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ST.LUCIA. scenery in a diorama; and their variety and quick transition were particularly grateful to the eye, fatigued with the monotony of the ocean. The back ground continued woody and mountainous, as I have described it before, but every three or four miles we opened the most lovely little coves and bays I ever saw in my life. At the bottom of two of the largest of these were considerable villages, with five or six large merchantmen lying at anchor, and the smallest of them were fringed with fields of green canes, and enlivened with the decent mansion of the proprietor, the cottages for the negros, and one or two droghers taking in their cargo from the plantation for some larger vessel at Castries or elsewhere. I was much amused too with a flotilla of fishing or passage boats, which, as we were going rapidly in a contrary direction, shot by us like lightning. These boats are very long, narrow, and light, having two, and even sometimes three masts, upon which they carry so much sail that the men are obliged to sit on the weather bulwarks to keep them from oversetting. No regatta in England ever witnessed such desperate sailing, and when it is recollected that, in the event of capsizing, swimming will not save a man from the sharks, there is sufficient danger to make the thing interesting to young ladies. By-the-by, we caught one of these said sharks soon after we got from under the Soufrière. The moment he was seen under the