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 “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, theugh, that he brought her with him as a slave, 
and that she was black; and that there afterwards got 
admixed a sougegon 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 
