Guadeloupe continued - The Traveller's Tree: A Journey Through the Caribbean Islands - page 21

under their own Saintois rig. The masts are placed well forward, and the bows are shaded by primitive
spinnakers, while the mainsails, vast triangles of ribbed canvas, swing out far beyond the stern on long
booms of bamboo.
After a short time in the island, compassion is the predominating feeling that these people evoke. Evid-
ence of disease, advanced and terrible, is visible on every side. A great number of the inhabitants suf-
fer from elephantiasis. Necks and shoulders are afflicted by huge goitrous tumours, arms are converted
into bolsters, and legs into bulbous monstrosities of vast proportions. Some of the women's legs are en-
larged into the semblance of pumpkins that dwindle to the normal size at the ankle; so that the extremities
of mammoth limbs disappear with a ghastly coquettishness into minute high-heeled shoes. The men are
prone to this affliction in the region of the pudenda, which swell to such proportions that the wretched
patients have to wear aprons or, in extreme cases, when their pendent tumours reach the ground, are con-
demned to an elaborate harness attached to their shoulders. It is pathetic to record that this particular form
of the disease, propagated by a microbe that is indigenous to these regions, is incurable. The stigmata of
hereditary syphilis are often discernible in the wreck of features and limbs.
An official of the island pointed out to us the marks of leprosy, which usually took the form of white
patches on the skin, within the circumference of which the flesh had lost all sensibility. They could be
pricked or cut without feeling pain or, indeed, anything at all. He explained that a recently discovered
treatment can render the disease uncontagious, though it cannot actually cure it. This is held to be a great
boon on the island, as its victims can thus sometimes escape the dreaded verdict of lifelong sequestration
on the Désirade. It was fairly easy to tell lepers, he said, by a certain sweetish smell that followed them.
The heavy local incidence of insanity struck us during our first couple of hours on the island, in the
persons of three men whom we encountered on the road at different points; croaking, stumbling, and
cursing the empty blue sky; and in the voice of a very old man seated in a rocking-chair in front of his
door. Alternating wails and giggles, or sudden spells of anger, sailed through the afternoon air.
It was in these waters that Admiral Rodney, with Hood as second-in-command, defeated the French
fleet under the Comte de Grasse on the 6th of April, 1782, delivering Jamaica from attack and capture
by the French, and putting an end to a serious French threat to the whole of the British West Indies. The
battle lasted from dawn till sunset. The forces engaged were 36 ships and 2,640 guns on the English side
against 34 ships and 2,500 guns on the French. The English lost 261 men killed and 837 wounded, while
French losses amounted to as many as 14,000. De Grasse was fighting stubbornly on the upper deck of
the Ville de Paris , beside the only other two unwounded men on board, when he was forced to surrender.
He was at once taken aboard the Formidable , Rodney's flagship, where the two admirals dined together.
It is permissible to think of the two sailors, with Hood looking on, sitting over their port with the lantern
light on their gold lace and powdered wigs, shifting the decanter, the pepper-pot and the salt-cellar about
the table in a reconstruction of the day's action, while the flagship lay at anchor on these tropical waters
dark with wreckage. The Duc des Cars (whose brother was killed in the battle) writes admiringly in his
memoirs of Rodney's generosity and good manners to the French. He had often visited Versailles before
the outbreak of the war, where he was something of a favourite.
In the hope of discovering the graves of English or French sailors killed in this action, I asked the way
to the cemetery. A lane ran inland past a green mound surmounted by a crucifix. Elder trees shaded the
footpath and rolling meadows lay on either hand; a tame, untropical landscape more like a country lane
in Brittany or Cornwall.