dge in which I needed no
instruction, geographical information seeming to soak into the
cells of my brain without an effort. At the age of eleven, I knew
a great deal more of maps, and of the mutual relation of
localities all over the globe, than most grown-up people do. It
was almost a mechanical acquirement. I was now greatly taken with
the geography of the West Indies, of every part of which I had
made MS. maps. There was something powerfully attractive to my
fancy in the great chain of the Antilles, lying on the sea like
an open bracelet, with its big jewels and little jewels strung on
an invisible thread. I liked to shut my eyes and see it all, in a
mental panorama, stretched from Cape Sant' Antonio to the
Serpent's Mouth. Several of these lovely islands, these emeralds
and amethysts set on the Caribbean Sea, my Father had known well
in his youth, and I was importunate in questioning him about
them. One day, as I multiplied inquiries, he rose in his
impetuous way, and climbing to the top of a bookcase, brought
down a thick volume and presented it to me. 'You'll find all
about the Antilles there,' he said, and left me with _Tom
Cringle's Log_ in my possession.

The embargo laid upon every species of fiction by my Mother's
powerful scruple had never been raised, although she had been
dead four years. As I have said in an earlier chapter, this was a
point on which I believe that my Father had never entirely agreed
with her. He had, however, yielded to her prejudice; and no work
of romance, no fictitious story, had ever come in my way. It is
remarkable that among our books, which amounted to many hundreds,
I had never discovered a single work of fiction until my Father
himself revealed the existence of Michael Scott's wild
masterpiece. So little did I understand what was allowable in the
way of literary invention that I began the story without a doubt
that it was true, and I think it was my Father himself who, in
answer to an inquiry, explained to me that it was 'all made up'.
He advised me to read the descriptions of the sea, and of the
mountains of Jamaica, and 'skip' the pages which gave imaginary
adventures and conversations. But I did not take his counsel;
these latter were the flower of the book to me. I had never read,
never dreamed of anything like them, and they filled my whole
horizon with glory and with joy.

I suppose that when my Father was a younger man, and less
pietistic, he had read _Tom Cringle's