Guadeloupe continued - The Traveller's Tree: A Journey Through the Caribbean Islands - page 18

The bulk of these French pioneers were Normans, Bretons or Gascons. Raoul's first ancestor in the
islands was, oddly enough, of Irish descent from a still remoter forerunner, perhaps in Elizabethan times,
of the general exodus which later on was to sprinkle the courts and armies of Europe with names like Dil-
lon, O'Rourke de Brefni, O'Kelly of Kallagh and Tycooly, Taaffe von Ballymote und Correu, O'Donnel
of Tyrconnel or Tetuan. Through some romantic atavistic allegiance, his curiosity about Ireland was al-
most as strong as his more normal preoccupation with Paris. What was Dublin like? and Mayo, Sligo and
Roscommon? ' Toute la province de Connaught, enfin? Comme je voudrais y aller. …'
On our way down we passed a minor crater. Bright yellow sulphur heaved and hissed and rank fumes
came curling upwards like corkscrews of smoke out of the nostril of a sleeping dragon. Half a mile be-
low, a ghastly stone ravine of grey and white and mauve was littered with dead bleached branches that
resembled the bones and antlers of calcinated fauna. A reek of sulphur, growing stronger as we climbed
to the brink of the three Chaudières , blew down this horrible valley. Grey water boiled and spouted and
bubbled in cauldrons of rock and a noise went roaring and echoing along the gorge louder than a hundred
exhaust pipes in full blast. Extreme heat and a poisonous cloud of vapour hung over these holes. The
wan colour of the rock, the heat, the smell of brimstone, and the desolation and the remoteness of this
place, lent it the aspect of a backwater of hell. It was too sinister to remain long. We turned at last, and
descended the haggard boneyard until the roar was only a distant sigh; and plunged down through the
willow-pattern trees into the refuge of the forest.
There was nothing that suggested an old-established or a patrician way of life in the first Créole estate
we visited. Our host and hostess were aggressively European in appearance, and in their conversation,
disappointingly parochial. Every question was measured, and accepted or discarded, by the yardstick of
conservatism, ultra-Catholicism and the interests of family life; usually discarded. Disapproval was ex-
pressed of a new official in the island administration. 'What do you expect,' our host said, 'from a gov-
ernment like the present one? Of course their nominee is a scoundrel. And what's more,' he lowered his
voice as if he were about to pronounce the most dreadful enormities, 'they say—they say mark you!—that
he is divorced! Then, take the roads in Martinique. Why are they in such a disgusting condition? Je vous
demande pourquoi? Because,' he said with lugubrious triumph, 'the people responsible for their upkeep
are a band of free-masons, sir, whose only interest is to fill their own pockets and destroy the state! La
Dissidence a fait beaucoup de mal dans les iles.'
'La Dissidence?'
'Yes, the de Gaullist movement. A terrible mistake! What these islands need is a firm hand, and that's
what they got, during the war, under Admiral Robert. Whereas now—.' He raised his hand, in a gesture of
helplessness that seemed to embrace his little timber villa, the mango trees in the garden, the descending
tiers of banana trees and the sea. His opinions are by no means representative, but there is a section of the
Créole world in the Antilles for whom the revolts and massacres of the Revolution have almost retained
the cogency of a living memory. This ultra-conservative minority whose background is one of centuries
of slave-owning, privilege, blason , the Church, and cousinage , was almost inevitably pro-Pétain during
the war, and with the advent of reform, the presence of a Prefect instead of the former semi-independent
governor, the spread of Leftist ideas and the islands' complete parliamentary integration into the Cham-
ber in Paris, they feel their position growing weaker every day. For some of them, the return of the Comte
de Paris to the throne of France is the only panacea.