the heathen Indians, and often with mere drink and sunshine, they
did deeds which, like all wicked deeds, avenge themselves, and are
avenging themselves, from Mexico to Chili, unto this very day.

I said that these islands resembled Vesuvius and the Bay of Naples.
Like causes have produced like effects; and each island is little
but the peak of a volcano, down whose shoulders lava and ash have
slidden toward the sea. Some carry several crater cones,
complicating at once the structure and scenery of the island; but
the majority carry but a single cone, like that little island, or
rather rock, of Saba, which is the first of the Antilles under the
lee of which the steamer passes. Santa Cruz, which is left to
leeward, is a long, low, ragged island, of the same form as St.
Thomas's and the Virgins, and belonging, I should suppose, to the
same formation. But Saba rises sheer out of the sea some 1500 feet
or more, without flat ground, or even harbour. From a little
landing-place to leeward a stair runs up 800 feet into the bosom of
the old volcano; and in that hollow live some 1200 honest Dutch, and
some 800 Negroes, who were, till of late years, their slaves, at
least in law. But in Saba, it is said, the whites were really the
slaves, and the Negroes the masters. For they went off whither and
when they liked; earned money about the islands, and brought it
home; expected their masters to keep them when out of work: and not
in vain. The island was, happily for it, too poor for sugar-growing
and the 'Grande Culture'; the Dutch were never tempted to increase
the number of their slaves; looked upon the few they had as friends
and children; and when emancipation came, no change whatsoever
ensued, it is said, in the semi-feudal relation between the black
men and the white. So these good Dutch live peacefully aloft in
their volcano, which it is to be hoped will not explode again. They