And now the steamer ran due south, across the vast basin which is ringed round by Antigua, Montserrat, and Guadaloupe, with St. Kitts and Nevis showing like tall gray ghosts to the north-west.  Higher and higher ahead rose the great mountain mass of Guadaloupe, its head in its own canopy of cloud.  The island falls into the sea sharply to leeward.  But it stretches out to windward in a long line of flat land edged with low cliff, and studded with large farms and engine-houses.  It might be a bit of the Isle of Thanet, or of the Lothians, were it not for those umbrella-like Palmistes, a hundred feet high, which stand out everywhere against the sky.  At its northern end, a furious surf was beating on a sandy beach; and beyond that, dim and distant, loomed up the low flat farther island, known by the name of Grande Terre.

Guadaloupe, as some of my readers may know, consists, properly speaking, of two islands, divided by a swamp and a narrow salt-water river.  The eastward half, or Grande Terre, which is composed of marine strata, is hardly seen in the island voyage, and then only at a distance, first behind the westward Basse Terre, and then behind other little islands, the Saintes and Mariegalante.  But the westward island, rising in one lofty volcanic mass which hides the eastern island from view, is perhaps, for mere grandeur, the grandest in the Archipelago.  The mountains—­among which are, it is said, fourteen extinct craters—­range upward higher and higher toward the southern end, with corries and glens, which must be, when seen near, hanging gardens of stupendous size.  The forests seem to be as magnificent as they were in the days of Pere Labat.  Tiny knots on distant cliff-tops, when looked at through the glass, are found to be single trees of enormous height and breadth.  Gullies hundreds of feet in depth, rushing downwards toward the sea, represent the rush of the torrents which have helped, through thousands of rainy seasons, to scoop them out and down.

But all this grandeur and richness culminates, toward the southern end, in one great crater-peak 5000 feet in height, at the foot of which lies the Port of Basse Terre, or Bourg St. Francois.

We never were so fortunate as to see the Souffriere entirely free from cloud.  The lower, wider, and more ancient crater was generally clear:  but out of the midst of it rose a second cone buried in darkness and mist.  Once only we caught sight of part of its lip, and the sight was one not to be forgotten.

The sun was rising behind the hills.  The purple mountain was backed by clear blue sky.  High above it hung sheets of orange cloud lighted from underneath; lower down, and close upon the hill-tops, curved sheets of bright white mist

’Stooped from heaven, and took the shape, With fold on fold, of mountain and of cape.’