paupers, rogues, whatnot, who are not a whit more civilised,
intellectual, virtuous, or spiritual than the Negro, and are
meanwhile neither healthy nor comfortable. The Negro may have the
corpus sanum without the mens sana. But what of those whose souls
and bodies are alike unsound?

Away south, along the low spit at the south end of the island, where
are salt-pans which, I suspect, lie in now extinguished craters; and
past little Nevis, the conical ruin, as it were, of a volcanic
island. It was probably joined to the low end of St. Kitts not many
years ago. It is separated from it now only by a channel called the
Narrows, some four to six miles across, and very shallow, there
being not more than four fathoms in many places, and infested with
reefs, whether of true coral or of volcanic rock I should be glad to
know. A single peak, with its Souffriere, rises to some 2000 feet;
right and left of it are two lower hills, fragments, apparently, of
a Somma, or older and larger crater. The lava and ash slide in
concave slopes of fertile soil down to the sea, forming an island
some four miles by three, which was in the seventeenth century a
little paradise, containing 4000 white citizens, who had dwindled
down in 1805, under the baneful influences of slavery, to 1300; in
1832 (the period of emancipation) to 500; and in 1854 to only 170.
{27a} A happy place, however, it is said still to be, with a
population of more than 10,000, who, as there is happily no Crown
land in the island, cannot squat, and so return to their original
savagery; but are well-ordered and peaceable, industrious, and well-
taught, and need, it is said, not only no soldiers, but no police.

One spot on the little island we should have liked much to have
seen: the house where Nelson, after his marriage with Mrs. Nisbet,