... It seems to you that you could never weary of watching this picturesque life,—of studying the costumes, brilliant with butterfly colors,—and the statuesque semi-nudity of laboring hundreds,—and the untaught grace of attitudes,—and the simplicity of manners. Each day brings some new pleasure of surprise;—even from the window of your lodging you are ever noting something novel, something to delight the sense of oddity or beauty.... Even in your room everything interests you, because of its queerness or quaintness: you become fond of the objects about you,—the great noiseless rocking-chairs that lull to sleep;—the immense bed (lit-à-bateau) of heavy polished wood, with its richly carven sides reaching down to the very floor;—and its invariable companion, the little couch or sopha, similarly shaped but much narrower, used only for the siesta;—and the thick red earthen vessels (dobannes) which keep your drinking-water cool on the hottest days, but which are always filled thrice between sunrise and sunset with clear water from the mountain,—dleau toutt vivant, "all alive";—and the verrines, tall glass vases with stems of bronze in which your candle will burn steadily despite a draught;—and even those funny little angels and Virgins which look at you from their bracket in the corner, over the oil lamp you are presumed to kindle nightly in their honor, however great a heretic you may be.... You adopt at once, and without reservation, those creole home habits which are the result of centuries of experience with climate,—abstention from solid food before the middle of the day, repose after the noon meal;—and you find each repast an experience as curious as it is agreeable. It is not at all difficult to accustom oneself to green pease stewed with sugar, eggs mixed with tomatoes, salt fish stewed in milk, palmiste pith made into salad, grated cocoa formed into rich cakes, and dishes of titiri cooked in oil,—the minuscule fish, of which a thousand will scarcely fill a saucer. Above all, you are astonished by the endless variety of vegetables and fruits, of all conceivable shapes and inconceivable flavors.
And it does not seem possible that even the simplest little recurrences of this antiquated, gentle home-life could ever prove wearisome by daily repetition through the months and years. The musical greeting of the colored child, tapping at your door before sunrise,—"Bonjou', Missié,"—as she brings your cup of black hot coffee and slice of corossole;—the smile of the silent brown girl who carries your meals up-stairs in a tray poised upon her brightly coiffed head, and who stands by while you dine, watching every chance to serve, treading quite silently with her pretty bare feet;—the pleasant manners of the màchanne who brings your fruit, the porteuse who delivers your bread, the blanchisseuse who washes your linen at the river,—and all the kindly folk who circle about your existence, with their trays and turbans, their foulards and douillettes, their primitive grace and creole chatter: these can never cease to have a charm for you. You cannot fail to be touched also by the amusing solicitude of these good people for your health, because you are a stranger: their advice about hours to go out and hours to stay at home,—about roads to follow and paths to avoid on account of snakes,—about removing your hat and coat, or drinking while warm.... Should you fall ill, this solicitude intensifies to devotion; you are tirelessly tended;—the good people will exhaust their wonderful knowledge of herbs to get you well,—will climb the mornes even at midnight, in spite of the risk of snakes and fear of zombis, to gather strange plants by the light of a lantern. Natural joyousness, natural kindliness, heart-felt desire to please, childish capacity of being delighted with trifles,—seem characteristic of all this colored population. It is turning its best side towards you, no doubt; but the side of the nature made visible appears none the less agreeable because you suspect there is another which you have not seen. What kindly inventiveness is displayed in contriving surprises for you, or in finding some queer thing to show you,—some fantastic plant, or grotesque fish, or singular bird! What apparent pleasure in taking trouble to gratify,—what innocent frankness of sympathy!... Childishly beautiful seems the readiness of this tinted race to compassionate: you do not reflect that it is also a savage trait, while the charm of its novelty is yet upon you. No one is ashamed to shed tears for the death of a pet animal; any mishap to a child creates excitement, and evokes an immediate volunteering of services. And this compassionate sentiment is often extended, in a semi-poetical way, even to inanimate objects. One June morning, I remember, a three-masted schooner lying in the bay took fire, and had to be set adrift. An immense crowd gathered on the wharves; and I saw many curious manifestations of grief,—such grief, perhaps, as an infant feels for the misfortune of a toy it imagines to possess feeling, but not the less sincere because unreasoning. As the flames climbed the rigging, and the masts fell, the crowd moaned as though looking upon some human tragedy; and everywhere one could hear such strange cries of pity as, "Pauv' malhérè!" (poor unfortunate), "pauv' diabe!"... "Toutt baggaïe-y pou allé, casse!" (All its things-to-go-with are broken!) sobbed a girl, with tears streaming down her cheeks.... She seemed to believe it was alive....
