e
constitution had been touched and retouched by the home authorities as
if no pains could be too great to make it worthy of a spot so sacred.
There is an administrator, which is a longer word than governor. There
is an executive council, a colonial secretary, an attorney-general, an
auditor-general, and other such 'generals of great charge.' There is a
legislative assembly of fourteen members, seven nominated by the Crown
and seven elected by the people. And there are revenue officers and
excise officers, inspectors of roads, and civil engineers, and school
boards, and medical officers, and registrars, and magistrates. Where
would political perfection be found if not here with such elaborate
machinery?

The results of it all, in the official reports, seemed equally
satisfactory till you looked closely into them. The tariff of articles
on which duties were levied, and the list of articles raised and
exported, seemed to show that Dominica must be a beehive of industry and
productiveness. The revenue, indeed, was a little startling as the
result of this army of officials. Eighteen thousand pounds was the whole
of it, scarcely enough to pay their salaries. The population, too, on
whose good government so much thought had been expended, was only
30,000; of these 30,000 only a hundred were English. The remaining
whites, and those in scanty numbers, were French and principally
Catholics. The soil was as rich as the richest in the world. The
cultivation was growing annually less. The inspector of roads was likely
to have an easy task, for except close to the town there were no roads
at all on which anything with wheels could travel, the old roads made by
the French having dropped into horse tracks, and the horse tracks into
the beds of torrents. Why in an island where the resources of modern
statesmanship had been applied so lavishly and with the latest
discoveries in political science, the effect should have so ill
corresponded to the means employed, was a problem into which it would be
curious to inquire.

The steamer set me down upon the pier and went on upon its way. At the
end of a fortnight it would return and pick me up again. Meanwhile, I
was to make the best of my time. I had been warned beforehand that there
was no hotel in Roseau where an Englishman with a susceptible skin and
palate could survive more than a week; and as I had two weeks to provide
for, I was uncertain what to do with myself. I was spared the tria