Even the “creole” of the islands under French rule is more orderly than that of Haiti. A knowledge of French is sufficient to carry on conversation with all classes, though the language of the masses falls far short of Parisian perfection. Curious local expressions are numerous. “Li” means either il y a or il est; the banana we know is a “gro’ femme” the tiny ones which seldom reach our markets are “figues naines”—literally “dwarf figs.” “Who” becomes “Qui monde” an improvement at least over the “Qui monde ça” of Haiti. Innumerable localisms of this kind, added to a slovenly pronunciation, make the popular tongue difficult for the stranger, but at least he is not called upon to guess the meaning of scores of terms from the African dialects such as pepper the Haitian jargon.
Though French money is current, Guadeloupe and Martinique issue notes of their own of from five francs upward. As these look exactly alike, except for the name of the island printed upon them, yet are not mutually accepted, the inexperienced traveler is sometimes put to considerable annoyance. Nominally, prices are now almost as high as in the United States, but the present low rate of exchange makes living agreeably low for the foreigner. “Telegrams” turned in at a post-office are telephoned to any part of the island in which they originate, with un-Latin despatch, at the slight cost of fifty centimes (four cents at the present exchange) for twenty words. There is no cable service, however, between the two islands, which have less intercourse with each other than with the mother country.
Schools are closely centralized, as in France, and not particularly numerous or effective, though there is less illiteracy than the census of the French islanders who helped to dig the Panama Canal seemed to indicate. Among the surprises in store for the visitor is the profound patriotism of almost all classes. Twenty thousand Martiniquais went to France as conscripts, while the British West Indies sent only volunteers, yet only one British island can in any way compare with their French neighbors in loyalty to the homeland. Thus is France rewarded for the comparative equality which she grants her subjects, irrespective of color. While the British segregated their West Indian troops into the separate regiments, with white officers over them and only the non-commissioned ranks open to soldiers of color, France mixed hers in with the poilus, and gave them equal chances of promotion. More than one black French colonel held important posts during the war. Incidentally, by this intermingling she got considerable fight out of her black troops, which can scarcely be said of the “B. W. I.” regiments. This policy, carried out with what to us would be too thorough an indifference to the racial problem, has at least given her “American” subjects a great loyalty and love for France.
The nearest approach to a railroad station in Martinique is a street beside the post-office in the capital. There, at half-past two each afternoon, three autos de poste set out for as many extremities of the island. A throng of would-be travelers, several times larger than the snorting old busses can accommodate, forms a whirlpool of gay calicos, multifarious bundles, and sputtering patois, in which a lone white man seems strangely out of place. The distribution of tickets is somewhat disorderly, as one might expect, and when the vehicles chug away with their full, cramped quota, they are followed by angry shrieks and gestures from the disappointed. The wealthy few of these hurry out to the edge of the savane to bargain for private cars, while the majority trudge homeward, hoping that the morrow will bring better luck, or wrathfully set out on foot for their destinations.
I won a place one afternoon in the bus for Ste. Anne, thirty-five miles away on the southern point of the island. The region proved more rolling, less broken by abrupt hills, than the central portion. Old kettles scattered here and there, the ruins of a few windmill-towers and ivy-grown brick chimneys showed that Martinique, too, had gone through a certain process of centralization in her principal industry. The sense of smell demonstrated that the larger and rarer usines we passed gave their attention rather to rum than to sugar. Beyond Petit Bourg the plains bordering Fort de France Bay gave way to a wilder landscape, with a rich red soil and many by no means perfect roads in every direction. The turban-coiffed women and barefoot countrymen tramping them had no such fear of the automobile as their Haitian cousins, but yielded the road to it with a sort of lofty disdain. Everywhere men and women were working side by side in the cane-fields, which filled each suggestion of valley and covered the lower slopes about it. The appearance of the soil and the short joints of the canes suggested that this southern region needed irrigation. Farther on came several precipices and immense ravines, the mountains sprinkled far and wide with huts and little cultivated fields which the irregularity of the ground gave every conceivable shape. Many of the mountaineers, according to a fellow-passenger, own their farms, those far back in the hills being mainly engaged in the cultivation of cacao. We passed half a dozen populous towns on the way, that of Rivière Pilote in a setting of enormous black boulders which carried the mind back to Namur in Belgium. A thorny, half-arid vegetation stretched from there all the way to the petrified forest and salt ponds on the southernmost point of the island.
The St. Pierre of to-day with Pelée in the background
The Cathedral of St. Pierre
