an idea of some queer relation between the lightning
and the birth of the little fish ,—it is commonly said, "Zéclai-
a ka fai yo écloré" (the lightning hatches them).
VIII.
… WE enter the upper belt of woods—green twilight again.
There are as many lianas as ever: but they are less massive in
stem;—the trees, which are stunted, stand closer together; and
the web-work of roots is finer and more thickly spun. These are
called the petits-bois (little woods), in contradistinction to
the grands-bois, or high woods. Multitudes of balisiers, dwarf-palms,
arborescent ferns, wild guavas, mingle with the lower
growths on either side of the path, which has narrowed to the
breadth of a wheel-rut, and is nearly concealed by protruding
grasses and fern leaves. Never does the sole of the foot press
upon a surface large as itself,—always the slippery backs of
roots crossing at all angles, like loop-traps, over sharp
fragments of volcanic rock or pumice-stone. There are abrupt
descents, sudden acclivities, mud-holes, and fissures;—one
grasps at the ferns on both sides to keep from falling; and some
ferns are spiked
sometimes on the under surface, and tear the
hands. But the barefooted guides stride on rapidly, erect as ever
under their loads,—chopping off with their cutlasses any branches
that hang too low. There are beautiful flowers here,—various
unfamiliar species of lobelia;—pretty red and yellow blossoms belonging
to plants which the creole physician calls
Bromeliacoe; and a
plant like the
Guy Lussacia of Brazil, with violet-red petals.
There is an indescribable multitude of ferns,—a very museum of
ferns! The doctor, who is a great woodsman, says that he never
makes a trip to the hills without finding some new kind of fern;
and he had already a collection of several hundred.
The route is continually growing steeper, and makes a number of
turns and windings: we reach another bit of savane, where we have
to walk over black-pointed stones that resemble slag;—then more
petits-bois, still more dwarfed, then another opening. The naked
crest of the volcano appears like a peaked precipice, dark-red,
with streaks of green, over a narrow but terrific chasm on the
left: we are almost on a level with the crater, but must make a
long circuit to reach it, through a wilderness of stunted timber
and bush. The creoles call this undergrowth razié: it is really
only a prolongation of the low jungle which carpets the high
forests below, with this difference, that there are fewer
creepers and much more fern. … Suddenly we reach a black gap in
the path about thirty inches wide—half hidden by the tangle of
leaves,—La Fente. It is a volcanic fissure which divides the whole
ridge, and is said to have no bottom: for fear of a possible slip,
the guides insist upon holding our hands while we cross it. Happily
there are no more such clefts; but there are mud-holes, snags, roots,
and loose rocks beyond counting. Least disagreeable are the
bourbiers, in which you sink to your knees in black or gray
slime. Then the path descends into open light again;—and we
find ourselves
at the Étang,—in the dead Crater of the Three
Palmistes.
An immense pool, completely encircled by high green walls of
rock, which shut out all further view, and shoot up, here and
there, into cones, or rise into queer lofty humps and knobs. One
of these elevations at the opposite side has almost the shape of
a blunt horn: it is the Morne de la Croix. The scenery is at
once imposing and sinister: the shapes towering above the lake
and reflected in its still surface have the weirdness of things
seen in photographs of the moon. Clouds are circling above them
and between them;—one descends to the water, haunts us a moment,
blurring everything; then rises again. We have travelled too
slow; the clouds have had time to gather.
I look in vain for the Three Palmistes which gave the crater a
name: they were destroyed long ago. But there are numbers of
young ones scattered through the dense ferny covering of the
lake-slopes,—just showing their heads like bunches of great
dark-green feathers.
—The estimate of Dr. Rufz, made in 1851, and the estimate of
the last "Annuaire" regarding the circumference of the lake, are
evidently both at fault. That of the "Annuaire," 150 metres, is
a gross error: the writer must have meant the diameter,—
following Rufz, who estimated the circumference at something over
300 paces. As we find it, the Étang, which is nearly circular,
must measure 200 yards across;—perhaps it has been greatly
swollen by the extraordinary rains of this summer. Our guides say
that the little iron cross projecting from the water about two
yards off was high and dry on the shore last season. At present
there is only one narrow patch of grassy bank on which we can
rest, between the water and the walls of the crater.
