among blocks of lava, it had assumed the
exact shape of an English oak in a poor soil and exposed situation;
globular-headed, gnarled, stunted, and most unlike to its giant
brethren of the primeval woods, which range upward 60 or 80 feet
without a branch. We walked up to see the old fort, commanding the
harbour from a height of 800 feet. We sat and rested by the
roadside under a great cotton-wood tree, and looked down on gorges
of richest green, on negro gardens, and groo-groo palms, and here
and there a cabbage-palm, or a huge tree at whose name we could not
guess; then turned through an arch cut in the rock into the interior
of the fort, which now holds neither guns nor soldiers, to see at
our feet the triple harbour, the steep town, and a very paradise of
garden and orchard; and then down again, with the regretful thought,
which haunted me throughout the islands--What might the West Indies
not have been by now, had it not been for slavery, rum, and sugar?

We got down to the steamer again, just in time, happily, not to see
a great fight in the water between two Negroes; to watch which all
the women had stopped their work, and cheered the combatants with
savage shouts and laughter. At last the coaling and the cursing
were over; and we steamed out again to sea.

I have antedated this little episode--delightful for more reasons
than I set down here--because I do not wish to trouble my readers
with two descriptions of the same island--and those mere passing
glimpses.

There are two craters, I should say, in Grenada, beside the harbour.
One, the Grand Etang, lies high in the central group of mountains,
which rise to 3700 feet, and is itself about 1740 feet above the
sea. Dr. Davy describes it as a lake of great beauty, surrounded by
bamboos and tree-ferns. The other crater-lake lies on the north-
east coast, and nearer to the sea-level: and I more than suspect
that more would be recognised, up and down the island, by the eye of
a practised geologist.

The southern end of Grenada--of whatsoever rock it may be composed--
shows evidence of the same wave-destruction as do the Grenadines.
Arches and stacks, and low horizontal strata laid bare along the
cliff, in some places white with guano, prove that the sea has been
at work for ages, which must be many and long, considering that the
surf, on that leeward side of the island, is little or none the
whole year round. With these low