glowed with the lustre of the topaz and the emerald. Their brown and
mossy trunks appeared transformed into columns of antique bronze; and
the birds, which had retired in silence to their leafy shades to pass
the night, surprised to see the radiance of a second morning, hailed the
star of day all together with innumerable carols.

Night often overtook us during these rural entertainments; but the
purity of the air and the warmth of the climate, admitted of our
sleeping in the woods, without incurring any danger by exposure to the
weather, and no less secure from the molestations of robbers. On our
return the following day to our respective habitations, we found them in
exactly the same state in which they had been left. In this island, then
unsophisticated by the pursuits of commerce, such were the honesty and
primitive manners of the population, that the doors of many houses were
without a key, and even a lock itself was an object of curiosity to not
a few of the native inhabitants.

There were, however, some days in the year celebrated by Paul and
Virginia in a more peculiar manner; these were the birth-days of their
mothers. Virginia never failed the day before to prepare some wheaten
cakes, which she distributed among a few poor white families, born
in the island, who had never eaten European bread. These unfortunate
people, uncared for by the blacks, were reduced to live on tapioca in
the woods; and as they had neither the insensibility which is the result
of slavery, nor the fortitude which springs from a liberal education,
to enable them to support their poverty, their situation was deplorable.
These cakes were all that Virginia had it in her power to give away, but
she conferred the gift in so delicate a manner as to add tenfold to
its value. In the first place, Paul was commissioned to take the cakes
himself to these families, and get their promise to come and spend the