but I may not think it worth my while to send for it over the ocean, when, with every risk, I must wait at the least three months for it. The moral consequences of this system are even more to be lamented than the economical, but I will say more about that at some other time.

There are two very good churches in St. Pierre, and both of them furnished with that mitigated idolatry which so advantageously distinguishes the French segment of the Papistical Heresy. I have great hopes that the Bishop of Gerren will succeed in getting rid of some of the absurdities in the Romish worship in Trinidad. I believe he disapproves them, and the example of the sober splendor of the Protestant Church in their neighbourhood will much facilitate his endeavours.

It was too hot to walk to the theatre or the botanical garden, but I am told that they are both very respectable.

The colored women here, as in St. Lucia and Trinidad, are a much finer race than their fellows in the old English islands. The French and Spanish blood seems to unite more kindly and perfectly with the negro than does our British stuff. We eat too much beef and absorb too much porter for a thorough amalgamation with the tropical lymph in the veins of a black; hence our mulatto females have more of the look of very dirty white women

than that rich oriental olive which distinguishes the haughty offspring of the half blood of French or Spaniards. I think for gait, gesture, shape and air, the finest women in the world may be seen on a Sunday in Port of Spain. The rich and gay costume of these nations sets off the dark countenances of their mulattos infinitely better than the plain dress of the English. A crimson, green, or saffron shawl cocked (pwvāvτa ovveroĩσi) on the head, and bent back with sham jewels into a tiara, gives a voluptuous and imperial air which always put me in mind of the proud mistress of the governor of St. Jago, with whom that sly old rogue Ligon was so smitten.

Excellent Eau de Cologne of many qualities and prices at Betsy Parker's; the lowest sort sold for a dollar a box, which contained six bottles. The champagne at eighteen dollars really divine, and a certain carmine nectareous crême de Chile much, ah! much too blessed a drink for throats in a state of moral probation.

I could get no fine kid gloves in the shops which I visited; a circumstance surely deserving much reprehension. Tight fitting gloves are amongst the few things by which the French nation has benefited mankind, and the world, which they have insulted and corrupted, have a right at least to their kid and double-sewing as some recompense.

Upon the whole St. Pierre is a pretty and civilized town undoubtedly, but scarcely deserving the extravagant commendations which are usually lavished upon it. It has attained the acme of its good looks; it can hardly be made more spacious or more convenient in any respect than it is; it is neat and Frenchy, and it cannot be more. But Port of Spain is even now a city in design, and its capacity for improvement of every description is unlimited. With a mole, which must, sooner or later, be built, the magnificent and ever gentle gulf of Paria washing its walls, its freedom from hurricanes, and commanding position, I think the time will come when Puerto de España, or Port of Spain, Colombian or British, will more than rival every capital in South America. About that time my book will be done into smooth Spanish, and they will think me a great prophet, and I shall enjoy my fame like the people who ride upon clouds in Ossian.

And so fare thee very well, romantic Martinico, with all thy green slopes of arrowy canes, thy woody glens, thy aerial mountains! I wish indeed my dear countrymen had not shed their precious blood in vain for thee, but still kindly good bye, bright island; I have a nook in my heart for thee with all thy Frenchery.

DOMINICA.

WE left St. Pierre on the 20th with a fresh breeze at E. by S., but it soon died away as usual under the lee of the island, and afterwards the wind was so light that, like Columbus, we did not creep into Roseau Bay till early on Sunday morning. There was only one merchant ship lying at anchor with two or three small sloops, and the few stragglers on the shore with the dirty row of storehouses impressed me with an idea of want and depopulation. The landscape behind the town is beautifully grand; indeed the whole prospect from the edge of Morne Bruce, a lofty table rock occupied by the garrison, is one of the very finest in the West Indies. The valley runs up for many miles in a gently inclined plane between mountains of irregular heights and shapes, most of which are clothed up to their cloudy canopies with rich parterres of green coffee which perfumes the whole atmosphere even to some distance over the sea; the river rolls a deep and roaring stream down the middle of the vale, and is joined at the outlet of each side ravine by a moun

tain torrent, whilst at the top, where the rocks converge into an acute angle, a cascade falls from the apex in a long sheet of silvery foam. Beneath, the town presents a very different appearance from what it does at sea; the streets are long and spacious, regularly paved, and intersecting each other at right angles; there is one large square or promenade ground, and the *shingled roofs of the houses, tinged with the intense blue of the heaven above them, seem like the newest slates, and put me much in mind of that clear and distinct look which the good towns of France have when viewed from an eminence.

Roseau is now in a most singular state of existence. Before the fire on the evening of Easter Sunday 1781, which that scoundrel Duchilleau either originated or promoted, it must have been the most commodious town of any in the islands; but the tyranny and folly of the French under this governor were so ruinous both to the colony in general and the town in particular, that neither the one or the other have in forty years been able to recover their former prosperity. You may walk along a street for half a mile; the houses seem to

* Shingles are thin planks or slips of pine imported from North America and used universally throughout the West Indies in lieu of slates.

L