It was an official building before which we were standing, and as we were about to move on to a shadier spot, the guards, or the soldiers, or whatever one might call them, approached and presented arms under the crooked arch, and disappeared noiselessly within the inner court. This barefooted squad, some ten strong,—negroes of all shades of blackness,—were equipped in gorgeous red caps. Yes, they all had caps, and muskets, every one of them; the remaining parts of the uniform, unessential parts, were eked out with linen dusters and old rags which happened to be lying around handy. I don’t see why they should have bothered about having the dusters, but I suppose it was traditional.
Just as we approached the main street under a blazing sun, there came toward us two chariots, with wheels eight or ten feet high, harnessed each to a mixture of tiny, woebegone donkeys and mules, about the size of hairpins, going at full speed with the true negro love of display, for the benefit of the strangers. The charioteers wore shirts and tattered hats, and yelled like wild hyenas at the poor, astonished mules. “Hurrah for Ben Hur!” we shouted, and the triumphant victor rattled ahead in a cloud of dust. Then we went on to the next performance, a Haïtien officer strutting past, bedecked with gold lace and buttons, and great cocked hat, well plumed, and barefooted. There was no use being serious; we couldn’t be. We were in the midst of an opera bouffe, with negroes playing at government, with the happy-go-lucky African savage fully possessed of his racial characteristics, fondly imagining himself a free and responsible man; and it was one, long pitiful laugh for the poor black children who were taking themselves in such dead earnest.
IV.
It was not to imitate Mr. F. Hopkinson Smith in the least that we said we must find a white umbrella, and yet even had we wished to imitate Mr. Smith, could we have followed in the way of a more delightsome traveller? It was simply because we were conscious that a white umbrella, with a soft green lining, is a necessary adjunct to life in the tropics. It is in harmony with its environment, because it is almost a necessity; and being such, we were not to be dissuaded from our desire. So, with that definite intent to our steps, we started to find the white umbrella.
Was every one else hunting for one, too, that the crowd was all going in our direction,—surely not! No sun could ever blaze strongly enough to penetrate those woolly tops. We go on a little farther, and then we begin to understand from a wave of odours sweeping over us that it’s to market we’re going with all the rest; and so for the time we are led from the purpose of the morning.
The stench grows more pronounced; we become a part of a black host, with babies, children, men, women, and donkeys crowding into the square, where a long, low-tiled market-building and its surrounding dirty pavement becomes the kitchen for the whole of Port-au-Prince; a place where filthy meats and queer vegetables and strange fruits are sold, and where all manner of curious, outlandish dishes are being concocted. The black women crouching on the ground over little simmering pots and a few hot coals, jabbering away at their crouching neighbours, were more like half-human animals than possible mothers of a republic. And in amongst the women were the babies, rolling around on bits of rags, blissfully happy in their complete nakedness. But there was something about those black, naked babies which seemed to dress them up without any clothes. Does a naked negro baby ever look as bare to you as a naked white baby?