There again is a group of coloured men of all ranks, talking eagerly, business, or even politics; some of them as well dressed as if they were fresh from Europe; some of them, too, six feet high, and broad in proportion; as fine a race, physically, as one would wish to look upon; and with no want of shrewdness either, or determination, in their faces:  a race who ought, if they will be wise and virtuous, to have before them a great future.  Here come home from the convent school two coloured young ladies, probably pretty, possibly lovely, certainly gentle, modest, and well-dressed according to the fashions of Paris or New York; and here comes the unmistakable Englishman, tall, fair, close-shaven, arm-in-arm with another man, whose more delicate features, more sallow complexion, and little moustache mark him as some Frenchman or Spaniard of old family.  Both are dressed as if they were going to walk up Pall Mall or the Rue de Rivoli; for ‘go-to-meeting clothes’ are somewhat too much de rigueur here; a shooting-jacket and wide-awake betrays the newly-landed Englishman.  Both take off their hats with a grand air to a lady in a carriage; for they are very fine gentlemen indeed, and intend to remain such:  and well that is for the civilisation of the island; for it is from such men as these, and from their families, that the good manners for which West Indians are, or ought to be, famous, have permeated down, slowly but surely, through all classes of society save the very lowest.

The straight and level street, swarming with dogs, vultures, chickens, and goats, passes now out of the old into the newer part of the city; and the type of the houses changes at once.  Some are mere wooden sheds of one or two rooms, comfortable enough in that climate, where a sleeping-place is all that is needed—­if the occupiers would but keep them clean.  Other houses, wooden too, belong to well-to-do folk.  Over high walls you catch sight of jalousies and verandahs, inside which must be most delightful darkness and coolness.  Indeed, one cannot fancy more pleasant nests than some of the little gaily-painted wooden houses, standing on stilts to let the air under the floors, and all embowered in trees and flowers, which line the roads in the suburbs; and which are inhabited, we are told, by people engaged in business.

But what would—­or at least ought to—­strike the newcomer’s eye with most pleasurable surprise, and make him realise into what a new world he has been suddenly translated—­even more than the Negroes, and the black vultures sitting on roof-ridges, or stalking about in mid-street—­are the flowers which show over the walls on each side of the street.  In that little garden, not thirty feet broad, what treasures there are!  A tall palm—­whether Palmiste or Oil-palm—­has its smooth trunk hung all over with orchids, tied on with wire.  Close to it stands a purple Dracaena, such as are put on English dinner-tables in pots: