twist, describe sudden angles. There is everywhere a loud murmur of running water,--pouring through the deep gutters contrived between the paved thoroughfare and the absurd little sidewalks, varying in width from one to three feet. The architecture is quite old: it is seventeenth century, probably; and it reminds one a great deal of that characterizing the antiquated French quarter of New Orleans. All the tints, the forms, the vistas, would seem to have been especially selected or designed for aquarelle studies,--just to please the whim of some extravagant artist. The windows are frameless openings without glass; some have iron bars; all have heavy wooden shutters with movable slats, through which light and air can enter as through Venetian blinds. These are usually painted green or bright bluish-gray.

So steep are the streets descending to the harbor,--by flights of old mossy stone steps,--that looking down them to the azure water you have the sensation of gazing from a cliff. From certain openings in the main street--the Rue Victor Hugo--you can get something like a bird's-eye view of the harbor with its shipping. The roofs of the street below are under your feet, and other streets are rising behind you to meet the mountain roads. They climb at a very steep angle, occasionally breaking into stairs of lava rock, all grass-tufted and moss-lined.

[Illustration: LA PLACE BERTIN (THE SUGAR LANDING), ST. PIERRE, MARTINIQUE.]

The town has an aspect of great solidity: it is a creation of crag-looks almost as if it had been hewn out of one mountain fragment, instead of having been constructed stone by stone. Although commonly consisting of two stories and an attic only, the dwellings have walls three feet in thickness;--on one street, facing the sea, they are even heavier, and slope outward like ramparts, so that the perpendicular recesses of windows and doors have the appearance of being opened between buttresses. It may have been partly as a precaution against earthquakes, and partly for the sake of coolness, that the early colonial architects built thus;--giving the city a physiognomy so well worthy of its name,--the name of the Saint of the Rock.

And everywhere rushes mountain water,--cool and crystal clear, washing the streets;--from time to time you come to some public fountain flinging a silvery column to the sun, or showering bright spray over a group of black bronze tritons or bronze swans. The Tritons on the Place Bertin you will not readily forget;--their curving torsos might have been modelled from the forms of those ebon men who toil there tirelessly all day in the great heat, rolling hogsheads of sugar or casks of rum. And often you will note, in the course of a walk, little drinking-fountains contrived at the angle of a building, or in the thick walls bordering the bulwarks or enclosing public squares: glittering threads of water spurting through lion-lips of stone. Some mountain torrent, skilfully directed and divided, is thus perpetually refreshing the city,--supplying its fountains and cooling its courts.... This is called the Gouyave water: it is not the same stream which sweeps and purifies the streets.

Picturesqueness and color: these are the particular and the unrivalled charms of St. Pierre. As you pursue the Grande Rue, or Rue Victor Hugo,--which traverses the town through all its length, undulating over hill-slopes and into hollows and over a bridge,--you become more and more enchanted by the contrast of the yellow-glowing walls to right and left with the jagged strip of gentian-blue sky overhead. Charming also it is to watch the cross-streets climbing up to the fiery green of the mountains behind the town. On the lower side of the main thoroughfare other streets open in wonderful bursts of blue-warm blue of horizon and sea. The steps by which these ways descend towards the bay are black with age, and slightly mossed close to the wall on either side: they have an alarming steepness,--one might easily stumble from the upper into the lower street. Looking towards the water through these openings from the Grande Rue, you will notice that the sea-line cuts across the blue space just at the level of the upper story of the house on the lower street-corner. Sometimes, a hundred feet below, you see a ship resting in the azure aperture,--seemingly suspended there in sky- color, floating in blue light. And everywhere and always, through sunshine or shadow, comes to you the scent of the city,--the characteristic odor of St. Pierre;--a compound odor suggesting the intermingling of sugar and garlic in those strange tropical dishes which creoles love....

XII.

... A population fantastic, astonishing,--a population of the Arabian Nights. It is many-colored; but the general dominant tint is yellow, like that of the town itself--yellow in the interblending of all the hues characterizing _mulâtresse, capresse, griffe, quarteronne, métisse, chabine,_--a general effect of rich brownish yellow. You are among a people of half- breeds,--the finest mixed race of the West Indies.

Straight as palms, and supple and tall, these colored women and men impress one powerfully by their dignified carriage and easy elegance of movement. They walk without swinging of the shoulders;--the perfectly set torso seems to remain rigid; yet the step is a long full stride, and the whole weight is springily poised on the very tip of the bare foot. All, or nearly all, are without shoes: the treading of many naked feet over the heated pavement makes a continuous whispering sound.

