a shore, spreads open sea. But the fantastic grandeur of the place
cannot be described in words. The pencil of the artist must be
trusted. I can vouch that he has not in the least exaggerated the
slenderness and steepness of the rock-masses. One of them, it is
said, has never been climbed; unless a myth which hangs about it is
true. Certain English sailors, probably of Rodney's men--and
numbering, according to the pleasure of the narrator, three hundred,
thirty, or three--are said to have warped themselves up it by lianes
and scrub; but they found the rock-ledges garrisoned by an enemy
more terrible than any French. Beneath the bites of the Fer-de-
lances, and it may be beneath the blaze of the sun, man after man
dropped; and lay, or rolled down the cliffs. A single survivor was
seen to reach the summit, to wave the Union Jack in triumph over his
head, and then to fall a corpse. So runs the tale, which, if not
true, has yet its value, as a token of what, in those old days,
English sailors were believed capable of daring and of doing.

At the back of these two Pitons is the Souffriere, probably the
remains of the old crater, now fallen in, and only 1000 feet above
the sea: a golden egg to the islanders, were it but used, in case
of war, and any difficulty occurring in obtaining sulphur from
Sicily, a supply of the article to almost any amount might be
obtained from this and the other like Solfaterras of the British
Antilles; they being, so long as the natural distillation of the
substance continues active as at present, inexhaustible. But to
work them profitably will require a little more common-sense than
the good folks of St. Lucia have as yet shown. In 1836 two
gentlemen of Antigua, {43a} Mr. Bennett and Mr. Wood, set up sulphur
works at the Souffriere of St. Lucia, and began prosperously enough,
exporting 540 tons the first year. 'But in 1840,' says Mr. Breen,