The trade-wind, at this season of the year, is saturated with steam from the ocean which it has crossed; and the least disturbance in its temperature, from ascending hot air or descending cold, precipitates the steam in a sudden splash of water, out of a cloud, if there happens to be one near; if not, out of the clear air.

Therefore it is that these showers, when they occur in the daytime, are most common about noon; simply because then the streams of hot air rise most frequently and rapidly, to struggle with the cooler layers aloft.

There is thunder, of course, in the West Indies, continuous and terrible.

But it occurs after midsummer, at the breaking up of the dry season and coming on of the wet.
At last the truck stopped at a manager's house with a Palmiste, {124} or cabbage-palm, on each side of the garden gate, a pair of columns which any prince would have longed for as ornaments for his lawn.

It is the fashion here, and a good fashion it is, to leave the Palmistes, a few at least, when the land is cleared; or to plant them near the house, merely on account of their wonderful beauty.