The lake is perfectly clear, with a bottom of yellowish
shallow mud, which rests—according to investigations made in
1851—upon a mass of pumice-stone mixed in places with
ferruginous sand; and the yellow mud itself is a detritus of
pumice-stone. We strip for a swim.
Though at an elevation of nearly 5000 feet, this water is not so
cold as that of the Roxelane, nor of other rivers of the north-west
and north-east coasts. It has an agreeable fresh taste, like dew.
Looking down into it, I see many larvae of the maringouin, or
large mosquito: no fish. The maringouins themselves are troublesome,
—whirring around us and stinging. On striking out for the middle,
one is surprised to feel the water growing slightly warmer. The
committee of investigation in 1851 found the temperature of the
lake, in spite of a north wind, 20.5 Centigrade, while that of
the air was but 19 (about 69 F. for the water, and 66.2 for the
air). The depth in the centre is over six feet; the average is
scarcely four.
Regaining the bank, we prepare to ascend the Morne de la Croix.
The circular path by which it is commonly reached is now under water;
and we have to wade up to our waists. All the while clouds keep
passing over us in great slow whirls. Some are white and half-transparent;
others opaque and dark gray;—a dark cloud passing through;
a white one looks like a goblin. Gaining the opposite shore, we find a
very rough path over splintered stone, ascending between the thickest
fern-growths possible to imagine. The general tone of this fern is dark
green; but there are paler cloudings of yellow and pink,—;due to
the varying age of the leaves, which are pressed into a cushion
three or four feet high, and almost solid enough to sit upon.
About two hundred and fifty yards from the crater edge, the path
rises above this tangle, and zigzags up the morne, which now
appears twice as lofty as from the lake, where we had a curiously
foreshortened view of it. It then looked scarcely a hundred feet
high; it is more than double
that. The cone is green to the top
with moss, low grasses, small fern, and creeping pretty plants,
like violets, with big carmine flowers. The path is a black line:
the rock laid bare by it looks as if burned to the core. We have now
to use our hands in climbing; but the low thick ferns give a good hold.
Out of breath, and drenched in perspiration, we reach the apex,—the
highest point of the island. But we are curtained about with
clouds,—moving in dense white and gray masses: we cannot see
fifty feet away.
The top of the peak has a slightly slanting surface of perhaps
twenty square yards, very irregular in outline;—southwardly the
morne pitches sheer into a frightful chasm, between the
converging of two of those long corrugated ridges already
described as buttressing the volcano on all sides. Through a
cloud-rift we can see another crater-lake twelve hundred feet
below—said to be five times larger than the Étang we have just
left: it is also of more irregular outline. This is called the
Étang Sec, or "Dry Pool," because dry in less rainy seasons. It
occupies a more ancient crater, and is very rarely visited: the
path leading to it is difficult and dangerous,—a natural ladder
of roots and lianas over a series of precipices. Behind us the
Crater of the Three Palmistes now looks no larger than the
surface on which we stand;—over its further boundary we can see
the wall of another gorge, in which there is a third crater-lake.
West and north are green peakings, ridges, and high lava walls
steep as fortifications. All this we can only note in the
intervals between passing of clouds. As yet there is no
landscape visible southward;—we sit down and wait.
IX.
… TWO crosses are planted nearly at the verge of the
precipice; a small one of iron; and a large one of
wood—probably
the same put up by the Abbé Lespinasse during the panic of
1851, after the eruption. This has been splintered
to pieces by a flash of lightning; and the fragments are clumsily
united with cord. There is also a little tin plate let into a
slit in a black post: it bears a date,—
8 Avril, 1867. … The
volcanic vents, which were active in 1851, are not visible from
the peak: they are in the gorge descending from it, at a point
nearly on a level with the Étang Sec.
