unrivalled charms of St. Pierre. As you pursue the Grande Rue,
or Rue Victor Hugo,--which traverses the town through all its
length, undulating over hill-slopes and into hollows and over a
bridge,--you become more and more enchanted by the contrast of
the yellow-glowing walls to right and left with the jagged strip
of gentian-blue sky overhead. Charming also it is to watch
the cross-streets climbing up to the fiery green of the
mountains behind the town. On the lower side of the main
thoroughfare other streets open in wonderful bursts of blue-warm
blue of horizon and sea. The steps by which these ways descend
towards the bay are black with age, and slightly mossed close to
the wall on either side: they have an alarming steepness,--one
might easily stumble from the upper into the lower street.
Looking towards the water through these openings from the Grande
Rue, you will notice that the sea-line cuts across the blue space
just at the level of the upper story of the house on the lower
street-corner. Sometimes, a hundred feet below, you see a ship
resting in the azure aperture,--seemingly suspended there in sky-
color, floating in blue light. And everywhere and always, through
sunshine or shadow, comes to you the scent of the city,--the
characteristic odor of St. Pierre;--a compound odor suggesting
the intermingling of sugar and garlic in those strange tropical
dishes which creoles love....



XII.


... A population fantastic, astonishing,--a population of the