crag-looks almost as if it had been hewn out of one mountain
fragment, instead of having been constructed stone by stone.
Although commonly consisting of two stories and an attic only,
the dwellings have walls three feet in thickness;--on one street,
facing the sea, they are even heavier, and slope outward like
ramparts, so that the perpendicular recesses of windows and doors
have the appearance of being opened between buttresses. It may
have been partly as a precaution against earthquakes, and partly
for the sake of coolness, that the early colonial architects
built thus;--giving the city a physiognomy so well worthy of
its name,--the name of the Saint of the Rock.

And everywhere rushes mountain water,--cool and crystal clear,
washing the streets;--from time to time you come to some public
fountain flinging a silvery column to the sun, or showering
bright spray over a group of black bronze tritons or bronze
swans. The Tritons on the Place Bertin you will not readily
forget;--their curving torsos might have been modelled from the
forms of those ebon men who toil there tirelessly all day in the
great heat, rolling hogsheads of sugar or casks of rum. And often
you will note, in the course of a walk, little drinking-fountains
contrived at the angle of a building, or in the thick walls
bordering the bulwarks or enclosing public squares: glittering
threads of water spurting through lion-lips of stone. Some
mountain torrent, skilfully directed and divided, is thus
perpetually refreshing the city,--supplying its fountains and
cooling its courts.... This is called the Gouyave water: it is
not the same stream which sweeps and purifies the streets.

Picturesqueness and color: these are the particular and the