CHAPTER XXII 



THE LESSER ANTILLES 



"Where first his drooping sails Columbus furl'd 

 And sweetly rested in another world, 

 Amidst the heaven-reflecting ocean, smiles 

 A constellation of elysian isles, 

 Fair as Orion when he mounts on high, 

 Sparkling with midnight splendor from the sky; 

 They bask beneath the sun's meridian rays, 

 Where not a shadow breaks the boundless blaze; 

 The breath of ocean wanders through their vales, 

 In morning breezes and in evening gales; 

 Earth from her lap perennial verdure pours, 

 Ambrosial fruits and amaranthine flowers; 

 O'er the wild mountains and luxuriant plains, 

 Nature in all the pomp of beauty reigns." Montgomery. 



WE left Port of Spain about four o'clock in the 

 afternoon. The thunderstorm which had passed 

 over the town still clung in the distance about 

 the tops of the mountains. We passed out to sea 

 through the Dragon's Mouths (Las Bocas de Dragos), 

 the triple strait, seeded with jutting islands and tower- 

 ing rocks, which connects the Gulf of Paria on the north 

 with the waters of the Caribbean. The scenery com- 

 pelled the admiration of the most indifferent. In the 

 blue distance rose the high peaks of Paria, one of them 

 thirty -five hundred feet in height, lofty sentinels on the 

 Venezuelan mainland, which here juts out eastward as a 

 narrow peninsula, forming the northern boundary of 



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