Guadaloupe

“ Suffice it then to say, that on the 12th of December 1531, the pious Juan Diego, praying by night on the volcanic hill of Guadaloupe, about three miles outside the north-eastern gate of Mexico, and some five miles from the grand plaza, saw the Virgin, clad in robes of wonderous splendor, with a face dark as that of the Indians, but radiant with a light not of earth, standing above in the air. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We saw horrid things in Guadaloupe!”
Away from these men sat or stood seven women. “They were captives,” said Sancho. “Caribs had ravished them from other islands and they fled in Guadaloupe to us.”
These women, too, seemed more strongly fibred, courageous, high of head than the Hayti women. There was among them one to whom the others gave deference, a chieftainess, strong and warlike in mien, not smoothly young nor after their notions beautiful, but with an air of sagacity and pride. A ship boy stood with us. “That is Catalina,” he said. “Ho, Catalina!” ”

“ Kitts and Guadaloupe, are seen faintly exhibiting their outlines on the horizon, and the whole forms a striking and not uninteresting picture.
A few more days and we had passed the south side of the island of Jamaica. Its appearance from the sea is singularly romantic: blue mountains encircled by clouds and clothed with verdure to the very summits form the back ground, while richly cultivated sugar plantations interspersed with the cedar and cocoa nut, line the hills and spread along the shore. Nature here at once presents herself in her forms of wild sublimity and luxuriant beauty. ”

“ Louis XIII.; exactly monsieur, our colonists were sadly in want of wives, and it is not every one who can realize a Venus in a copper-coloured Carib squaw, or a tattooed Congo negress, with a fish-bone in her nostrils; so the Frenchmen in Guadaloupe tilled the land, sowed, reaped, boiled the sugar, pressed the vines, and made money in peace and profound tranquillity, until a certain Madame Fayolle conceived the brilliant, but unfortunate idea of bringing a stock of handsome young damsels from Paris to Guadaloupe. ”

“ Nine miles to the east of Guadaloupe lie six other islands called Todos Santos and Barbadas. These are only barren reefs, but mariners are obliged to know them. Thirty-five miles north of Guadaloupe looms the island called Montserrat, which is forty miles in circumference, and is dominated by a very lofty mountain. An island called Antigua, thirty miles distant from Guadaloupe, has a circumference of about forty miles. ”

“ The city was joined to the main land by three great causeways, so solidly built of earth and stone, and having draw-bridges to span the canals which crossed them, as to excite the admiration of the Spaniards. The northern causeway, from the Tlatelolco quarter, extended for three miles to Tepejaca, where stands the present shrine of Guadaloupe ”

“ Early in the year 1795, during the French revolution, a plan was conceived by some white men and five mulattoes, in Guadaloupe, who were aware of the existence of this discontented feeling, to create an insurrection among the slaves in Grenada, and take possession of the island. Emissaries were sent among the plantations, who conferred with the principal negroes, and secretly made arrangements for the work they contemplated. ”

“ They built her a great church, and she was the patron saint of Mexico until the Guadaloupe arose to contest the devotion of the populace with her. The war was long and bitter, but the Indians outnumbered the Spaniards ten to one, though conquered, and they had not a single Indian saint in the calendar—they have not one to this day, though many saints have been canonized in Mexico—and a brown-skinned Virgin was something worth fighting for. ”

“ That he was not only a born commander of men, but had the interest of the colony at heart, time was to show.
The voyagers disported themselves among the luxuries of the West Indies. At Guadaloupe they found a bath so hot that they boiled their pork in it as well as over the fire. At the Island of Monaca they took from the bushes with their hands near two hogsheads full of birds in three or four hours. ”

“ Finding it impossible to effect much at Guadaloupe, he withdrew the British troops there, and sent some to Antigua and Dominica, and the rest to Martinique, where he returned. His health failing, he applied for leave to return to England, where he arrived, 10 Feb. ”

