This was fortunate, for it was a day in which it would have been more than easy to go astray. Only once or twice in the ascent did the fog lift, giving a glimpse of both the Atlantic and the Caribbean, of Morne Rouge half hidden in its verdure, and the green-gray site of what was once St. Pierre. Great fields of tree-ferns, whole mountain-sides of them, showed in these brief intervals of visibility, with deeply wooded valleys and steep peaks and ridges entirely covered with vegetation; nowhere the bare rocks and patches of lava I had expected. Mountain “raspberries,” the same inviting but rather tasteless fruit which the Porto Ricans miscall fresas, lined the way almost to the summit, enticing us to halt and eat regardless of the downpour. Once during the last sheer miles we had a brief view of the rim of the crater, like the edge of a world broken off by some cataclysm of the solar system. But when we had surmounted this and paused on the brink, there was nothing to be seen except an immense void filled with swirling white mist.
“Patrice” knew the value of patience, however, and for a long shivering hour we waited. Then all at once the cloud-curtain was snatched away for the briefest instant, and at our feet lay, not the quarry-like crater of the imagination, but a great valley filled with a scrub vegetation which might have been duplicated in the highlands of Scotland. Across it, like a mammoth monument, the “needle” that marks the summit, in the new form which the latest eruption left it, stood out against the sky a mere rifle-shot away. Then the mists swept in again, as if nature were some busy caretaker who had little time to waste on mere sight-seers, and left us to find our way as best we could out of the little cell-like chamber of fog in which we were inclosed.
We descended by a path that “Patrice” knew, even in the clouds, to the bottom of the crater. Gigantic rocks of every possible form lay tumbled everywhere, but so completely were they covered with light vegetation that only this closer view revealed their existence. Here and there was a fumerole, or smoke-hole, from which issued light clouds of vapor indistinguishable, except in temperature, from the swirling mists in which they were quickly merged. We crawled into one of these, half-covered with a hoodlike boulder, and at once lost the chill that had pervaded our very bones. The vent was like some mammoth chimney-corner, with a damp, sulphurous heat which quickly induced sleepiness and a desire to stretch out and let the world below go hang. That and the bottle of syrupy Martinique rum which “Patrice” had been foresighted enough to bring with him allayed any fear of mishap from exposure, and we ate our lunch in as homelike comfort as if the wintry winds and pouring rain outside were a thousand leagues distant.
The descent was swifter than we would have had it, thanks to the rain-soaked slopes, and almost before I realized it we were down in the brilliant tropical sunshine again, great clumps of bamboos casting a welcome shade over the ever more level trail and the mountainsides; of tree-ferns again high above us. At Ajoupa Bouillon (ajoupa, a hastily constructed shelter, is one of the few Carib words which has survived) we rejoined the highway and parted company, “Patrice” dubious of a “helpless stranger’s” ability to find his way, even along a public road. But as I showed no inclination to add another five-franc note to his unusual day’s income for being piloted to the north coast, he took his leave with a doleful countenance and pattered away in the direction of Morne Rouge.
Everything I wore or carried was still dripping wet. I turned aside into the first open meadow and spread out all of which I could in decency divest myself, the blazing sunshine drying it with magical rapidity. One felt immensely more of a sense of civilization here than in Haiti. There a lone white man would have hesitated to lie down beside the highway, even had there been one. Here one seemed as secure as in the heart of France. Yet there was little outward difference between the Haitians and the simple, kindly country-people who plodded constantly past, the women carrying big bundles on their heads. The hats they secured by laying the load over one rim flapping behind them, balancing their burdens with a cadenced swing of the hips, their legs bare to the knees. The men were fewer and seldom carried anything. In the fields were flocks of cattle; the little houses were all built close to the road, for cacos are unknown in Martinique. Vehicles were few despite the excellence of the leisurely French highway. The great mass of the islanders do their traveling on foot, the wealthy by automobile; but the latter are not numerous enough to give the pedestrian much annoyance.
As I neared the coast, the rolling hills turned to cane-fields, stretching clear down to the edge of the Atlantic. Compared with Cuba or Porto Rico, the methods were primitive, or more exactly, diminutive. Children, women, and old men picked up the cut canes, one by one, tied them in bundles with the top leaves, and slowly carried them to small ox-carts in which they were laboriously stood on end, bundle by bundle. These workers received two francs a day—fifteen cents at the then rate of exchange. Men in the prime of life were paid four francs fifty centimes for such work as hoeing or transferring the ox-cart loads into the little four-wheeled railroad cars which bore them away to the factory. Cane-cutters, however, working by the tache, earned as much as twelve francs a day.
Women of Martinique
