Two Years in the French West Indies | Page 7

to pronounce English rapidly according to French
pronunciation and pitch of voice.
These green oranges have a delicious scent and amazing juiciness.
Peeling one of them is sufficient to perfume the skin of the hands for
the rest of the day, however often one may use soap and water.... We
smoke Porto Rico cigars, and drink West Indian lemonades, strongly
flavored with rum. The tobacco has a rich, sweet taste; the rum is
velvety, sugary, with a pleasant, soothing effect: both have a rich aroma.
There is a wholesome originality about the flavor of these products, a
uniqueness which certifies to their naif purity: something as opulent
and frank as the juices and odors of tropical fruits and flowers.
The streets leading from the plaza glare violently in the strong
sunlight;--the ground, almost dead-white, dazzles the eyes.... There are
few comely faces visible,--in the streets all are black who pass. But
through open shop-doors one occasionally catches glimpses of a pretty
quadroon face,--with immense black eyes,--a face yellow like a ripe
banana.
... It is now after mid-day. Looking up to the hills, or along sloping
streets towards the shore, wonderful variations of foliage-color meet
the eye: gold-greens, sap-greens, bluish and metallic greens of many
tints, reddish-greens, yellowish-greens. The cane-fields are broad

sheets of beautiful gold-green; and nearly as bright are the masses of
_pomme-cannelle_ frondescence, the groves of lemon and orange;
while tamarind and mahoganies are heavily sombre. Everywhere
palm-crests soar above the wood-lines, and tremble with a metallic
shimmering in the blue light. Up through a ponderous thickness of
tamarind rises the spire of the church; a skeleton of open stone-work,
without glasses or lattices or shutters of any sort for its naked apertures:
it is all open to the winds of heaven; it seems to be gasping with all its
granite mouths for breath--panting in this azure heat. In the bay the
water looks greener than ever: it is so clear that the light passes under
every boat and ship to the very bottom; the vessels only cast very thin
green shadows,--so transparent that fish can be distinctly seen passing
through from sunlight to sunlight.
The sunset offers a splendid spectacle of pure color; there is only an
immense yellow glow in the west,--a lemon-colored blaze; but when it
melts into the blue there is an exquisite green light.... We leave
to-morrow.
... Morning: the green hills are looming in a bluish vapor: the long
faint-yellow slope of beach to the left of the town, under the mangoes
and tamarinds, is already thronged with bathers,--all men or boys, and
all naked: black, brown, yellow, and white. The white bathers are
Danish soldiers from the barracks; the Northern brightness of their
skins forms an almost startling contrast with the deep colors of the
nature about them, and with the dark complexions of the natives. Some
very slender, graceful brown lads are bathing with them,--lightly built
as deer: these are probably creoles. Some of the black bathers are
clumsy-looking, and have astonishingly long legs.... Then little boys
come down, leading horses;--they strip, leap naked on the animals'
backs, and ride into the sea,--yelling, screaming, splashing, in the
morning light. Some are a fine brown color, like old bronze. Nothing
could-be more statuesque than the unconscious attitudes of these
bronze bodies in leaping, wrestling, running, pitching shells. Their
simple grace is in admirable harmony with that of Nature's green
creations about them,--rhymes faultlessly with the perfect self-balance
of the palms that poise along the shore....

Boom! and a thunder-rolling of echoes. We move slowly out of the
harbor, then swiftly towards the southeast.... The island seems to turn
slowly half round; then to retreat from us. Across our way appears a
long band of green light, reaching over the sea like a thin protraction of
color from the extended spur of verdure in which the western end of the
island terminates. That is a sunken reef, and a dangerous one. Lying
high upon it, in very sharp relief against the blue light, is a wrecked
vessel on her beam-ends,--the carcass of a brig. Her decks have been
broken in; the roofs of her cabins are gone; her masts are splintered off
short; her empty hold yawns naked to the sun; all her upper parts have
taken a yellowish-white color,--the color of sun-bleached bone.
Behind us the mountains still float back. Their shining green has
changed to a less vivid hue; they are taking bluish tones here and there;
but their outlines are still sharp, and along their high soft slopes there
are white specklings, which are villages and towns. These white specks
diminish swiftly,-- dwindle to the dimensions of salt-grains,--finally
vanish. Then the island grows uniformly bluish; it becomes cloudy,
vague as a dream of mountains;--it turns at last gray as smoke,