returned to Peter Lytton's. His favourite aunt was delighted to get him,
and her husband, for whom Alexander had no love, was shortly to sail on
one of his frequent voyages.

Mrs. Mitchell had a winter home in Christianstadt, for she loved the gay
life of the little capital, and her large house, on the corner of King
and Strand streets, was opened almost as often as Government House. This
pile, with its imposing facade, represented to her the fulfilment of
worldly ambitions and splendour. There was nothing to compare with it on
Nevis or St. Kitts, nor yet on St. Thomas; and her imagination or memory
gave her nothing in Europe to rival it. When Government House was closed
she felt as if the world were eating bread and cheese. The Danes were
not only the easiest and most generous of rulers, but they entertained
with a royal contempt of pieces of eight, and their adopted children had
neither the excuse nor the desire to return to their native isles.

Christianstadt, although rising straight from the harbour, has the
picturesque effect of a high mountain-village. As the road across the
Island finds its termination in King Street, the perceptible decline and
the surrounding hills, curving in a crescent to the unseen shore a mile
away, create the illusion. On the left the town straggles away in an
irregular quarter for the poor, set thick with groves of cocoanut and
palm. On the right, and parallel with the main road, is Company Street,
and above is the mountain studded with great white stone houses,
softened by the lofty roofs of the royal palm. All along King Street the
massive houses stand close together, each with its arcade and its
curious outside staircase of stone which leads to an upper balcony where
one may catch the breeze and watch the leisures of tropic life. Almost
every house has a court opening into a yard surrounded by the
overhanging balconies of three sides of the building; and here the
guinea fowl screech their matins, the roosters crow all night, there is
always a negro asleep under a cocoanut tree, and a flame of colour from
potted plants.

Down by the sea is the red fort, built on a bluff, and commanding a
harbour beautiful to look upon, with its wooded island, its sharp high
points, its sombre swamps covered with lacing mangroves, but locked from
all the world but that which can come in sailing ships, by the coral
reef on which so many craft have gone to pieces.

From Alexander's high window in Tho