ISLANDS 61 



eyes suddenly readjusted, I perceived that the 

 glaring sunlight was tempered ; again the strange 

 mid-day breeze arose and finally I realized that 

 I was witnessing an eclipse of the sun on the 

 island of Barbados. The natives and the birds 

 and even the patient little donkeys grew rest- 

 less, the light became weaker and strange, and 

 until the end of the eclipse we could think of 

 nothing else. The most remarkable part to me, 

 were the reflections. Looking however hastily 

 and obliquely at the sun, I perceived nothing 

 but a blinding glare, but walking beneath the 

 shade of dense tropical foliage, the hosts of 

 specks of sunlight sifting through, reflected on 

 the white limestone, were in reality thousands 

 of tiny representations of the sun's disk incised 

 with the segment of the silhouetted moon, but 

 reversed, just like the image through the aper- 

 ture of a pinhole camera. I suppose it is a very 

 common physical phenomenon, but to me it 

 was a surprising thing to trace the curve of 

 the eclipse clearly and with ease in the sun- 

 beams on the pavement beneath my feet, while 

 my retinas refused to face or register the 

 original. 



Barbados is very flat, thoroughly cultivated 



