ers had planted, waving green over the wrecks of
their forgotten industry. Such industry as is now to be found is, as
elsewhere in general, the industry of the black peasantry. It is the
same as in Grenada: the whites, or the English part of them, have lost
heart, and cease to struggle against the stream. A state of things more
helplessly provoking was never seen. Skill and capital and labour have
only to be brought to bear together, and the land might be a Garden of
Eden. All precious fruits, and precious spices, and gums, and plants of
rarest medicinal virtues will spring and grow and flourish for the
asking. The limes are as large as lemons, and in the markets of the
United States are considered the best in the world.

As to natural beauty, the West Indian Islands are like Scott's novels,
where we admire most the one which we have read the last. But Dominica
bears the palm away from all of them. One morning Mr. F---- took me a
walk up the Roseau river, an ample stream even in what is called the dry
season, with deep pools full of eels and mullet. We entered among the
hills which were rising steep above us. The valley grew deeper, or
rather there were a series of valleys, gorges dense with forest, which
had been torn out by the cataracts. The path was like the mule tracts of
the Alps, cut in other days along the sides of the precipices with
remnants of old conduits which supplied water to the mills below. Rich
odorous acacias bent over us. The flowers, the trees, the birds, the
insects, were a maze of perfume and loveliness. Occasionally some valley
opposite the sun would be spanned by a rainbow as the rays shone through
a morning shower out of the blue sky. We wandered on and on, wading
through tributary brooks, stopping every minute to examine some new fern
or plant, peasant women and children meeting us at intervals on their
way into the town. There were trees to take shelter under when
indispensable, which even the rain of Dominica could not penetrate. The
levels at the bottom of the valleys and the lower slopes, where the soil
was favourable, were carelessly planted with limes which were in full
bearing. Small black boys and girls went about under the trees,
gathering the large lemon-shaped fruit which lay on the ground thick as
apples in a West of England orchard. Here was all this profusion of
nature, lavish beyond example, and the enterprising youth of England
were neglecting a colony which might yield them wea