29O CAMPS IN THE CARIBBEES. 



are roses and choice plants, and a small museum con- 

 taining a good collection of birds, pictures of native 

 types, and insects and reptiles of the island, which 

 figured in the Exposition of 1867. 



Near the main walk a grotto, in a bank covered 

 with vines, overhung by a palm, spouts out a glisten- 

 ing shower. This broad path runs by the side of a 

 stream, under tamarinds and screw-pines, ascending 

 between a double row of tall palmistes. This, my 

 guide tells me, was the old dueling-ground of the 

 Creoles, and the many holes with which the gray 

 pillars are perforated were caused by bullets ; the 

 names carved there, in memory of those who fell. 

 This may well be credited when I can state upon my 

 own evidence that there were three duels on the tapis 

 when I left the island. Though many of the affairs 

 of honor are merely farcical, and the empty air gets 

 the pistol-shot and sword-thrust, there are some in 

 which the participators are in dead earnest, and blood 

 is often shed. 



Above the palms is a cascade sixty feet in height, 

 which flows from a deep cut in solid rock, in a single 

 sheet, into a broad basin below. From the cascade 

 another path, broad and shaded, leads to a gar- 

 den of acclimatization and a nursery, where are all 

 kinds of tropical plants groups of palmistes, tree- 

 ferns, fan-palms, broken-leaved African palms, and 

 forms of plants strange even to these tropic isles. 

 Near the basin of a fountain, containing the Egyptian 

 papyrus, are the tallest sago-palms ever seen out of 

 their native isles of the Indian Archipelago, for they 

 are twenty feet in height, have stout trunks and dense 

 crowns. Candelabra cacti, night-blooming cereus, 



