8o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



or freight were to be raised, the bucket at the top of the cliff was 

 filled with water from a tank, and the lighter load at the bottom 

 was quickly drawn up. The speed was regulated by means of 

 brakes applied to the pulleys. 



The main cables were eight hundred feet long, and the load 

 was raised to the height of five hundred and twenty-five feet 

 above the beach. In places the wires ran at a height of sixty feet 

 above the uneven surface of the gorge. 



We were invited to get into the bucket which was at the foot. 



Captain H stood upon the edge, clinging to the trolley, and we 



rapidly glided up between the steep walls of the gorge, from 

 whose rocky sides peered round cactus plants like heads of gnomes 

 and several strange shrubs threw down aerial roots as though 

 in a vain effort to reach the thin soil at the bottom. On gaining 

 the landing at the top we were received by the workmen drawn 

 up in two lines, bowing and murmuring, " Good ebenin, massa," 

 past whom we were conducted up the slope a hundred yards to 

 the superintendent's house. The dwelling and office were really 

 two separate buildings joined together by a wide veranda between 

 them and along their front. This arrangement made them seem 

 like one house in a climate where doors and windows are unneces- 

 sary. The buildings had been brought there framed and ready 

 for putting together, and were small cottages with two rooms and 

 with roofs of corrugated iron. We were met at the house by 

 Mrs. H and her young daughter Dorothea, who, with the cap- 

 tain, were the sole white inhabitants of the island. A small black 

 boy called Chalmers showed us to our room, where we prepared 

 for dinner. By this time the short twilight of the tropics had 

 been succeeded by darkness, and when we returned to the dining 

 room with its bright light we could hardly believe that we were 

 upon an almost inaccessible rock in the Caribbean Sea. 



The next morning, just before daybreak, while yet dark as 

 night in the room, we were awakened by the cries of the sea 

 birds, which made their homes by the hundreds in crevices and 

 niches of the cliffs. Very soon a bell rang in front of the house 

 to awaken the workmen in the huts below us. A tropical dawn 

 is as abrupt as a tropical twilight, and by the time we were 

 dressed and on the veranda the sun was coming up out of the sea 

 and sending its beams in long lines of brightness over the waters. 



The trade wind, with its steady, powerful breath, made the 

 morning delightfully cool, and as we stood looking at the sea far 

 below us, as smooth apparently as a lake, it was difficult to realize 

 that it was the middle of summer in the tropics. 



The workmen were now filing past the house on their way to 

 the mine at the northern end of the island. The bookkeeper, an 

 intelligent colored man, stood at the corner of the veranda and, as 



