nt career
came to an end some time in the forties. The tide of fashion turned,
and as it was too large for a private residence, it was left to the
elements. Earthquakes have riven it, hurricanes unroofed it, and time
devoured it, but it is still magnificent in its ruin.

ATLANTIS. Bacon, in "The New Atlantis," assumes America to be the
fabled continent of Atlantis, which, according to his theory, was not
submerged, but flooded to such an extent that all the inhabitants
perished except the few that fled to the highest mountain tops. I
have, however, preferred to adopt the Platonic theory, as at once more
plausible and interesting.

QUEEN ELIZABETH'S RING. West Indian tradition gives this historic ring
to the Warner family, as related in the story. It descended in the
direct line to Colonel Edward Warner, who bequeathed it by will to his
brother, Ashton Warner, as "a diamond ring in shape of a heart, given
by Queen Elizabeth to the Earl of Essex." This will, dated 27th of
December, 1732, was proved in the Probate Court of Canterbury,
England, on the 21st of February following. From Ashton Warner it
descended to his son Joseph, and at the date of the story was in the
possession of Charles Warner, Esq., Solicitor-General of Trinidad, B.
W. I.

The Gorgeous Isle

CHAPTER I

Bath House, the most ambitious structure ever erected in the West
Indies, and perhaps the most beautiful hotel the world has ever seen,
was the popular winter refuge of English people of fashion in the
earlier half of the nineteenth century. This immense irregular pile of
masonry stood on a terraced eminence rising from the flat border of
Nevis, a volcano whose fires had migrated to less fortunate isles and
covered with some fifty square miles of soil that yielded every luxury
of the Antilles. There was game in the jungles, fish in the sea, did
the men desire sport; there were groves of palm and cocoanut for
picnics, a town like a bazaar, a drive of twenty-four miles round the
base of the ever-beautiful ever-changing mountain; and a sloop always
ready to convey the guests to St. Kitts, Montserrat, or Antigua, where
they were sure of entertainment from the hospitable planters. There
were sea baths and sulphur baths; above all, the air was light and
stimulating on the hottest days, for the trade winds rarely deserted
Nevis and St. Kitts, no matter what the fate of the rest of that
blooming archipelago.

Bath House was surrounded by wi