“ Point à Pitre is the capital of that part of Guadaloupe called Grand Terre, which is separated from the other part, called Bass Terre, by a narrow arm of the sea, in form of a river; it is called the river Sallée. The town is neat and well built, but in an unhealthy situation, being on the borders of a large extent of swampy land; it has a good harbour called the Carénage, the entrance to which is guarded on one side by an half-moon battery lately erected on Islet a Couchon, or Hog Island, and on the other by the ancient castle of Fort Louis ”

“ There they remained until the month of December following, when an expedition was formed for the reduction of Guadaloupe.
Since the expulsion of the British in 1794, that island had enjoyed a period of tranquility; its armament had been considerably increased under successive governors, slavery had been re-established, and its harbours swarmed with privateers, which preyed upon British commerce. The incessant annoyance and loss to our trade caused by these vessels, was a strong incentive for a descent upon the island. Added to this, it was a colony of considerable importance to France ”

“ Here, abandoning the northern continent, they passed over to the Lucayos [Bahamas] , and thence gradually, in the process of years, from island to island of that vast verdant chain, which links, as it were, the end of Florida to the coast of Paria, on the southern continent. The archipelago extending from Porto Rico to Tobago was their stronghold, and the island of Guadaloupe in a manner their citadel. Hence they made their expeditions, and spread the terror of their name through all the surrounding countries. ”

“ Some men went on shore again on Tuesday the 5th of November, who took two youths, who made them understand that they belonged to the island of Borriquen, since named St Juan de Porto Rico, and that the inhabitants of Guadaloupe were Caribbees, and kept them to eat, being canibals. The boats returned for some Spaniards who had remained on shore, and found with them six women who had fled from the Caribbees; but the admiral gave them some hawks-bells and set them on shore. ”

“ THE COMMANDERS IN CHIEF, ON RECEIVING AN ACCOUNT THEREOF, RETURN TO GUADALOUPE ... SIR CHARLES GREY LANDS ON GRAND TERRE, AND TAKES THE HEIGHTS OF MASCOT ... SEVERAL ACTIONS TAKE PLACE ... A TRUCE TO BURY THE DEAD ... AN UNSUCCESSFUL ATTACK ON POINT A PITRE.
On the evening of the 3d of June, Major General Thomas Dundas, the governor of Guadaloupe, became the victim of that dreadful fever, which once more began to desolate these islands. He was ill only three days. By his death the army in the West Indies suffered an irreparable loss, and the service in general one of its brightest ornaments. ”

“ The padres are not always to blame; frequently the inhabitants are simply too indifferent or lazy to go through the formalities, or there may be no one in their midst to look after their spiritual wants.
94 While we were at La Danta a half-dozen priests came to Guadaloupe and urged the paisanos to take advantage of this opportunity to become united in wedlock according to the ritual of the church. The people listened to the exhortations, promised to heed the admonitions, and—failed to show up at the proper time. Then the padres lost patience and talked the matter over with the jefe. ”

“ Governor Colonel Christopher Codrington​—​Establishment of the first market​—​Accession of Queen Anne​—​Arrival of Admiral Benbow​—​Attack upon the island of Guadaloupe, in conjunction with the Antiguan troops​—​Bravery of Colonel Edward Byam​—​Arrival of Captain Hovenden Walker​—​Second attack upon Guadaloupe​—​Colonel Codrington quits the government​—​His death​—​Sir William Mathew​—​Hon. ”

“ THE VIRGIN OF GUADALUPE. In every Mexican church, monastery, convent, palace, house, hut, hovel, hacienda, or rancho, the traveller will not fail to observe an image of "The Virgin of Guadalupe." Many men receive the name of "Guadalupe," in baptism, and almost every woman has it added to the others she receives from her parents or sponsors. A saint whose tutelary influence is at once so national and so curious deserves especial mention in the notice of a country over whose people she is supposed to exercise a mysterious dominion ”

