nd alone. The decline
in the value of property, the general decay of the white interest in the
islands, and the rapid increase of the blacks, taught those who at one
time were ready for the change what the real nature of it would be. They
have paused to consider; and the longer they consider the less they like
it.

Sir Graham had called upon me at Government House, and had spoken fully
and freely about the offered American sugar treaty. As a severe sufferer
he was naturally irritated at the rejection of it; and in the mood in
which I found him, I should think it possible that if the Americans
would hold their hands out with an offer of admission into the Union, he
and a good many other gentlemen would meet them halfway. He did not say
so--I conjecture only from natural probabilities, and from what I should
feel myself if I were in their position. Happily the temptation cannot
fall in their way. An American official laconically summed up the
situation to me: 'As satellites, sir, as much as you please; but as
parts of the primary--no, sir.' The Americans will not take them into
the Union; they must remain, therefore, with their English primary and
make the best of it; neither as satellites, for they have no proper
motion of their own, nor as incorporated in the British Empire, for they
derive no benefit from their connection with it, but as poor relations
distantly acknowledged. I did not expect that Sir Graham would have
more to say to me than he had said already: but he was a cultivated and
noteworthy person, his house was said to be the most splendid of the old
Barbadian merchant palaces, and I gratefully accepted an invitation to
pay him a short visit.

I started as before in the early morning, before the sun was above the
trees. The road followed the line of the shore. Originally, I believe,
Barbadoes was like the Antilles, covered with forest. In the interior
little remains save cabbage palms and detached clumps of mangy-looking
mahogany trees. The forest is gone, and human beings have taken the
place of it. For ten miles I was driving through a string of straggling
villages, each cottage or cabin having its small vegetable garden and
clump of plantains. Being on the western or sheltered side of the
island, the sea was smooth and edged with mangrove, through which at
occasional openings we saw the shining water and the white coral beach,
and fishing boats either drawn up upon it or anchored outside with their
sail