[At Last by Charles Kingsley]@TWC D-Link bookAt Last CHAPTER II: DOWN THE ISLANDS 9/76
Everywhere, too, are gullies sawn in the slopes, which terminate above in deep and narrow glens, giving, especially when alternated with long lava-streams, a ridge-and- furrow look to this and most other of the Antilles.
Dr.Davy, with his usual acuteness of eye and soundness of judgment, attributes them rather to 'water acting on loose volcanic ashes' than to 'rents and fissures, the result of sudden and violent force.' Doubtless he is in the right.
Thus, and thus only, has been formed the greater part of the most beautiful scenery in the West Indies; and I longed again and again, as I looked at it, for the company of my friend and teacher, Colonel George Greenwood, that I might show him, on island after island, such manifold corroborations of his theories in Rain and Rivers. But our eyes were drawn off, at almost the second glance, from mountain-peaks and glens to the slopes of cultivated lowland, sheeted with bright green cane, and guinea-grass, and pigeon pea; and that not for their own sakes, but for the sake of objects so utterly unlike anything which we had ever seen, that it was not easy, at first, to discover what they were.
Gray pillars, which seemed taller than the tallest poplars, smooth and cylindrical as those of a Doric temple, each carrying a flat head of darkest green, were ranged along roadsides and round fields, or stood, in groups or singly, near engine-works, or towered above rich shrubberies which shrouded comfortable country-houses.
It was not easy, as I have said, to believe that these strange and noble things were trees: but such they were.
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