"Pa
combiné,
chè!"
387
and shooting like a showering of jewel-fires, y o u feel how weak the skill of poet or painter to fix the sensation of that white-pillared imperial s p l e n d o r ; — a n d you think you know why créoles exiled by necessity to colder lands may sicken for love of their own,—die of home-yearning, as did many a one in far Louisiana, after the political tragedies of 1 8 4 8 . . . . . . . But you are not a Creole, and must pay tribute of suffering to the climate of the tropics. Y o u will have to learn that a temperature of 9 0 ° Fahr. in the tropics is by no means the same thing as 9 0 Fahr. in Europe or the United States ;—that the mornes cannot be climbed with safety during the hotter hours of the afternoon ;—that by taking a long walk you incur serious danger of catching a fever ;—that to enter the high woods, a path must be hewn with the cutlass through the creepers and vines and undergrowth,—among snakes, venomous insects, venomous plants, and malarial exhalations ;—that the finest blown dust is full of irritant and invisible enemies;—that it is folly to seek repose on a sward, or in the shade of trees, — particularly under tamarinds. Only after you have by experience become well convinced of these facts can you begin to comprehend something general in regard to West Indian conditions of life. 0
IV. . . . S L O W L Y the knowledge comes. . . . For months the vitality of a strong European (the American c o n stitution bears the test even better) may resist the debilitating climate : perhaps the stranger will flatter himself that, like men habituated to heavy labor in stifling warmth,—those toiling in mines, in founderies, in enginerooms of ships, at iron-furnaces, — so he too may become accustomed, without losing his strength, to the continuous draining of the pores, to the exhausting force