MY FIRST CAMP. 27 



break the monotony of existence on board. I can see 

 white sails, sails of sloops, of schooners, of ships, 

 drifting lazily over the placid sea. Sometimes the 

 morning will reveal the sail of the evening before — 

 the sail that I watched as I swung listlessly in my 

 hammock. It is one of the pleasures of existence here 

 that I can at any time have within my view the 

 still, dreamy, beautiful sea of the Antilles. It is 

 not always so peaceful. In the ff hurricane season," 

 when the tempests devastate these islands, it rises in 

 its wrath — not like the miserable Atlantic, though, 

 always in commotion ; it is disturbed only by a hurri- 

 cane — nothing less. 



A century ago or thereabouts, there came to this 

 mountain retreat, then unbroken wilderness, (as now 

 it is, save this little clearing) that sanguine French- 

 man, Jean Baptiste Laudat. Tradition says he came 

 from his native isle of Martinique or Guadeloupe, and 

 here looked about him for a wife. It is more proba- 

 ble, though, that he brought her with him as a slave, 

 and that she was black ; and that there afterwards got 

 admixed a soufgon of Carib blood is manifest in the 

 color of these, his descendants. They are not yellow, 

 or bright olive like the Carib, but of a rich brown, 

 with long hair, black and wavy. That the air of 

 these mountains is conducive to health, their size, 

 plumpness and activity prove. 



There are but five families, ruled over by the 

 present Jean Baptiste, who inherits his power from 

 his deceased grandfather, as eldest son. With 

 him lives his mother, a yellow-skinned old lady of 

 eighty, who hobbles about with a cane, and is a fre- 

 quent visitor at the door of my hut. Now, this old 