The ground gives out a peculiar hollow sound when tapped, and is
covered with a singular lichen,—all composed of round overlapping
leaves about one-eighth of an inch in diameter, pale green, and
tough as fish-scales. Here and there one sees a beautiful
branching growth, like a mass of green coral: it is a gigantic
moss. Cabane-Jésus ("bed of-Jesus") the patois name is: at
Christmas-time, in all the churches, those decorated cribs in
which the image of the Child-Saviour is laid are filled with it.
The creeping crimson violet is also here. Fire-flies with
bronze-green bodies are crawling about;—I notice also small
frogs, large gray crickets, and a species of snail with a black
shell. A solitary humming-bird passes, with a beautiful blue
head, flaming like sapphire. All at once the peak vibrates to a
tremendous sound from somewhere below. … It is only a peal of
thunder; but it startled at first, because the mountain rumbles
and grumbles occasionally. … From the wilderness of ferns about
the lake a sweet long low whistle comes—three times;—a
siffleur-de-montagne has its nest there. There is a rain-storm
over the woods beneath us: clouds now hide everything but the
point on which we rest; the crater of the Palmistes becomes
invisible. But it is only for a little while that we are thus
befogged: a wind comes, blows the clouds over us, lifts them up
and folds them like a drapery, and slowly whirls them away
northward. And for the first time the view is clear over
the intervening gorge,—now spanned by the rocket-leap of a
perfect rainbow.
… Valleys and mornes, peaks and ravines,—succeeding each
other swiftly as surge succeeds surge in a storm,—a weirdly
tossed world, but beautiful as it is weird: all green the
foreground, with all tints of green, shadowing off to billowy
distances of purest blue. The sea-line remains invisible as
ever: you know where it is only by the zone of pale light ringing
the double sphericity of sky and ocean. And in this double blue
void the island seems to hang suspended: far peaks seem to come
up from nowhere, to rest on nothing—like forms of mirage.
Useless to attempt photography;—distances take the same color
as the sea. Vauclin's truncated mass is recognizable only by the
shape of its indigo shadows. All is vague, vertiginous;—the
land still seems to quiver with the prodigious forces that up-heaved
it.
High over all this billowing and peaking tower the Pitons of
Carbet, gem-violet through the vapored miles,—the tallest one
filleted with a single soft white band of cloud. Through all the
wonderful chain of the Antilles you might seek in vain for other
peaks exquisite of form as these. Their beauty no less surprises
the traveller today than it did Columbus three hundred and
eighty-six years ago, when—on the thirteenth day of June, 1502—
his caravel first sailed into sight of them, and he asked his
Indian guide the name of the unknown land, and the names of those
marvellous shapes. Then, according to Pedro Martyr de Anghiera,
the Indian answered that the name of the island was Madiana; that
those peaks had been venerated from immemorial time by the
ancient peoples of the archipelago as the birthplace of the human
race; and that the first brown habitants of Madiana, having been
driven from their natural heritage by the man-eating pirates of
the south—the cannibal Caribs,—
remembered and mourned for their
sacred mountains, and gave the names of them, for a memory, to
the loftiest summits of their new home,—Hayti. … Surely never
was fairer spot hallowed by the legend of man's nursing-place than
the valley blue-shadowed by those peaks,—worthy, for their gracious
femininity of shape, to seem the visible breasts of the All-nourishing
Mother,—dreaming under this tropic sun.
Touching the zone of pale light north-east, appears a beautiful
peaked silhouette,—Dominica. We had hoped to perceive Saint
Lucia; but the atmosphere is too heavily charged with vapor to-day.
How magnificent must be the view on certain extraordinary
days, when it reaches from Antigua to the Grenadines—over a
range of three hundred miles! But the atmospheric conditions
which allow of such a spectacle are rare indeed. As a general
rule, even in the most unclouded West Indian weather, the
loftiest peaks fade into the light at a distance of one hundred
miles.
