tless lizards
were lazily basking. Through the bars of the railings on each side of
them there were intertwined the runners of the largest and most
powerfully scented stephanotis which I have ever seen. Captain Churchill
(one of the Marlborough Churchills) received me with more than
cordiality. Society is not abundant in his Barataria, and perhaps as
coming from England I was welcome to him in his solitude. His wife, an
English Creole--that is, of pure English blood, but born in the
island--was as hospitable as her husband. They would not let me feel
that I was a stranger, and set me at my ease in a moment with a warmth
which was evidently unassumed. Captain C. was lame, having hurt his
foot. In a day or two he hoped to be able to mount his horse again, when
we were to ride together and see the curiosities. Meanwhile, he talked
sorrowfully enough of his own situation and the general helplessness of
it. A man whose feet are chained and whose hands are in manacles is not
to be found fault with if he cannot use either. He is not intended to
use either. The duty of an administrator of Dominica, it appears, is to
sit still and do nothing, and to watch the flickering in the socket of
the last remains of English influence and authority. Individually he was
on good terms with everyone, with the Catholic bishop especially, who,
to his regret and mine, was absent at the time of my visit.

His establishment was remarkable; it consisted of two black girls--a
cook and a parlourmaid--who 'did everything;' and 'everything,' I am
bound to say, was done well enough to please the most fastidious nicety.
The cooking was excellent. The rooms, which were handsomely furnished,
were kept as well and in as good order as in the Churchills' ancestral
palace at Blenheim. Dominica has a bad name for vermin. I had been
threatened with centipedes and scorpions in my bedroom. I had been
warned there, as everywhere in the West Indies, never to walk across the
floor with bare feet, lest a land crab should lay hold of my toe or a
jigger should bite a hole in it, lay its eggs there, and bring me into
the hands of the surgeon. Never while I was Captain C.'s guest did I see
either centipede, or scorpion, or jigger, or any other unclean beast in
any room of which these girls had charge. Even mosquitoes did not
trouble me, so skilfully and carefully they arranged the curtains. They
were dressed in the fashion of the French islands, something like the
Moorish