Trees hung over them with smooth greasy stems of bright copper--which has gained them the name of 'Indian skin,' at least in Trinidad, where we often saw them wild; another glance showed us that every tree and shrub around was different from those at home: and we recollected where we were; and recollected, too, as we looked at the wealth of flower and fruit and verdure, that it was sharp winter at home.

We admired this and that: especially a most lovely Convolvulus--I know not whether we have it in our hothouses {52a}-- with purple maroon flowers; and an old hog-plum {52b}--Mombin of the French--a huge tree, which was striking, not so much from its size as from its shape.

Growing among blocks of lava, it had assumed the exact shape of an English oak in a poor soil and exposed situation; globular-headed, gnarled, stunted, and most unlike to its giant brethren of the primeval woods, which range upward 60 or 80 feet without a branch.

We walked up to see the old fort, commanding the harbour from a height of 800 feet.

We sat and rested by the roadside under a great cotton-wood tree, and looked down on gorges of richest green, on negro gardens, and groo-groo palms, and here and there a cabbage-palm, or a huge tree at whose name we could not guess; then turned through an arch cut in the rock into the interior of the fort, which now holds neither guns nor soldiers, to see at our feet the triple harbour, the steep town, and a very paradise of garden and orchard; and then down again, with the regretful thought, which haunted me throughout the islands--What might the West Indies not have been by now, had it not been for slavery, rum, and sugar?
We got down to the steamer again, just in time, happily, not to see a great fight in the water between two Negroes; to watch which all the women had stopped their work, and cheered the combatants with savage shouts and laughter.