striking right across the island, along the coral ridge which forms the
backbone of it. We found ourselves at length in a grove of orange trees
and shaddocks, at the old church of St. John's, which stands upon a
perpendicular cliff; Codrington College on the level under our feet, and
beyond us the open Atlantic and the everlasting breakers from the trade
winds fringing the shore with foam. Far out were the white sails of the
fishing smacks. The Barbadians are careless of weather, and the best of
boat sailors. It was very pretty in the bright morning, and the church
itself was not the least interesting part of the scene. The door was
wide open. We went in, and I seemed to be in a parish church in England
as parish churches used to be when I was a child. There were the
old-fashioned seats, the old unadorned communion table, the old pulpit
and reading desk and the clerk's desk below, with the lion and the
unicorn conspicuous above the chancel arch. The white tablets on the
wall bore familiar names dating back into the last century. On the floor
were flagstones still older with armorial bearings and letters cut in
stone, half effaced by the feet of the generations who had trodden up
the same aisles till they, too, lay down and rested there. And there was
this, too, to be remembered--that these Barbadian churches, old as they
might seem, had belonged always to the Anglican communion. No mass had
ever been said at that altar. It was a milestone on the high road of
time, and was venerable to me at once for its antiquity and for the era
at which it had begun to exist.

At the porch was an ancient slab on which was a coat of arms, a crest
with a hand and sword, and a motto, '_Sic nos, sic nostra tuemur._' The
inscription said that it was in memory of Michael Mahon, 'of the kingdom
of Ireland,' erected by his children and grandchildren. Who was Michael
Mahon? Some expatriated, so-called rebel, I suppose, whose sword could
not defend him from being Barbados'd with so many other poor wretches
who were sent the same road--victims of the tragi-comedy of the English
government of Ireland. There were plenty of them wandering about in
Labat's time, ready, as Labat observes, to lend a help to the French,
should they take a fancy to land a force in the island.

The churchyard was scarcely so home-like. The graves were planted with
tropical shrubs and flowers. Palms waved over the square stone
monuments--stephanotis and jessamine crept ab