Martinique - The Traveller's Tree: A Journey Through the Caribbean Islands - page 46

ures, battles against the Royalists and their English allies, British occupation, and the re-establishment of
slavery and the slave trade by Napoleon.
Memoirs are rich in accounts of the social life of St. Pierre, and descriptions of balls and governmental
receptions and carnival. Earlier chronicles are also filled with descriptions of mass hangings in the central
square, of burnings at the stake and breakings on the wheel. Both kinds of scene are equally difficult to
reconstruct in the new mushroom town. Lafcadio Hearn gives captivating descriptions of former carni-
vals, of the songs and balls and fire-work displays of St. Pierre, the beautiful capresses , and the dancing
in the streets, when blacks and whites, dressed as dragons or tigers or demon kings, mingled freely for
three strange days.
The old rum-drinker in the bar told a curious tale about these festivities. Some years before the erup-
tion, the last time that carnival was held, a number of patients escaped from a local leper colony and
evaded pursuit and recapture by disguising themselves in dominoes and losing themselves among the
other masques and fancy dresses. Among the humbler classes in the islands, monogamy is seldom ad-
hered to with much austerity; and at carnival time rum-drinking and the atmosphere of rejoicing lend an
even greater latitude. The eight escaped lepers were, it seems, violently affected by the prevailing mood
and, under cover of their disguise, managed to leave the imprint of their disease on a very large number
of people. When the carnival was over they were apprehended by the very device that had enabled them
to escape, as they were the only people among a population dressed with lenten sobriety who were still
in fancy dress …
' Apwès ça ,' the old man concluded, ' plus de carnaval. C'était dommage ….'
[1] Béqué or Béké is the Negro name for a white in the French Antilles; a term which is said to derive
from the reiterated question Eh bien, quoi? Eh ben, que? of the early colonists.