the sea.

We stay at Roseau only long enough to land the mails, and wonder
at the loveliness of the island. A beautifully wrinkled mass of
green and blue and gray;--a strangely abrupt peaking and heaping
of the land. Behind the green heights loom the blues; behind
these the grays--all pinnacled against the sky-glow-thrusting up
through gaps or behind promontories. Indescribably exquisite the
foldings and hollowings of the emerald coast. In glen and vale
the color of cane-fields shines like a pooling of fluid bronze,
as if the luminous essence of the hill tints had been dripping
down and clarifying there. Far to our left, a bright green spur
pierces into the now turquoise sea; and beyond it, a beautiful
mountain form, blue and curved like a hip, slopes seaward,
showing lighted wrinkles here and there, of green. And from the
foreground, against the blue of the softly outlined shape, cocoa-
palms are curving,--all sharp and shining in the sun.

... Another hour; and Martinique looms before us. At first it
appears all gray, a vapory gray; then it becomes bluish-gray;
then all green.

It is another of the beautiful volcanic family: it owns the same
hill shapes with which we have already become acquainted; its
uppermost height is hooded with the familiar cloud; we see the
same gold-yellow plains, the same wonderful varieties of
verdancy, the same long green spurs reaching out into the sea,--
doubtless formed by old lava torrents. But all this is now
repeated for us more imposingly, more grandiosely;--it is wrought
upon a larger scale than anything we have yet seen. The