... Perhaps the most novel impression of all is that produced by the singularity and brilliancy of certain of the women's costumes. These were developed, at least a hundred years ago, by some curious sumptuary law regulating the dress of slaves and colored people of free condition,--a law which allowed considerable liberty as to material and tint, prescribing chiefly form. But some of these fashions suggest the Orient: they offer beautiful audacities of color contrast; and the full-dress coiffure, above all, is so strikingly Eastern that one might be tempted to believe it was first introduced into the colony by some Mohammedan slave. It is merely an immense Madras handkerchief, which is folded about the head with admirable art, like a turban;--one bright end pushed through at the top in front, being left sticking up like a plume. Then this turban, always full of bright canary-color, is fastened with golden brooches,--one in front and one at either side. As for the remainder of the dress, it is simple enough: an embroidered, low- cut chemise with sleeves; a skirt or _jupe_, very long behind, but caught up and fastened in front below the breasts so as to bring the hem everywhere to a level with the end of the long chemise; and finally a _foulard_, or silken kerchief, thrown over the shoulders. These _jupes_ and _foulards_, however, are exquisite in pattern and color: bright crimson, bright yellow, bright blue, bright green,--lilac, violet, rose,--sometimes mingled in plaidings or checkerings or stripings: black with orange, sky-blue with purple. And whatever be the colors of the costume, which vary astonishingly, the coiffure must be yellow- brilliant, flashing yellow--the turban is certain to have yellow stripes or yellow squares. To this display add the effect of costly and curious jewellery: immense earrings, each pendant being formed of five gold cylinders joined together (cylinders sometimes two inches long, and an inch at least in circumference);--a necklace of double, triple, quadruple, or quintuple rows of large hollow gold beads (sometimes smooth, but generally ally graven)--the wonderful _collier-choux_. Now, this glowing jewellery is not a mere imitation of pure metal: the ear-rings are worth one hundred and seventy-five francs a pair; the necklace of a Martinique quadroon may cost five hundred or even one thousand francs.... It may be the gift of her lover, her _doudoux_, but such articles are usually purchased either on time by small payments, or bead by bead singly until the requisite number is made up.

But few are thus richly attired: the greater number of the women carrying burdens on their heads,--peddling vegetables, cakes, fruit, ready-cooked food, from door to door,--are very simply dressed in a single plain robe of vivid colors (_douillette_) reaching from neck to feet, and made with a train, but generally girded well up so as to sit close to the figure and leave the lower limbs partly bare and perfectly free. These women can walk all day long up and down hill in the hot sun, without shoes, carrying loads of from one hundred to one hundred and fifty pounds on their heads; and if their little stock sometimes fails to come up to the accustomed weight stones are added to make it heavy enough. Doubtless the habit of carrying everything in this way from childhood has much to do with the remarkable vigor and erectness of the population.... I have seen a grand-piano carried on the heads of four men. With the women the load is very seldom steadied with the hand after having been once placed in position. The head remains almost most motionless; but the black, quick, piercing eyes flash into every window and door-way to watch for a customer's signal. And the creole street-cries, uttered in a sonorous, far-reaching high key, interblend and produce random harmonies very pleasant to hear.

..._"Çe moune-là, ça qui lè bel mango?"_ Her basket of mangoes certainly weighs as much as herself.... _"Ça qui lè bel avocat?,"_ The alligator-pear--cuts and tastes like beautiful green cheese... _"Ça qui lè escargot?"_ Call her, if you like snails.... _"Ca qui lè titiri?"_ Minuscule fish, of which a thousand would scarcely fill a tea-cup;--one of the most delicate of Martinique dishes.... _"Ça qui lè canna?--Ça qui lè charbon?--Ça qui lè di pain aubè?" (Who wants ducks, charcoal, or pretty little loaves shaped like cucumbers.)... _"Ça qui lè pain-mi?"_ A sweet maize cake in the form of a tiny sugar-loaf, wrapped in a piece of banana leaf.... _"Ça qui lè fromassé" (pharmacie) "lapotécai créole?"_ She deals in creole roots and herbs, and all the leaves that make _tisanes_ or poultices or medicines: _matriquin, feuill-corossol, balai-doux, manioc-chapelle, Marie- Perrine, graine-enba-feuill, bois d'lhomme, zhèbe-gras, bonnet- carré, zhèbe-codeinne, zhèbe-à-femme, zhèbe-à-châtte, canne- dleau, poque, fleu-papillon, lateigne,_ and a score of others you never saw or heard of before.... _"Ça qui lè dicaments?"_ (overalls for laboring-men).... _"Çé moune-là, si ou pa lè acheté canari-à dans lanmain moin, moin ké crazé y."_ The vender of red clay cooking-pots;--she has only one left, if you do not buy it she will break it!

_"Hé! zenfants-la!--en deho'!"_ Run out to meet her, little children, if you like the sweet rice-cakes.... _"Hé! gens pa' enho', gens pa' enbas, gens di galtas, moin ni bel gououôs poisson!"_ Ho! people up-stairs, people down-stairs, and all ye good folks who dwell in the attics,--know that she has very big and very beautiful fish to sell!... _"Hé! ça qui lé mangé yonne?"_--those are "akras,"--flat yellow-brown cakes, made of pounded codfish, or beans, or both, seasoned with pepper and fried in butter.... And then comes the pastry-seller, black as