Murat trail

9 points of interest

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  Agricultural landscape

  View over a meadow

  Typical scene of the Marie-Galante countryside, with cattle tied up not far from a pool (a natural drinking trough) with a field of sugar cane in the background.

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  Agricultural landscape

  'Pak a kochon'

  Pens for rearing pigs.

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  Flora

  Bay rum tree

  A specimen of the bay rum tree, Pimenta racemosa, perched on a rocky outcrop.
  The Coulée Ouliée
  The many stones littering this ravine testify to the power of the floods of heavy rain.

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  River and waterfall

  The Coulée Ouliée

  The many stones littering this ravine testify to the power of the floods of heavy rain.

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  The Slave Route

  Route de l'Esclave : Mare au Punch

  The tradition connected with this place is linked to the tragic events which occurred on 24 and 25 June 1849, on the occasion of the first legislative elections in the West Indies. The serious electoral incidents which occurred at Marie-Galante led to the results of the legislative elections of the whole of Guadeloupe being declared invalid by the National Assembly.
  The opposition between the supporters of Schoelcher and Perrinon (Republican) denouncing the fraud, and the enforcement of the law, caused between 50 and 100 deaths. Many arrests were made, giving rise to convictions, some very heavy, during the trial which took place in 1850.
  At these events, former slaves who had been freed reportedly looted and burned the Pirogue residence and then spilled all the rum and the sugar from the estate into the nearby pool - the Mare au Punch. Three days and three nights of celebrations followed !

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  The Slave Route

  Route de l'Esclave : Murat residence

  The founder of this sugar works was probably Antoine Luce, a notary from the Champagne area, who came to Marie-Galante in 1657. By 1665, the residence already owned eleven slaves aged from nine to 36. In 1807, Dominique Murat, who was born in Aquitaine and was the husband of a Creole from Marie-Galante, bought the property and added new buildings.
  The sugar farm, now known as Bellevue La Plaine, became an important producing unit.
  In 1807, 114 slaves were involved, and this number tripled over two decades, since by 1839 there were 307 (175 women, 132 men), which made it one of the largest 'workshops' in
  Guadeloupe a few years before the abolition of slavery.
  With the help of European and mixed-race craftsmen, the 'talented slaves' - workmen, masons and carpenters - worked on the construction of buildings whose remains, radically restored in the 1960s when there was a suggestion of building a hotel, can still be seen today. The residence contains all the usual buildings of a sugar-works: one or more mills (here there was one animal mill and one windmill), the sugar-works itself and its outbuildings, the slave quarters. The quality of the dressed stone masonry, the crest on the windmill, which bears the master's name and initials and the date of construction (1814), reflect undeniable expertise.
  The originality of the dwelling is not the contrast between the 'big house', where the master lived, and the hundred long-disappeared thatched 'cases' mounted on wooden poles, where most of the slaves lived in 1839, but in the Neo-classical architecture of the Murat's house.
  If the design was undoubtedly due to the family, the knowledge of contemporary architectural styles is clear in the freed master-masons or the master carpenters, many of whom had learned their trade as slaves.

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  Flora

  Example of a pleasure garden

  Only a trained eye can interpret the hidden messages in this colourful plantation.

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  Agricultural landscape

  View over an enclosed meadow.

  Rustic landscape illustrating a most bucolic and pleasant way of life.

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  Flora

  Chacha (Devil bean)

  Crotalaria retusa, is locally called chacha (bell), or rattle from the sound obtained by shaking the seeds contained in the pods produced by this legume.