The Roanoke times. [volume] (Roanoke, Va.) 1890-1895, 1891-08-27
AN HISTORIC ISLAND.
Martinique, the Birthplace OF tho
Empress Josephine.
A Picturesque Community and Some of
Its Principal Attractious-A
Fountain That Spouts
Live Fishes.

Martinique is q garden Of romantic
beauty, extending from the edge Of the
pretty hurbor to tho foothills of the
mountains, md looks like q fragment
OF France gone astray, says O writer
in the Waverly Magazine. Every
building Is of venerable stone, an
tiQue In structure, largo and roomy.
and windowed by deep jalousies. The
heavy tile roofs overhang the sills
like the eyebrows of man, and are
covered with silvery moses md trail
ing vines
The streets are nearly oil paved with
Belgian blocks, and sparkling water
rushes down the middle of each in the
gutter, toward which tho pavement
slopes
Everybody lives out Of doors. Tho
shaded by palm trees and furnished
with iron seats, where the populace
gather In the evening and chatter like
magpies- During the day tho women
sit in the gardens and Mt night sleep In
hammocks under the verandas, except
IN the roiny season, when they keep
their houses There is no glass In the
windows and not a chimney In the
place. All the cooking is done in char
coal stoves. or upon shelves of stone like
blacLsmith's forge
There arc some fine churches, and
one old cathedral that is worth visit.
Tho people IRE mostly Catholics, but
there Is large colony Of Jews engaged
in banking and trade.
The town of Port de Franco, which
was known US Port Royal during the
time of the empire, Is the seat of the
government, where the lieutenant
governor lives and commands garrison
Of three hundred OF four hundred col
ored soldiers. It is about twenty miles
from ST. Pierre and has ten thousand
inhabitants, but the latter place Is the
commercial capital and the fashionable
residence. The blacks and whites 1.-Two
together as brothers and sisters of the
common family, often intermarrying.
Many of the colored families nre
wealthy and aristocratic and send their
children abroad to be educated.
The upper classes wear tho latest
French fashions and live with consider
able comfort. but the colored women Of
the common class. as elsewhere In tho
tropics, ere clad in single garment of
cotton, without any particular design of
concealing or exposing their anatomy.
amount Of jewclry of peculiar designs,
and on Sunday and feast days get them
selves up In q most elaborate and OUT
landish manner, men and women both
rivaling the plumago Of the birds In the
myriad colors they assume. There are
no poor, no almshouseS, no asylum for
the INDECENT.
The women of Martinique carry their
babies in peculiar manner by placing
them astride of the left hip, and strap
ping them there by wide strips of
cloth. Martinique has population Of
one hundred and fifty Thousand, Of
whom twelve thousand are white,
thirty thousand of mixed blood, and the
remainder colored
The island Is covered with fields of
sugar cane, mostly cultivated by tho
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 ind donkeys are the
common carriers.
There is q good opera house where
performances are often given by local
talent and once in awhile an opera or
play by o company from France.
One of the most beautiful parks In
the world Is known as the Place Berth,
where there is magnificent fountain
of bronze. n most graceful water nymph
fourteen feet high. bearing upon her
head basket, from the rim Of which
jets OF water dow. .,s,~- -s~-~
In August this fountain exhibits what
to strangers is most amazing phenom-
enon, spouting myriads Of little fishes
about DIS large as whitehall with bodies
as transparent as crystal These AFRO
called titire and come from the noun
tain streams with which the fountain Is
fed. In the month Of August they
como from the sea and are caught by
the pipes that feed tho fountain. The
people expecting them come down with
baskets, scoop them up, and taking
them homo. fry them In oil; they mako
delicious morsels-
Martinique was tho birthplace of
Empress Josephine. whose family still
live near Fort dc France, and their
old hesac, little one-story house, Is
still 10 be seen.
VIII Versus Circumstances.
a writer In the New England Farm
er makes the following interesting
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