“ Guadalupe is the holiest shrine in Mexico. It is the scene of a tradition that is never doubted for an instant by the people. In 1531 the Virgin appeared one evening to a poor peon, Juan Diego, and told him to go to some wealthy man and say it was her will that a church be built on that spot. The Indian, in great fright, obeyed her command, but the wealthy fellow refused to put credence in the incredulous story, so the peon returned and told the Virgin, who was still there, of his failure. ”

“ General Guadalupe Victoria is perhaps the last man in a crowd whom one would fix upon as being the owner of the above high-sounding cognomen, which in fact is not his original but his assumed name, Guadalupe being adopted by him in honor of the renowned image of the virgin of that name, and Victoria with less humility, to commemorate his success in battle. He is an honest, plain, down-looking citizen, lame and tall, somewhat at a loss for conversation, apparently, amiable and good-natured, but certainly neither courtier nor orator ”

“ The holiday look everywhere is kept up in anticipation of the most universally celebrated of all the feast-days of the country, that of the Virgin de Guadalupe—the patron saint of Mexico—which takes place on the 12th of December.
She is venerated in all Spanish-America, and the story of her mysterious appearance to Juan Diego is firmly believed by thousands of every grade and class. The most ignorant Indian may not know of the President, Congress, or machinery of government, but he is sure to be well informed as to the merits of "Our Lady of Guadalupe." ”

“ Guadalupe is an interesting town of some six thousand inhabitants, not counting the myriads of dogs, which do much abound in every part of Mexico. As a rule these are miserable, mangy-looking, half-starved creatures, with thin bodies and prominent ribs. The poorer the people, the more dogs they keep, a rule which applies not only here, but everywhere, especially among semi-barbarous races. The people seem to be very kind to pet animals,—though they do abuse the burros,—cats especially [Pg 74] being of a plump, handsome species, quite at home, always sleeping lazily in the sunshine. ”

“ As Guadalupe is for the most part composed of adobe houses, and as its mass of humble visitors have little finery to distinguish their brown personages from the dust out of which man was originally created, the complexion of the general scene which they constitute can only be described as earth-like and earth-worn. Elsewhere than in a superficial glance at the poverty of Guadalupe we must seek for the meaning of its spectacle. ”

“ Some would also say of desolation, as man is ever disposed to call any place he does not inhabit. But though Guadalupe contained not a single representative of the most intelligent animal on the planet, it sustained great herds of goats, sea birds, and a little black and white land-bird, so tame and trustful as to perch and eat from Miller’s and Whitney’s tin plates during their former visit to the island. ”

“ Guadalupe’s sparse vocabulary of Spanish words was drained; but the manner of his resuming the forward hike was sufficiently eloquent. Guadalupe, born to the desert code and grown to manhood under the inexorable desert law, had in mind but a single impulse—to survive. His mind plumped through the bog of discomforts wherein Stooder’s was mired to read clearly the tablets of the desert’s decalogue: ten commandments in one—live! In extremity throw over loyalty, discard obligations of oath or of blood, strip the soul to its elemental selfishness; but live! ”

“ Guadalupe was a husky little Indian, rather moon-faced, and very solemn in the presence of guests. There were two other maids of her own age who served us at table, where guests dined with the Spanish proprietor, and his native wife—a Tehuana lady of masculine features and Amazonian proportions. The maids would enter very seriously and sedately with their trays of frijoles, but once they were out of sight, we could hear their bare feet scampering across the patio as they chased each other to the kitchen in a game of tag. ”

“ The water cures any disease, so they say, and at any time a crowd is found around filling its magic brim filling jars, bottles, and pitchers to take home, or supping from the copper bowl that is chained to the iron that cover the well. Very few can suppress the look of disgust when they try to swallow the vile stuff with the all-healing qualities. Nor are these all the churches of Guadalupe. Away up on top of a pile of rocks, some hundred feet in height, is the oldest church of the three. It is quite small, and filled with quaint paintings. ”