Chita: A Memory of Last Island | Page 4

unfamiliar villages worthy to inspire
any statuary,--beautiful with the beauty of ruddy bronze,--gracile as the
palmettoes that sway above them.... Further seaward you may also pass
a Chinese settlement: some queer camp of wooden dwellings clustering
around a vast platform that stands above the water upon a thousand
piles;--over the miniature wharf you can scarcely fail to observe a white
sign-board painted with crimson ideographs. The great platform is used
for drying fish in the sun; and the fantastic characters of the sign,
literally translated, mean: "Heap--Shrimp--Plenty." ... And finally all
the land melts down into desolations of sea-marsh, whose stillness is
seldom broken, except by the melancholy cry of long-legged birds, and
in wild seasons by that sound which shakes all shores when the weird
Musician of the Sea touches the bass keys of his mighty organ....
II.
Beyond the sea-marshes a curious archipelago lies. If you travel by
steamer to the sea-islands to-day, you are tolerably certain to enter the
Gulf by Grande Pass--skirting Grande Terre, the most familiar island of
all, not so much because of its proximity as because of its great
crumbling fort and its graceful pharos: the stationary White-Light of
Barataria. Otherwise the place is bleakly uninteresting: a wilderness of
wind-swept grasses and sinewy weeds waving away from a thin beach

ever speckled with drift and decaying things,--worm-riddled timbers,
dead porpoises.
Eastward the russet level is broken by the columnar silhouette of the
light house, and again, beyond it, by some puny scrub timber, above
which rises the angular ruddy mass of the old brick fort, whose ditches
swarm with crabs, and whose sluiceways are half choked by obsolete
cannon-shot, now thickly covered with incrustation of oyster shells....
Around all the gray circling of a shark-haunted sea...
Sometimes of autumn evenings there, when the hollow of heaven
flames like the interior of a chalice, and waves and clouds are flying in
one wild rout of broken gold,--you may see the tawny grasses all
covered with something like husks,--wheat-colored husks,--large, flat,
and disposed evenly along the lee-side of each swaying stalk, so as to
present only their edges to the wind. But, if you approach, those pale
husks all break open to display strange splendors of scarlet and
seal-brown, with arabesque mottlings in white and black: they change
into wondrous living blossoms, which detach themselves before your
eyes and rise in air, and flutter away by thousands to settle down farther
off, and turn into wheat-colored husks once more ... a whirling
flower-drift of sleepy butterflies!
Southwest, across the pass, gleams beautiful Grande Isle: primitively a
wilderness of palmetto (latanier);--then drained, diked, and cultivated
by Spanish sugar-planters; and now familiar chiefly as a bathing-resort.
Since the war the ocean reclaimed its own;--the cane-fields have
degenerated into sandy plains, over which tramways wind to the
smooth beach;--the plantation-residences have been converted into
rustic hotels, and the negro-quarters remodelled into villages of cozy
cottages for the reception of guests. But with its imposing groves of
oak, its golden wealth of orange-trees, its odorous lanes of oleander.
its broad grazing-meadows yellow-starred with wild camomile, Grande
Isle remains the prettiest island of the Gulf; and its loveliness is
exceptional. For the bleakness of Grand Terre is reiterated by most of
the other islands,--Caillou, Cassetete, Calumet, Wine Island, the twin
Timbaliers, Gull Island, and the many islets haunted by the gray

pelican,--all of which are little more than sand-bars covered with wiry
grasses, prairie-cane, and scrub-timber. Last Island (L'Ile
Derniere),--well worthy a long visit in other years, in spite of its
remoteness, is now a ghastly desolation twenty-five miles long. Lying
nearly forty miles west of Grande Isle, it was nevertheless far more
populated a generation ago: it was not only the most celebrated island
of the group, but also the most fashionable watering-place of the
aristocratic South;--to-day it is visited by fishermen only, at long
intervals. Its admirable beach in many respects resembled that of
Grande Isle to-day; the accommodations also were much similar,
although finer: a charming village of cottages facing the Gulf near the
western end. The hotel itself was a massive two-story construction of
timber, containing many apartments, together with a large dining-room
and dancing-hall. In rear of the hotel was a bayou, where passengers
landed--"Village Bayou" it is still called by seamen;--but the deep
channel which now cuts the island in two a little eastwardly did not
exist while the village remained. The sea tore it out in one night--the
same night when trees, fields, dwellings, all vanished into the Gulf,
leaving no vestige of former human habitation except a few of those
strong brick props and foundations upon which the frame houses and
cisterns had been raised. One living creature was found there after the
cataclysm--a cow! But how that solitary cow survived the fury of