Alma record. (Alma, Mich.) 1878-1928, 1891-07-03
IN QUEER MARTINIQUE.
IT LOOKS LIKE A BIT OF FRANCE
GONE ASTRAY.
They Have Many Peculiar Things There
and DO Very Many Things I'm
Peculiar way-The Women.
Their Babies, etc.

Martinique is garden OF romantic
beauty. extending from the edge OF
the pretty harbor TO the foothills OF the
mountains and looks like n fragment
of France gone astray. says writer
in the Waverly Magazine. Every
building is of venerable stone, antique
in structure, large and roomy, and
Widowed by deep jalousies. The
heavy tile roofs overhang the stills like
the eyebrows of man. and are COW
cred 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.
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 tho varanda, ex-
cept in the rainy season, when they
y
in the windows and not a chimney in
the place. All the cooking is done in
charcoal stoves or upon shelves OF
stone lise blacksmith's forge.
The town OF Port de France, which
was known rs Port Royal during the
time of the empire, is the seat of the
government, where the lieutenant
governor lives and commands garri-
son of 800 or 400 colored soldiers. 1t
is about twenty miles from ST. Pierre
and has 10. 900 inhabitants, but the
latter place is the commercial capital
and the fashionable residence. The
| blacks and whites live together as
brothers and sisters Of the common
family, often intermarrying. Many of
the colored families are wealthy and
aristocratic and send their children
abroad TO be educated.
I The upper classes wear the latest
French fashions and live with consid-
cradle comfort but the colored wom-
en- of the common class, as elsewhere
in the tropics are clad in a single gar
ment OF cotton. without any particular
design Of concealing or exposing their
anatomy. They load them selves with
large amount OF jewelry of peculiar
designs. and on Sundays and feast
DAYS get themselves up in most elab-
crate and outlandish manner men
and women both rivaling the plumage
OF the birds in the myriad colors they
assume. There are no poor. no aims
houses, no asylum for the INDECENT.
The women OF Martinique carry
their babies in peculiar manner by
placing them astride the left hip and
strapping them there by wide strips of
cloth. Martinique has a population OF
$50, 600 of whom y, 900 are white,
10000 of mixed blood, and the re-
mainder colored.
The island is covered with fields OF
sugar cane mostly cultivated by the
women, while the men do the heavier
labor in the sugar mills and in the
harbor. There are no carriages or
carts, but the women and donkeys are
the common carriers.
One of the most beautiful parks in
the world is known rs the Place Berth.
whore there is a magnificent fountain
of bronze, a most graceful water nymph
fourteen feet high, bearing upon her
head basket, from the rim of which
Jets of water flow.
In August this fountain exhibits
what to strangers is most amazing
phenomenon. spouting myriads OF little
fishes about as large as whitehall with
bodies as transparent rs crystal. These
are called titire and come from the
mountain streams with which the
fountain is fed. In the month OF Au-
gust they come from the sea and are
caught by the pipes that feed the foun-
tain. The people expecting them
come down with baskets, scoop them
up, and, taking them home, fry them
in oil; they make delicious morsels.