the Cyclades of the Grecian Archipelago: their number is counted at
three hundred. The largest of them all is not 8000 acres in extent;
the smallest about 600. A quiet prosperous race of little yeomen,
beside a few planters, dwell there; the latter feeding and exporting
much stock, the former much provisions, and both troubling
themselves less than of yore with sugar and cotton. They build
coasting vessels, and trade with them to the larger islands; and
they might be, it is said, if they chose, much richer than they
are,--if that be any good to them.

The steamer does not stop at any of these little sea-hermitages; so
that we could only watch their shores: and they were worth
watching. They had been, plainly, sea-gnawn for countless ages; and
may, at some remote time, have been all joined in one long ragged
chine of hills, the highest about 1000 feet. They seem to be for
the most part made up of marls and limestones, with trap-dykes and
other igneous matters here and there. And one could not help
entertaining the fancy that they were a specimen of what the other
islands were once, or at least would have been now, had not each of
them had its volcanic vents, to pile up hard lavas thousands of feet
aloft, above the marine strata, and so consolidate each ragged chine
of submerged mountain into one solid conical island, like St.
Vincent at their northern end, and at their southern end that
beautiful Grenada to which we were fast approaching, and which we
reached, on our outward voyage, at nightfall; running in toward a
narrow gap of moonlit cliffs, beyond which we could discern the
lights of a town. We did not enter the harbour: but lay close off
its gateway in safe deep water; fired our gun, and waited for the
swarm of negro boats, which began to splash out to us through the
darkness, the jabbering of their crews heard long before the flash