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:
In Port-au-Prince the celebrations start in the month of January. The balls, feasts, and masquerades follow each other without interruption. Every night the young, paint smeared on their faces, grotesquely dressed, walk in the streets, to the great distraction of the shopkeepers, enjoying the fresh air under the galleries, before their doors.
There are continual comings and goings. Dances, antics, cries from behind masks vary and multiply the disorder. Terrorized mules run, dogs chase after them with their incessant barking.
During holy week, it's a different thing entirely. Ranks of clowns, devils, knights, fools, invade the city. A masked man, cloaked in bizarre finery, leads the parade, his brow surmounted by monumental horns. A General appears, dressed in a fanciful uniform, in which his arms and legs are lost. Around him, his general staff, armed with rusty machetes, old rifles, jumping to the sound of pots, pans, weird bamboulas (big bamboo flutes) that produce lamenting chants. Men disguised as women accompany them, performing innumerable antics. A harlequin brandishes his wooden sword; a fool poorly powdered retakes his black color with each shake of the head Several participants in this noisy cortege walk under a mat of leaves; others, distorting their voices, jeer the spectators that they meet and emit screams that one would believe came from the Ivory Coast. Most are on foot; a few, carried on horses that produce chaos and fear amongst the crowd, remain in the saddle through prodigious feats of horsemanship. At the front, musicians draw from their crude instruments a hidden harmony.
The balconies are literally decorated with women, young girls, that, sitting in the shade, watch the parade that produces in them so much laughter.
At this time, Maitre Deslandes, Staff Bearer of the Order of Lawyers, died, still young, suddenly taken by an illness with no remedy. He enjoyed the respect of his fellow citizens. His death was the signal for widespread mourning.
The day of the funeral, I went to the mortuary. Under the balcony, in the corridor, on the steps, friends of the family waited for the priest to come and undertake the removal of the body. On the first floor, in the room draped with black curtains, dotted with death heads and crossed bones underneath, the parents and close friends were gathered.
A very respected rite requires that before moving him to his last resting place, the parents and the friends of the deceased must pass the night next to the remains. This supreme testament of respect and affection signifies that they cannot separate themselves from him until the last moment.
When the procession left the home, it was five o'clock. The friends of the deceased carried him to the church, his remains inside a mahogany casket. The banners of the Grand Orient of Haiti followed, as he was a life-member of the United Hearts lodge and an admitted member of the Mount Lebenon. The clergy is opposed to the showing of these flags of the French Masonry, they take them down during the procession, which upsets all of the brothers present there.
The interior cemetery is reserved for the deceased of distinction. The rain, not having lasted, I entered there upon my return. I noticed the mausoleum of the Count of Ennery, dying as Governor General in 1776. A few steps from there is found the modest tomb of Coutilien Coutard. Civiques de Gastines, who was a refugee in Haiti; Doctor Montègre, who came to study yellow fever; the famous revolutionary Billaud de Varennes deported from Cayenne (French Guiana), from where the Restauration chased him, found the ultimate safe haven here.
I also see the tomb erected by Mrs Inginac that covers the remains of Jacques Ist. It carries this brief inscription that no one looks for, that no one reads:
HERE LIES DESSALINES, DEAD AT 48.
During many years an unknown hand placed a lit candle at Toussaint's.
Not far of, Lamarre, Eveillard, Bazelais, Thomas, Juste Chanlatte, Benjamin Noel, and a few other celebrities, sleep the eternal sleep beneath the fortifications that formerly defended Port-au-Prince.
May 1st, Agriculture Day, the country folk, whose names had been submitted to the Secretary of State by the Heads or Rural Sections, arrived in Port-au-Prince, carrying nothing but a few lengths of sugarcane, or some coffee plants. These products would be presented to the jury, installed in the middle of Pétion Square, on the altar of the Nation. Following the custom, there was much discussion. Winners were given sickles, hoes, and other agricultural tools. The parade then went to the cathedral where a mass of thanks was celebrated, and from the cathedral they went to City Hall. A meal was offered by the Republic, and was served to the award winners of the day.
For the longest time, one of my friends, the head of public schools, A.
Fleury-Buttier, author of Sous les Bambous (Under the Bamboo) {See. La Litterature
Noir} and Rimes Glanées (Gleanings of Verse), invited me to visit the southern part
of the island, which he assured me was much more picturesque than the north. I ceded
to his insistance, and on the 30th of December my secretary, Gaston des Rayauds, and
I, embarked on the Chanté-Clair.
When you look at it on the map, doesn't Haïti remind you of a shark on
its back? I asked des Rayauds, lying next to me on the sail, folded in
quarters, that brother Petit-Mot, the owner-boss of the Chanté-Clair, had
spread on the back of the boat to serve as a temporary bed for his two
passengers. I will explain: the north would be the lower jaw, and the south,
commonly called bas de la cote (bottom of the coast), the upper jaw of this
apocalyptic monster, whose deep throat, wide open, seems to devour a well
placed prey, Gonave.
That's incredible, the upper jaw! Replies my companion. Do you
know that the south is a peninsula sixty lieues (270 km.) long and averages
nine (40 km.) wide: it spreads east to west from a bit over seventy-five
degrees to about seventy-seven degrees longitude. We are still a long way
from going around it.
The remark was true.
Our boat having moved away slowly, from the harbor mouth, as the wind was
weak, barely crawled into the Gonave strait as we exchanged these thoughts.
Soon after, the wind freshened and blew with force. The moon did not appear,
but the stars, like so many celestial lights, shined above our heads, and
the sky, despite it being night-time, was almost as bright as that of the
clearest day. Wrapped in this transparent blackness, unique to tropical
nights, we sailed without loosing sight of the land. The capes, the
promontories, an immovable and torn landscape running the length of the
coast overlooking the sea, paraded before us. A red signal light, like Saint
Elmos fire, shined from the top of a pontoon mast, anchored not far from
fort Ilet, projecting a luminous line on the waves that elongated itself as
we drew away. From time to time, to port and to starboard, raucous sounds
attained our ears: they were the calls of the lambi boatmen, who, heard at
extraordinary distances, indicate by the modulation of their voices, in
which direction he who hears should steer to avoid a collision.
We continued our voyage amidst all the fantastic enchantments of this
beautiful night, until the pitch and roll of the Chanté-Clair forced me,
completely against my wishes, to abandon my contemplation for the less
varied horizon of the boat's deck. I lay down more or less, across the
bottom of the boat, and placing my night bag under my head, I slept, badly
berthed, next to my secretary who snored noisily.
We had just risen when the Chanté-Clair entered into an unknown harbor.
The moon was setting behind Piton mountain, and sunrise was turning the
coast to gold. The land, covered in vegetation, and the naked sea, were
tinged in many shades, from marine blue to emerald green.
We weighed anchor a few feet from land, in the middle of several immobile
boats floating on the waves like a group of sleeping swans. I paid brother
Petit-Mot our two fares. The sailors rolled up their pants to the knees and
stepped into the water with our night bags in their hands. We climbed up on
their shoulders, and they soon had us deposited on dry sand, almost at the
entrance of a small food and drink store whose kind is only found in Haïti.
The store keeper, Miss Choune, a plump negress, be it said in passing,
offered us chairs, apparently in hope of custom.
I would have been saddened to produce, on my passing, a deception. I
asked her to prepare two hot coffees for us. We were served almost at once.
As we were savoring a fully aromatic moka, Tysbel arrived, the director
of the Travelers Hotel in Port-au-Prince. This brave boy, whose ovens had
made him sick, was in Léogane, where he was born, for a change of air.
Having learned of my arrival, he had come to put himself at my service. I
sent him to the head of the district to get us horses, for which I had a
letter of recommendation. We were still three quarters of an hour from the
town, and it was necessary to change our mode of transport in order to get
there.
While waiting for Tysbel to bring a reply, I took the time to visit the
ruins that I saw in front of me from Miss Choune's gallery.
