which lost itself before one could see
where it ended. They told us that in old times, when troops were in the
fort, and the white men of the island went about and enjoyed
themselves, there were boats on this lake, and parties came up and
fished there. Now it was like the pool in the gardens of the palace of
the sleeping princess, guarded by impenetrable thickets, and whether
there are fish there, or enchanted princesses, or the huts of some tribe
of Caribs, hiding in those fastnesses from negroes whom they hate, or
from white men whom they do not love, no one knows or cares to know. I
made a hurried pencil sketch, and we went on.

A little farther and we were out of the bush, at a rocky terrace on the
rim of the great valley which carries the rainfall on the eastern side
of the mountains down into the Atlantic. We were 3,000 feet above the
sea. Far away the ocean stretched out before us, the horizon line where
sky met water so far distant that both had melted into mist at the point
where they touched. Mount Diablot, where Labat spent a night catching
the devil birds, soared up on our left hand. Below, above, around us, it
was forest everywhere; forest, and only forest, a land fertile as Adam's
paradise, still waiting for the day when 'the barren woman shall bear
children.' Of course it was beautiful, if that be of any
consequence--mountain peaks and crags and falling waters, and the dark
green of the trees in the foreground, dissolving from tint to tint to
grey, violet, and blue in the far-off distance. Even at the height where
we stood, the temperature must have been 70 deg.. But the steaming damp of
the woods was gone, the air was clear and exhilarating as champagne.
What a land! And what were we doing with it? This fair inheritance, won
by English hearts and hands for the use of the working men of England,
and the English working men lying squalid in the grimy alleys of crowded
towns, and the inheritance turned into a wilderness. Visions began to
rise of what might be, but visions which were taken from me before they
could shape themselves. The curtain of vapour fell down over us again,
and all was gone, and of that glorious picture nothing was left but our
own two selves and the few yards of red rock and soil on which we were
standing.

There was no need for haste now. We return slowly to our horses, and
our horses carried us home by the way that we had come. Captain C. went
carelessly in front through the fog, ov