of the island of Grenada.  So runs the tale; and so it seemed likely to run again, during the late earthquake at St. Thomas’s.  For on the very same day, and before any earthquake-wave from St. Thomas’s had reached Grenada—­if any ever reached it, which I could not clearly ascertain—­this Etang du Vieux Bourg boiled up suddenly, hurling masses of water into the lower part of the town, washing away a stage, and doing much damage.  The people were, and with good reason, in much anxiety for some hours after:  but the little fit of ill-temper went off, having vented itself, as is well known, in the sea between St. Thomas’s and Santa Cruz, many miles away.

The bottom of the crater, I was assured, was not permanently altered:  but the same informant—­an eye-witness on whom I can fully depend—­shared the popular opinion that it had opened, sucked in sea-water, and spouted it out again.  If so, the good folks of George Town are quite right in holding that they had a very narrow escape of utter destruction.

An animated and picturesque spot, as the steamer runs alongside, is the wooden wharf where passengers are to land and the ship to coal.  The coaling Negroes and Negresses, dressed or undressed, in their dingiest rags, contrast with the country Negresses, in gaudy prints and gaudier turbans, who carry on their heads baskets of fruit even more gaudy than their dresses.  Both country and town Negroes, meanwhile, look—­as they are said to be—­comfortable and prosperous; and I can well believe the story that beggars are unknown in the island.  The coalers, indeed, are only too well off, for they earn enough, by one day of violent and degrading toil, to live in reckless shiftless comfort, and, I am assured, something very like debauchery, till the next steamer comes in.

No sooner is the plank down, than a struggling line getting on board meets a struggling line getting on shore; and it is well if the passenger, on landing, is not besmirched with coal-dust, after a narrow escape of being shoved into the sea off the stage.  But, after all, civility pays in Grenada, as in the rest of the world; and the Negro, like the Frenchman, though surly and rude enough if treated with the least haughtiness, will generally, like the Frenchman, melt at once at a touch of the hat, and an appeal to ‘Laissez passer Mademoiselle.’  On shore we got, through be-coaled Negroes, men and women, safe and not very much be-coaled ourselves; and were driven up steep streets of black porous lava, between lava houses and walls, and past lava gardens, in which jutted up everywhere, amid the loveliest vegetation, black knots and lumps scorched by the nether fires.  The situation of the house—­the principal one of the island—­to which we drove, is beautiful beyond description.  It stands on a knoll some 300 feet in height, commanded only by a slight rise to the north; and the wind of the eastern mountains sweeps fresh and cool through