Chapter I

I cannot teach Cyrillia the clock;--I have tried until both of us had our patience strained to the breaking-point. Cyrillia still believes she will learn how to tell the time some day or other;--I am certain that she never will. "_Missié_," she says, "_lézhè pa aïen pou moin: c'est minitt ka fouté moin yon travail!_"--the hours do not give her any trouble; but the minutes are a frightful bore! And nevertheless, Cyrillia is punctual as the sun;--she always brings my coffee and a slice of corossol at five in the morning precisely. Her clock is the _cabritt-bois_. The great cricket stops singing, she says, at half-past four: the cessation of its chant awakens her.

--"_Bonjou', Missié. Coument ou passé lanuitt?_"--"Thanks, my daughter, I slept well."--"The weather is beautiful: if Missié would like to go to the beach, his bathing-towels are ready."--"Good! Cyrillia; I will go."... Such is our regular morning conversation.

Nobody breakfasts before eleven o'clock or thereabout; but after an early sea-bath, one is apt to feel a little hollow during the morning, unless one take some sort of refreshment. Cyrillia always prepares something for me on my return from the beach,--either a little pot of fresh cocoa-water, or a _cocoyage_, or a _mabiyage_, or a _bavaroise_.

The _cocoyage_ I like the best of all. Cyrillia takes a green cocoa-nut, slices off one side of it so as to open a hole, then pours the opalescent water into a bowl, adds to it a fresh egg, a little Holland gin, and some grated nutmeg and plenty of sugar. Then she whips up the mixture into effervescence with her _baton-lélé_. The _baton-lélé_ is an indispensaple article in every creole home: it is a thin stick which is cut from a young tree so as to leave at one end a whorl of branch-stumps sticking out at right angles like spokes;--by twirling the stem between the hands, the stumps whip up the drink in a moment.

The _mabiyage_ is less agreeable, but is a popular morning drink among the poorer classes. It is made with a little white rum and a bottle of the bitter native root-beer called _mabi_. The taste of _mabi_ I can only describe as that of molasses and water flavored with a little cinchona bark.

The _bavaroise_ is fresh milk, sugar, and a little Holland gin or rum,--mixed with the baton-lélé until a fine thick foam is formed. After the _cocoyage_, I think it is the best drink one can take in the morning; but very little spirit must be used for any of these mixtures. It is not until just before the mid-day meal that one can venture to take a serious stimulant,--_yon ti ponch_,--rum and water, sweetened with plenty of sugar or sugar syrup.

The word _sucre_ is rarely used in Martinique,--considering that sugar is still the chief product;--the word _doux_, "sweet," is commonly substituted for it. _Doux_ has, however, a larger range of meaning: it may signify syrup, or any sort of sweets,--duplicated into _doudoux_, it means the corossole fruit as well as a sweetheart. _Ça qui lè doudoux?_ is the cry of the corossole-seller. If a negro asks at a grocery store (_graisserie_) for _sique_ instead of for _doux_, it is only because he does not want it to be supposed that he means syrup;--as a general rule, he will only use the word _sique_ when referring to quality of sugar wanted, or to sugar in hogsheads. _Doux_ enters into domestic consumption in quite remarkable ways. People put sugar into fresh milk, English porter, beer, and cheap wine;--they cook various vegetables with sugar, such as peas; they seem to be particularly fond of sugar-and-water and of _d'leau-pain_,--bread-and-water boiled, strained, mixed with sugar, and flavored with cinnamon. The stranger gets accustomed to all this sweetness without evil results. In a northern climate the consequence would probably be at least a bilious attack; but in the tropics, where salt fish and fruits are popularly preferred to meat, the prodigal use of sugar or sugar-syrups appears to be decidedly beneficial.

... After Cyrillia has prepared my _cocoyage_, and rinsed the bathing-towels in fresh-water, she is ready to go to market, and wants to know what I would like to eat for breakfast. "Anything creole, Cyrillia;--I want to know what people eat in this country." She always does her best to please me in this respect,--almost daily introduces me to some unfamiliar dishes, something odd in the way of fruit or fish.