Two years in the French West Indies

When you find yourself for the first time, upon some unshadowed day, in the delightful West Indian city of St. Pierre, -supposing that you own the sense of poetry, the recollections of a student, -there is apt to steal upon your fancy an impression of having seen it all before, ever so long ago, -you cannot tell where. The sensation of some happy dream you cannot wholly recall might be compared to this feeling. In the simplicity and solidity of the quaint architecture, -in the eccentricity of bright narrow streets, all aglow with warm coloring, -in the tints of roof and wall, antiquated by streakings and patchings of mould greens and grays, -in the startling absence of window-sashes, glass, gas lamps, and chimneys, -in the blossom-tenderness of the blue heaven, the splendor of tropic light, and the warmth of the tropic wind, -you find less the impression of a scene of to-day than the sensation of something that was and is not. Slowly this feeling strengthens with your pleasure in the colorific radiance of costume, -the semi-nudity of passing figures, -the puissant shapeliness of torsos ruddily swart like statue metal, -the rounded outline of limbs yellow as tropic fruit, -the grace of attitudes, -the unconscious harmony of groupings, -the gathering and folding and falling of light robes that oscillate with swaying of free hips, -the sculptural symmetry of unshod feet. You look up and down the lemon-tinted streets, -down to the dazzling azure brightness of meeting sky and sea; up to the perpetual verdure of mountain woods-wondering at the mellowness of tones, the sharpness of lines in the light, the diaphaneity of colored shadows; always asking memory: "When?... where did I see all this.