The bottom of the crater, I was assured, was not permanently
altered: but the same informant--an eye-witness on whom I can fully
depend--shared the popular opinion that it had opened, sucked in
sea-water, and spouted it out again. If so, the good folks of
George Town are quite right in holding that they had a very narrow
escape of utter destruction.

An animated and picturesque spot, as the steamer runs alongside, is
the wooden wharf where passengers are to land and the ship to coal.
The coaling Negroes and Negresses, dressed or undressed, in their
dingiest rags, contrast with the country Negresses, in gaudy prints
and gaudier turbans, who carry on their heads baskets of fruit even
more gaudy than their dresses. Both country and town Negroes,
meanwhile, look--as they are said to be--comfortable and prosperous;
and I can well believe the story that beggars are unknown in the
island. The coalers, indeed, are only too well off, for they earn
enough, by one day of violent and degrading toil, to live in
reckless shiftless comfort, and, I am assured, something very like
debauchery, till the next steamer comes in.

No sooner is the plank down, than a struggling line getting on board
meets a struggling line getting on shore; and it is well if the
passenger, on landing, is not besmirched with coal-dust, after a
narrow escape of being shoved into the sea off the stage. But,
after all, civility pays in Grenada, as in the rest of the world;
and the Negro, like the Frenchman, though surly and rude enough if
treated with the least haughtiness, will generally, like the
Frenchman, melt at once at a touch of the hat, and an appeal to
'Laissez passer Mademoiselle.' On shore we got, through be-coaled