Let him sail down the leeward side of Guadaloupe, down the leeward side of what island he will, and judge for himself how poor, and yet how tawdry, my words are, compared with the luscious yet magnificent colouring of the Antilles.
The traveller, at least so I think, would remark also, with some surprise, the seeming smallness of these islands.

The Basse Terre of Guadaloupe, for instance, is forty miles in length.

As you lie off it, it does not look half, or even a quarter, of that length; and that, not merely because the distances north and south are foreshortened, or shut in by nearer headlands.

The causes, I believe, are more subtle and more complex.

First, the novel clearness of the air, which makes the traveller, fresh from misty England, fancy every object far nearer, and therefore far smaller, than it actually is.