32 ' NAPJBIMA. 



tunities of seeing the interior of tlie island which an average 

 traveller could not have ; and I looked forward with interest 

 to visitinii new settlements in the forests of the interior, 

 which very few inhabitants of the island, and cei'tainly no 

 strangers, had as yet seen. Our journey began by landing on 

 a good new jetty, and being transferred at once to the tram- 

 way which adjoined it. A t-ruck, with chairs on it, as 

 usual here, carried us off at a good mule-trot ; and we ran in 

 the fast-fading light through a rolling hummocky country, 

 very like the lowlands of Aberdeenshire, or the neighbour- 

 hood of Waterloo, save that, as night came on, the fireflies 

 flickered everywhere among the canes, and here and there 

 the palms and ceibas stood up, black and gaunt, against the 

 sky. At last we escaped from our truck, and found horses 

 waiting, on which we floundered, through mud and moon- 

 light, to a certain hospitable house, and found a hungry 

 party, who had been long waiting for a dinner worth the 

 waiting. 



It was not till next morning that I found into what a 

 charming place I had entered overnight. Around were 

 books, pictures, china, vases of flowers, works of art, and all 

 appliances of European taste, even luxury : but in a house 

 utterly un-European. The living rooms, all on the first 

 floer, opened into each other by doorless doorways, and 

 the walls were of cedar and other valuable woods, which 



