keys, kinkajous, and what not, which might
cluster about the capitals, or swing along the beams. Let men who
have such materials, and such models, proscribe all tawdry and poor
European art--most of it a bad imitation of bad Greek, or worse
Renaissance--and trust to Nature and the facts which lie nearest
them. But when will a time come for the West Indies when there will
be wealth and civilisation enough to make such an art possible?
Soon, if all the employers of labour were like the gentleman at
whose house we were that day, and like some others in the same
island.

And through the windows and between the pillars of the gallery, what
a blaze of colour and light. The ground-floor was hedged in, a few
feet from the walls, with high shrubs, which would have caused
unwholesome damp in England, but were needed here for shade.
Foreign Crotons, Dracaenas, Cereuses, and a dozen more curious
shapes--among them a 'cup-tree,' with concave leaves, each of which
would hold water. It was said to come from the East, and was
unknown to me. Among them, and over the door, flowering creepers
tangled and tossed, rich with flowers; and beyond them a circular-
lawn (rare in the West Indies), just like an English one, save that
the shrubs and trees which bounded it were hothouse plants. A few
Carat-palms {184} spread their huge fan-leaves among the curious
flowering trees; other foreign palms, some of them very rare, beside
them; and on the lawn opposite my bedroom window stood a young
Palmiste, which had been planted barely eight years, and was now
thirty-eight feet in height, and more than six feet in girth at the
butt. Over the roofs of the outhouses rose scarlet Bois
immortelles, and tall clumps of Bamboo reflecting blue light from
their leaves even under a cloud; and beyond them and below them to
the right, a park just like an English one carried stately trees
scattered on the turf, and a sheet of artificial water. Coolies, in
red or yellow waistcloths, and Coolie children, too, with nothing
save a string round their stomachs (the smaller ones at least), were
fishing in the shade. To the left, again, began at once the rich
cultivation of the rolling cane-fields, among which the Squire had
left standing, somewhat against the public opinion of his less
tasteful neighbours, tall Carats, carrying their heads of fan-leaves
on smooth stalks from fifty to eighty feet high, and Ceibas--some of
th