A sharp ridge covered with fern cuts off the view of the
northern slopes: one must climb it to look down upon Macouba.
Macouba occupies the steepest slope of Pelée, and the grimmest
part of the coast: its little chef-lieu is industrially famous
for the manufacture of native tobacco, and historically for the
ministrations of Père Labat, who rebuilt its church. Little
change has taken place in the parish since his time. "Do you
know Macouba?" asks a native writer;—"it is not Pelion upon
Ossa, but ten or twelve Pelions side by side with ten or twelve
Ossae, interseparated by prodigious ravines. Men can speak to
each other from places whence, by rapid walking, it would require
hours to meet;—to travel there is to experience on dry land the
sensation of the sea."
With the diminution of the warmth provoked by the exertion of climbing,
you begin to notice how cool it feels;—you could almost doubt the
testimony of your
latitude. Directly east is Senegambia: we are well
south of Timbuctoo and the Sahara,—on a line with southern India. The
ocean has cooled the winds; at this altitude the rarity of the
air is northern; but in the valleys below the vegetation is
African. The best alimentary plants, the best forage, the
flowers of the gardens, are of Guinea;—the graceful date-palms
are from the Atlas region: those tamarinds, whose thick shade
stifles all other vegetal life beneath it, are from Senegal.
Only, in the touch of the air, the vapory colors of distance, the
shapes of the hills, there is a something not of Africa: that
strange fascination which has given to the island its poetic
creole name,—
le Pays de Revenants. And the charm is as puissant
in our own day as it was more than two hundred years ago, when
Père Dutertre wrote:—"I have never met one single man, nor one
single woman, of all those who came back therefrom, in whom I
have not remarked a most passionate desire to return thereunto."
Time and familiarity do not weaken the charm, either for those
born among these scenes who never voyaged beyond their native
island, or for those to whom the streets of Paris and the streets
of St. Pierre are equally well known. Even at a time when
Martinique had been forsaken by hundreds of her ruined planters,
and the paradise-life of the old days had become only a memory to
embitter exile,—a Creole writes:—
"Let there suddenly open before you one of those vistas, or
anses, with colonnades of cocoa-palm—at the end of which you see
smoking the chimney of a sugar-mill, and catch a glimpse of the
hamlet of negro cabins (cases);—or merely picture to yourself
one of the most ordinary, most trivial scenes: nets being hauled
by two ranks of fishermen; a canot waiting for the embellie to
make a dash for the beach; even a negro bending under the weight
of a basket of fruits, and running along the
shore to get to market;
—and illuminate that with the light of our sun! What landscapes!
—O Salvator Rosa! 0 Claude Lorrain,—if I had your pencil! …
Well do I remember the day on which, after twenty years of absence,
I found myself again in presence of these wonders;—I feel once more
the thrill of delight that made all my body tremble, the tears that
came to my eyes. It was my land, my own land, that appeared so
beautiful." …
*
[_]
* Dr. E. Rufz: "Études historiques," vol. i., p. 189.
X.
AT the beginning, while gazing south, east, west, to the rim of
the world, all laughed, shouted, interchanged the quick delight
of new impressions: every face was radiant. … Now all look
serious;—none speak. The first physical joy of finding oneself
on this point in violet air, exalted above the hills, soon yields
to other emotions inspired by the mighty vision and the colossal
peace of the heights. Dominating all, I think, is the
consciousness of the awful antiquity of what one is looking
upon,—such a sensation, perhaps, as of old found utterance in
that tremendous question of the Book of Job:—"Wast thou brought
forth before the hills?" … And the blue multitude of the peaks,
the perpetual congregation of the mornes, seem to chorus in the
vast resplendence,—telling of Nature's eternal youth, and the
passionless permanence of that about us and beyond us and
beneath,—until something like the fulness of a great grief
begins to weigh at the heart. … For all this astonishment of
beauty, all this majesty of light and form and color, will surely
endure,—marvellous as now,—after we shall have lain down to
sleep where no dreams come, and may never arise from the dust of
our rest to look upon it.