Grand tours: Beauty in the shadow of destruction

Writers' adventures in literature: Lafcadio Hearn is captivated by the port of St Pierre in Martinique, awaiting a terrible fate

Born on Lefkas to a Greek mother and an Anglo-Irish surgeon, and raised in Dublin, journalist, translator and latterly Japanese citizen Lafcadio Hearn (1850-1904) intended to stay just a few weeks in Martinique when he arrived in 1887. But he fell under the spell of cosmopolitan Saint Pierre on the northwest coast and stayed for two years, writing about his experiences in 'Two Years in the French West Indies', from which this extract is taken. In 1902, Saint Pierre was flattened by a violent volcanic eruption. Hearn's tales endure as a vivid account of Caribbean life and as a picture of a doomed city.

We are ashore in St Pierre, the quaintest, queerest, and the prettiest withal, among West Indian cities: all stone-built and stone-flagged, with very narrow streets, wooden or zinc awnings, and peaked roofs of red tile, pierced by gabled dormers. Most of the buildings are painted in a clear yellow tone, which contrasts delightfully with the burning blue ribbon of tropical sky above; and no street is absolutely level; nearly all of them climb hills, descend into hollows, curve, twist, describe sudden angles. There is everywhere a loud murmur of running water, – pouring through the deep gutters contrived between the paved thoroughfare and the absurd little sidewalks, varying in width from one to three feet. The architecture is quite old: it is 17th century, probably; and it reminds one a great deal of that characterising the antiquated French quarter of New Orleans.

The town has an aspect of great solidity: it is a creation of crag – looks almost as if it had been hewn out of one mountain fragment, instead of having been constructed stone by stone. Although commonly consisting of two storeys and an attic only, the dwellings have walls three feet in thickness; – on one street, facing the sea, they are even heavier, and slope outward like ramparts, so that the perpendicular recesses of windows and doors have the appearance of being opened between buttresses. It may have been partly as a precaution against earthquakes, and partly for the sake of coolness, that the early colonial architects built thus; – giving the city a physiognomy so well worthy of its name, – the name of the Saint of the Rock.

And everywhere rushes mountain water ... from time to time you come to some public fountain flinging a silvery column to the sun, or showering bright spray over a group of black bronze tritons or bronze swans. The Tritons on the Place Bertin you will not readily forget: – their curving torsos might have been modelled from the forms of those ebon men who toil there tirelessly all day in the great heat, rolling hogsheads of sugar or casks of rum. And often you will note, in the course of a walk, little drinking-fountains contrived at the angle of a building, or in the thick walls bordering the bulwarks or enclosing public squares: glittering threads of water spurting through lion-lips of stone. Some mountain torrent, skilfully directed and divided, is thus perpetually refreshing the city, – supplying its fountains and cooling its courts ... This is called the Gouyave water.

Readers can buy copies of 'Two Years in the French West Indies' by Lafcadio Hearn (Signal Books, £12.99) for the special price of £11 including free p&p (UK only) by calling 01865 724856.

Follow in the footsteps

French connection

Located in the eastern Caribbean, within the French Antilles island group, Martinique has been called a piece of France transported to the tropics. Except for two brief periods of British rule in the 18th and 19th centuries, the island has been under French control since 1635. It is still a region of France, with the euro as its local currency.

Getting there

Air France flies (via Paris) to Fort-de-France from London for £624 return. The Tourism Office of Martinique (www.martinique.org) and Maison de la France (0906 824 4123; www.franceguide.com) can arrange accommodation, including Ilet Oscar, a guest-house on a private island.

Dominic Hewing