ium of the village. Behind the
houses, among the stumps of huge trees, maize and cassava, pigeon-
peas and sweet potatoes, fattened in the sun, on ground which till
then had been shrouded by vegetation a hundred feet thick; and as we
sat at the head man's house, with French and English prints upon the
walls, and drank beer from a Chinese shop, and looked out upon the
loyal, thriving little settlement, I envied the two young men who
could say, 'At least, we have not lived in vain; for we have made
this out of the primeval forest.' Then on again. 'We mounted' (I
quote now from the notes of one to whom the existence of the
settlement was due) 'to the crest of the hills, and had a noble view
southwards, looking over the rich mass of dark wood, flecked here
and there with a scarlet stain of Bois Immortelle, to the great sea
of bright green sugar cultivation in the Naparimas, studded by white
works and villages, and backed far off by a hazy line of forest, out
of which rose the peaks of the Moruga Mountains. More to the west
lay San Fernando hill, the calm gulf, and the coast toward La Brea
and Cedros melting into mist. M--- thought we should get a better
view of the northern mountains by riding up to old Nicano's house;
so we went thither, under the cacao rich with yellow and purple
pods. The view was fine: but the northern range, though visible,
was rather too indistinct, and the mainland was not to be seen at
all.'

Nevertheless, the panorama from the top of Montserrat is at once the
most vast, and the most lovely, which I have ever seen. And
whosoever chooses to go and live there may buy any reasonable
quantity of the richest soil at 1 pounds per acre.

Then down off the ridge, toward the northern lowland, lay a headlong
old Indian path, by which we travelled, at last, across a rocky
brook, and into a fresh paradise.

I must be excused for using this word so often: but I use it in the
original Persian sense, as a place in which natural beauty has been
helped by art. An English park or garden would have been called of
old a paradise; and the enceinte of a West Indian house, even in its
present half-wild condition, well deserves the same title. That Art
can help Nature there can be no doubt. 'The perfection of Nature'
exists only in the minds of sentimentalists, and of certain well-
meaning persons, who assert the perfection of Nature when they wish
to controvert science, and