visions of hills. The near slopes descending to the sea are a
radiant green, with streaks and specklings of darker verdure;--
the farther-rising hills faint blue, with green saliencies
catching the sun;--and beyond these are upheavals of luminous
gray--pearl-gray--sharpened in the silver glow of the horizon....
The general impression of the whole landscape is one of motion
suddenly petrified,--of an earthquake surging and tossing
suddenly arrested and fixed: a raging of cones and peaks and
monstrous truncated shapes.... We approach the Pitons.

Seen afar off, they first appeared twin mammiform peaks,--naked
and dark against the sky; but now they begin to brighten a little
and show color,--also to change form. They take a lilaceous hue,
broken by gray and green lights; and as we draw yet nearer they
prove dissimilar both in shape and tint.... Now they separate
before us, throwing long pyramidal shadows across the steamer's
path. Then, as they open to our coming, between them a sea bay
is revealed--a very lovely curving bay, bounded by hollow cliffs
of fiery green. At either side of the gap the Pitons rise like
monster pylones. And a charming little settlement, a beautiful
sugar-plantation, is nestling there between them, on the very
edge of the bay.

Out of a bright sea of verdure, speckled with oases of darker foliage,
these Pitons from the land side tower in sombre vegetation. Very high
up, on the nearer one, amid the wooded slopes, you can see houses
perched; and there are bright breaks in the color there--tiny
mountain pastures that look like patches of green silk velvet.

... We pass the Pitons, and enter another little craterine