SOME SUMMER DAYS IN MARTINIQUE. 281 
The wind was light; flying-fish darted in all direc- 
tions ; little sharp-prowed canoes came sailing in out 
of the distance, hailed us with cheerful don jours, and 
disappeared again in the spray and mist. We sailed 
in under high, frowning cliffs, down which fell silver 
streams into the sea; past broad fields of cane, smiling 
in the sunshine; past long stretches of yellow sand, 
overtopped by silent palms ; beneath atowering gloomy 
mountain hiding its crest in cloud. A shower came 
down from those impending clouds and pattered over 
deck and sea, ending as suddenly as it had com- 
menced; and a rainbow, born of the mist and the 
sunshine, spanned the bay of St. Pierre from head- 
land to headland, dissolving at either end above a 
little fishing-village, bathing houses and boats, and 
nets, and beach, in glorious showers of light. 
A second time I sailed into the bay of St. Pierre, a 
second time looked upon the volcano rising above it. 
The town is about a mile in length, straggling at the 
north away down the coast, ending in scattered 
villages; and at one place, where a river makes a 
break in the cliffs, creeping up toward the mountains. 
A narrow belt between high cliffs and the sea, built 
into and under them; the houses, of stone and brick, 
covered with brown earthen tiles, tier upon tier, climb- 
ing up to the hills. With the soft mellow tints of the 
tiles, the grays of the walls, the frequent clumps of 
tamarind and mango, and with the magnificent wall 
of living green behind it, St. Pierre strikes one as a 
beautiful town —— until he comes to analyze it. Then, 
the windowless loopholes —there is hardly a square 
of glass in town, save in the stores—the flapping 
shutters, the conglomerate material used in its construc- 
