Cayenne

“ The Capital, Cayenne, with about one half of the population, at the mouth of the Oyack River, is the only town of importance. It is well situated on a rocky eminence with a pleasant view of the harbor. It might be made more attractive than Georgetown, but the colony has always been a little behind the others, its use as a penal settlement being a great disadvantage. ”

“ Efforts to supply the need by immigration have not done so completely. The land routes are not numerous. The most important are that from Cayenne to Mana by way of Kourou, Sinnamarie and Iracoubo, and that from Cayenne along the coast to Kaw and the mouth of the Approuague. Towards the interior there are only foot-paths, badly made. By water, Cayenne is in regular communication with the Safety Islands (35 m.) , and the mouth of the Maroni (80 m.) , with Fort de France in the island of Martinique, where travellers meet the mail packet for France, and with Boston (U.S.A.) . ”

“ From Rio the Hercule called in succession at Guiana, Martinique and Guadaloupe. The low shores of Guiana are clothed with mangrove swamps, the trees of which seemed scarlet, so covered were they with red ibises! Nothing more gay-looking can be imagined than the Cayenne River, and the pretty town standing on its banks—the wooden houses all separated from each other by gardens in which the tropical vegetation displays an unexampled luxuriance and variety. ”

“ In the year 1816, two days before the vernal equinox, I sailed from Liverpool for Pernambuco, in the southern hemisphere, on the coast of Brazil. Arrived there, I embarked on board of a Portuguese brig for Cayenne in Guiana. On the 14th day after leaving Pernambuco, the brig cast anchor off the island of Cayenne. The entrance is beautiful. To windward, not far off, are two bold wooded islands, called Father and Mother; and near them are others, their children, smaller, though beautiful as their parents. ”

“ But the pith of these remarks chiefly applies to the manufacturing concerns of the new town of Cayenneville; for in the clachan we lived in the lea of the dike, and were more taken up with our own natural rural affairs, and the markets for victual, than the craft of merchandise. The only man interested in business, who walked in a steady manner at his old pace, though he sometimes was seen, being of a spunkie temper, grinding the teeth of vexation, was Mr. Cayenne himself.
One day, however, he came to me at the manse. ”

“ Cayenne was his meddling with matters in which he had no concern; for he had a most irksome nature, and could not be at rest, so that he was truly a thorn in our side. Among other of his strange doings, was the part he took in the proceedings of the session, with which he had as little to do, in a manner, as the man in the moon; but having no business on his hands, he attended every sederunt, and from less to more, having no self-government, he began to give his opinion in our deliberations; and often bred us trouble, by causing strife to arise. ”

“ I am not a particularly firm believer in the efficacy of repentance, but even if he felt the desire to do better stirring within him, the convict of Cayenne would find every conceivable difficulty on the road to reform. He is marked and stamped with, and hounded for, his past sins, without a friend on earth, except in the rare cases when he has money, without which he is made to understand that his early elimination is the thing most desirable. The great majority, of course, are scoundrels who deserve their fate—or at least a somewhat more humane one. ”

“ The bird called the frigate is ever soaring round its rugged summit. Hither the phaeton bends his rapid flight, and flocks of rosy flamingos here defy the fowler's cunning. All along the coast, opposite the Constable, and indeed on every uncultivated part of it to windward and leeward, are seen innumerable quantities of snow-white egrets, scarlet curlews, spoonbills and flamingos.
Cayenne is capable of being a noble and productive colony. At present it is thought to be the poorest on the coast of Guiana. Its estates are too much separated one from the other by immense tracts of forest ”

“ Though they come from all the other French colonies,—Algeria, the West Indies, Madagascar, and the rest—by far the majority of the convicts one sees in Cayenne are white men from France, probably a large percentage of them from Paris, many of them truly rough looking customers, for all their whipped-dog attitude. A few are educated men of good families who have gone seriously astray and been caught at it. ”

