ISLANDS 49 



dens and sugar-cane. Our efforts were in vain. 

 We heard the scolding chatter of one of the 

 small simians, and were preparing to surround 

 him, when a warning blast from the ship sum- 

 moned us and we packed up our collection of 

 insects and flowers, munched our last piece of 

 chocolate and began to clamber down the great 

 sun-drenched slopes. 



MARTINIQUE, OR A NEW USE FOR AN EIGHT 

 OF HEARTS. Columbus thought that this island 

 was inhabited only by women, and to this day 

 the market place bears out the idea. It is a 

 place apart from all the rest of the city. In 

 early morning, before the gaudy shutters were 

 taken down, the streets were quiet the callous 

 soles of the passersby made the merest velvet 

 shuffling and only an occasional cry of the 

 vendor of some strange fruit or cakes broke the 

 stillness. When yet half a block away from the 

 market one became aurally aware of it. The air 

 was filled with a subdued hum, an indefinite 

 murmur which might as well be the sound of 

 tumbling waters as of human voices. It was a 

 communal tongue, lacking individual words, 

 accent and grammar, and yet containing the es- 

 sence of a hundred little arguments, soliloquies, 