These ruins are what is left of the fort called Ca-ira, in 1793, and
which gave its name to the little harbor where we were, that served as the
port for Léogane; but this fort is now nothing more that a pile of rubble
hidden under the vines, penguins (?), shrubs of all sorts, and insolent
parasitic plants that overtake all abandoned buildings.
Returning under the gallery of Miss Choune, where, during my
explorations, des Rayauds had rested in the shade, I saw Tysbel running
towards us, all sweaty and out of breath, He gave me a letter with the
District stamp on it.
General Tibérius Zamor wrote me that he was sorry not to be able to put
any horses at my disposition: all of hes horses were pasturing on a
plantation far from the town. He sent instead a mule-drawn cart, that
transported me, if not as fast, at least without tiring me.
The said vehicule followed Tysbel closely. We climbed on top. For better
or for worse we sat on our night bags. Des Raynauds put up a white
umbrella, as large as a tent, that I had put in our baggage, believing that
it would be useful to us on more than one occasion. The sun was beating
down on us. Protected by this portable tent, we could brave the sun that
fell directly on our heads. The driver whipped the oxen, which got them
moving at an easy and slow pace.
At ten o'clock, we made our entrance into Léogane.
After having passed along a park square, covered with a colorful crowd,
that offered many scenes worth painting, the cart turned into a rather
large road and eventually stopped before the gallery of a large square
house, roofless, surrounded a variety of construction materials, amongst
which we heard the deafening sounds of sawing, hammering and pounding. We
were at the door of the district office. We got down from the rustic cart.
It was market day. We found the commandant so occupied that I was
ashamed to disturb him. But as soon as he saw us he called out a soldier
demanding that glasses be rinsed out. He then had us enter into his dining
room and served us refreshments that were most appreciated.
You see, said the General, showing me all of the rooms of his home
invaded by masons, plasterers, and carpenters; see! I live not in a house,
but in a construction.
General Zamor, you are in plaster up to the hilt. Therefore don't
trouble yourself on our behalf, I told him;I will be staying at Mr. Joseph
Lacombe's.
The soldier who had rinsed the glasses, and Tysbel, who was waiting for
me on the gallery, took by bags and led us to Mr. Lacombe's, who welcomed
us with open arms.
Léogane, one of the most important towns of the French colony, was the
seat of the government until the time it was moved to Port-au-Prince, which
is eight lieues (36 km.) away.
Today it is made up of twenty-five blocks of unequal size, and, from a
bird's eye view, looks like a rectangle where the long sides are eight
hundred meters and the short side six hundred and forty eight. The streets
are not paved.
Its old church, that was very beautiful, was reduced to cinders by a
fire lit by the independents in 1802. The present church, built during the
time of Soulouque on the same site, is heavy, massive, looking, in every
aspect, like a huge coffin destined for Gargantua.
Léogane is the birth place of Admiral Bonnet, born in 1773; of a poet,
Ignace Nau, and of Marie-Claire Heureuse, the daughter of a slave, a slave
herself, who would be Empress. Dessalines married her after the war with
the South. Soft-hearted and kind, she took no part in the acts of barbary
carried out by her husband, and, always submissive, saved many victims from
this tiger. She was still alive in 1848 and living in Saint-Marc.
The next day, February 2nd, I was at the burial of a woman who died at
age one hundred and twenty. What monstrous things she must have seen over
such a long life span. And what curious information she could have given me
if, not having died the day of my arrival, I could have talked with her!
They assured me that she had maintained her lucidity and that she told of
horrifying scenes of 1793 with details that few knew.
I therefore accompanied this contemporary of Romaine the Prophetess to
her last resting place. This gave me the occasion to see the cemetery that
is in the middle of the plain, reasonably far from the town.
The day after the burial, I learned that the citizen Cicéi Lully,
previous representative of the people, hit by a cerebral congestion, died
during the night. In his turn we took him to his rest. He was a respected T
(here there is a 3 dot pyramid after the T) and loved F (3 dots), R. A. R.
