They stood utterly unharmed; save some half-dozen who had had their tops snapped off by a gale--there are no hurricanes in Trinidad--and remained as enormous unmeaning pikes, or posts, fifty to eighty feet high, transformed, by that one blast, from one of the loveliest to one of the ugliest natural objects.
Through the Palmiste pillars; through the usual black Roseau scrub; then under tangled boughs down a steep stony bank; and we were on a long beach of deep sand and quartz gravel.

On our right the Shore- grapes with their green bunches of fruit, the Mahauts {226} with their poplar-like leaves and great yellow flowers, and the ubiquitous Matapalos, fringed the shore.

On our left weltered a broad waste of plunging foam; in front green mountains were piled on mountains, blazing in sunlight, yet softened and shrouded by an air saturated with steam and salt.

We waded our horses over the mouth of the little Yarra, which hurried down through the sand, brown and foul from the lagoon above.

We sat down on bare polished logs, which floods had carried from the hills above, and ate and drank-- for our Negroes had by now rejoined us; and then scrambled up the shore back again, and into a trace running along the low cliff, even more beautiful, if possible, than that which we had followed in the morning.