[Footnote A: Savanna was a Haytian word spelt and pronounced by Spaniards. It is a plain of grass, affording pasturage in the rainy season; but a few shrubs also grow upon it. Pampas are vast plains without vegetation except during three months of the rainy season, when they yield fine grass. The word is Peruvian; was originally applied to the plains at the mouth of the La Plata. But the plains of Guiana and tropical America, which the Spaniards called Llanos, are also pampas. The Hungarian pasture-lands, called Puszta, are savannas. A Steppe is properly a vast extent of country, slightly rolling, without woods, but not without large plants and herbs. In Russia there are sometimes thickets eight or ten feet high. The salt deserts in Russia are not called steppes, but Solniye. Pampas and deserts are found alternating with steppes. A Desert may have a sparing vegetation, and so differ from pampas: if it has any plants, they are scrubby and fibrous, with few leaves, and of a grayish color, and so it differs from steppes and savannas. But there are rocky and gravelly, sandy and salt deserts: gravelly, for instance, in Asia Minor, principally in the district known to the ancients as the [Greek: katakekaumegae]. A Heath is a level covered with the plants to which that name has been applied. Finally, a Prairie differs from a savanna only in being under a zone where the seasons are not marked as wet and dry, but where the herbage corresponds to a variable moisture.]
The words crête, pic, and montagne are sometimes applied to the peaks and ridges of the island, but the word morne, which is a Creole corruption of montagne, is in common use to designate all the elevated land, the extended ridges which serve as water-sheds for the torrents of the rainy season, as well as the isolated hillocks, clothed in wood, which look like huge hay-cocks,—those, for instance, which rise in the rear of Cap Haytien. The aspect of the higher hills in the interior might mislead an etymologist to derive the word morne from the French adjective which means gloomy, they are so marked by the ravages of the hurricane and earthquake, so ploughed up into decrepit features by the rains, the pitiless vertical heat, the fires, and the landslides. The soft rock cannot preserve its outlines beneath all these influences; its thin covering of soil is carried off to make the river-silt, and then it crumbles away beneath the weather. Great ruts are scored through the forests where the rock has let whole acres of trees and rubbish slip; they sometimes cover the negro-cabins and the coffee-walks below. These mountains are capricious and disordered masses of grayish stone; there are no sustained lines which sweep upward from the green plantations and cut sharply across the sky, no unchangeable walls of cool shadow, no delicate curves, as in other hills, where the symmetry itself seems to protect the material from the wear and tear of the atmosphere. The mornes are decaying hills; they look as if they emerged first from the ocean and were the oldest parts of the earth, not merely weather-beaten, but profligately used up with a too tropical career, which deprives their age of all grandeur: they bewilder and depress.
There are delightful valleys below these sullen hills. In the dry season their torrents are stony bridle-paths, with only two or three inches of water, along which the traveller can pass from the flourishing plantations, where all the forms of a torrid vegetation are displayed, into this upper region of decay. The transition is sudden and unpleasant. Everything below is stately, exuberant: the sugar-cane, the cotton-tree, the coffee-shrub are suggestive of luxury; the orange and lemon shine through the glossy leaves; the palm-tree, the elegant papayo, the dark green candle-wood, the feathery bamboo, the fig, the banana, the mahogany, the enormous Bombax ceiba, the sablier,[B] display their various shapes; shrubs and bushes, such as the green and red pimento, the vanilla, the pomegranate, the citron, the sweet-smelling acacia, and the red jasmine, contest the claim to delight one's senses; and various flowers cover the meadows and cluster along the shallow water-courses. No venomous reptiles lurk in these fragrant places: the seed-tick, mosquito, and a spiteful little fly are the greatest annoyances. The horned lizard, which the Indians esteemed so delicate, and the ferocious crocodile, or caiman, haunt the secluded sands and large streams, and the lagoons which form in marshy places.
