oral breakers. I look to the eastward, and behold a summer sea that
seems to invite navigation. But where are the messengers of commerce
with their white wings? The solitary skiff of the savage "pescador" is
making its way through the surf; a lone "polacca" beats up the coast
with its half-smuggler crew; a "piragua" swings at anchor in a
neighbouring cove: this is all! Far as eye or glass can reach, no other
sail is in sight. The beautiful sea before me is almost unfurrowed by
the keels of commerce.

From this I draw ideas of the land and its inhabitants--unfavourable
ideas of their moral and material condition. No commerce--no industry--
no prosperity. Stay! What see I yonder? Perhaps I have been wronging
them. A dark, tower-like object looms up against the horizon. It is
the smoke of a steamer--sign of advanced civilisation--emblem of active
life. She nears the shore. Ha! a foreign flag--the flag of another
land trails over her taffrail; a foreign flag floats at her peak;
foreign faces appear above her bulwarks, and foreign words issue from
the lips of her commander. She is not of the land. My first conjecture
was right.

She makes for the principal port. She lands a small parcel of letters
and papers, a few bales of merchandise, half a dozen slightly-formed
cadaverous men; and then, putting about, a gun is fired, and she is off
again. She soon disappears away upon the wide ocean; and the waves once
more roll silently in--their glistening surface broken only by the
flapping of the albatross or the plunge of the osprey.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

I direct my eyes northward. I behold a belt of white sand skirting the
blue water. I turn towards the south, and in this direction perceive a
similar belt. To both points it extends beyond the reach of vision--
hundreds of miles beyond--forming, like a ribbon of silver, the selvage
of the Mexican Sea. It separates the turquoise blue of the water from
the emerald green of the forest, contrasting with each by its dazzling
whiteness. Its surface is far from being level, as is usual with the
ocean-strand. On the contrary, its millions of sparkling atoms,
rendered light by the burning sun of the tropic, have been lifted on the
wings of the wind, and thrown into hills and ridges hundreds of feet in
height, and trending in every direction like the wreaths of a great
snow-drift. I advance with difficulty over t