earthquakes and hurricanes, they each possess an active volcano, and
Martinique and St. Lucia are the habitat of the dreaded and deadly
Fer-de-Lance snake.

The Administrator of St. Vincent had been good enough to ask me to
dinner by telegram. The steamer reached St. Vincent after dark, and it
was a curious experience landing on an unknown island in a tailcoat
and white tie, driving for two miles, and then tumbling into a
dinner-party of sixteen white people, not one of whom one had ever
seen before, or was ever likely to meet again. It was as though one
had been dropped by an aeroplane into an unknown land, and when the
steamer sailed again before midnight, it was all as though it had
never been. The orchids on that dinner-table were very remarkable, for
orchid-growing was the Administrator's hobby. He grafted his orchids
on to orange trees, and so obtained enormous growths. We measured some
of the flower-sprays, the biggest being nine feet long. As they were
brown and yellow Oncidiums, they were more curious than beautiful.

The appalling desolation of St. Pierre, in the French island of
Martinique, cannot be imagined without having been seen. Of a very
handsome city of 40,000 inhabitants there is absolutely nothing left
except one gable of the cathedral. There is no trace of a town having
ever existed here, for the poisonous manchineel tree has spread itself
over the ruins, and it is difficult to realise that twenty years ago
the pride of the French West Indies stood here. The rich merchants and
planters of St. Pierre had all made their homes in the valley of the
little river Roxelana. After the sides of Mont Pele had gaped apart
and hurled their white-hot whirlwind of fire over the doomed town on
that fatal May 8, 1902--a fiery whirlwind which calcined every human
being and every building in the town in less than one minute--molten