DOMINICA. 5 
since the great navigator first saw its blue mountains 
and landed upon its fragrant strand. 
Does it not read like a fairy tale, this second voyage 
of Columbus? With three ships and fourteen cara- 
vels, containing fifteen hundred persons, he set sail 
from Cadiz, touched at the Canary Isles, and then 
shaped his course for the islands of the Caribs, of 
whose prowess and fierce nature he had heard many 
stories from the mild people of Hispaniola. “At the 
dawn of day, November 34d, a lofty island was descried 
to the west. As the ships moved gently onward, other 
islands rose to sight, one after another, covered with 
forests and enlivened by flights of parrots and other 
tropical birds, while the whole air was sweetened 
by the fragrance of the breezes which passed over 
them.” 
Dominica is but thirty miles in length by eleven in 
breadth, yet presents a greater surface and more ob- 
stacles to travel to the square mile than any island of 
similar size in the West Indies. Well did Columbus 
illustrate its crumpled and uneven surface, when, in 
answer to his queen’s inquiry regarding its appear- 
ance, he crushed a sheet of paper in his hand and 
threw it upon the table. In no other way could he 
better convey an idea of the furrowed hills and moun- 
tains, deeply cut and rent into ravines and hollowed 
into valleys. 
“To my mind,” says Anthony Trollope, “ Dominica, 
as seen from the sea, is by far the most picturesque 
of all these islands. Indeed, it would be hard to beat 
it either in color or grouping. It fills one with an 
ardent desire to be off and rambling among these 
mountains—as if one could ramble through such wild 
