which seemed for the first glance boundless, but which gradually resolved itself into mile after mile of forest, rushing down into the sea.

The hues of the distant woods, twenty miles away, seen through a veil of ultramarine, mingled with the pale greens and blues of the water, and they again with the pale sky, till the eye could hardly discern where land and sea and air parted from each other.

We stopped to gaze and breathe; and then downward again for fifteen hundred feet. Leading our tired horses, we went cheerily down the mountain side in Indian file, hopping and slipping from ledge to mud, and mud to ledge, and calling a halt every five minutes to look at some fresh curiosity; now a treefern, now a climbing fern; now some huge tree-trunk, whose name was only to be guessed at; now a fresh armadillo-burrow; now a parasol-ants' warren, which had to be avoided lest horse and man should sink in it knee-deep, and come out sorely bitten; now some glimpse of sea and forest far below; now we cut a water-vine, and had a long cool drink; now a great Morpho, or other gaudy butterfly, had to be hunted, if not caught; or a toucan, or some other strange bird listened to, or an eagle soared high over the green gulf.

Now all stopped together, for the ground was sprinkled thick with great Jumby-beads, scarlet, with a black eye, which had fallen, I presume, from some Erythrina, high overhead; and all set to work like schoolboys, filling their pockets with them for the ladies at home.

Now the path was lost, having vanished in the six months' growth of weeds, and we had to beat about for

it over fallen logs, through tangles of liane, ̃and thickets of the tall Arouma, a cane with a flat tuft of leaves atop, which is plentiful in these dark, damp, northern slopes.

Now we struggled and hopped, horse and man, down and round a corner, at the head of a glen, where a few flagstones laid across a gully gave an uncertain foothold, and paused, under damp rocks covered with white and pink Begonias, flat-leaved Pepperworts, and ferns of innumerable forms, to drink the clear mountain water out of cups extemporised from a Calathea leaf; and then struggled up again over roots and ledges, and round the next spur, in cool green darkness, on which it seemed the sun had never shone, and in a silence which, when our own voices ceased, was saddening, all but appalling.

At last, striking into a broader trace which came from the westward, we found ourselves some six or eight hundred feet above the sea, on a smooth road of turf, amid a vegetation which-how can I describe it? Suffice it to say, that right and left of the path, and arching together overhead, rose a natural avenue of Cocorite palms, beneath whose shade I rode for miles, enjoying the fresh trade-wind, the perfume, now and then, of the Vanilla flowers, and last, but not least, the conversation of one who used his high post to acquaint himself thoroughly with the beauties, the productions, the capabilities of the island which he governed; and his high culture to make such journeys as this one .continuous stream of instruction and pleasure to those who accompanied him.

Under his guidance we stopped at one point silent with delight and awe.

Through an arch of Cocorite boughs-ah, that English painters would go to paint such pictures, set in such natural frames!—we saw, nearly a thousand feet below us, the little bay of Fillette. The height of the horizon line told us how high we were ourselves; for the blue of the Caribbean Sea rose far above a point which stretched out on our right, covered with noble wood, while the dark olive cliffs along its base were gnawed by snowy surf. On our left, the nearer mountain woods rushed into the sea, cutting off the view; and under our very feet, in the centre of an amphitheatre of wood, as the eye of the whole picture, was a group-such as I never dare to hope to see again. Out of a group of scarlet Erythrinas rose three Palma Reals, and close to them a single Balata, whose height I hardly dare to estimate. So tall they were, that though they were five hundred feet below us, they stood out against the blue sea, far up toward the horizon line; the central palm a hundred and fifty feet at least, and the two others—as we guessed-a hundred feet and more. Their stems were perfectly straight and motionless, while their dark crowns, even at that distance, could be seen to toss and rage impatiently before the rush of the strong trade-wind; and the black, glossy head of the Balata, almost as high aloft as they, threw off sheets of spangled light, which mingled with the spangles of the waves; while above them again, as if poised in a blue, hazy sky, one tiny white sail danced before the breeze. The whole scene swam in soft sea-air; and such combined grandeur and delicacy of form and of colour I never beheld before.

We rode on over a sort of open down, from which all

vegetation had been cleared, save the Palma Reals— such a wood of them as I had never seen before. A hundred or more, averaging at least a hundred feet in height, stood motionless in the full cut of the strong trade-wind.

Through the Palma Real pillars; through the usual Bactris scrub; then under tangled boughs, down a steep stony bank, and we were on the long beach of deep sand and quartz gravel.-C. Kingsley.

Am'-phi-the-a-tre, an open space of

oval or circular form.
Li-anes', plants in tropical regions which
cling to trees like ropes, and
entangle the feet of pedes-
trians.

Deft, dexterous, expert, active.
Ul-tra-ma-rine', sky-blue.
E-ry-thri'-na (from erythros, red), a
plant with large and fine scarlet
leaves.

Be-go'-ni-as, plants with peculiar ob-
lique leaves at their base, so
named in honour of a French
botanist, M. Bégon.

Glen, a narrow valley.

Clo-vel'-ly, a village in the north of
Devon.

Pep'-per-worts, plants with scale-like
pods.

Cal'-a-thea, plants shaped like a basket or cup (from kalathos, a basket).

Va-nil'-la, a fragrant plant (native of tropical America), bearing an aromatic fruit which is much used to flavour chocolate, confectionery, and snuffs.

Bac'-tris scrub, a species of scrubby palm, so called from its small stems being used for walkingsticks (bactron, a stick).

DICTATION EXERCISE.

Beneath those rugged elms, that ewe-tree's shade, Where heaves the turf in many a mould'ring heap, Each in his narrow cell for ever laid,

The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep.

The breezy call of incense-breathing morn,

The swallow twitt'ring from the straw-built shed, The cock's shrill clarion, or the echoing horn,

No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed.