6 CAMPS IN THE CARIBBEES. 
bush country, or ramble at all with the thermometer 
at eighty-five degrees. But when one has only to 
think of such things, without any idea of doing them, 
neither the bushes nor the thermometer are consid- 
ered.” In this, as in all his sketches, Mr. Trollope 
is right so far as he goes; but he does not go far 
enough. “Filled with an ardent desire,” he should 
have given those woods and mountains the months of 
camp-life that I did; then would the world be richer 
in pictures of forest-life and mountain scenery that my 
poor pen so feebly tries to portray. As one writer, 
an intelligent geologist, once remarked: “No island 
in these seas is bolder in its general aspects, more 
picturesque and more beautiful in the detail of its 
scenery — indeed, one might be tempted to say, con- 
sidering .its fortunes, that it has the fatal gift of 
beauty !” 
At five o’clock, the gun in the fort starts off the bell 
in the cathedral spire. It 1s an hour before daylight, 
and even at six the mists of the valleys cover all, 
even to the mountain-tops. The sun climbs steadily, 
though it is eight o’clock before he has shown his 
face to Roseau, and darts over the mountain-tops to 
windward his scorching rays. It is interesting to 
watch the changes that come over the mountain sides 
and valleys as the sun dissipates the morning mists. 
Lake Mountain, four thousand feet in height, towers 
black against the sky; five miles it is from town, yet 
seems so close as to overshadow it. Its head is veiled 
more than half the time in mist. Stretching away. 
north and south is a long line of hills, an isolated peak 
jutting up at intervals. Their summits are blue and 
purple in the distance. Within this line is a cordon 
