aid my respects to the governor, who, although a Portuguese, chose
to follow the fashion of the island, and was as black as most of his
subjects. After a few French compliments, I took my leave. I was
curious to see the old town of St Jago, which had been abandoned; and
after a hot walk of two hours over uncultivated ground, covered with
fine goats, which are the staple of the island, I reached the desolate
spot.

It was melancholy to behold: it seemed as if the human race were
extinct. The town was built on a wide ravine running down to the sea;
the houses were of stone, and handsome; the streets regular and paved,
which proves that it had formerly been a place of some importance; but
it is surprising that a spot so barren as this island generally is
should ever have had any mercantile prosperity. Whatever it did enjoy,
I should conceive must have been anterior to the Portuguese having
sailed round the Cape of Good Hope; and the solidity and even elegance
of construction among the buildings justifies the supposition.

The walls were massive, and remained entire; the churches were
numerous, but the roofs of them and the dwelling-houses had mostly
fallen in. Trees had grown to a considerable height in the midst of
the streets, piercing through the pavements and raising the stones
on each side; and the convent gardens were a mere wilderness. The
cocoa-nut tree had thrust its head through many a roof, and its long
stems through the tops of the houses; the banana luxuriated out of
the windows. The only inhabitants of a town capable of containing ten
thousand inhabitants, were a few friars who resided in a miserable
ruin which had once been a beautiful convent. They were the first
negro friars I had ever seen; their cowls were as black as their
faces, and their hair grey and woolly. I concluded they had adopted
this mode of life as being the laziest; but I could not discover by
what means they could gain a livelihood, for there were none to give
them anything in charity.

The appearance of these poor men added infinitely to the necromantic
character of the whole melancholy scene. There was a beauty, a
loveliness, in these venerable ruins, which delighted me. There was a
solemn silence in the town; but there was a small, still voice, that
said to me: "London may one day be the same--and Paris; and you and
your children's children will all have lived and had their loves and
adventures; but who will the wretched man be, that