“ Cayenne’s affairs in the Cotton-mill Company, it was found that he had left such a power of money, that it was needful to the concern, in order that they might settle with the doers under his testament, to take in other partners. By this Mr. Speckle came to be a resident in the parish, he having taken up a portion of Mr. Cayenne’s share. He likewise took a tack of the house and policy of Wheatrig. But although Mr. Speckle was a far more conversible man than his predecessor, and had a wonderful plausibility in business, the affairs of the company did not thrive in his hands. ”

“ Leaving the Newcastle and Acasta to windward of Barbadoes, Sir George Collier took up a cruising ground off the north end of Cayenne, with the intention of remaining there ten days; but only four had elapsed when he fell in with an American schooner, the master of which gave him an authentic account of the peace between Great Britain and the United States. It afterwards appeared by the Constitution’s log, that she made the north end of Cayenne, only two days after the Leander had left that spot to rejoin the other ships ”

“ He also made drawings of over 800 species of animals. Having lost the greater part of his wife's dowry in speculations, he resolved to try his fortune in Cayenne, where he arrived in May, 1750, and settled on the banks of the river Oyapok. For fifteen years he explored Cayenne and the Brazilian Guiana, north of the Amazon, and collected nearly 7,000 species of plants. ”

“ The population is estimated at about 30,000; its movement is not rapid. Of this total 12,350 live at Cayenne, 10,100 were in the communes, 5700 formed the penal population, 1500 were native Indians (Galibi, Emerillon, Oyampi) and 500 near Maroni were negroes. Apart from Cayenne, which was rebuilt after the great fire of 1888, the centres of population are unimportant: Sinnamarie with 1500 inhabitants, Mana with 1750, Roura with 1200 and Approuague with 1150. In 1892 French Guiana was divided into fourteen communes, exclusive of the Maroni district. ”

“ As she lay at the wharf ready for sea, everything on deck had been made snug, and not a coil of rope or spare block was out of place. Her cargo consisted of case oil, salt fish and flour in her hold, and she carried a good deck-load of lumber. She was bound for Cayenne, French Guiana, on the north coast of South America. ”

“ A second-meeting on the morning of the 12th finally fixed them, and on the morning of the 14th, the Portuguese troops and British seamen and marines marched into Cayenne, and took possession of the town. The enemy, amounting to 400, laid down their arms on the parade, and were immediately embarked on board the several vessels belonging to the expedition; at the same time the militia, amounting to 600, together with 200 blacks, who had been incorporated with the regular troops, delivered in their arms. ”

“ It is impossible to contradict a gentleman who has been in the forests of Cayenne, but we are determined, as soon as a Campanéro is brought to England, to make him toll in a public place, and have the distance measured. ”

“ We must warn Cayenne, Kourou, Sinnamarie, St. Laurent and the other stations on the coast. I look upon it as most unfortunate, but we mustn't lose time. The convicts must have felt certain of being able to leave the roadstead or they wouldn't have attempted such a stroke, and possibly they have made terms with some vessel passing through. ”

“ To the kindness of this nobleman alone can I attribute the success that followed this step; for, the tenth month from the date of my letter to M. le Comte de Herouville, I saw a decked galliot arrive at Cayenne, equipped at Para by order of the King of Portugal, manned with thirty oars, and commanded by a captain of the garrison of Para, instructed to bring me to Para, thence transport me up the river as high as the first Spanish settlement, to await there till I returned with my family, and ultimately re [Pg 313] conduct me to Cayenne, all at the special charge of his Most Faithful Majesty ”

“ The sun rose over the land, a thin gauze obscuring it. The red light flashed and died away as if the wind were the sunshine. The haggard faces of the men caught at moments a lurid glow from it. In the west a mass of bluish cloud rested a little while on the horizon, and then passed into a nimbus of gray rain-cloud that floated above it. Such was the dawn and sunrise of a fateful day.
They were sailing north; they had no haven in their view. But Peel was behind them. Think what home is to the fisherman who goes down into the great deep. Then know that to them home could be all this no longer. ”

