Haiti continued - The Traveller's Tree: A Journey Through the Caribbean Islands - page 193

had cleared, and our driver of the day before, who proved remarkably learned in Haitian history, poin-
ted across the bay in the direction of the Bois Caiman, where the sacrifice of the pig and the oath of
the Maroon Negroes unloosed the first massacre of the whites and the firing of the plantations. Below
the mountains stretched the Plaine du Nord and the malarial coast where Napoleon's armies had melted
away. Le Cap itself, at the approach of the French fleet, had been set in flames by the grim and determ-
ined Christophe, so that when General Leclerc and Pauline Bonaparte landed, the town was a smoulder-
ing ruin. The port was the scene of Rochambeau's atrocities, and the same mountains had echoed to the
howling of the bloodhounds with which he hunted the straggling guerrillas. [2] Somewhere in the same
region lay the house where Pauline had lived during the campaign. She conducted herself, it is said, with
a frivolity which incurred, on her return to Paris after Leclerc's death with General Humbert as her lover,
the sharp censure of Napoleon. Following the direction of the driver's forefinger, we were just able to
make out the steep outline, perched on a peak in the distant sunlight, of Henri Christophe's citadel.
We called at the Centre d'Art of Cap Haitien and spent a pleasant hour with the grave and charming
Philomée Obin and the group of younger painters there. Much of their work, like the punctilious and
beautiful primitives of Obin himself, we had seen in Port-au-Prince. Then, making my way to the out-
skirts of the town, I visited an elderly savant who is entirely immersed in the archives of Haitian history,
M. Villardouin Lecomte. Books and papers were littered on every table. Seeing that I was interested in
the same things as himself, he allowed me to return in the afternoon and browse among them at leisure.
He sat under a fine portrait of President Boyer with his single gold ear-ring, and explained each new doc-
ument as it appeared—the letters of Leclerc or Christophe, ancient gazettes and decrees and a quantity of
old coins and maps and almanacs. One of these marked the estates of the pre-revolutionary landowners
of the district. Many of their names had associations quite unconnected with Haiti—d'Estaing, Gallifet,
Fouché, Montauban, le Vicomte de Choiseul, and, most evocative of all, Villiers de l'Isle Adam. Could
this vanished sugar-planter have had any connection with the kings of Cyprus or with the author of Axel?
Or, were that possible, both? My host shrugged his shoulders. They were all killed, he said, wiped out in
the great August massacre of 1791. It was hard to tell whether pride as a Haitian or regret as an antiquar-
ian and a student of history were dominant in his voice.
He gave me, as I left, a piece of random information that filled me with perhaps exaggerated pleasure.
We were talking of the Créole patois. The Haitian word for hibiscus is choublac , and I asked him how
it came to have such an odd name. His eyebrows went up. Didn't I know? It was the word the old Eng-
lish buccaneers had used, because they were accustomed to blacking their shoes with hibiscus. Picking a
blossom from the wall of the courtyard, he gave it to me. I rubbed the beautiful flower sacrilegiously on
to my shoes, and, sure enough, a purplish juice ran out of the crushed petals and dried on the leather in a
shiny black varnish.
At Joan's instigation, we wandered, towards the evening, through the narrow streets of projecting
beams and upper stories to the cemetery. The usual emblems of the Baron and of Maman Brigitte,
smeared with the smoke of offerings, stood in the centre of a forest of ornate tombstones. A little six-line
poem marked the resting-place of the hero of the Caco rebellion. It ended:—
' Face a l'Américain, lui seul a crié halte;
Découvrez-vous devant Charlemagne Péralte!'