Under a cloudless sky, upon a sea, lively yet not unpleasantly rough, we thrashed and leaped along.  Ahead of us, one after another, rose high on the southern horizon banks of gray cloud, from under each of which, as we neared it, descended the shoulder of a mighty mountain, dim and gray.  Nearer still the gray changed to purple; lowlands rose out of the sea, sloping upwards with those grand and simple concave curves which betoken, almost always, volcanic land.  Nearer still, the purple changed to green.  Tall palm-trees and engine-houses stood out against the sky; the surf gleamed white around the base of isolated rocks.  A little nearer, and we were under the lee, or western side, of the island.  The sea grew smooth as glass; we entered the shade of the island-cloud, and slid along in still unfathomable blue water, close under the shore of what should have been one of the Islands of the Blest.

It was easy, in presence of such scenery, to conceive the exaltation which possessed the souls of the first discoverers of the West Indies.  What wonder if they seemed to themselves to have burst into Fairyland—­to be at the gates of The Earthly Paradise?  With such a climate, such a soil, such vegetation, such fruits, what luxury must not have seemed possible to the dwellers along those shores?  What riches too, of gold and jewels, might not be hidden among those forest-shrouded glens and peaks?  And beyond, and beyond again, ever new islands, new continents perhaps, an inexhaustible wealth of yet undiscovered worlds.

No wonder that the men rose above themselves, for good and for evil; that having, as it seemed to them, found infinitely, they hoped infinitely, and dared infinitely.  They were a dumb generation and an unlettered, those old Conquistadores.  They did not, as we do now, analyse and describe their own impressions:  but they felt them nevertheless; and felt them, it may be, all the more intensely, because they could not utter them; and so went, half intoxicated, by day and night, with the beauty and the wonder round them, till the excitement overpowered alike their reason and their conscience; and, frenzied with superstition and greed, with contempt and hatred of the heathen Indians, and often with mere drink and sunshine, they did deeds which, like all wicked deeds, avenge themselves, and are avenging themselves, from Mexico to Chili, unto this very day.

I said that these islands resembled Vesuvius and the Bay of Naples.  Like causes have produced like effects; and each island is little but the peak of a volcano, down whose shoulders lava and ash have slidden toward the sea.  Some carry several crater cones, complicating at once the structure and scenery of the island; but the majority carry but a single cone, like that little island, or rather rock, of Saba, which is the first of the Antilles under the lee of which the steamer passes.  Santa Cruz,