The English in the West Indies or the bow of Ulysses

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THE

ENGLISH

IN

THE

WEST

INDIES

men, either to save themselves trouble or to please the prevailing uninstructed sentiment, insist on extending it, they will be found when the accounts are made up to have been no better friends to the unlucky negro than their slave-trading forefathers. From the head of the bay on which Port au Prince stands there reaches out on the west the long arm or penin足 sula which is so peculiar a feature in the geography of the island. The arm bone is a continuous ridge of mountains rising to a height of 8,000 feet and stretching for 160 miles. At the back towards the ocean is Jacmel, on the other side is the bight of Leogane, over which and along the land our course lay after leaving President Salomon's city. The day was unusually hot, and we sat under an awning on deck watching the changes in the landscape as ravines opened and closed again, and tall peaks changed their shapes and angles. Clouds came down upon the moun足 tain tops and passed off again, whole galleries of pictures swept by; and nature never made more lovely ones. The peculiarity of tropical mountain scenery is that the high summits are clothed with trees. The outlines are thus softened and rounded, save where the rock is broken into precipices. Along the sea and for several miles inland are the Basses Terres as they used to be called, level alluvial plains, cut and watered at intervals by rivers, once covered with thriving plantations and now a jungle. There are no wild beasts there save an occasional man, few snakes, and those not dangerous. The acres of richest soil which are waiting there till reasonable beings can return and cultivate them, must be hundreds of thousands. In the valleys and on the slopes there are all gradations of climate, abundant water, grass lands that might be black with cattle, or on the loftier ranges white with sheep. It is strange to think how chequered a history these islands have had, how far they are even yet from any


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