“ Gilded by the sun's rays, the waters to the west made a floor of bleared red. The fishing-boat had drifted nearly ten miles to the south. If she should drift two miles more she must float into the southeasterly current that flows under Contrary Head. The crew lay half-frozen on the deck. No one cared to go below. All was still around them, and silence was in their midst. At last a man lifted his head, and asked if any one could say what had become of Christian. No one knew. Old Quilleash thought he must have come by some mischief, and perhaps be captured or even dead. ”

“ The wind clamored louder every minute. Timbers cut away from the fishing-boat were swept up with every wave. The surf around the rocks was like snow. The water was beaten into seething foam around the boat also; between the billows the long swell was red with the reflection of the fire, but the sea was black as ink beyond the line of the Castle Isle, save where, at the farthest line of wave and sky, a streak of ashen light shone in the darkness.
Danny had coiled the rope from end to end around his waist. Then he stood and waited. He knew that the tide must soon turn. ”

“ It's independent young rovers like you for newses, not poor ould chaps tied to the harbour-post same as a ship's cable. I was hearing you, though. You'd a power of music in the everin' yonder. Fine doings up at Ballure, seemingly.”
“Nothing fresh with yourself then, Daniel? No?”
“Except that I am middling sick of these late sailings, and the sooner they're building us a breakwater the better. If the young Deemster will get that for us, he'll do.”
They were nearing a lamp at the corner of the marketplace.
“It's like you know the young Ballawhaine crossed with the boat to-night? ”

“ They had placed the body of the master by the hatchways, and again and again they turned their heads toward it in the darkness. It was as though the body might even yet stand up in their midst, and any man at any moment might find it face to face with him, eye to eye. The certainty that it was dead had not taken hold of all of them. It still bled, and one of the crew, Quilleash, an old man reputed to possess a charm to stop blood, knelt down beside Kisseck, and whispered in his ear. ”

“ When the tumult was over, and all lives appeared to be saved, and nothing seemed lost save the two vessels—the schooner and the yawl, which still rose and fell on the Carick and the forked reef of the Head—and the people separated, and the three old net-weavers straggled back to their home, the crew of the Peveril went off with the Fairbrothers to Lague. Great preparations were already afoot there, for Asher had sent on a message ahead of them, and the maids were bustling about, the fire was rekindled in the kitchen, and the kettle was singing merrily. ”

“ With never a reef in a stitch of sail,
But standing about to burst the gale
Merrily sped the barque.
The first night out there was fear on the ship,
For the lady lay in a swoon;
The second night out she woke from her trance,
And the skipper did laugh and his men would dance,
But she made a piteous moan.
“O, where is my home and my sweet baby—
My Jannie I nursed on my knee?
He will wake in his cot by the cold hearth-stone
And cry for his mother who left him alone ”

“ The strait was very narrow—sixty feet at most from the shore to the rocks. Yet what a toilsome journey to the man who was wading off with the rope. The tide was flowing and near the top. It never rose higher than four or five feet in this channel. A man might cross it if the swell did not sweep him back.
Through the boiling surf, piercingly cold, Christian struggled bravely. He was young and strong. He reached the boat at last. It was prancing like an unbroken horse. But waiting for a receding wave, he rushed in, laid firm hold of the first man at hand, and carried him back to the shore. ”

“ But no "strike" was made, and after an hour's time Dan popped his head over the hatchways and asked the skipper to try the "look-on" net. The warp was hauled in until the first net was reached. It came up as black as coal, save for a single dogfish or two that had broken a mesh here and there.
"Too much moon to-night," said Quilleash; "they see the nets, and 'cute they are extraordinary."
But half an hour later the moon went out behind a thick ridge of cloud that floated over the land; the sky became gray and leaden, and a rising breeze ruffled the sea. ”