... And day by day the artlessness of this exotic humanity touches you more;—day by day this savage, somnolent, splendid Nature—delighting in furious color—bewitches you more. Already the anticipated necessity of having to leave it all some day—the far-seen pain of bidding it farewell—weighs upon you, even in dreams.
II
Reader, if you be of those who have longed in vain for a glimpse of that tropic world,—tales of whose beauty charmed your childhood, and made stronger upon you that weird mesmerism of the sea which pulls at the heart of a boy,—one who had longed like you, and who, chance-led, beheld at last the fulfilment of the wish, can swear to you that the magnificence of the reality far excels the imagining. Those who know only the lands in which all processes for the satisfaction of human wants have been perfected under the terrible stimulus of necessity, can little guess the witchery of that Nature ruling the zones of color and of light. Within their primeval circles, the earth remains radiant and young as in that preglacial time whereof some transmitted memory may have created the hundred traditions of an Age of Gold. And the prediction of a paradise to come,—a phantom realm of rest and perpetual light: may this not have been but a sum of the remembrances and the yearnings of man first exiled from his heritage,—a dream born of the great nostalgia of races migrating to people the pallid North?...
... But with the realization of the hope to know this magical Nature you learn that the actuality varies from the preconceived ideal otherwise than in surpassing it. Unless you enter the torrid world equipped with scientific knowledge extraordinary, your anticipations are likely to be at fault. Perhaps you had pictured to yourself the effect of perpetual summer as a physical delight,—something like an indefinite prolongation of the fairest summer weather ever enjoyed at home. Probably you had heard of fevers, risks of acclimatization, intense heat, and a swarming of venomous creatures; but you may nevertheless believe you know what precautions to take; and published statistics of climatic temperature may have persuaded you that the heat is not difficult to bear. By that enervation to which all white dwellers in the tropics are subject you may have understood a pleasant languor,—a painless disinclination to effort in a country where physical effort is less needed than elsewhere,—a soft temptation to idle away the hours in a hammock, under the shade of giant trees. Perhaps you have read, with eyes of faith, that torpor of the body is favorable to activity of the mind, and therefore believe that the intellectual powers can be stimulated and strengthened by tropical influences:—you suppose that enervation will reveal itself only as a beatific indolence which will leave the brain free to think with lucidity, or to revel in romantic dreams.
III
You are not at first undeceived;—the disillusion is long delayed. Doubtless you have read the delicious idyl of Bernardin de Saint-Pierre (this is not Mauritius, but the old life of Mauritius was wellnigh the same); and you look for idyllic personages among the beautiful humanity about you,—for idyllic scenes among the mornes shadowed by primeval forest, and the valleys threaded by a hundred brooks. I know not whether the faces and forms that you seek will be revealed to you;—but you will not be able to complain for the lack of idyllic loveliness in the commonest landscape. Whatever artistic knowledge you possess will merely teach you the more to wonder at the luxuriant purple of the sea, the violet opulence of the sky, the violent beauty of foliage greens, the lilac tints of evening, and the color-enchantments distance gives in an atmosphere full of iridescent power,—the amethysts and agates, the pearls and ghostly golds, of far mountainings. Never, you imagine, never could one tire of wandering through those marvellous valleys,—of climbing the silent roads under emeraldine shadow to heights from which the city seems but a few inches long, and the moored ships tinier than gnats that cling to a mirror,—or of swimming in that blue bay whose clear flood stays warm through all the year.[53] Or, standing alone, in some aisle of colossal palms, where humming-birds are flashing and shooting like a showering of jewel-fires, you feel how weak the skill of poet or painter to fix the sensation of that white-pillared imperial splendor;—and you think you know why creoles exiled by necessity to colder lands may sicken for love of their own,—die of home-yearning, as did many a one in far Louisiana, after the political tragedies of 1848....
