- 26 - 
St. Christopher(or St. Kitts) . 
1894 
February 25 
I rose at 5.50 this morning and coming on deck at 
6 found that we were running in towards the open roadstead 
off Basse Terre, the chief town of St. Kitts. The scenery 
was very beautiful and for the first time I saw true vol¬ 
canic mountains with their pointed cone-shaped peaks and 
curiously wrinkled sides, as if cloth had been drawn down 
over them and clumsily folded. Their upper slopes are 
wooded and dark green, but everywhere else, save in and 
very near the town, the whole face of the country is devoted 
to sugar plantations, brown newly-pLoughed fields alter¬ 
nating with great patches of fully-grown cane which at a 
distance in the morning sunlight looked pale yellowish 
green,like ripening grain. 
After breakfast I went ashore with Dr. Riley. We 
found the Hubbards in the park (Pall Mall) which proved so 
beautiful and attrs.ctive that we spent the forenoon there 
and returned to it again in the afternoon after taking 
lunch on the steamer. It was filled with the most beau¬ 
tiful palms and there is a big "banyan"tree 
ba nyan, ' b u t a Ficus ) in the center. By Hubbard® s help 
~ yv 
I learned to distinguish the Royal(Palmisti), Date, 
Cocoanut and Fan Palms, the Rubber Tree( Ficus ? ) 
Just agreeably warm with brief intervals of sun¬ 
shine alternating with longer periods of cloudiness and 
occasional drenching showers of fine rain. Still the steady 
trade wind, stronger to-day than usual. 
