Two Years in the French West Indies

arched buildings peeping through breaks in a line of mahogany, bread-fruit, mango, tamarind, and palm trees,-an irregular mass of at least fifty different tints, from a fiery e

rudely constructed of light timber. There are many heavy arcades and courts opening on the streets with large archways. Lava blocks have been used in paving as well as

of an earthquake region, seem extravagantly heavy by contrast with the frail wooden superstructures. One reason may be that the city was burned and sacked during a negro revolt in 1878;-the Spanish basements r

whether hut or public building;-everywhere you see the splitted green of banana leaves. In the court-yards you may occas

few have little tables, but as a rule the eatables are simply laid on the dusty ground or heaped upon the steps of the piazza-reddish-yellow mangoes, that look like great apples squeezed out of shape, bunches of bananas, pyramids of bright-green cocoanuts, immense golden-green oranges, and various other fruits and vegetables totally unfamiliar to Northern eyes.... It is no use to ask questi

ely, garbed-only a skirt or petticoat, over which is worn a sort of calico short dress, which scarcely descends two inches below the hips, and is confined about the waist with a belt or a string. The skirt bells out like the skirt of a dancer, leaving the f

were it not for the absence of real grace of form in such compact, powerful little figures. All wear brightly colored cottonade stuffs, and the general effect of the costume in a large gathering is very agreeable, the dominant hues being pink, white, and blue.

moke Porto Rico cigars, and drink West Indian lemonades, strongly flavored with rum. The tobacco has a rich, sweet taste; the rum is velvety, sugary, with a pleasant, soothing effect: both have a rich aroma.

e eyes.... There are few comely faces visible,-in the streets all are black who pass. But through open shop-doors on

roves of lemon and orange; while tamarind and mahoganies are heavily sombre. Everywhere palm-crests soar above the wood-lines, and tremble with a metallic shimmering in the blue light. Up through a ponderous thickness of tamarind rises the spire of the church; a skeleton of open stone-work, without glasses or lattices or shutters of any sort for its naked apertures: it is all ope

mmense yellow glow in the west,-a lemon-colored blaze; but when it melts

ors of the nature about them, and with the dark complexions of the natives. Some very slender, graceful brown lads are bathing with them,-lightly built as deer: these are probably creoles. Some of the black bathers are clumsy-looking, and have astonishingly long legs.... Then little boys come down, leading horses;-they strip, leap naked on the animals' backs, and ride into the sea,-yelling, screamin

ke a thin protraction of color from the extended spur of verdure in which the western end of the island terminates. That is a sunken reef, and a dangerous one. Lying high upon it, in very sharp relief against the blue light, is a wrecked vessel on her beam

d along their high soft slopes there are white specklings, which are villages and towns. These white specks diminish swiftly,-dwindle to the dimensions of salt-grains,-finally va

of the Cosmos and that ghostlier one which stretches over the black deep behind us. This alternately broadens and narrows at regular intervals, concomitantly with the rhythmical swing of the steamer, Before us