166 CAMPS IN THE CARIBBEES. 
the hospitals the filthiest offscourings of humanity. 
Of course there was much difficulty in the way, not 
only from the patients themselves, who preferred 
hugging this living death and communicating it to 
others, to separation from their friends, but from rabid 
philanthropists of the “ Exeter-Hall” type, who saw in 
this an infringement upon the negro’s liberty. 
The disease is engendered and propagated by a 
filthy mode of living and insufficient diet; hence, the 
most important agents in effecting a cure are cleanli- 
ness and good living. No one would suppose the 
natives would object to that, but they do, and neglect 
no opportunity for escape from the hospitals; thus 
the doctor’s position is one of thankless labor and 
vigilance. 
It was a five-hours’ row to Prince Rupert’s, and 
half that to Battalie. We left Roseau in a long dug- 
out, rowed by four men and guided by a cockswain, 
and rapidly glided along the Caribbean coast. Re- 
clining beneath an arched canvas, we could look out 
upon a swiftly-gliding shore, green sugar plantations, 
bluff headlands, narrow valleys. Being June, when 
all the flowering trees are in bloom, and when the 
fruits are ripe and ripening, it was a pleasure to note 
the vegetation. Conspicuous above all foliage was the 
Flamboyant, the “ flame-tree,” with its broad umbrella- 
shaped top, one mass of flaming crimson. Without 
a leaf at the beginning of the season, its twigs and 
branches are covered with gorgeous flowers. So far 
as you can distinguish any object on shore, you see the 
flame-tree, its bright coloring making it as prominent 
at a distance as bright-plumaged birds, which, as in 
