When we have arrived there, we will allow them for a few moments to inhale the evening breeze, so refreshingly sweet after the mid-day heat of the month of May, and they can cast a glance with us over the luxuriant vegetation of the tropics.
With our backs turned to the woody and volcanic mountains, which divide the western part of the island, and amid which arise, crowned with their plumes of smoke and sparks, the two calcined pinnacles of the sulphur mountain, we have at our feet, sheltered by the hills, which have been named Bellevue, Mont-Désir, Beau Soliel, Espérance and Saint Charles, the city gracefully descending towards the sea, the waves of which sparkling with the last rays of the setting sun, laves its white walls. The horizon, formed by the ocean, lying like a vast and limpid mirror, and to the right and left, the most beautiful and richest plantation of the island; large square fields of coffee trees, transplanted originally from Arabia, with their knotty and flexible branches, covered with dark green glossy leaves, of an oblong and pointed form, and bearing clusters of flowers as white as snow; long rows of cotton plants, covering with a rich carpet of verdure, the dry and stony soil, on which they thrive best, and among which we see, like so many colossal ants, negroes occupied in reducing to two or three, the thousand shoots which sprout out from each stalk. And then again, but in more level and well sheltered spots, in which the soil is richer and more argillaceous, we see plantations of cocoa trees, first introduced into the West Indies by the Jew, Benjamin Dacosta, with their lofty trunks and porous branches, covered with fawn colored bark, from which large oblong leaves are pending, among which we see fresh shoots of a soft rose color, which contrast strongly with the long, curved and yellow fruit, which bends the branches with its weight. And further off, whole fields of the plant, discovered at Tabaco, first brought to France by the Ambassador of Francis II., who presented it to Catherine de Medicis, from which circumstance it derived its name of Herbe-a-là-reine.* This did not, however, prevent it from being, like every popular thing, in the first instance, excommunicated and proscribed, in Europe and Asia, by the two powers who then divided the world, proscribed by the Grand Duke of Muscovy, Michael Fedorowich, by the Turkish Sultan Amurath IV., by the Emperor of Persia, and excommunicated by Pope Urban VIII. Here and there, we see springing up to a height of forty or fifty feet above all the shrubs and plants, by which it is surrounded, the banana tree of Paradise, of which, according to tradition, the oval leaves, seven or eight feet in length, served to form the first garment of the first created woman. And finally, elevated above all the rest, and standing forth pre-eminent, whether hacked by the azure of the Heavens, or by the dark green tea, the cocoa-nut and the palm-tree, those two giants of the Western Archipelago graceful and prodigal, as is everything that is powerful. Figure to yourselves, then these beautiful hills, intersected by seventy rivers, eased in beds, ninety feet in depth; these mountains illuminated during the day by a tropical sun, at night, by the volcano of the sulphur mountain; that vegetation, which never is arrested, the new leaves of which succeed the leaves which fall; this soil so salubrious, and air so pure, that notwithstanding the insensate experiments that man, the real enemy of himself, has made by transporting serpents from Martinique, and Saint Lucie, it was found that they could neither live nor reproduce there, and then judge after the sufferings they had endured in Europe, of the happiness which Antole de Lusignan and Marguerite d’Auray must have enjoyed there.
* Queen’s Grass.
To a life agitated by the passions, to that struggle of natural rights against legal power, to that succession of scenes in which all earthly pains, from childbirth even to death, had played their part, had succeeded a life of pure delights, each day of which had passed on calmly and tranquilly; the only clouds that darkened it, arose from that vague uneasiness for distant friends, which as if borne upon the air, and which contracts the heart like a painful presentiment. However, from time to time, whether by newspapers, or by vessels, touching at the island, Anatole and Marguerite had obtained some intelligence of the generous being who had so powerfully served them as a protector; they had heard of his victories; that after he had left them, he had been appointed to the command of a small squadron, and had destroyed the English establishments on the coast of Acadia, which had gained for him the title of commodore; that, in an engagement with the Serapis and the Countess of Scarborough, after a combat yard-arm to yard-arm, which lasted four hours, he had obliged the two frigates to strike to him, and that finally, as a reward for the services he had rendered to the cause of American Independence, he had received the public thanks of Congress, who had voted him a gold medal, and had selected him to command the frigate America, to which that name had been given as being the finest in the service, and the command of which had been conferred on him as the bravest of its officers; but this splendid ship had been presented by Congress to the King of France, to replace the Magnifique, which had been lost at Boston. Paul Jones, after conducting this frigate to Havre, had joined the fleet of the Count de Vaudreuil, who had projected an attack upon Jamaica. This last intelligence had overjoyed the hearts of Lusignan and Marguerite, for this enterprize would bring Paul into their latitude, and they hoped at last they should soon see their brother and their friend; but peace, as we have before said, had intervened, and from that time, they had heard no more of the adventurous seaman.
