Chapter XIII

Following the Rue Victor Hugo in the direction of the Fort,--crossing the Rivière Roxelane, or Rivière des Blanchisseuses, whose rocky bed is white with unsoaped linen far as the eye can reach,--you descend through some tortuous narrow streets into the principal market-place.[1] A square--well paved and well shaded--with a fountain in the midst. Here the dealers are seated in rows;--one half of the market is devoted to fruits and vegetables; the other to the sale of fresh fish and meats. On first entering you are confused by the press and deafened by the storm of creole chatter;--then you begin to discern some order in this chaos, and to observe curious things.

In the middle of the paved square, about the market fountain, are lying boats filled with fish, which have been carried up from the water upon men's shoulders,--or, if very heavy, conveyed on rollers.... Such fish!--blue, rosy, green, lilac, scarlet, gold: no spectral tints these, but luminous and strong like fire. Here also you see heaps of long thin fish looking like piled bars of silver,--absolutely dazzling,--of almost equal thickness from head to tail;--near by are heaps of flat pink creatures;--beyond these, again, a mass of azure backs and golden bellies. Among the stalls you can study the monsters,--twelve or fifteen feet long,--the shark, the _vierge_, the sword-fish, the _tonne_;--or the eccentricities. Some are very thin round disks, with long, brilliant, wormy feelers in lieu of fins, flickering in all directions like a moving pendant silver fringe;--others bristle with spines;--others, serpent-bodied, are so speckled as to resemble shapes of red polished granite. These are _moringues._ The _balaou, coulio, macriau, tazard, tcha-tcha, bonnique_, and _zorphi_ severally represent almost all possible tints of blue and violet. The _souri_ is rose-color and yellow; the _cirurgien_ is black, with yellow and red stripes; the _patate_, black and yellow; the _gros-zié_ is vermilion; the _couronné_, red and black. Their names are not less unfamiliar than their shapes and tints;--the _aiguille-de-mer_, or sea-needle, long and thin as a pencil;--the _Bon-Dié-manié-moin_ ("the Good-God handled me"), which has something like finger-marks upon it;--the _lambi_, a huge sea-snail;--the _pisquette_, the _laline_ (the Moon);--the _crapaud-de-mer_, or sea-toad, with a dangerous dorsal fin;--the _vermeil_, the _jacquot_, the _chaponne_, and fifty others.... As the sun gets higher, banana or balisier leaves are laid over the fish.

Even more puzzling, perhaps, are the astonishing varieties of green, yellow, and parti-colored vegetables,--and fruits of all hues and forms,--out of which display you retain only a confused general memory of sweet smells and luscious colors. But there are some oddities which impress the recollection in a particular way. One is a great cylindrical ivory-colored thing,--shaped like an elephant's tusk, except that it is not curved: this is the head of the cabbage-palm, or palmiste,--the brain of one of the noblest trees in the tropics, which must be totally destroyed to obtain it. Raw or cooked, it is eaten in a great variety of ways,--in salads, stews, fritters, or _akras._ Soon after this compact cylinder of young germinating leaves has been removed, large worms begin to appear in the hollow of the dead tree,--the _vers-palmiste._ You may see these for sale in the market, crawling about in bowls or cans: they are said, when fried alive, to taste like almonds, and are esteemed as a great luxury.

... Then you begin to look about you at the faces of the black, brown, and yellow people who are watching you curiously from beneath their Madras turbans, or from under the shade of mushroom-shaped hats as large as umbrellas. And as you observe the bare backs, bare shoulders, bare legs and arms and feet, you will find that the colors of flesh are even more varied and surprising than the colors of fruit. Nevertheless, it is only with fruit-colors that many of these skin-tints can be correctly compared: the only terms of comparison used by the colored people themselves being terms of this kind,--such as _peau-chapotille_, "sapota-skin." The _sapota_ or _sapotille_ is a juicy brown fruit with a rind satiny like a human cuticle, and just the color, when flushed and ripe, of certain half-breed skins. But among the brighter half-breeds, the colors, I think, are much more fruit-like;--there are banana-tints, lemon-tones, orange-hues, with sometimes such a mingling of ruddiness as in the pink ripening of a mango. Agreeable to the eye the darker skins certainly are, and often very remarkable--all clear tones of bronze being represented; but the brighter tints are absolutely beautiful. Standing perfectly naked at door-ways, or playing naked in the sun, astonishing children may sometimes be seen,--banana-colored or orange babies. There is one rare race-type, totally unlike the rest: the skin has a perfect gold-tone, an exquisite metallic yellow; the eyes are long, and have long silky lashes;--the hair is a mass of thick, rich, glossy curls that show blue lights in the sun. What mingling of races produced this beautiful type?--there is some strange blood in the blending,--not of coolie, nor of African, nor of Chinese, although there are Chinese types here of indubitable beauty.[2]

