amboos, dabbed with mud, and roofed over with gigantic palm-leaves.
Each had its garden in front, of yams, cocos, and sweet potatoes. The
negroes of the village were our nearest neighbours, and we visited
them occasionally, in the hope of ameliorating their condition by
communicating to them such instruction as they were capable of
receiving; but their grotesque ideas of liberty, overweening egotism,
and marvellous superstition, together with the shortness of our stay
in their vicinity, combined to frustrate our object.

The place we occupied had been once a missionary station, and
consisted merely of a couple of chambers, a sitting-room, and a
veranda that ran round the house, which was built of an inferior
species of mahogany, and ceiled and floored with the same. The colour
of the wood, together with the fact, that all the former occupants had
fallen victims to the climate, gave the house an air of extraordinary
gloom; still, this was in some measure dissipated by the multitude of
flowers in the garden, of the kinds familiar to us in England, and
which, from the equable temperature of the mountain climate,
flourished in the open air.

Before the windows flashed a bright parterre, begirt with a thick
hedge of salvias, above which the exquisite humming-bird for ever
hovered. The hedge was intermingled with the tea-rose, white jasmine,
fuchsia, pink cactus, and bignonia; all of which, from the hardihood
of their growth, appeared indigenous. Balsams sprung like weeds, and
every conceivable variety of convolvulus flaunted in gay bands from
the shafts of ever-blossoming limes. Along the veranda, extending from
column to column, ran a drapery of nurandias, lobeas, and plumbago;
while at the end of the parterre, in close proximity, stretched the
grave-yard of the station, studded thick with white stones, recording
the names of many a once weary missionary and Christianised negro.

About a month after our arrival at Rosevale--for so was the place
called--my husband was compelled by professional duty to be absent for
a couple of days. It was the first time I had ever been left alone,
having been only recently married, and separated from my family in
England. An utter stranger in the island, my nerves were somewhat
subdued at the prospect before me; and although determined to endure
the loneliness very bravely, still it was not felt the less acutely.
There were no Europeans nearer than a distance of five miles; and
owing to