The daily morning journal and courier., 1902-06-03

"REMINISCENCES OF ST. PIERRE. I have been a frequent visitor to St. Pierre, and knew well the bright tropi-
 cal town nestling under the first rises of Mont Pelee. It had the advantage
 over many of its sister towns in the Wes Indies hat it retained not a few
 of the old stone buildings of its early days, dating back from its foundation in 1885, and had thus little of the tenn porary, rough and ready timber and corrugated aspect which so often spells the towns of those parts. From the sea St. Pierre presented striking panorama. The white houses, inter- spersed with clumps of waving palms the small white dome of the cathedral, an old steeple rising here and there, it's quaint frontage of old houses, it's busy market, the broad sweeping bay, full of all kinds of craft, from big steamers to small sailing vessels, the towering
 
 the clouds caught as they lazily drifted by, all bathed in the golden tropical day, constituted together a delightful impression which is now only memo ". But 1t was on landing and entering this busy seaport that one gathered it's full charm. There all was hustle and movement, and the negro with his hap py knack of adapting himself to his surroundings seemed to have caught much of the vlvacity of manner and speech of his French masters Here the chee-chee, or patois, was "nigger- French" indeed the most common of the two patois throughout the Leeward and Windward Islands, and still the language of the black population in St Lucia and in Dominica. The jabbering negro, with an exuberance of words and gestures, suggestive of other men in other climes, importuned the visitor with his curios-sea eggs, dried skins of the fer-de-lance, the small deadly snake common in the island, whips made of seaWeed small bull-fish hats made of palm fibre and strings of shells.
 The Frenchman, more so than the carries his country, so to speak, about with him; and life at St. Pierre was quaint replica of life in France, with the negro element thrown in. There people lounged about in the same happy go-lucky sort of way as we find our neghbors doing when we cross the channel Men sat in the cafes dis cussing business or politics over their absinthes or vermouths or over their cafes and llqueur, according to the hour, in much the same way as in any town in France; but the man who served was black, and, looking put into the street sultry with tropical l heat, where trim negresseS passed, | dressed in their clean, short, white frocks, carrying on their heads baskets full of bananas and alligator pears and star apples, and big, green, luscious oranges and cabadlllas, 1t was easy to realize that the boulevards of Paris | were three thousand miles away. Of | 2ourse the cercles were the chief meet | ng places, and the one in the street | eading from the hospital was the most | exclusive. It was an agreeable, cosey | title club and possessed in the upper | story a large room with a stage, where | lpon many of the Palais Royal farces | nave been given by enterprlsing anna | eurs Here 1 have several times been l he guest ol the Doctors Guerin, father i md son, whose large sugar factory, ust outside St. Pierre by the seashore, | vas among the first buildings destroyed l ,y the eruption of Mont Pelee.
 Doctor Guerin, the father, went to Martinique about twenty-five years .go, and invested his money in some l ugar estates. In those days the sugar | industry was still prosperous, and the l loctor who was keen business man, lid well and soon became the proprie- or of several large plantations, making
 considerable fortune But his spirit f enterprise was not limited to Martin que; he acquired property in the neigh