Wichita eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1886-1890, 1889-06-01
ISLAND OF MARTINIQUE.
A BEAUTIFUL LITTLE PLACE WHERE
THERE is NO POVERTY.


Common Carriers - Tho Birthplace Of
Frances Empress, Josephine.
Martinique is a garden of romantic
beauty, extending from the edge of the
pretty harbor to the foot hills of the
mountains, and looks like fragment of
France gone astray. Every building is
of venerable stone, antique in structure
large and roomy and Widowed by deep
jalousies The heavy tile roofs overhang
the sills like the eyebrows of man, and
are covered with silvery moses and
trailing vines.
The streets are nearly all paved with
Belgian blocks, and sparkling water
rushes down the middle of each in the
gutter, toward which the pavement
slopes.
LIFE ON THE ISLAND.
Everybody lives out of DOORS The
harbor is skirted by wide boulevard,
shaded by palm trees and furnished with
iron seats, where the populace gather in
the evening and chatter like magpies.
During the day the women sit in the
gardens, and at night sleep in hammocks
under the verandas, except in the rainy
season, when they keep their houses
There is no glass in the windows, and
not chimney in the place. All the
cooking is done in charcoal stoves, or
upon shelves of stone like blacksmith's
forge.
On an eminence overlooking the town
stands statue of the Blessed Virgin, like
protecting guardian, benignant and
serene There are some fine churches
and one old cathedral that is worth a
visit. The people are mostly Catholics,
but there is large colony of Jews en-
gagged in banking and trade.
The town of Fort de France, which
was known as Fort Royal during the
time of the empire, is the seat Of the
government. where the lieutenant gov
ernor lives and commands garrison Of
300 or 400 colored soldiers. 1t is about
twenty miles from St. Pierre and has
10000 inhabitants, but the latter place
is the commercial capital and the fash
ionable residence The blacks and whites
live together as brothers and sisters Of
the common family, often intermarry-
ing Many of the colored families arc
wealthy and aristocratic, and send their
children abroad to be educated.
The upper class wear the latest French
fashions and live with considerable COM
fort, but the colored women of the COM
mon class, as elsewhere in the tropics,
are clad in a single garment of cotton,
without any particular design of con-
cealing or exposing their anatomy.
They load themselves with a large
amount of jewelry of peculiar designs,
and on Sunday and feast days get them
selves up in most elaborate and out
landish manner, men and women both
rivaling the plumage of the birds in the
myriad colors they assume. There are
no poor, no almshouses, no asylum for
the INDECENT.
INTERESTING PARTICULARS.
The women of Martinique carry their
babies in peculiar manner by placing
them astride of the left hip and strap
ping them there by broad sings of cloth.
Martinique has a population of 154, 900,
of which $4,000 are white, 10000 Of
mixed blood and the remainder colored.
The island is covered with fields of su-
gar cane, mostly cultivated by the
women, while the men do the heavier
labor in the sugar mills and in the har-
Dor. There are no carriages or carts,
but the women and donkeys are the COM
mon carriers.
There is good opera house where
performances are often given by local
talent, and once in while an opera or
play by a company from France. One
of the most beautiful parks in the world
is known as the Place Der in, where
there is a magnificent fountain of bronze,
a graceful water nymph, fourteen feet
high, bearing upon her head basket,
from the rim of which jets of water flow
In Augus this fountain exhibits what
to strangers is a most amazing pheno-
menon, spouting myriads of little fishes
about as large as whitehall, with bodies
as transparent as crystal These are
called titire, and come from the noun
tain streams with which the fountain is
fed. In the month Of August they start
for the sea and are caught by the pipes
that feed the fountain. The people, ex-
pecting them, come down with baskets,
scoop them up, and, taking them home,
fry them in oil, when the make most de-
icious morsels.
Martinique was the birthplace of the
Empress Josephine, whose family still
live near Fort de France, and their old
home, little one story house, is still to
be seen. In the center Of that little city
a magnificent statue of white marble was
erected to her memory by the late En-
peror Napoleon III. Josephine was the
daughter Of Joseph Gaspard Tacher de Ia
Pagerie,, lieutenant of artillery, and at
10 married Alexander de Beauharnais.
He was only 10, and after few years of
married life in France the young couple
were separated, and Josephine returned
to her parents at Martinique. In 1874
Beauharnais died on the guillotine, and
two years afterward Josephine was mar
ried to Napoleon. The empress was di-
vorced, and died in 1909. The people Of
Martinique revere her like a saint.-Cor
Philadelphia Press
The Newspaper Deadbeat.
4 newspaper deadbear is one Of the
nr1isances the restaurant patron has to