But above, the cloud-procession passed on, shattered by its contact with the mountain, and transfigured as it neared the setting sun into long upward streaming lines of rack, purple and primrose against a saffron sky, while Venus lingered low between cloud and sea, a spark of fire glittering through dull red haze.
And now the steamer ran due south, across the vast basin which is ringed round by Antigua, Montserrat, and Guadaloupe, with St.Kitts and Nevis showing like tall gray ghosts to the north-west.

Higher and higher ahead rose the great mountain mass of Guadaloupe, its head in its own canopy of cloud.

The island falls into the sea sharply to leeward.

But it stretches out to windward in a long line of flat land edged with low cliff, and studded with large farms and engine-houses.

It might be a bit of the Isle of Thanet, or of the Lothians, were it not for those umbrella-like Palmistes, a hundred feet high, which stand out everywhere against the sky.