ilors were believed capable of daring and of doing.

At the back of these two Pitons is the Souffriere, probably the
remains of the old crater, now fallen in, and only 1000 feet above
the sea: a golden egg to the islanders, were it but used, in case
of war, and any difficulty occurring in obtaining sulphur from
Sicily, a supply of the article to almost any amount might be
obtained from this and the other like Solfaterras of the British
Antilles; they being, so long as the natural distillation of the
substance continues active as at present, inexhaustible. But to
work them profitably will require a little more common-sense than
the good folks of St. Lucia have as yet shown. In 1836 two
gentlemen of Antigua, {43a} Mr. Bennett and Mr. Wood, set up sulphur
works at the Souffriere of St. Lucia, and began prosperously enough,
exporting 540 tons the first year. 'But in 1840,' says Mr. Breen,
'the sugar-growers took the alarm,' fearing, it is to be presumed,
that labour would be diverted from the cane-estates, 'and at their
instigation the Legislative Council imposed a tax of 16s. sterling
on every ton of purified sulphur exported from the colony.' The
consequence was that 'Messrs. Bennett and Wood, after incurring a
heavy loss of time and treasure, had to break up their establishment
and retire from the colony.' One has heard of the man who killed
the goose to get the golden egg. In this case the goose, to avoid
the trouble of laying, seems to have killed the man.

The next link in the chain, as the steamer runs southward, is St.
Vincent; a single volcano peak, like St. Kitts, or the Basse Terre
of Guadaloupe. Very grand are the vast sheets, probably of lava
covered with ash, which pour down from between two rounded mountains
just above the town. Rich with green canes, they contrast strongly
with the brown ragged cliffs right and left of them, and still more
with the awful depths beyond and above, where, underneath a canopy
of bright white clouds, scowls a purple darkness of cliffs and
glens, among which lies, unseen, the Souffriere.

In vain, both going and coming, by sunlight, and again by moonlight,
when the cane-fields gleamed white below and the hills were pitch-
black above, did we try to catch a sight of this crater-peak. One
fact alone we ascertained, that like all, as far as I have seen, of
the West Indian volcanoes, it does not terminate in an ash-cone, but
in ragged clif