n a
shortsighted prophet. The English had obtained Grenada, and this is what
they had made of it. The forts which had been erected by his countrymen
had been deserted and dismantled; the castle on which we had seen our
flag flying was a ruin; the walls were crumbling and in many places had
fallen down. One solitary gun was left, but that was honeycombed and
could be fired only with half a charge to salute with. It was true that
the forts had ceased to be of use, but that was because there was
nothing left to defend. The harbour is, as I said, the best in the West
Indies. There was not a vessel in it, nor so much as a boat-yard that I
could see where a spar could be replaced or a broken rivet mended. Once
there had been a line of wharves, but the piles had been eaten by worms
and the platforms had fallen through. Round us when we landed were
unroofed warehouses, weed-choked courtyards, doors gone, and window
frames fallen in or out. Such a scene of desolation and desertion I
never saw in my life save once, a few weeks later at Jamaica. An English
lady with her children had come to the landing place to meet my friends.
They, too, were more like wandering ghosts than human beings with warm
blood in them. All their thoughts were on going home--home out of so
miserable an exile.[4]

Nature and the dark race had been simply allowed by us to resume
possession of the island. Here, where the cannon had roared, and ships
and armies had fought, and the enterprising English had entered into
occupancy, under whom, as we are proud to fancy, the waste places of the
earth grow green, and industry and civilisation follow as an inevitable
fruit, all was now silence. And this was an English Crown colony, as
rich in resources as any area of soil of equal size in the world.
England had demanded and seized the responsibility of managing it--this
was the result.

A gentleman who for some purpose was a passing resident in the island,
had asked us to dine with him. His house was three or four miles inland.
A good road remained as a legacy from other times, and a pair of horses
and a phaeton carried us swiftly to his door. The town of St. George's
had once been populous, and even now there seemed no want of people, if
mere numbers sufficed. We passed for half a mile through a straggling
street, where the houses were evidently occupied though unconscious for
many a year of paint or repair. They were squalid and dilapidated, but
the luxuriant ba