Roraima and British Guiana, With a Glance at Bermuda, the West Indies, and the Spanish Main

by J. W. Boddam-Whetham

And the sceptred aloe’s bloom

Glorifies it for the tomb.”

The above lines, appropriate enough for any West India isle, yet for me associate themselves with Martinique more than with any other. It may be because I lingered long enough to know that island better than the rest, or it may be because the remembrance of a certain ride across the rich country—a ride ever memorable as the most beautiful I had ever enjoyed, and which must be described later on—abides with me as a practical lesson in botany by nature herself.

It was late in the afternoon when we anchored off St. Pierre—the chief town in Martinique. The character of the island had not seemed quite so broken and romantic as Dominica, there was more low table-land and more cultivation, but the mountain range, with its grand pitons looking out over the clouds, gave promise to the expectant imagination of many beautiful scenes.

From the roadstead, we saw in front of us houses thickly massed together and extending round the bay. Close behind the town, on the eastern side, rose a precipitous hill, crowned with waving sugar-cane, and its deep-wooded side dotted with white villas. Towards the north, a broad ravine, through which a river ran, divided the town into two parts, and beyond rose the soft uplands, green with cane, and stretching to the delicately coloured hills which reached the high mountains in the background. On our right, the coast line was varied with rock, hill, and valley, and on one summit a large white statue stood out conspicuously against the green foliage; on our left, the palm-fringed shore, with here a solitary house, and there a little white village, ran northwards in a gently undulating line.

On landing at St. Pierre the traveller finds himself the object of a popular demonstration; he is assailed by a swarm of stalwart women, some of whom dispossess him of his book, umbrella, or whatever he may be carrying, whilst others, after a short fight among themselves, seize on the luggage, toss great portmanteaus and boxes on to their heads with the greatest of ease, and amid shouts of laughter rush off with loud cries, “A la douane! à la douane!” It is useless to protest that you want to carry such and such a thing yourself, you may recapture it for a second, but it is lost again; everything goes aloft on female heads and shoulders, and to avoid a similar fate yourself you follow in the wake of the flying Amazons and arrive at the Custom House. Then a strict inspection ensues, after which the luggage is remounted and a procession is formed to the hotel.

We—one other passenger and myself—had been advised to go to the Hôtel des Bains, so when our porters said of course “les Messieurs” were going to the “Hôtel Micas,” we answered of course not. Eventually we made out from the extraordinary Creole patois, that the former hotel was closed, and that its proprietor had opened the latter. We soon arrived there, and it looked clean and comfortable, but the landlord was “désolé,” there was not a single vacant room; “would the gentlemen be satisfied with a billiard table for to-night, then to-morrow——?” This offer was declined, and finally we found rooms in the Hôtel du Commerce, a place of very second-rate pretensions, but with a very obliging proprietor.

The first few days of my sojourn in this “Faubourg St. Germain of the tropics”—as the French love to call it—were certainly depressing. The heat was great, the food very indifferent, and the rain almost incessant. Much stress has been laid on the streams of clear, crystal water which here run through the streets. I should call them gutters, and, after one has seen the use to which they are put—the houses being entirely free from what we consider the most necessary requirements—the crystal romance is dissipated. Fortunately, owing to the slope of the streets and the ample supply of water which is brought down through fine aqueducts from the mountains, the flow is swift, and thus the gutters are kept pretty clean. Otherwise, the town of St. Pierre would be unbearable, as even now it rivals Cologne in the number of its smells. Under such conditions, it is not surprising that the stranger feels the effects of an “acclimatizing fever,” as they here designate it.

Morning after morning I awoke dull, listless, and tired, and with all sorts of pains and aches in my limbs, but as the day advanced health returned and fever was forgotten.

St. Pierre is not a cheerful town even on its sunniest days; the streets are narrow, with side-walks of infinitesimal dimensions, the old stone houses, with heavy outside shutters, are gloomy and comfortless, no bright verandahs attract the eye, and the roofs are dingy with moss-covered tiles. But the outskirts are more attractive, and the road to the Botanical Gardens particularly so. Passing up the Grande Rue towards the north, we see shops and stores filled with gay-coloured foulards, straw hats, finery of all sorts, and an excess of gold ornaments. On the left is the Batterie d’Esnoty, with a few seats under the shady trees, and affording a fine view over the sea. Farther on, some fine mangoes overshadow a heavy fountain, and soon our road turns off eastward before reaching the bridges which cross the intersecting river. We follow its left bank under a beautiful avenue of tamarinds, whilst on our right is the Savanna or public park. And here commences picturesque Martinique. Down below in the wide rocky ravine flows the brawling stream, alive with dusky “blanchisseuses,” whose methodical beat on the smooth stones with the clothes they are washing, keeps time with their patois songs. White houses rise in tiers over the opposite bank, their gardens filled with many bright flowers, and crowning all are clusters of palms and ceiba groves. Across the Savanna rises the mountain screen that shades the town; its steep side a perfect network of hanging vines. Here and there a mango has gained a precarious footing, its dark green dome contrasting well with the crimson blaze of a neighbouring Bois Immortelle;[12] and these lofty trees look like out-stretched arms on which is hung a close-textured mantle of flowering creepers. Far up, at the head of the cultivated river-valley, rise the mountains, whose dark gorges, veiled by almost constant mist, are arched by the most brilliant rainbows.