IN THE WEST INDIA ISLANDS 
61 
IN THE WEST INDIA ISLANDS. 
I HAD heard and read much, from boyhood, about these 
“ Lesser Antilles.” I had pictured them to myself a 
thousand times : but I was altogether unprepared for their 
beauty and grandeur. For hundreds of miles, day after 
day, the steamer carried us past a shifting diorama of 
scenery, which may be likened to Vesuvius and the Bay 
of Naples, repeated again and again, with every possible 
variation of the same type of delicate loveliness, 
Under a cloudless sky, upon a sea, lively yet not un- 
pleasantly rough, we thrashed and leaped along. Ahead 
of us, one after another, rose high on the southern horizon 
banks of gray cloud, from under each of which, as we 
neared it, descended the shoulder of a mighty mountain, 
dim and gray. Nearer still the gray changed to purple ; 
lowlands rose out of the sea, sloping upwards with those 
grand and simple concave curves which betoken, almost 
always, volcanic land. Nearer still, the purple changed 
to green. Tall palm trees and engine-houses stood out 
against the sky ; the surf gleamed white around the base 
of isolated rocks. A little nearer, and we were under 
the lee,.or western side, of the island. The sea grew 
smooth as glass; we entered the shade of the island- 
cloud, and slid along in still, unfathomable blue water, 
close under the shore of what should have been one of the 
Islands of the Blest. 
It was easy, in presence of such scenery, to conceive the