Guadeloupe - Mother Of The Pine-apple

( Originally Published 1905 )

Like silver in the sunshine, I beheld

The imperial isle and when I saw her beauty

My mind misgave me then.

_Madoc, I, 6.

NOWHERE on earth is there a fairer island than Guadeloupe and nowhere have I found a happier or more approachable people. Here the luscious and palatable pine-apple was first found, and here too the creole, the quadroon, and the octoroon attain the perfection of Southern beauty. Since the annihilation of St. Pierre, Basse-Terre, the island capital is admitted to be the most beautiful city of the West Indies. Behind the town is La Soufriere towering up to a romantic summit, where on a bright day one may see the volcanic smoke covering like a huge pall the imperial crest. To windward is the island of Marie Gallante, floating like a misty cloud thirty miles away. Between Guadeloupe and Dominica sleep the Saintes—isles of beauty.

"Where the children are fair as the roses they twine, And all but the spirit of man is divine."

But it is of that terrible snake, the deadly fer-de-lance, that I would now write, and before commencing I ought to dip my pen in vitriol. I was surprised to learn from a gentleman to whom I bore a letter of introduction, that the mountains of Guadeloupe, like those of Martinique and St. Lucia, were infested with this hideous reptile. The fer-de-lance is full of venomous cunning, and an ugly customer to meet anywhere, and at any time. When in St. Lucia, I was told he never strikes without provocation. " You must never approach him abruptly," said Mr. James Flett, of Castries, to me, " if so you are sure to pay for your rashness, because the instinct of self-protection dominates every animal, and the snake to defend himself makes the intruder feel the deadly effects of his fangs." "Never approach him abruptly ?" Just so! but how is one to know even of his presence, when the ugly monster, when in repose, resembles a decayed branch in colour and deadness ? Schomburgh, in his "Travels in Guiana," records how the fer-de-lance, coiled by the forest path, allowed fourteen persons to pass him, unnoticed by any one of the party, then, rising, he fastened his poisonous fangs in the neck of Schomburgh's young Indian wife, who fled to her husband's arms, where she died in great agony.

He is the deadliest snake in the West Indies, and perhaps in the world. There is no known antidote to his bite, and once in the grip of his venomous fangs, the victim abandons hope. He is not found alive in any zoological garden in the world. This rat-tailed monster when full grown is eight feet long, with a very ugly, flat, triangular head, a heavy jaw, and an eye that gives to it a look of malevolence, craft and cunning. He will not get out of your way, and if you touch him or step on him you will never do it again.

A few months before I came here Ti-Joseph and Remy, sons of Roland Dufreneau, went into the woods early one morning to hunt agouti, a tailless, slender-limbed animal a little larger than our rabbit. Ti-Joseph, the elder of the two, stopped to fasten his leather gaiters or spats. When rising from his knee his brother Remy, who was crossing a fallen tree, gave a cry of alarm, staggered, then reeled as in a stupour, and fell. When Ti-Joseph rushed to his side a fer-de-lance was hanging from his brother's throat. Ti-Joseph killed the snake, then turned to help his brother, but he was already writhing in the agony of death. In 1871, in the parish of St. Francis, twenty-one men and boys were done to death by this hideous reptile.

The following year the mongoose was turned loose in the woods, and at once he began to make war on the fer-de-lance. Now, what is a mongoose ? Well, the mongoose is a native of Ceylon, India, and parts of Africa, with the body and head of a weasel and the tail of a lizard. Where the snake can go, the mongoose can follow him. His manner of attack is peculiar. When the snake and the mongoose meet in the woods or in the open the fer-de-lance " strips" for the fight by forming a triple coil, with his vicious head swaying eight or ten inches above his body. Cunning as the reptile notoriously is, his cunning is no match for the strategy of the mongoose. When the snake is "set" the mongoose opens battle by moving around him in narrowing circles, the fer-de-lance watching him eye to eye. Slowly now, but outside the striking line, the mongoose trots around his foe, always keeping his ferretlike eyes on those of the snake. Then he breaks into a gallop, gradually increasing his stride, his pace becomes faster, and now he is rushing with the speed of a turbine. At last the pace begins to tell on the reptile. He has watched his enemy eye to eye all this time, and now his head is dizzy with the spinning. The muscles of the corrugated neck relax, the head sinks on his coiled body, the eyes close, when, as speeds the mauser, the mongoose is upon him, and all is over but the eating. The fer-de-lance has another enemy in the cribo snake. The cribo, though six to eight feet long, never harms man or child. He is always a welcome guest on the plantations, where he feeds on rats and mice, hunting around the "thrash "-roofed barns and outbuildings, scouting now and then through cellars and pantries. The superior speed of the fer-de-lance helps him out, but when the cribo corners him there is a dead fer-de-lance.

Another denizen of the island is the black scorpion, more feared by the bare-footed negro than the snake. Then there is the iguana, a lizard of giant wrack, an ugly and repulsive reptile, gnarled and knotted with warty excrescences, a disgusting and gruesome, but harmless creature, about three feet long, eaten by the blacks and pronounced by them to be excellent and nourishing food.

