h off the point. I looked at the natural beauty
and repose; at the human vigour and happiness: and I said to
myself, and said it often afterwards in the West Indies: Why do not
other people copy this wise Scot? Why should not many a young
couple, who have education, refinement, resources in themselves, but
are, happily or unhappily for them, unable to keep a brougham and go
to London balls, retreat to some such paradise as this (and there
are hundreds like it to be found in the West Indies), leaving behind
them false civilisation, and vain desires, and useless show; and
there live in simplicity and content 'The Gentle Life'? It is not
true that the climate is too enervating. It is not true that nature
is here too strong for man. I have seen enough in Trinidad, I saw
enough even in little Monos, to be able to deny that; and to say
that in the West Indies, as elsewhere, a young man can be pure,
able, high-minded, industrious, athletic: and I see no reason why a
woman should not be likewise all that she need be.

A cultivated man and wife, with a few hundreds a year--just enough,
in fact, to enable them to keep a Coolie servant or two, might be
really wealthy in all which constitutes true wealth; and might be
useful also in their place; for each such couple would be a little
centre of civilisation for the Negro, the Coolie; and it may be for
certain young adventurers who, coming out merely to make money and
return as soon as possible, are but too apt to lose, under the
double temptations of gain and of drink, what elements of the
'Gentle Life' they have gained from their mothers at home.

The following morning early we rowed away again, full of longing,
but not of hope, of reaching one or other of the Guacharo caves.
Keeping along under the lee of the island, we crossed the 'Umbrella
Mouth,' between it and Huevos, or Egg Island. On our right were the
islands; on our left the shoreless gulf; and ahead, the great
mountain of the mainland, with a wreath of white fleece near its
summit, and the shadows of clouds moving in dark patches up its
sides. As we crossed, the tumbling swell which came in from the
outer sea, and the columns of white spray which rose right and left
against the two door-posts of that mighty gateway, augured ill for
our chances of entering a cave. But on we went, with a warning not
to be upset if we could avoid it, in the shape of a shark's back fin
above th