Landing at Point h Pitre from the naphtha launch
at a pier near the fish market, our company dispersed
through the town, some seeking the sugar mills, and
others the market and museum. The market is held
in a covered building in one of the principal squares,
and presented a novel and exciting scene. Several
hundred women — black, yellow, quadroon, and octo-
roon, with very little negro blood and hardly any
negro features — were chattering and chaffering,
screaming and gesticulating like monkeys, over little
piles of fruit and vegetables and roots and meats and
bouquets of flowers. They wore loose and long flow-
ing gowns of gaudy and brilliant prints, which they
held half-way up to their waists as they walked in
the market-place. On their heads were turbans
which equalled anything in Damascus or Assouan,
formed of Madras handkerchiefs, rolled and twisted
about the head in many folds with one end sticking



102 CKTTISING AMONG THE CARIBBBES

up at the top. All the women wore jewels, neck-
laces of huge beads, great hoops and cylinders of
gold in their ears, bracelets and rings without num-
ber. The passion of the Frenchwoman and of the
blacks for the display of jewelry and gay clothing
seems to have united in this race of islanders,
and their appearance was gay and festive in the
extreme.
The women of Guadeloupe are good-looking, and
we saw a few Creole girls who were beautiful. They
had pure and fine complexions, brown and pale with
a rose tint on the cheeks, and a thin skin through
which the blue veins in the forehead could be traced.
