II.
The little girls and their father have all but lost their patience. “I’m ready now,” I call to the beckoning eyes. “Just wait until I get the St. Thomas basket, and I’ll be there.” After a quick dash to the stateroom and back, I’m armed with the basket and umbrella. But after all these snake stories you would rather not join us in our morning walk? You’re not nervous? That’s fine; I like your spirit! Suppose we go first to the market, and then in a roundabout way to the Botanical Gardens.
There are always guide-books to be bought in every town; there are always those on shipboard who never separate themselves from a red cover; there are always those who tell you what you ought to see, and especially afterward what you ought to have seen; but we four are born dissenters; we kind o’ forget about the mummies when there are live human beings to watch. We know the mummies will be there when we’re tired of the rest, but we’re not so sure of the people. It’s such fun to find out what the natives are doing, thinking, saying; what they wear, what they eat, how they live, how they dance, and walk, and play, and work.
Here in Martinique we find the market a perfect babel of voices, all speaking a curious French patois.
It is next to impossible to distinguish one word from another in all that hum of highly pitched creole voices. The famous “porteuses”—long-limbed, slender, shapely, tall, and agile half-caste and negro girls—have brought their heavy burdens from the mountains and the country roundabout; and here they sit, like flowers in a garden, surrounded by their goods. Some have little piles of fruits, or of vegetables, cooked and ready to be eaten, wrapped in banana leaves; some have a stock of dried meats, made up into tiny portions; some sell fancy cakes; some, pies; others crouch down, fairly hidden by showy piles of calico and bright silks, with needles, threads, coarse laces, and beads scattered about them in great confusion.
And here are the sinewy men; the fishers with heaps of fish. Such beautiful fish! Does it seem credible that you can stand in a smelly fish-market, and be fairly enchanted by the colour and beauty of great trays of fish spread out upon a stone pavement? Their beauty is amazing. Here are enormous trays of flying fish, glittering silver, sweeter to the taste than any trout; here are others, all pink and red, and here are wee bits of fish sold by the glass—some sort of “white bait,” maybe.
We elbow on through the babel of voices, looking, as I told you we did, for the palm salad, but there is none to be had. Still I remember its flavour, and I remember that the creole madame brought us a piece which she had bought in the market for four sous. It was very like a round stick of ivory, a foot and a half long and two inches in diameter. We shall have to be content with that one sight.
But what is the use in going to a market unless we can buy something? So we stop in front of a porteuse as she squats behind her pile of fruit on the market floor, and buy oranges, and get almost a pint of coppers in change for one silver piece; but not without grave doubts on the part of the seller. She looks at our silver and shakes her head, and all her neighbours come together, and the colours of their bright turbans and the little funny ends of handkerchiefs tied so that they stand up on top of the head like plumes,—all these ends flutter and bob as they comment in their funny French, while we tell the women that our money is good, good silver. Finally a big-eyed, handsome girl comes elbowing along and proudly explains to her doubting sisters that we are right; then at last we get our change, distribute it in our various pockets, take our oranges, and leave the market.