(Maltese cross) C. T. K. G. E. K. S. 30th , ex-vénér (3 dots) of the Resp
(3 dots) [ ] (sideways) (3 dots) Humanity, no. 12. (If anyone can decode
this for me I would appreciate it) His brothers rendered him the last
honors. The Catholic ceremony was not finished and the priest had not left,
when they ran away his coffin.
There were three speeches. Grammar and certainly common sense suffered a
great deal from the over abundant funerary eloquence where Christian,
Masonic, and Mythological vocabulary were jumbled together in mile long
phrases that I could not remember.
I indicated to my new friends my wish to visit the cave that served as a
refuge for Ana-Kaona who is commonly known as the madam of Léogane. I had
trouble finding it. General Tibérius Zamor had given me a letter of
recommendation to the citizen Rosier By, commander of the Orangers section.
But this distinguished gentleman, after spending ten good minutes at
deciphering the letter, told us that the General had made a mistake and
that the cave of 'la madame de Léogane' was to be found in the Grand-Boucan
section. He gave us his son to show us the way, and after two hours at the
gallop we arrived at the hut of Commandant Cassius, who administered
Grand-Boucan. This other functionary wanted to discourage us from making
the difficult climb that led to the cave where we could not enter, he said
with some reason. After having climbed for three-quarters of an hour, like
goats, the mountain covered with brush and high grass, we arrived in front
of the cave. It is situated at a high altitude. Trees grew at the entrance,
closing it like a portcullis at the entrance to a fortified castle.
Searching, I found, between the trunks growing bigger every year, a tight
passage by which I could slide through; but I had good reason to
investigate this cave, famous and unexplored, where curtains of vines hide
the depths, I found no remains worth noting. All the same an immense
panorama, that unrolled before my eyes, made me forget my fatigue.
Having thus seen the only thing that interested me in Léogane, I thought
about going to Grand-Goave, and I embarked on the canoe captained by the
son of the brother of Petit-Mot, Papaloute, who, for ten piastres, was to
take me to Miragoâne, stopping in Grand-Goave and Petit-Goave long enough
for me to visit these two ports fermés (closed ports).
This is what they call ports that foreign boats cannot enter, as opposed
to open ports, where access is free.
Preparation of the boat kept my new pilot busy all afternoon. I,
therefore, could not embark until the next day, February 7 at dawn. I took
my provisions at Miss Choune's. Cheese and biscuits, as there was no bread,
there you are for solid food; a bottle of Martel, a bottle of wine and
three bottles of beer, there you are for the liquids. All this was nothing
but an emergency ration.
The next day, at five in the morning, as I was lying down at the foot of
the mizzen-mast, alone this time, as des Rayauds, having fallen sick, had
returned to Port-au-Prince, the boat left the Ca-ira wharf and entered into
the bay of Léogane, hugging the land very closely, according to my
instructions to the captain.
Far off, Gonave, that we could barely see, exiting from the ocean mists.
The shores, the contours of which we were following, are low but
beautiful despite a certain sameness. In the background, a steamy
remoteness like cyclopean walls, unfolded in sinuous lines the formidable
natural bastions that make up Piton mountain. After sailing for three hours
we arrived in front of a poor little town where the huts are colorfully
spread out along the beach.
It carries an ironic name: Grand-Goave.
On the same spot, the Spanish had established a place they called
Aguava; this place was burned in 1592. The French rebuilt it at the same
time as Léogane, and gave it the current name, that appears to be a
corruption of the Castillian one. It is there that the war between Rigaud
and Toussaint-Louverture broke out. In 1816 a legislative assembly met
there to revise the constitution of the Republic.
Until today Grand-Goave is a small town, sad, lost, abandoned, that
sends several hundreds of sacks of coffee to Port-au-Prince, largely packed
with added stones.
You don't have to drop anchor, I told my captain; I have seen
everything. Continue on.
And we went round a hill, Tapion, that makes a promontory into the sea.
