t is mounted on a huge pedestal and is of
heroic size, the white glitter of its marble enhanced by its truly
magnificent setting, a circle of towering royal palms. There she
stands, the lovely Creole woman of Martinique, forever looking at
"Trois Islets," as if she were remembering her birth in an overseer's
shack and her girlhood passed in a sugar-mill. Straightway the crowds
of native men and women chaffering in the market-place, the mothers
holding up their crowing babies to the statue, the nursemaids and
groups of playing children, all vanished, and we re-lived in spirit
poor Josephine's past, thrilling anew at the remembrance of her
romance, her triumph, and her bitter sorrow--the Creole girl who
crossed the sea to become Empress of France and share a throne with
Napoleon, but who sailed back to her island home a brokenhearted
woman.

Good-bye, Martinique, land of Josephine; and land of St. Pierre, the
scene of one of the greatest tragedies of modern times, when the fury
of Mont Pelee engulfed the growth of centuries and buried forty
thousand human creatures in its scalding lava. St. Lucia, of the
Windward group, to-morrow, and then Barbados, from whence the Diana
goes on to Demerara and returns a week or so later, so that we are
able to rejoin her, taking up our former comfortable cabins and our
much-liked captain.

* * * * *

S.S. Diana
Between Barbados and New York
February 11

Here we are again on our homeward trip, making fewer landings and
briefer stops, principally to take on passengers and thousands of
barrels of limes.

Barbados, with its charming hotel at Hastings, was an unalloyed
delight; and Dorothea, who had determined to live in each of the
islands as it came along, would finally have transferred her
allegiance for good and all had it not seemed more loyal for an
American to choose one of our own possessions and "grow up with the
country." We found ourselves in the midst of pleasant, even
distinguished, society--British officials, ex-governors, and
judge-advocates of the various islands, English and Canadian soldiers
on sick-leave, and officers commanding the U-boat chasers in near-by
waters. Dorothea danced nightly and held court daily on the broad
piazzas, reminding me of Rudyard Kipling's fascinating heroine