RUINS, ST. PIERRE
Decked out with flowers grayed by the passing years, these crumbling walls look immeasurably old.
... And the blue multitude of the peaks, the perpetual congregation of the mornes, seem to chorus in the vast resplendence,—telling of Nature's eternal youth, and the passionless permanence of that about us and beyond us and beneath,—until something like the fulness of a great grief begins to weigh at the heart.... For all this astonishment of beauty, all this majesty of light and form and color, will surely endure,—marvellous as now,—after we shall have lain down to sleep where no dreams come, and may never arise from the dust of our rest to look upon it.
['TI CANOTIÉ]
I
One might almost say that commercial time in St. Pierre is measured by cannon-shots,—by the signal-guns of steamers. Every such report announces an event of extreme importance to the whole population. To the merchant it is a notification that mails, money, and goods have arrived;—to consuls and Government officials it gives notice of fees and dues to be collected;—for the host of lightermen, longshoremen, port laborers of all classes, it promises work and pay;—for all it signifies the arrival of food. The island does not feed itself: cattle, salt meats, hams, lard, flour, cheese, dried fish, all come from abroad,—particularly from America. And in the minds of the colored population the American steamer is so intimately associated with the idea of those great tin cans in which food-stuffs are brought from the United States, that the onomatope applied to the can, because of the sound outgiven by it when tapped,—bom!—is also applied to the ship itself. The English or French or Belgian steamer, however large, is only known as packett-à, batiment-là; but the American steamer is always the "bom-ship"—batiment-bom-à; or, the "food-ship"—batiment-mangé-à. ... You hear women and men asking each other, as the shock of the gun flaps through all the town, "Mil godé ça qui là, chè?" And if the answer be, "Mais c'est bom-là, chè,—bom-mangé-à ka rivé" (Why, it is the bom, dear,—the food-bom that has come), great is the exultation.
Again, because of the sound of her whistle, we find a steamer called in this same picturesque idiom, batiment-cône,—"the horn-ship." There is even a song, of which the refrain is:—
"Bom-là rivé, chè,—
Batiment-cône-là rivé."