154 WEST INDIA SOCIETY. 



parrot bill, whence is derived its name. They hav^ ground seins 

 and crawl baskets for catching turtle, but no deep sea fishing here : 

 one looks in vain for the busy fleet of trawling smacks that so often 

 speckle the moon-lit horizon as seen from our own shores. Sharks 

 are rarely caught, although we had several basking round the packet 

 one evening at Fredrickstadt, and a sea lion, monstrura informe, 

 got himself embayed lately under our town fort, but made his way 

 out again in spite of harpoons. 



On the voyage from Europe we struck a dolphin, of whose death- 

 hues you have heard so much, but these are not equally vivid at all 

 times ; I prefer watching their motions before the clear sun-rise, 

 now darting a-head under the progressive mass, now again rising to 

 the surface and glancing to and fro across the ship*s wake. This 

 occurred soon after passing the tropic, and rare sport we had on 

 that matter. A flying fish too came on board two days before Nep- 

 tune, and being the first visitor of the species, his forked tail went 

 at once to deck the sloop's jib-boom. This ambidexter tribe is not 

 commonly found near the land in a higher latitude than that of 

 Barbadoes. Further southward again we fell in with a nautilus, 

 cracking on under his tiny sail, as he had been one of the water 

 king's revenue craft, in chace of some smuggling cockle shell with 

 eau de Cologne and French fans for the Nereids. And yet I had 

 rather watch a shoal of porpoises at their gambols on my native 

 coast; how they bowl their huge forms half out of the smooth water 

 in every direction about one. 



From the strand, a gentle ascent, shrouded in mangroves, brought 

 us on the low table-ground known as the valley of Spanish Town. 

 There appeared nothing remarkable in the prospect here, but soon 

 after, on opening the great sea view, it acquired interest at every 

 step. The immense pile of grey rock before noticed, was seen in 

 debris spread over an uneven champaign, as one witnesses on the 

 granite heaths of Cornwall : but these were interspersed with fallow, 

 cotton shrubs, rivulets and dwellings in the wildest grouping ima- 

 ginable. Here a cottage lay sheltered under impending crags, there 

 another peeped from behind its begable screen, like a shy infant. ~ 

 One residence stood in a bolder position, commanding each side of 

 the island. Within, you saw the Virgin's Channel in its whole 

 length, a magnificent vista ;' without, the eye lighted on one broad 

 expanse of waters. This house, by far the best here, they should 

 name Janus Hall. My companion, the colonial chaplain,* pro- 



* These unbeneficed levites cannot be said to stand high in the 

 West India church. I quote for the initiated,- **Stat dicitur a 



