mber without end drifts from
that river? In a word, I have no explanation whatsoever to give; as
I am not minded to fall back on the medieval one, that the devil
must have brought them thither, to plague the inhabitants for their
sins.

Among all these beautiful islands, St. Lucia is, I think, the most
beautiful; not indeed on account of the size or form of its central
mass, which is surpassed by that of several others, but on account
of those two extraordinary mountains at its south-western end,
which, while all conical hills in the French islands are called
Pitons, bear the name of The Pitons par excellence. From most
elevated points in the island their twin peaks may be seen jutting
up over the other hills, like, according to irreverent English
sailors, the tips of a donkey's ears. But, as the steamer runs
southward along the shore, these two peaks open out, and you find
yourself in deep water close to the base of two obelisks, rather
than mountains, which rise sheer out of the sea, one to the height
of 2710, the other to that of 2680 feet, about a mile from each
other. Between them is the loveliest little bay; and behind them
green wooded slopes rise toward the rearward mountain of the
Souffriere. The whole glitters clear and keen in blazing sunshine:
but behind, black depths of cloud and gray sheets of rain shroud all
the central highlands in mystery and sadness. Beyond them, without
a shore, spreads open sea. But the fantastic grandeur of the place
cannot be described in words. The pencil of the artist must be
trusted. I can vouch that he has not in the least exaggerated the
slenderness and steepness of the rock-masses. One of them, it is
said, has never been climbed; unless a myth which hangs about it is
true. Certain English sailors, probably of Rodney's men--and
numbering, according to the pleasure of the narrator, three hundred,
thirty, or three--are said to have warped themselves up it by lianes
and scrub; but they found the rock-ledges garrisoned by an enemy
more terrible than any French. Beneath the bites of the Fer-de-
lances, and it may be beneath the blaze of the sun, man after man
dropped; and lay, or rolled down the cliffs. A single survivor was
seen to reach the summit, to wave the Union Jack in triumph over his
head, and then to fall a corpse. So runs the tale, which, if not
true, has yet its value, as a token of what, in those old days,
English sa