The chameleon of Guadeloupe is the most beautiful reptile on earth, and a marvel of transmutation of colour. When you meet him in the early morning this attractive little lizard is of olive tint, shot with bright and deep blue. When at noon you again see him he is of silver sheen, mottled with spots which change from deep olive into the most beautiful and brilliant tints. They were all on this volcanic island when Columbus landed, and as the island is one hundred and forty miles from the mainland, how did they get there ? Are these islands of the Caribbean Sea all that remain of a submerged continent ?

Nowhere in the West Indies, nor, indeed, in the world, is the creole seen to such advantage as in Martinique and Guadeloupe. Goethe's compliment, paid by the Princess Eleanor to Antonio, would be equally true if applied to the Guadeloupe creole. "All the gods have with one accord brought gifts to his cradle." Of finely chiselled features and lithe figures, the creoles of Guadeloupe, wherever you meet them, form a fascinating study.

The blending and mixing of hues and tints, the shadings, from the jet black of the Coromante negro down to the pale flesh of the Norman French, illustrate how the fusion of race with race was and is proceeding on this island; as this fusion progresses the distinguishing characteristics of the original races become less and less distinct, and a new type is evolved.

But to understand how this is brought about we must go back to the origin of the creole in the West Indies. In the early days the unsettled state of these islands, haunts of sea rovers, pirates and buccaneers, the hardships of the long and stormy Atlantic voyage, the exaggerated reports of the awful heat and the absence of congenial society, deterred European women from approaching the Caribbean shores. The inevitable result followed. Enjoying entire immunity from all social restraint, fearing no rebuke from public opinion, and in most cases unrestrained by religious or moral law, the planters, agents and overseers entered into natural alliances with their female slaves and the daughters of the Arrawak Indians. From these unions were begotten the mulatto and the mustee. The terceron was the offspring of the white and the mustee, and the next in descent were the quadroon and octoroon.

To me all distinction of race disappeared in the octoroon, as I could perceive no visible difference in feature or colour between them and the whites. The mustees, mestizos, octoroons, and indeed many of the quadroons are sometimes fairer than the whites, but lack the endurance of the latter. "Well," I said to M. Julien Romain, who took the trouble to explain these variants to me the evening we sat on the balcony of the Hotel de France, "you have a phenomenal infusion of racial blood on this island." "Not so bad, after all," he good-naturedly answered.

Speaking of this wonderful blending of races, only in the French West Indies has the word creole a distinct and honourable meaning. In Louisiana, if we except New Orleans, the creole no longer exists, and in the British West Indies every one born on the islands, negro, coloured, and white is conventionally called a creole, though even in these islands the word creole is very seldom mentioned.

Criollo is derived from the verb criar, which in Spanish and Portuguese means to breed, to create, to produce. In Portuguese especially a criola is understood to mean a person born in the West Indies.

When, in 1814, Bonaparte reestablished slavery, after it was abolished by the directorate, he hedged in and protected the rights of the slave by his famous "code noir." By that code all children born to whites and mulattoes became legitimatized, and the status of the creole born of a Christian marriage was henceforth socially and civilly recognized. Many of these children were sent to France to be educated, and returned with all the refinement and polish of their white confreres ; so that to-day those of mixed blood are socially the equals of the whites, assuming their means and education to be equal. Still, I am told, that among this mixed race there is an unconscious selection ever tending upwards in a favoured direction towards the superior race.

In the British West Indies a different order of life is established. Not only will no white girl marry a mulatto, but she draws the line even at an octoroon, and draws it tight, and no dowry will tempt a white planter or merchant to lead to the altar any girl with the slightest taint of negro blood in her veins. This is one of the most sinister features of the British West India social life, and bars all hope for the elevation of the coloured race.

In the days of slavery, prior to 1837, the clergy of the Church of England, and those of the Lutheran Church, refused to baptize the children of slaves, holding that since Christ had made them free by His passion and death on the cross, no planter could bind them to slavery, and to hold them in bondage after baptism was a sin against the Incarnation.

On the other hand, the priests of the Catholic Church in the Spanish and French slave colonies insisted on the sacramental marriage of the slaves after their conversion to Christianity, and on the baptism of the children, refusing sacramental absolution to the master till he consented to obey the laws of his church on this point. Henceforth the slave became the ward of the church, and, while kneeling and praying at the same altar, the equal of his master. This recognition of his immortality secured better treatment for him on the plantation, and created a public opinion in his favour which a brutal master was compelled to respect.

Here and in Martinique every office, civil and political, except that of governor, is open to the creole. Side by side with his white brother he works in the professions, in commerce, in the civil service, in the editorial room, and in the departmental buildings. In the British islands of the Caribbean Sea there is, with rare exceptions, no hope for him, and above that of school-teacher to the blacks it is idle for him to aspire. Legally and civilly he has all the rights and privileges of the white, but there is a wall of prejudice that he cannot climb over or break through.

When in Bermuda I enjoyed for a few days the companionship of a most amiable and scholarly clergyman of the Anglican Church, who was here to look into the administration of a school for the higher education of the negro. Forty years before our meeting his father was rector of Pembroke, Bermuda, and with funds collected in Great Britain established this school. " What good do you hope to achieve," I asked, "by carrying the black beyond a rudimentary training ?"

"You surprise me," he answered. " Would you keep him in the illiteracy and ignorance of his slavery days; is he not worthy of as good an education as the white man ?"