. That was
the last of the fighting, and we have been left since in undisturbed
possession. Dominica was then sacred as the scene of Rodney's glories.
Now I suppose, if the French came again, we should calculate the
mercantile value of the place to us, and having found it to be nothing
at all, might conclude that it would be better to let them keep it.

We went up and up, winding round projecting spurs of mountain, here and
there coming on plateaus where pioneering blacks were clearing patches
of forest for their yams and coffee. We skirted the edge of a valley
several miles across, on the far side of which we saw the steaming of
the sulphur springs, and beyond and above it a mountain peak four
thousand feet high and clothed with timber to the summit. In most
countries the vegetation grows thin as you rise into the higher
altitudes. Here the bush only seems to grow denser, the trees grander
and more self-asserting, the orchids and parasites on the boughs more
variously brilliant. There were tree ferns less splendid than those in
New Zealand and Australia, but larger than any one can see in English
hot-houses, wild oranges bending under the weight of ripe fruit which
was glowing on their branches, wild pines, wild begonias scattered along
the banks, and a singularly brilliant plant which they call the wild
plantain, but it is not a plantain at all, with large broad pointed
leaves radiating out from a centre like an aloe's, and a crimson flower
stem rising up straight in the middle. It was startling to see such
insolent beauty displaying itself indifferently in the heart of the
wilderness with no human eye to look at it unless of some passing black
or wandering Carib.

The track had been carried across hot streams fresh from boiling
springs, and along the edge of chasms where there was scarcely foothold
for the horses. At length we found ourselves on what was apparently the
highest point of the pass. We could not see where we were for the trees
and bushes which surrounded us, but the path began to descend on the
other side. Near the summit was a lake formed in an old volcanic crater
which we had come specially to look at. We descended a few hundred feet
into a hollow among the hills where the lake was said to be. Where was
it, then? I asked the guide, for I could discover nothing that suggested
a lake or anything like one. He pointed into the bush where it was
thicker with tropical undergrowth than a wheatfield with ears