edies have been tried. The constitution has been altered a
dozen times. Just now I believe the Crown is trying to do without one,
having found the results of the elective principle not encouraging, but
we shall perhaps revert to it before long; any way, the tables show that
each year the trade of the island decreases, and will continue to
decrease while the expenditure increases and will increase.

I did not land, for the time was short, and as a beautiful picture the
island was best seen from the deck. The characteristics of the people
are the same in all the Antilles, and could be studied elsewhere. The
bustle and confusion in the ship, the crowd of boats round the ladder,
the clamour of negro men's tongues, and the blaze of colours from the
negro women's dresses, made up together a scene sufficiently
entertaining for the hour which we remained. In the middle of it the
Governor, Mr. S----, came on board with another official. They were
going on in the steamer to Tobago, which formed part of his dominions.

Leaving St. Vincent, we were all the forenoon passing the Grenadines, a
string of small islands fitting into their proper place in the Antilles
semicircle, but as if Nature had forgotten to put them together or else
had broken some large island to pieces and scattered them along the
line. Some were large enough to have once carried sugar plantations, and
are now made over wholly to the blacks; others were fishing stations,
droves of whales during certain months frequenting these waters; others
were mere rocks, amidst which the white-sailed American coasting
schooners were beating up against the north-east trade. There was a
stiff breeze, and the sea was white with short curling waves, but we
were running before it and the wind kept the deck fresh. At Grenada, the
next island, we were to go on shore.

Grenada was, like St. Vincent, the home for centuries of man-eating
Caribs, French for a century and a half, and finally, after many
desperate struggles for it, was ceded to England at the peace of
Versailles. It is larger than St. Vincent, though in its main features
it has the same character. There are lakes in the hills, and a volcanic
crater not wholly quiescent; but the especial value of Grenada, which
made us fight so hardly to win it, is the deep and landlocked harbour,
the finest in all the Antilles.

Pere Labat, to whose countrymen it belonged at the time of his own
visit there, says that 'if Barbadoes had s