The Project Gutenberg eBook, At Last, by Charles Kingsley

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Title: At Last

Author: Charles Kingsley

Release Date: January 10, 2004 [eBook #10669]

Language: English

Character set encoding: US-ASCII

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AT LAST***

Transcribed by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk

AT LAST: A CHRISTMAS IN THE WEST INDIES

TO HIS EXCELLENCY THE HON. SIR ARTHUR GORDON, GOVERNOR OF MAURITIUS

My Dear Sir Arthur Gordon,

To whom should I dedicate this book, but to you, to whom I owe my
visit to the West Indies? I regret that I could not consult you
about certain matters in Chapters XIV and XV; but you are away again
over sea; and I can only send the book after you, such as it is,
with the expression of my hearty belief that you will be to the
people of Mauritius what you have been to the people of Trinidad.

I could say much more. But it is wisest often to be most silent on
the very points on which one longs most to speak.

Ever yours,

C. KINGSLEY.

CHAPTER I: OUTWARD BOUND

At last we, too, were crossing the Atlantic. At last the dream of
forty years, please God, would be fulfilled, and I should see (and
happily, not alone) the West Indies and the Spanish Main. From
childhood I had studied their Natural History, their charts, their
Romances, and alas! their Tragedies; and now, at last, I was about
to compare books with facts, and judge for myself of the reported
wonders of the Earthly Paradise. We could scarce believe the
evidence of our own senses when they told us that we were surely on
board a West Indian steamer, and could by no possibility get off it
again, save into the ocean, or on the farther side of the ocean; and
it was not till the morning of the second day, the 3d of December,
that we began to be thoroughly aware that we were on the old route
of Westward-Ho, and far out in the high seas, while the Old World
lay behind us like a dream.

Like dreams seemed now the last farewells over the taffrel, beneath
the chill low December sun; and the shining calm of Southampton
water, and the pleasant and well-beloved old shores and woods and
houses slidi