Then, after an hour, we found ourselves in the deep bay of Petit-Goave,
where empties, through the inextricable vegetation of its' banks, to the
right of the Pelet ravine, divided at its' mouth into two arms that
surround an islet, the Ravine-a-Pelet river that forms a delta and that
cuts the road to Miragoane. To the left we left behind the Ilet-à-Poule
(Chicken Island), across from which is a fort, and sailed the length of
place d'Armes, with the Caïman ravine close by and, going in the direction
of the Bourgogne Point, we entered into the bay of Acul du Petit-Goave,
passing between the island of Carénage and the Dames battery, in the port
that was once protected by Fort Royal.
Petit-Goave, that dates from 1863, was the seat of jurisdiction for
Nippes, Rochelois, Grande-Anse, and Ile-à-Vaches.
It was on the point of becoming the capital of the colony. The security
of its port, protected from all winds, and where the biggest ships could
anchor and find good careenage (drydocking), was the reason for this
preference. During a certain time it was at Acul du Petit-Goave that it was
proposed to built the town of Fort-Royal, that made everyone happy. At
great cost they built fortifications destined to ward off English and
Spanish attacks that had occurred there before.
After the founding of Port-au-Prince, Petit-Goave was forgotten.
The boat landed. I jumped onto the shore and went immediately to the
office of the commune commander, General Gracchus Petit, for whom I had a
letter from Tibérius Zamor. The honored rural officer received me in a
kingly fashion. It was meal-time. They put one more place setting on the
table and put ourselves to the task of cutting up a mamam-poule (mother
hen), that had been the pride of my hosts barnyard.
While eating, I asked him to give me any possible information about the
area.
In truth, by God! He replied, what can I tell you? That there are Palms
in the zone, on top of a mountain a fresh water lake six kilometers round
where fishermen find fish, and hunters find hundreds of ducks.
- Its' basin is probably the crater of an extinct volcano?
- I wouldn't know what to tell you. To the south of the town is a swamp
that, mostly during hot periods, fills the air with pests. Our countryside
grows coffee and produce in abundance. The Trou-Chouchou canton in
particular, is famous for its bananas and oranges. Now, the only industry
of my administrations is the making of chairs from white wood, with straw
seats, they paint the legs and back in red to make them pretty. But the
strangest thing in my commune is, without doubt, the tree that carries men.
And with that word, the commander smiled maliciously, like a man who
plots against another.
The tree I mention, he adds, I see it every day, and I will show it to
you when we have finished.
The meal completed, he led me to the town square to the foot of an
unusual tamarind tree. Its' fruits outline exactly the profile of a human
head.
I picked several examples, and we continued our walk through the town.
One should never judge a town by its name. Petit-Goave is big. Twelve
unpaved streets cutting each other at right angles separate twenty unequal
blocks. Burnt by the insurgent Lamarre in 1803, it has since been rebuilt
almost in its entirety.
Three French academics, Godin, La Condamine, and Bouguer, sent to Peru
in 1736 to determine the surface of the earth, spent three months in
Petit-Goave during which time they undertook a series of scientific
experiments.
To see all of Petit-Goave two or three hours is enough. At night fall, I
gave the order to set sail, even though the weather was getting stormy.
Soon the boat was bouncing on the waves like a stone that you skip
across the water. The waves were moaning deliriously, whistling, grinding,
screaming, yelping, screeching. All of a sudden a wild rumbling came out of
the night: it repeated itself, horrible and menacing.
What is that? I asked Papaloute, who was holding the rudder with both
hands.
Being curious I leaned over the gunwale trying to see the monster
that followed us, hoping for some prey. The night was so black that
the waves were like ink and could not be distinguished from any other
object.
In order to escape these visions, I went back to bed, and, thank God, it did not
take me long to fall into a deep sleep.
I didn't wake up until five o'clock in the morning.
PART X / PART XI
PART XI
- A pantou-fouillé, I think.
- And what is that? -- A creature that comes from the sea. It
is enormous, has horns like a goat and can turn over a canoe.
My father told me that at Petit-Gonave a pantou-fouillé ripped
off the rudder of the boat he was steering.
Go to Part XII
Brian D. Oakes is translator of this document
Mail him to comment
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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