hree centuries and a half before, had traversed with greater
astonishment, but not with more delight. Everything now conspired to
raise our spirits. The soft air, reminding us by contrast of the winter
we had left behind, the deep blue sky, answered by waves of an intenser
blue below, whose gentle ripples, unlike the stormy Atlantic surges
which we had escaped, only came up to bear us kindly on, and the
knowledge that we were but two days' sail from the fair island to which
some were returning, and which two of us were about to make our home for
an indefinite future, all made us now a very different set from the
dull, anxious, seasick group that the Atlantic had lately been boxing
about at his pleasure.

Before making Jamaica, however, we came in sight of the negro empire of
Hayti, and ran along for a day under its northern coast.

We saw swelling hills, covered on their tops with woods, and sloping
down to the shore, but were too far distant to distinguish very plainly
any sign of human habitation. By nightfall we had sunk the land, but
were astonished in the morning to see looming through the air, at an
immense distance, a mountain, which in height seemed more like one of
the Andes than any summit that Hayti could afford. Its actual height, I
presume, may not have been less than 8,000 feet, but in my memory it
shows like Chimborazo.

It was now Saturday, the 8th of December. We held our way westward
across the hundred miles of sea that separate Hayti from Jamaica. All
eyes were now turned to discover the first glimpse of our expected
island home. At last, about the middle of the afternoon, we remarked on
the western horizon the distant blot of indigo that showed us where it
lay. Another twenty-four hours would pass before we should land, but
that distant patch of mountain blue seemed to have brought us to land
already. Heavy rain clouds coming up, hid it from us again, but gave
ample compensation in the sunset that followed, one of the two grand
sunsets of my life. The other was in Andover, Mass., which, is justly
celebrated for the beauty of its sunsets. There the banks of white
cloud, lying along the west, glowed with an inner radiance, that led the
eye and the mind back into the very depths of heaven. Here, on the other
hand, an unimaginable wealth of color was poured out on the very face of
the sky. The whole western heaven, to the zenith, was one mingled
melting mass of gorgeous dyes, rendered the more magnific