So, again, when in the year 1812 the volcano of St. Vincent, in the West India Islands, poured out torrents of lava, after mighty earthquakes which shook all that part of the world, a strange thing happened (about which I have often heard from those who saw it) in the island of Barbados, several hundred miles away.  For when the sun rose in the morning (it was a Sunday morning), the sky remained more dark than any night, and all the poor negroes crowded terrified out of their houses into the streets, fancying the end of the world was come.  But a learned man who was there, finding that, though the sun was risen, it was still pitchy dark, opened his window, and found that it was stuck fast by something on the ledge outside, and, when he thrust it open, found the ledge covered deep in soft red dust; and he instantly said, like a wise man as he was, “The volcano of St. Vincent must have broken out, and these are the ashes from it.”  Then he ran down stairs and quieted the poor negroes, telling them not to be afraid, for the end of the world was not coming just yet.  But still the dust went on falling till the whole island, I am told, was covered an inch thick; and the same thing happened in the other islands round.  People thought—­and they had reason to think from what had often happened elsewhere—­that though the dust might hurt the crops for that year, it would make them richer in years to come, because it would act as manure upon the soil; and so it did after a few years; but it did terrible damage at the time, breaking off the boughs of trees and covering up the crops; and in St. Vincent itself whole estates were ruined.  It was a frightful day, but I know well that behind that How there was a Why for its happening, and happening too, about that very time, which all who know the history of negro slavery in the West Indies can guess for themselves, and confess, I hope, that in this case, as in all others, when Lady Why seems most severe she is often most just and kind.

Ah! my dear child, that I could go on talking to you of this for hours and days!  But I have time now only to teach you the alphabet of these matters—­and, indeed, I know little more than the alphabet myself; but if the very letters of Madam How’s book, and the mere A, B, AB, of it, which I am trying to teach you, are so wonderful and so beautiful, what must its sentences be and its chapters?  And what must the whole book be like?  But that last none can read save He who wrote it before the worlds were made.

But now I see you want to ask a question.  Let us have it out.  I would sooner answer one question of yours than tell you ten things without your asking.

Is there potash and magnesia and silicates in the soil here?  And if there is, where did they come from?  For there are no volcanos in England.