brokenly across the valley and over half the roofs of the palmy
town. There is a little river flowing down to the bay on the
left; and west of it a walled cemetery is visible, out of which
one monumental palm rises to a sublime height: its crest still
bathes in the sun, above the invading shadow. Night approaches;
the shade of the hills inundates all the landscape, rises even
over the palm-crest. Then, black-towering into the golden glow
of sunset, the land loses all its color, all its charm; forms of
frondage, variations of tint, become invisible. Saint Lucia is
only a monstrous silhouette; all its billowing hills, its
volcanic bays, its amphitheatrical valleys, turn black as ebony.

And you behold before you a geological dream, a vision of the
primeval sea: the apparition of the land as first brought forth,
all peak-tossed and fissured and naked and grim, in the
tremendous birth of an archipelago.



XXXIII.


Homeward bound.

Again the enormous poem of azure and emerald unrolls before us,
but in order inverse; again is the island--Litany of the Saints
repeated for us, but now backward. All the bright familiar
harbors once more open to receive us;--each lovely Shape floats
to us again, first golden yellow, then vapory gray, then ghostly
blue, but always sharply radiant at last, symmetrically