SETTLEMENT ON A VOLCANO. 185 



polished metal, and the whole turn-out has an air of barbaric splendour. These carriages 

 are never kept in a coach-house, but are usually placed in the halls, and often even in the 

 dining-room, as a child's perambulator might with us. Havana has an ugly cathedral 

 and a magnificent opera-house. 



Slave labour is common, and many of the sugar and tobacco planters are very wealthy. 

 Properties of many hundred acres under cultivation are common. Mr. Trollope found the 

 negroes well-fed, sleek, and fat as brewers' horses, while no sign of ill-usage came before 

 him. In crop times they sometimes work sixteen hours a day, and Sunday is not then a 

 day of rest for them. There are many Chinese coolies, also, on the island. 



Kingsley, speaking of the islands in general, says that he "was altogether unprepared 

 for their beauty and grandeur/' Day after day, the steamer took him past a shifting 

 diorama of scenery, which he likened to Vesuvius and Naples, repeated again and again, 

 with every possible variation of the same type of delicate loveliness. Under a cloudless 

 sky, and over the blue waters, banks of light cloud turned to violet and then to green, and 

 then disclosed grand mountains, with the surf beating white around the base of tall cliffs 

 and isolated rocks, and the pretty country houses of settlers embowered in foliage, and 

 gay little villages, and busy towns. " It was easy," says that charming writer, " in presence 

 of such scenery, to conceive the exultation which possessed the souls of the first discoverers 

 of the West Indies. What wonder if they seemed to themselves to have burst into fairy- 

 land to be at the gates of the earthly Paradise ? With such a climate, such a soil, such 

 vegetation, such fruits, what luxury must not have seemed possible to the dwellers along 

 those shores? What riches, too, of gold and jewels, might not be hidden among those 

 forest- shrouded glens and peaks ? And beyond, and beyond again, ever new islands, new 

 continents, perhaps, and inexhaustible wealth of yet undiscovered worlds." * 



The resemblance to Mediterranean, or, more especially, Neapolitan, scenery is very 

 marked. ' ' Like causes have produced like effects ; and each island is little but the peak 

 of a volcano, down whose shoulders lava and ash have slidden toward the sea." Many 

 carry several cones. One of them, a little island named Saba, has a most remarkable 

 settlement half-way up a volcano. Saba rises sheer out of the sea 1,500 or more feet, and, 

 from a little landing-place, a stair runs up 800 feet into the very bosom of the mountain, 

 where in a hollow live some 1,200 honest Dutchmen and 800 negroes. The latter were, 

 till of late years, nominally the slaves of the former ; but it is said that, in reality, it was 

 just the other way. The blacks went off when and whither they pleased, earned money 

 on other islands, and expected their masters to keep them when they were out of work. 

 The good Dutch live peaceably aloft in their volcano, grow garden crops, and sell them 

 to vessels or to surrounding islands. They build the best boats in the West Indies up 

 in their crater, and lower them down the cliff to the sea ! They are excellent sailors and 

 good Christians. Long may their volcano remain quiescent ! 



When the steamer stops at some little port, or even single settlement, the negro 

 boats come alongside with luscious fruit and vegetables bananas and green oranges ; the 

 sweet sop, a fruit which looks like a strawberry, and is as big as an orange ; the custarcl- 



* "At Last : A Christmas in the West Indies." 



24 



