290 CAMPS IN THE CARIBBEES. 
are roses and choice plants, and a small museum con- 
taining a good collection of birds, pictures of native 
types, and insects and reptiles of the island, which 
figured in the Exposition of 1867. 
Near the main walk a grotto, in a bank covered 
with vines, overhung, by a palm, spouts out a glisten- 
ing shower. This broad path runs by the side of a 
stream, under tamarinds and screw-pines, ascending 
between a double row of tall palmistes. This, my 
guide tells me, was the old dueling-ground of the 
creoles, and the many holes with which the gray 
pillars are perforated were caused by bullets; the 
names carved there,in memory of those who fell. 
This may well be credited when I can state upon my 
own evidence that there were three duels on the tapis 
when I left the island. Though many of the affairs 
of honor are merely farcical, and the empty air gets 
the pistol-shot and sword-thrust, there are some in 
which the participators are in dead earnest, and blood 
is often shed. 
Above the palms is a cascade sixty feet in height, 
which flows from a deep cut in solid rock, in a single 
sheet, into a broad basin below. From the cascade 
another path, broad and shaded, leads to a gar- 
den of acclimatization and a nursery, where are all 
kinds of tropical plants — groups of palmistes, tree- 
ferns, fan-palms, broken-leaved African palms, and 
forms. of plants strange even to these tropic isles. 
Near the basin of a fountain, containing the Egyptian 
papyrus, are the tallest sago-palms ever seen out of 
their native isles of the Indian Archipelago, for they 
are twenty feet in height, have stout trunks and dense 
crowns. Candelabra cacti, night-blooming cereus, 
