ASCENT OF THE GUADELOUPE SOUFRIERE. 325 



chandise, and I was obliged to sleep on deck, which 

 was covered with negroes. With a bulwark of fat and 

 garrulous negroes, men and women, on either side of 

 me, I stretched myself upon a narrow ledge and fell 

 asleep. If those blacks had given way, I would have 

 been lost. To their credit be it said, they did not, but 

 sat there the livelong night, and soothed me to sleep 

 with the musical numbers of their patois. The night 

 was dark, the sky black, with stars shining in it as 

 throuo-h holes in a vaulted roof. In the middle of 

 the night there came up a rain-storm, driving, pitiless. 

 Awakened by the plashing of drops in my face, I 

 drew my rubber poncho over me and fell asleep again 

 to the murmur of their patter on the waves. 



These are historic waters. I was coasting a shore 

 along which sailed the caravels of Columbus ; but 

 even the consciousness of this fact could not induce 

 me to go to the rail and peer into the darkness for 

 some ancient landmark. Spite of historic reminis- 

 cence, and in spite of my odorous enclosure of natives, 

 I slept the sleep of the just man who is taking his 

 second night's rest in his clothes ; thanks to years of 

 camp life. 



I have said that this was historic ground, this island 

 of Guadeloupe, and fraught with deeds dear to 

 America's existence, these waters that lave its shores. 

 Let me quote, in confirmation, the words of Irving as 

 he describes the second voyage of Columbus : " The 

 islands among which Columbus had arrived were a 

 part of that beautiful cluster called by some the An- 

 tilles, which sweep almost in a semicircle from the 

 eastern end of Porto Rico to the coast of Paria on the 

 Southern continent During the first day that 



