414
Martinique
Sketches.
as never before the beauty of that tropic Nature, and the simple charm of the life to which I am bidding farewell,—the question comes to me : " Does she not love it all as I do,—nay, even much more, because of that in her own existence which belongs to it ?" But as a child of the land, she has seen no other skies,—fancies, perhaps, there may be brighter ones. . . . . . . Nowhere on this earth, Violet-Eyes !—nowhere beneath this sun ! . . . Oh ! the dawnless glory of tropic morning !—the single sudden leap of the giant light over the purpling of a hundred peaks,—-over the surging of the mornes ! And the early breezes from the hills,—all cool out of the sleep of the forests, and heavy with vegetal odors thick, sappy, savage-sweet !—and the wild high winds that run ruffling and crumpling through the cane of the mountain slopes in storms of papery sound !— And the mighty dreaming of the woods,—greendrenched with silent pouring of creepers,—dashed with the lilac and yellow and rosy foam of liana flowers !— And the eternal azure apparition of the all - circling sea,—that as you mount the heights ever appears to rise perpendicularly behind you,—that seems, as you descend, to sink and flatten before you !— And the violet velvet distances of evening ;—and the swaying of palms against the orange-burning,—when all the heaven seems filled with vapors of a molten sun ! . . . IV. H o w beautiful the mornes and azure-shadowed hollows in the jewel - clearness of this perfect morning ! Even Pelée wears only her very lightest head-dress of gauze ; and all the wrinklings of her green robe take unfamiliar tenderness of tint from the early sun. All the quaint peaking of the colored town—sprinkling the sweep of blue bay with red and yellow and white-of-