A WEST INDIAN SKETCH. 0'7 



the shoulders were the only responses which this sally elicited,, and 

 which the Yankee doubtless did not interpret to his disadvantage. 



Having inspected this mountain from several points, and rowed 

 under its dark cavern, we made for the fishing hamlet of Saut d'Eaux, 

 so called from two or three little cascades that fall here. This is an 

 extraordinary site for a village; it is a sandy and rocky nook of 

 nearly a triangular form, the base of which is the sea, and its re- 

 maining sides a mountain of about 2,000 feet high, so very steep that 

 it is astonishing how trees force tlieir roots * in the soil. The whole 

 of the bight (to use a maritime phrase) is but twenty or thirty paces 

 in extent, yet on this confined spot dwell more than eighty souls, the 

 constant inhabitants, and on an average one hundred transient persons 

 using such shelter as about fourteen houses afford. These are huddled 

 together with their respective mud-built walls touching each other. 

 Some stand on the rocks, some in holes dug out of the mountains, 

 but most of them on the sands, looking like large packages thrown 

 promiscuously out of a ship when she discharges her cargo. There 

 is no passage to it save the surfy bay on one side, and over the steep 

 mountain on the other. How any one can climb it is astonishing ; 

 but this its inhabitants, and those who visit them for the purpose of 

 bartering, do with heavy burdens on their heads. To achieve this, 

 they make use of steps which they have dug in the mountains. 

 Sometimes they pull themselves up by holding on the roots of the 

 trees which project from the steep soil; and at others they climb 

 large rocks which are loosely embedded in the surface of the soil. It 

 seemed to us a strange place for one hundred and eighty human 

 beings to fix their residence. The danger of an earthquake naturally- 

 suggested itself, or that some of those extended cataracts, called Tri- 

 nidadrains, might loosen the rocks, which seemed but suspended over 

 their crowded huts, ready at each moment to crush them, as the sword 

 of the tyrant hung by a single hair over the bed of his guest ! Our 

 ideas at the time anticipated a catastrophe that took place some months 

 after this visit, during one of those deluges which are almost peculiar 

 to this island. A stream poured down the mountain with such vio- 

 lence, that some of the rocks above gave way ; these, in their de- 

 scent, brought down others ; the lower this " ponderous ruin" de- 

 scended the more terrific it became, until a mass of rocks, earth, and 

 trees alighted on the wretched habitations of Saut d'Eaux, and in an 

 instant they were buried in destruction ! During the descent of this 

 tremendous body, what must have been the feelings of the poor inha- 

 bitants? The chances of escape seemed few; hemmed in by the 

 boisterous main, they could only take to their canoes, or plunge amid 

 the surf. This they did ; and, by the mercy of Heaven, all escaped, 

 with the exception of seven, who were the next day dug from the 

 ruins, literally crushed to atoms. It was marvellous that the greater 

 part escaped this terrible visitation. 



It may be asked, what induces such a number of persons to choose 

 so dreadful a spot for their residence, on an island capable of afford- 



* The Ctoton gossytrifolium, and twenty or thirty other varieties of the cro- 

 ton, arc here found in great abundance. 



