A single peak, with its Souffriere, rises to some 2000 feet; right and left of it are two lower hills, fragments, apparently, of a Somma, or older and larger crater.

The lava and ash slide in concave slopes of fertile soil down to the sea, forming an island some four miles by three, which was in the seventeenth century a little paradise, containing 4000 white citizens, who had dwindled down in 1805, under the baneful influences of slavery, to 1300; in 1832 (the period of emancipation) to 500; and in 1854 to only 170.

{27a} A happy place, however, it is said still to be, with a population of more than 10,000, who, as there is happily no Crown land in the island, cannot squat, and so return to their original savagery; but are well-ordered and peaceable, industrious, and well- taught, and need, it is said, not only no soldiers, but no police.
One spot on the little island we should have liked much to have seen: the house where Nelson, after his marriage with Mrs.Nisbet, a lady of Nevis, dwelt awhile in peace and purity.

Happier for him, perhaps, though not for England, had he never left that quiet nest.
And now, on the leeward bow, another gray mountain island rose; and on the windward another, lower and longer.

The former was Montserrat, which I should have gladly visited, as I had been invited to do.