en had been, in spite of a pretty hot
scorching sun, since dawn, on the look-out for it.

"Who saw it first?" asked the captain, who was always more anxious when
nearing the coast than at any other time.

"Tom Tillson," was the answer from aloft.

"A glass of grog for you, Tom, if it proves to be the land, and you have
kept your eyes open to good purpose!" said the captain, preparing
himself to go to the mast-head, where the mates followed him.

They were satisfied that Tom had fairly won his glass of grog, I
suppose; for, after some time, when I went aloft, I saw a high
blue-pointed mountain rising out of the sparkling sea with ranges of
lower hills beneath it.

As we drew in with the shore, we could distinguish the fields of
sugar-cane surrounded by lime-trees, and the white houses of the
planters, and the huts of the negroes; and I thought that I should very
much like to take a run among the lofty palmetto and the wild
cotton-trees and the fig-trees, and to chase the frolicsome monkeys I
had heard spoken of among their branches. A light silvery mist hung
over the whole scene, and made it look doubly beautiful. I asked Peter
what land it was, for I thought that we had arrived at America itself.
He laughed, and said that it was only a little island called Saint
Christopher's; and that he'd heard say that it was first discovered by
the great admiral who had found out America, and that he had called it
after his own name. Peter, though he could not read, had a great store
of information, which he had picked up from various people. He was not
always quite correct; and that was from not being able to read, as he
was less able to judge of the truth of what people told him; but
altogether, I learned a great deal from his conversation.

We came to an anchor before the town of Basseterre, the capital of the
island. It was a clean handsome-looking place, and a number of ships
lay before it; while behind it, rising from the wide valley, richly
cultivated and beautiful in the extreme, rose the lofty and precipitous
crags of Mount Misery, 3700 feet high. It may well be so-called, for it
would be pain and misery to have to climb up it, and still greater not
to be able to come down again!

After the events I have before described, we had come south till we fell
in with the trade-winds, which had brought us on a due westerly course
to this place. I did not go on shore; but I heard the captain say that
the merchants and