33 CAMPS IN THE CARIBBEES. 



lieve, were swept away. Outside the town, but a few 

 minutes' walk along the bluff, lies the cemetery, where 

 crosses and quaint tombs mark the last resting-places 

 of many poor souls. Beyond, below this place of 

 sepulchre, is a depression in the hillside, which, I 

 was told, was once a deep ravine, into which were 

 cast the bodies of those who died of the plague. So 

 rapidly were they stricken down that people enough 

 could not be found to bury them, and the living hardly 

 sufficed to take away the dead. Finally vessels were 

 employed, which, laden with corpses, departed one 

 after the other into the offing with their freight of 

 death. There was scant ceremony in the carrying 

 away of these stricken ones from the place where 

 once they had enjoyed life to be given over to the 

 dwellers of the deep ! For many months the corpses 

 strewed the strand, and fish from the sea were ban- 

 ished from the tables of the island for a twelvemonth 

 after. What is remarkable in this plague is, that it 

 extended to the higher and generally healthy mountain 

 villages, and killed as ruthlessly as along the heated 

 coast. 



The heat in town was intense, and I was glad to 

 be allowed to depart for the mountains, after having 

 been compelled to wait for my permit to shoot. Every 

 one desirous of shooting in these islands is compelled 

 to pay ten francs for a ficrmis de chassc, which the 

 French official, with characteristic courtesy to a stran- 

 ger, gave me without the usual fee. It was a lengthy 

 document, exceeding in size my American passport 

 from the Secretary of State ; and, in the comparison 

 of the two papers, each of which affects to describe 

 me accurately, there is much food for reflection upon 



