grand and simple concave curves which betoken, almost always,
volcanic land. Nearer still, the purple changed to green. Tall
palm-trees and engine-houses stood out against the sky; the surf
gleamed white around the base of isolated rocks. A little nearer,
and we were under the lee, or western side, of the island. The sea
grew smooth as glass; we entered the shade of the island-cloud, and
slid along in still unfathomable blue water, close under the shore
of what should have been one of the Islands of the Blest.

It was easy, in presence of such scenery, to conceive the exaltation
which possessed the souls of the first discoverers of the West
Indies. What wonder if they seemed to themselves to have burst into
Fairyland--to be at the gates of The Earthly Paradise? With such a
climate, such a soil, such vegetation, such fruits, what luxury must
not have seemed possible to the dwellers along those shores? What
riches too, of gold and jewels, might not be hidden among those
forest-shrouded glens and peaks? And beyond, and beyond again, ever
new islands, new continents perhaps, an inexhaustible wealth of yet
undiscovered worlds.

No wonder that the men rose above themselves, for good and for evil;
that having, as it seemed to them, found infinitely, they hoped
infinitely, and dared infinitely. They were a dumb generation and
an unlettered, those old Conquistadores. They did not, as we do
now, analyse and describe their own impressions: but they felt them
nevertheless; and felt them, it may be, all the more intensely,
because they could not utter them; and so went, half intoxicated, by
day and night, with the beauty and the wonder round them, till the
excitement overpowered alike their reason and their conscience; and,
frenzied with superstition and greed, with contempt and hatred of