the earthquake, and then
away to the south and east for the Islands: having had our first
taste, but, thank God, not our last, of the joys of the 'Earthly
Paradise.'

CHAPTER II: DOWN THE ISLANDS

I had heard and read much, from boyhood, about these 'Lesser
Antilles.' I had pictured them to myself a thousand times: but I
was altogether unprepared for their beauty and grandeur. For
hundreds of miles, day after day, the steamer carried us past a
shifting diorama of scenery, which may be likened to Vesuvius and
the Bay of Naples, repeated again and again, with every possible
variation of the same type of delicate loveliness.

Under a cloudless sky, upon a sea, lively yet not unpleasantly
rough, we thrashed and leaped along. Ahead of us, one after
another, rose high on the southern horizon banks of gray cloud, from
under each of which, as we neared it, descended the shoulder of a
mighty mountain, dim and gray. Nearer still the gray changed to
purple; lowlands rose out of the sea, sloping upwards with those
grand and simple concave curves which betoken, almost always,
volcanic land. Nearer still, the purple changed to green. Tall
palm-trees and engine-houses stood out against the sky; the surf
gleamed white around the base of isolated rocks. A little nearer,
and we were under the lee, or western side, of the island. The sea
grew smooth as glass; we entered the shade of the island-cloud, and
slid along in still unfathomable blue water, close under the shore
of what should have been one of the Islands of the Blest.

It was easy, in presence of such scenery, to conceive the exaltation
which possessed the souls of the first discoverers of the West
Indies. What wonder if they seemed to themselves to have burst into
Fairyland--to be at the gates of The Earthly Paradise? With such a
climate, such a soil, such vegetation, such fruits, what luxury must
not have seemed possible to the dwellers along those shores? What
riches too, of gold and jewels, might not be hidden among those
forest-shrouded glens and peaks? And beyond, and beyond again, ever
new islands, new continents perhaps, an inexhaustible wealth of yet
undiscovered worlds.

No wonder that the men rose above themselves, for good and for evil;
that having, as it seemed to them, found infinitely, they hoped
infinitely, and dared infinitely. They were a dumb generation and
an unlettered, those old Conquistadores