That’s all I can attempt to say about it now (in a general way) without wearying you.
Imagine old New Orleans, the dear quaint part of it, young and idealized as a master-artist might idealize it,—made all tropical, with narrower and brighter streets, all climbing up the side of a volcanic peak to a tropical forest, or descending in terraces of steps to the sea;—fancy our Creole courts filled with giant mangoes and columnar palms (a hundred feet in height sometimes); and everything painted in bright colours, and everybody in a costume of more than Oriental picturesqueness;—and astonishments of half-breed beauty;—and a grand tepid wind enveloping the city in one perpetual perfumed caress,—fancy all this, and you may have a faint idea of the sweetest, queerest, darlingest little city in the Antilles: Saint-Pierre, Martinique. I hope it will be my residence for the next two months,—and for the latter part of my wretched little existence. I love it as if it were a human being.
Outside are queer little French islands, with queer names—Marie Galante is rather an old appellation for an island,—full of Cytherean suggestion.
We leave this very fantastic and unhealthy land—now smitten with Gold-fever as well as other maladies—to-morrow. Then will come Trinidad, with its Hindoo villages to see. Photos, bought at Demerara and St. Kitts, predict visions of Indian grace worth daring the perpendicular sun to see. I am now the only passenger. My last companion—a fine Northwestern man—goes, I fear, to leave his bones in the bush. From the interior men are being carried back to the coast to die, yet the stream pours on to the gold-mines. My miner thinks he can stand it: he has dug for African gold, under a fiercer sky. He was an odd fellow. Saw no beauty in these islands. “No, partner—if you want to see scenery see the Rockies: that’s something to look at! Even the sea’s afraid of them mountains,—ran away from them: you can see four thousand feet up where the sea tried to climb before it got scared!”
Sometimes the apes on board are taught the experiences of life, the advantages of civilization. Torpedoes are tied to their tails; fire-crackers surround them with circles of crepitation and flame. Also they are occasionally paralyzed by unexpected sensations of electricity;—they have made the acquaintance of a galvanic battery; they have been induced to do foolish things which resulted in sharp and unfamiliar pains and burnings. Their lives are astonishments, and prolonged spasms of terror.
The sea at night is an awful and magnificent sight. It looks infernal,—Acherontic;—black surges that break into star-spray;—an abyss full of moving lights that come and go.
Well, I can’t write a good letter now;—wait till I get back to Martinique. I wanted you to know I had not forgotten my promise to write. You must make a trip down here some day. It is not hotter than New York except in the sun. You can do whatever you wish. You have force to do it. You have more brains in your finger-tips than some who have managed to get a big reputation. The little talk about Grande Isle that night was an absolute poem,—gave me a sense of the charm of the place such as I felt the first beautiful morning there. You don’t know what you can do, if you want to.
I think I should do something with this novel material, it is so rich in absurd colour! But I don’t feel enthusiastic now. Enthusiasm has been numbed by a long series of violent sensations and unexpected experiences. I have artistic indigestion;—going to try to dream it away at divine, paradisaical Martinique. There I will write you again. My address will be, care American Consul. But you mustn’t write unless you have plenty of time;—I am only paying my debts, not trying to make you waste paper answering me.
I believe I am beginning to write absurdities: it is so hot that rain-clouds form in one’s head.