EXTRACT FROM LE TOUR DU MONDE VOL. XXXVIII. 975eme LIV. pp 162-224
Translation by Brian D. Oakes
A couple of notes on the translation:
After the palace of Sans-Souci and the Laferrière citadel, there remained some local curiosities for me to see, a cave that, Mr. Karnès Gourgues knowing my weakness, had recommended to me.
Beaubrun-Audouin assured me that this cave, called Voute-a-Minguet, got its' name from a colonist. For Demesvar Delorme, it is because of the large number of muguet (May-lily, or woodruff), in creole minguettes, that grow all around it.
I left at four o'clock in the morning, the 29th of January. To guide me, Mr. Karnès Gourgues had given me the young Sacatra (?) named Courouille, native of Dondon, and who, familiar with the areas we were going to visit, as he had crisscrossed them so frequently, was certainly the best guide for me.
It was with Courouille that I took my first creole lesson. I accosted him, while riding, with questions to which he invariably answered moé pa connai (I don't know), which enlightened me very little.
We went along, he nimbly walking barefoot, me on horseback, across the famous plains of Acul, that are part of the Northern plain, and where, in 1791, the 93rd Haitian, would echo for the first time, the formidable songs Oua-Nassé and Camp du Grand-Pré.
The road, flat for three lieues (14 km.), becomes arduous all of a sudden. We enter into the mountains of Limbé about which Lamartine had sung in the tragic play about Toussaint-Louverture.
In 1789, Limbé was nothing but a hamlet; but the twenty-two sugar mills built in its little plain gave it importance. It is in this commune, at Bas-Limbé, that Mr. Bélin de Villeneuve invented and built on his plantation, in a business collaboration with Mr. Raby, an ingenious sugar extraction mill.
I was busy reading these details in the Geography of Beaubrun-Audouin, that I had brought with me to use as an itinerary, when, no longer hearing Courouille, who had, for the past hour, been singing a song repeating its refrain so many times that I had memorized it :
Madame Fiat, oh! (Lady Fiat, oh! A la madame qui canaille! To the lady who swears! Fiat allé Pot-au-Prince; Fiat went to Port-au-Prince; Li di : She says : "Cassé feuille, couvri ça," "Break leaves, cover that,"
And, no longer seeing him in front of me, I returned to see if he was at least following me. Of Courouille, not even a shadow. He had disappeared. I yelled: Courouille! Courouille!
No one answered. Nothing. I was alone in the path. I was starting to believe that he was using the occasion to play a trick on me, when I found myself in front of a torrent about ten feet across, that, enlarged by the seasonal rains, cut the path in running white effervescence and noise, on its' sloped bed. Dry as a piece of tinder, Courouille, on his knees on a spot of bluish rock on the opposite shore, seemed to be addressing to the Snake or the Virgin Mary, only he would know, an ejaculatory prayer.
I looked at him with surprise, thinking that he had been overtaken by an attack of madness; but he interrupted his prayer to say to me : "Général, passé vite; Clameille capabe vini. (General, come across fast, Clameille can come)
Wanting to find out what was Clameille, I spiked my horse, that soon took me over to Courouille. What do you mean, I asked him, with your Clameille?
This time he made a sign, and, persuaded that by this gesture he had driven away the bad spirits :
Clameille, he replied, c'est Zombi qui rété isit. Si moune pas passé vite, li égaré yo. (Clameille is a Zombie who lives here. I a person doesn't go across fast he gets you lost)
We stopped for lunch. A second stage of six hours brought us to Dondon, where we stopped to spend the night. Courouille presented me to his mother, flanked by a half dozen little black girls and boys of different shades and sizes. They offered me a hospitality that, to not be unbiased, didn't do any less than charm me by its' source.
Dondon is a group of picturesque huts hooked to the side of a mountain, at five hundred feet above sea-level. Mountains interspersed with steep valleys cover all of the commune of which it is the chief town. They conceal, says Beaubrun-Audouin, gold, silver, copper, iron, antimony, marble, porphyry, alabaster, jasper, agate, flint, sandstone, granite, talc, fluor-spars, potters clay, petrified objects, crystals, and fossils.
Dondon has memories. They started large-scale coffee planting there, imported from Martinique and planted firstly in Terrier-Rouge. The tomb of the Haitian General Clervaux, dead in 1864, is in its cemetery, next to that of the Jesuit Le Pers, who gave to Charlevoix the material for his Histoire de Saint-Domingue. After him, the vicarage was occupied, in 1791, by the famous abbey de la Haye, instigator of the slave insurrection in the North, who, arrested on the orders of Captain General Rochambeau, was drowned in 1803, in the harbor entrance of Cap, a deserving end to his life.
The supper prepared by my hostess appeared excellent to me. As it was late and I was very tired, I went straight from the table to the rustic bed that furnished the largest room of the hut put at my disposal. Imagine four posts about three feet high, supporting a screen of bamboo, on which was spread a mattress. I wasn't in any position to complain, as, the next morning, the pipiri had been singing for a long time, when several discrete knocks at my door pulled me from a sweet sleep. It was the sister of Courouille, Sicliclaise, who brought me a cup of coffee and fresh water for me to wash in.
My host's hut, outside of the town, being on a high outcrop, I discovered with the first rays of sunlight a magnificent view : in the foreground, the isolated Pic Karabras, who's summit appears golden, and all the chain variously undulated with black mountains, the enormous humps of this volcanic land; in the background, the immense plains of Guaba and of San-Raphael, that spread out covered with hattes (?), right to the foot of Loma del Peligro, and Morne-du-Diable, whereas beneath me, at I don't know how many feet deep, I saw glittering and twisting Vasé river. She comes down from the summits of Bonnet-à-Evèque, capriciously meandering along all the length of the plain and ending by throwing and loosing itself into the Guayamuco, one of the tributaries of the Artibonite.
Courouille's younger brother, the young Septimus, who, while I was admiring the landscape, had saddled my horse, brought it to me as I came out of the hut.
The path to the cave, tortuous and uneven, was less than easy. Meanwhile we came after a thousand detours to the edge of the Vasé river. Courouille rolled up his pants to the knees, descended bravely into the current, and, turning towards me said : Vini, général
We advanced a few minutes into the riverbed, against the current; and, arriving at a spot less steep, Courouille got up on the shore and invited me to dismount.
The entrance to the cave, is shaped like an arch, is covered by a natural curtain of green vines that descend right to the ground. Courouille lifted them up and we entered. When the curtain fell back in place behind me, we found ourselves in complete darkness. My guide asked in his patois with which I was starting to become familiar : Général, ou pa gagné z'allumettes? (General you don't have matches)
I passed him on of those combs, imported from the United States, whose wooden teeth are sulfured and phosphored. With two or three of these teeth he lit a piece of pine that he had prepared on the way, and, by the light of this smoking torch, I advanced deeper with each step. It is simply guano deposited over three centuries by birds of all types.
The Minguet cave merits its' reputation. It is divided in three perfectly distinct parts : one large nave between two smaller side vaults separated from each other by two rows of uneven stalactites, but arranged in a straight line. Some of these pillars have been worked (carved), it seems to me. Some are simply rough-hewn. Many, to which the eternal drips add without end their calcareous deposit, have not yet reached the ceiling of the cave.
At the extremity of the nave, you see square stones on which other flat stones, that resemble the breton dolmen (megaliths found in the Breton region of France), have been placed. Such an arrangement reveals the work of man. These rough-hewn tables are altars. Each year, according to the report of Moreau de Saint-Méry, the kacik and the nitaynos of Marien came here, at the head of their tribes, to make sacrifice to Zémès, titular gods, of which the butios, combination of doctors and priests, interpreted the oracles. They conjured up Kouroumon, as powerful as Michabou, spirit of the waters, as terrible as Adamastor, spirit of the storms, and Urucane that he lifts up. At the time of the new moon, they went there to await the rising of the blond divinity of the nights, and as soon as she had arisen in the whiteness of the sky, they threw themselves outside, crying, according to the rites : Nonun! Nonun!
The walls of the cave, that appeared whitewashed, retain, still perfectly legible, the dates, inscriptions, names, Spanish for the most part, in charcoal or engraved since the end of the sixteenth century by the Europeans who have visited. Courouille found a six inch, crudely sculpted statue, but well conserved. This statue represents Zémès crouching, wild, ready to jump, threatening with his left hand and hurling his zagaie (?) with the other.
During our exploration, Courouille's mother had made one of those gros bouillons (hearty soups) that produce on the traveler the same effect as the earth on the giant Antaeus.
My meal finished, I lay down on the bed that I had found, the night before, preferable to the cot in the Traveler's Hotel, and I slept like a happy man until supper time.
We left Dondon two hours after sundown.
The lightning bugs, in Spanish cucuyos, drew their capricious zigzags between the breaks in the green masses of the forest. A breeze, that came from the east, ruffled the trees on the sides of the path and blew on my face its fresh breath impregnated with the quickening fragrances of the campeachy flowers. Above my head, in a milky sky, the moon, spreading bundles of velvety blue light, peacefully following its course in the middle of sparkling constellations, whereas my horse, slowly progressing, continued on his own, without stumbling, across the stones in the path and lulled me into dreams.
When I got down from my mount at the door of the Traveler's Hotel, nine o'clock sounded on the cuckoo-clock always late from the dining room. It was time for me to take, at the guest's table, for lunch, my place, that I would not have given up for anything.
Besides the Vertières fort and the neighborhood of Fosette, almost completely destroyed in 1865 by President F. Geffrard, I had visited Calvaire, admirably located on the other side of the city, the country huts, the strange court of Miracles, and, on the road to Marchegalle, the remains of a cemetery that dates from the time of the colonists, serving the Jews as a burial site, and where can be found a very deep well into which Christophe had thrown a large number of mulattos. There was, therefore, nothing left for me to see at Cap or in the area. I thought of leaving.
The traveler can today choose his steamer like one chooses his train in Europe.
But at the time I was passing through Cap, the communications between towns were very rare, and to travel from one point to another along the coast, no matter how close they got, was a lot less easy than going around the world in eighty days, like Phileas Fogg in Jules Verne.
Going by land was not without difficulty either, if you were carrying baggage. It required a horse, pack animals, a guide, all things that are difficult to acquire and that are exorbitantly priced.
What remained were the coastal vessels.
The General of the division, inspector of fortifications, Mr. B. Martin, who I had met at the Club des Negoçiants, (Trader's Club) put me in contact with the supercargo Conception, a schooner that was going on ballast to Port-au-Prince, touching at almost all of the ports on the north coast. She would be setting sail soon, Si Dieu voulait (God willing), to make use of a saying much used over there. I wasn't going to miss my chance and I booked my passage, the price being fixed at nine piastres, food included.This seemed to me very expensive, seeing the poor plainness of the schooner, invariably made up of cod and bananas.
When I wanted to send my bags to the schooner, more than eight loiterers, who were napping in the street, their heads against the wall, presented themselves to take charge of the two or three parcels that the weaker ones could not carry. One of them grabbed a heavy box containing books, and, with the help of four of his companions, hoisted it onto a wheelbarrow, each one was only holding it by the tips of his fingers. The rest of my baggage, of which a commissioner would not have been embarrassed, occupied another half-dozen. Three bottles of pale-ale (English light beer), a useful gift from the inspector of fortifications, were carried by three men. A box of biscuits, with which I had supplied myself, as the menu on the boat barely tempted me, and my traveling bag followed, one in front of the other, carried on the heads by two blacks of a size to hold the world on their backs equal to Atlas. I lead the squad, holding in my hand the small objects from which I never separate myself when traveling. Upon seeing us the passerbys stopped and the storekeepers appeared at their doors, curious to see a white marching in such a large group. My sizable entourage bestowed on me such a high opinion, judging by the expressions on their stupefied faces, that I could not, despite the little bit of envy I had, stop from laughing at this roguishness, that would cost me two or three piastres.
The Conception, sailing under the red and blue flag of Haiti, could pass, with its elevated prow, the sleekness of its lines, its two sails, elegantly leaning, for the prettiest schooner on the seas. Eight brawny sailors maneuvered it. Superbly black as well, the Captain Saint-Louis put his hands to the rigging and the wheel, like the last man of the crew.
The cabin-boy, a big fellow, lean, tall, and a shade of roasted coffee, answered to the name of Petit-Frère. The father Adam -- put, if Fyou will, hat in hand, -- oversaw the daily cooking of the cod and roasted the plantains. He was the ship's Vatel (Vatel was a famous maitre d'hotel of the Grand Conde in Paris).
Attired with a monogrammed handkerchief, knotted in the front, a jacket that covered a pair of pants of raw cloth, held on the hips by a belt to which was affixed the sheath of a clasp knife with two blades, long and short, cabin-boy and captain, starboard and larboard, slept most of the time, in the long expanse at the front of the ship.
Two or three hours later, I don't know exactly, the Conception, fleeing Cap-Haïtien, that receded behind us, ascended and descended the waves one by one. The day expired. A sudden rain assailed us. In the need to find shelter in the hold, because the only room on the schooner was reserved for the women, I passed a very uncomfortable night without a bed, pell-mell with the sailors, on barrels full of water that served as ballast. To add to my misfortune, the rain, filtering between the joints of the badly caulked deck, fell on me drop by drop. It was useless to attempt to change places, with the risk of stepping on the stomachs of my neighbors in the darkness, this agonizing flood followed me everywhere. The deck of the schooner was a sieve to winnow the waves.
During my stay at the bottom of the hold the rain continued to fall through the night and I couldn't even sneak a peek at the deep bay where can be found the ile à Rats that Christopher Columbus, who entered there on 21st December 1492, called Puerto de San Tomas, a name that time has not preserved, as it is today called baie de l'Acul, and the village that rises behind it, four lieues (18 km) from Cap-Haitïen, l'Acul-du-Nord. Neither did I see Port-Margot, situated one and a half lieues (8 km) from the landing spot of the same name, where is found the ile à Cabris, where the French pirates hid after being chased from Tortue by the English pirates, who, commanded by the famous Willis, took Rausset prisoner in 1660.
After Port-Margot, you find "le Borgne" (one-eyed) called this because its position behind a tall outcropping of rocks makes it such that you can only see one side at a time. The village is built on an alluvial soil nex to the Ester, a dangerous river during the rainy season. I have to say quickly, that the Borgne of which I'm speaking, is the new one. At the time of the colonists, it was only the landing site of the old Borgne, that still exists three lieues (13 km) in the interior under the name of "Petit-Bourg". Currently, it is administrative center of a mountainous commune that produces the best coffee in the North.
Five kilometers from the sea, on the road to Petit-Bourg, is a cave divided into seven rooms, in which we found, as at the Minguet cave, human bones, fetishes, and fragments of indian pottery. There is also a salt lake in the region of Borgne.
We know that the cheerful singer Désaugiers, having come to Saint-Domingue, at the time when a war little mentioned in history erupted, was on the point of being shot by "les cannibales" there.
At the break of day, the schooner, that had passed Cap-Rouge during the night, landed at Saint-Louis-du-Nord, or, more briefly, Saint-Louis. This town, conveniently situated in a little plain, on the edge of the sea, owes its establishment to the abandonment of Tortue by the pirates in 1675. Found in the area is excellent wood, chalk, calcareous spaths and alabaster. Its port, small, surrounded by reefs, exposed to all the winds, is not accessible to ships of heavy tonnage.
We made but a stop of two hours at Saint-Louis, and, continuing our route, we entered into the channel, about eight kilometers wide, that separates Tortue from the mainland.
This island is nine lieues (40 km.) long and eighteen hundred meters wide. She rises up on the dark blue of the waves, like the shell of a giant tortoise. The western end resembles the head of this crustacean, where as the eastern end makes up the posterior. From that its name. Thick vegetation covers, from the top to the bottom, its flanks cut with little bays. It is populated by goats, wild pigs and red crabs, much appreciated by gourmets. The tree whose shade is deadly and that bears a fruit resembling little apples, manzanas in Spanish, which has merited its name, the mancenilier (Manchineel tree), in one word, poisons the mahogany forests, whose exploitation was done in a very intelligent manner by a French engineer, Mr. Arnoux, the last of the buccaneers, who died just recently.
Tortue is famous. It was the cradle of the richest colony France ever possessed in the Antilles. French adventurers, under the direction of Pierre Vadrosque and d'Enambuc; English adventurers, under the direction of Warner; chased from Saint-Christopher island by the Spanish admiral Frédéric de Tolède, came and installed themselves there. It was there that, during many long years, these redoubtable hosts lived, first called buccaneers, because they cooked their meat, seasoned with pepper and bitter orange juice, on a boucan, a kind of wood-fire grill used by the Indians. Their clothing was very simple : a coat and breeches stained with blood. They held up their breeches with a belt from which hung a short strong saber, a cutlass, or a dagger. They walked bare legged, simply putting on their feet, crude sandals made from sun-dried skin. Their only ambition consisted of a rifle and a pack of twenty-five to thirty dogs.
Their style of life was quite singular. They chose chiefs that they often cut the throats of. They suffered no women amongst them. They formed associations amongst themselves. All their personnel possessions were shared in common and remained to the survivor, if one of the members of the association died. They hunted wild boar and beef of which there were large herds on the island. The meat was their food source. They sold the skins. When they had gathered together a certain number, they had them carried to ships that traded with them, by conscripts, emigrants that were sold in Europe to work in the colonies for a period of three years. Once one of these unfortunates tried to point out to his master, who always chose Sunday to deliver, that Sunday should be consecrated to rest. Me?, replied the ferocious hunter, I say: For six days you skin the cattle that I kill for you to carry, the seventh day, the skins go to the sea side.
And flails of the rod accompanied each decisive word.
Later, hunted by the Spanish, they turned to piracy and changed their name from buccaneers to flibustiers (from fly-boat, ships that steal, or from free-boater, free plunderer). Imagine tigers with a little bit of reason, says Voltaire, in his Essay on Morals. They feared nothing. They faced death for the smallest booty. Distinguished amongst them were, Pierre le Grand, of Dieppe, who, with a boat armed with four cannon and crewed by twenty-eight men, captured the vessel of a Spanish vice-admiral; Michel le Basque, who stole a war boat carrying a million piastres; Nau l'Olonnais and Montbars the Languedoc, alias the Exterminator. Nothing equaled the fearlessness of these corsairs, unless it was their courage, or more exactly their audacity. The news of their exploits filled the New World with terror.
When we arrived in front of Port-de-Paix, only a few kilometers from Saint-Louis, it was noontime. Not a boat on the water. The town appeared deserted, like the day Christopher Columbus, coming from Mole, landed here.
A couple of notes on the translation: Comments in ( ) are my own or question words for which I have no translation or do not know the meaning of. If anyone else can help me with these it would be much appreciated. Comments in { } are footnotes of the author that I have introduced into the body of the text. Comments in [ ] are La Selve's text comments in parentheses. I would very much appreciate any comments or suggestions anyone has on the translation job. Would anyone be interested in editing this text into readable English once it is completed?
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