ASCENT OF THE GUADELOUPE SOUFRIERE. 325 
_ chandise, and I was obliged to sleep on deck, which 
was covered with negroes. With a bulwark of fat and 
garrulous negroes, men and women, on either side of 
me, I stretched myself upon a narrow ledge and fell 
asleep. If those blacks had given way, I would have 
been lost. To their credit be it said, they did not, but 
sat there the livelong night, and soothed me to sleep 
with the musical numbers of their patois. The night 
was dark, the sky black, with stars, shining in it as 
through holes in a vaulted roof. In the middle of 
the night there came up a rain-storm, driving, pitiless. 
Awakened by the plashing of drops in my face, I 
drew my rubber poncho over me and fell asleep again — 
to the murmur of their patter on the waves. 
These are historic waters. I was coasting a shore 
along which sailed the 'caravels of Columbus; but 
even the consciousness of this fact could not induce 
me to go to the rail and peer into the darkness for 
some ancient landmark. Spite of historic reminis- 
cence, and in spite of my odorous enclosure of natives, 
I slept the sleep of the just man who is taking his 
second night’s rest in his clothes; thanks to years of- 
camp life. 
I have said that this was historic ground, this island 
of Guadeloupe, and fraught with deeds dear to 
America’s existence, these waters that lave its shores. 
Let me quote, in confirmation, the words of Irving as 
he describes the second voyage of Columbus: “The 
islands among which Columbus ,had arrived were “A 
part of that beautiful cluster called by some the An- 
tilles, which sweep almost in a semicircle from the 
eastern end of Porto Rico to the coast of Paria on the 
Southern continent... . . During the first day that 