[Footnote B: Hura crepitans, one of the handsomest trees in the West Indies, called sablier because its fruit makes a very convenient sandbox, when not fully ripe, by removing the seeds. It is of a horn-color, about three and a half inches wide and two high, and looks like a little striped melon. The ripe fruit, on taking out one of the twelve woody cells which compose it, will explode with a noise like a pistol, each cell giving a double report. This sometimes takes place while the fruit is hanging on the tree, and sometimes when it stands upon the table filled with sand. To prevent this, it is prettily hooped with gold, silver, or ivory.]
The trees and thickets do not glitter with fruits alone: gay birds fill them with shifting colors, and a confusion of odd, plaintive, or excited notes. Several kinds of pigeons, paroquets, thrushes, bright violet and scarlet tanagras go foraging among the bananas, the rice, and the millet. The ponds of the savannas are frequented by six or eight varieties of wild ducks, and the wild goose; woodcock and plover abound in the marshy neighborhoods; and the white crane, the swan, different kinds of herons, and an ibis are found near the sea. On the shores stand pelicans and cormorants absorbed in fishing enterprises, and the flamingo,[C] whose note of alarm sounds like a trumpet.
[Footnote C: When the English were meditating a descent upon the coast of Gonaive, a negro happened to see a prodigious number of these red-coated birds ranked on the savanna near the sea, as their habit is, in companies. He rushed into the town, shouting, "Z'Anglais, yo après veni, yo en pile dans savanne l'Hôpital!" "The English, they are after coming, they are drawn up on l'Hôpital savanna!" The générale was beaten, the posts doubled, and a strong party was sent out to reconnoitre.
The pelican is a source of great amusement to the negroes. They call this bird blague à diable, because of the incredible number of fish it can stow away in its pouch. They call the cormorant grand gosier, big gullet; and they make use of the membranous pocket which is found under the lower mandible of its beak to carry their smoking tobacco, fancying that it enhances the quality and keeps it fresh. Among the queer birds is the cra-cra, or crocodile's valet, a bold and restless bird with a harsh cry, represented in its name, which it uses to advertise the dozing crocodile of any hostile approach. It is a great annoyance to the sportsman by mixing with the wild ducks and alarming them with the same nervous cry.]
Charming valleys open to sight from the coast, where the limestone bluffs let in the bays. The eye follows the rivulets as they wind through green, sequestered places, till the hills bar the view, but do not prevent the fancy from exploring farther, and losing itself in a surmise of glens filled with rare vegetation and kept quiet by the inclosing shadows. From the sea this picture is especially refreshing, with the heat left out which is reflected with great power from the sandy rocks and every denuded surface. Below all appears beautiful, luxurious, and new; but above the signs of decrepitude appear, and the broad wastes stretch where little grows except the bayaonde, (Mimosa urens,) with its long murderous spines and ugly pods. Sudden contrasts and absence of delicate gradations mark the whole face of the island. All is extreme; and the mind grows disquieted amid these isolated effects.
The climate also corresponds to this region of luxury and desolation. From November to April everything is parched with heat; some of the trees lose their leaves, the rest become brown, and all growth ceases. From April to November everything is wet; vegetation revives without a spring, and the slender streams suddenly become furious rivers, which often sweep away the improvements of man, and change the face of the country in a single night. During the dry season the inhabitants depend upon the sea-breeze which blows in over the heated land to replace the rarefied air. It blows from six in the morning to three in the afternoon, in the eastern part of the island; in other parts, from nine to three. But frequently a furious northeast wind interrupts this refreshing arrangement: the air becomes hard and cold; thick, wintry-looking clouds sweep over the hills; the inhabitants shut themselves up in their houses to escape the rheumatism, which is a prevalent infliction; a March weather which was apparently destined for New England seems to have got entangled and lost among these fervid hills. The languid Creole life is overtaken by universal discomfort.
Great fires break out over the elevated plateaus and hill-sides, during the dry season. They sweep with incredible rapidity across great tracts, levelling everything in the way. The mountains seem tipped with volcanic flames. The angry glow spreads over the night, and its smoke mixes with the parched air by day. These fires commence by some carelessness, though they are sometimes attributed to the action of the son's rays, concentrated by the gray cliffs upon great masses of vegetation dried to tinder.