... All this population is vigorous, graceful, healthy: all you see passing by are well made--there are no sickly faces, ho scrawny limbs. If by some rare chance you encounter a person who has lost an arm or a leg, you can be almost certain you are looking at a victim of the fer-de-lance,--the serpent whose venom putrefies living tissue.... Without fear of exaggerating facts, I can venture to say that the muscular development of the working-men here is something which must be seen in order to be believed;--to study fine displays of it, one should watch the blacks and half-breeds working naked to the waist,--on the landings, in the gas-houses and slaughter-houses, or on the nearest plantations. They are not generally large men, perhaps not extraordinarily powerful; but they have the aspect of sculptural or even of anatomical models; they seem absolutely devoid of adipose tissue; their muscles stand out with a saliency that astonishes the eye. At a tanning-yard, while I was watching a dozen blacks at work, a young mulatto with the mischievous face of a faun walked by, wearing nothing but a clout (_lantcho_) about his loins; and never, not even in bronze, did I see so beautiful a play of muscles. A demonstrator of anatomy could have used him for a class-model;--a sculptor wishing to shape a fine Mercury would have been satisfied to take a cast of such a body without thinking of making one modification from neck to heel. "Frugal diet is the cause of this physical condition," a young French professor assures me; "all these men," he says, "live upon salt codfish and fruit." But frugal living alone could new produce such symmetry and saliency of muscles: race-crossing, climate, perpetual exercise, healthy labor--many conditions must have combined to cause it. Also it is certain that this tropical sun has a tendency to dissolve spare flesh, to melt away all superfluous tissue, leaving the muscular fibre dense and solid as mahogany.

At the _mouillage_, below a green _morne_, is the bathing-place. A rocky beach rounding away under heights of tropical wood;--palms curving out above the sand, or bending half-way across it. Ships at anchor in blue water, against golden-yellow horizon. A vast blue glow. Water clear as diamond, and lukewarm.

It is about one hour after sunrise; and the higher parts of Montagne Pelée are still misty blue. Under the palms and among the lava rocks, and also in little cabins farther up the slope, bathers are dressing or undressing: the water is also dotted with heads of swimmers. Women and girls enter it well robed from feet to shoulders;--men go in very sparsely clad;--there are lads wearing nothing. Young boys--yellow and brown little fellows--run in naked, and swim out to pointed rocks that jut up black above the bright water. They climb up one at a time to dive down. Poised for the leap upon the black lava crag, and against the blue light of the sky, each lithe figure, gilded by the morning sun, has a statuesqueness and a luminosity impossible to paint in words. These bodies seem to radiate color; and the azure light intensifies the hue: it is idyllic, incredible;--Coomans used paler colors in his Pompeiian studies, and his figures were never so symmetrical. This flesh does not look like flesh, but like fruit-pulp....

[Footnote 1: Since this was written the market has been removed to the Savane,--to allow of the erection of a large new market-building on the old rite; and the beautiful trees have been cut down.]

[Footnote 2: I subsequently learned the mystery of this very strange and beautiful mixed race,--many fine specimens of which may also be seen in Trinidad. Three widely diverse elements have combined to form it: European, negro, and Indian,--but, strange to say, it is the most savage of these three bloods which creates the peculiar charm.... I cannot speak of this comely and extraordinary type without translating a passage from Dr. J. J. J. Cornilliac, an eminent Martinique physician, who recently published a most valuable series of studies upon the ethnology, climatology, and history of the Antilles. In these he writes:

... "When, among the populations of the Antilles, we first notice those remarkable _métis_ whose olive skins, elegant and slender figures, fine straight profiles, and regular features remind us of the inhabitants of Madras or Pondicherry,--we ask ourselves in wonder, while looking at their long eyes, full of a strange and gentle melancholy (especially among the women), and at the black, rich, silky-gleaming hair curling in abundance over the temples and falling in profusion over the neck,--to what human race can belong this singular variety,--in which there is a dominant characteristic that seems indelible, and always shows more and more strongly in proportion as the type is further removed from the African element. It is the Carib blood,--blended with blood of Europeans and of blacks,--which in spite of all subsequent crossings, and in spite of the fact that it has not been renewed for more than two hundred years, still conserves as markedly as at the time of the first interblending, the race-characteristic that invariably reveals its presence in the blood of every being through whose veins it flows."--"Recherches chronologiques et historiques sur l'Origine et la Propagation de la Fièvre Jaune aux Antilles." Par J. J. J. Cornilliac. Fort-de-France: Imprimerie du Gouvernement. 1886.

But I do not think the term "olive" always indicates the color of these skins, which seemed to me exactly the tint of gold; and the hair flashes with bluish lights, like the plumage of certain black birds.]