In the evening of the day on which we have transported our readers from the wild shores of Brittany to the fertile coast of Guadaloupe, the young family were assembled in the very garden which we have entered, and which commands a view of the immense panorama we have described; the foreground of which is formed by the city, at its feet the ocean, studded with islands in the distance.
Marguerite had promptly habituated herself to the soft listlessness of Creole life; and her mind now tranquil and full of happiness, she gave herself up to the dolce far niente, which renders the sensual existence of the colonies a half sleep, the incidents of which appear as dreams.
She was lying with her daughter in a Peruvian hammock, netted with the silken fibres of the aloe, and ornamented with the most brilliant colored plumes of the rarest tropical birds; her son was swinging her with a soft and regular motion, and Lusignan was holding one of her hands between both his. She was still pale, but delicate and graceful as a wild lily. Her looks were vacantly wandering over the immense extent of ocean lying before her, and she felt her soul and senses enraptured by all the bliss which heaven can promise, and all the enjoyments which this earth can offer. At that moment, and as if everything concurred to complete the magic spectacle which every evening she came there to contemplate, and which every succeeding evening she found still more marvellously beautiful, there suddenly appeared, doubling the cape Trois Pointes, and looking like an ocean king, a large vessel, gliding along the surface of the sea without more apparent effort than a swan playing upon the tranquil bosom of a lake. Marguerite was the first to perceive it, and without speaking, for every action is a fatigue under that burning clime, she made a sign with her head to Lusignan, who directed his looks to the spot she had indicated, and then, like her, silently followed with his eyes the rapid and graceful movements of the vessel. By degrees as she approached, and as the elegant and delicate proportions of her masts amidst the mass of sails which they sustained, could be discerned, which, in the first instance, had seemed a cloud floating upon the horizon—they began to discover in one corner of her flag the stars of America, equal in number to the States they represent. One same idea shot instantly through their minds, and they exchanged a glance, radiant with hope that they were, perhaps, about to receive some news of Paul. Lusignan immediately ordered a negro to bring a telescope: but before he had returned, a hope still more delightful pervaded both their hearts. It appeared to Lusignan and Marguerite that they recognized an old friend in the frigate that was approaching. To persons, however, unaccustomed, it is so difficult to distinguish, at a great distance, signs which speak at once to the eye of an experienced seaman, that they did not yet dare to have faith in this hope, and which, indeed, was more an instinctive presentiment than positive reality. At last the negro brought the so much longed for telescope. Lusignan uttered a cry of joy, and then handed it to Marguerite: he had recognized the sculpture of Guillaume Costou, upon the prow of the vessel, and it was really the Indienne which was advancing towards Basseterre.
Lusignan raised Marguerite from the hammock and placed her on her feet, for their first impulse was to hasten to the harbour; but then they reflected that Paul had left the Indienne nearly five years, at the time that his promotion entitled him to the command of a larger vessel, and that she might now be under the orders of another captain, and they paused with palpitating hearts and trembling limbs. During this time, their son Hector had taken up the telescope, and placing it to his eye, looked through it, and soon after exclaimed,—“Father, see there,—upon the deck stands an officer, dressed in a black coat, embroidered with gold, just like the one in the picture of my dear friend, Paul!” Lusignan hastily snatched the glass from his son’s hands, looked through it for a few moments, then again passed it to Marguerite, who, after directing it toward the vessel, let it fall, and then they threw themselves into each other’s arms; they had recognized their friend, who, as he was about to visit them, had put on the dress which we have before said he had generally worn. At this instant the frigate passed the fort, which it saluted with three guns, and the fort returned the salute with an equal number.
From the moment that Lusignan and Marguerite had acquired the certitude that their friend and brother was actually on board the Indienne, they had hastened down the mountain, followed by young Hector, towards the port, leaving their little Blanche in the hammock. The captain had also recognized them, so that at the moment they left the garden he had ordered a boat to be lowered, and, thanks to the united strength of ten vigorous oarsmen, he had rapidly glided over the distance between the anchorage ground and the port, and had sprung upon the jetty at the instant that his friends arrived there. Such sensations as then filled their breasts cannot be expressed in words; tears are their only interpreter. And thus their joy more closely resembled grief, for they all wept, even to the child, who wept because he saw them weep.
After giving some orders relating to the vessel, the young commodore, with his delighted friends, slowly ascended the hill down which they had rushed so rapidly to meet him. Paul told them that the expedition of Admiral Vaudreuil having failed, he had returned to Philadelphia, and peace having been signed, as we have before mentioned, with England, the Congress, as a token of gratitude, had presented him with the first ship he had commanded as captain.