the words) when sung by good voices, all taking their parts properly, as they row you across the harbor in the soft moonlight, and one nears the dim outline of the shore and the twinkling lights of the little town, while the great white stars gleam above, and the Southern Cross hangs low on the horizon. A friend who visited the opera in Martinique, where "Lucia di Lammermoor" was given, told me that the chorus was composed of blacks, and that the principal parts were sung by indifferent French artistes. He said that the effect of Highland bonnets perched on the black woolly heads, and surmounting the round, shining, grinning faces, was irresistibly comic, to say nothing of the black knees appearing below the kilts! Traditions of old world warfare linger round some of the islands, where, for centuries, the great naval powers of England, France, Spain, and Holland fought for the supremacy of these seas. Nor were the battles by land less frequent. St. Lucia was taken and retaken five times by the English (twice under Rodney) before we finally conquered it in 1803. St. Kitts, which claims the honor of being the first British colony, was afterwards partially captured by the French, who took possession of half the island; and here, within an area of sixty-eight square miles, deadly battles, on a small scale, waged for years. The two tiny capitals, Basseterre and Sandypoint, were alternately besieged as the fortunes of war fluctuated, and surprises and massacres were of every-day occurrence. Reinforcements from the mother countries arrived from time to time, and the inhabitants were not completely exterminated. At last Spain drove both French and English from the island, which, having been again re-conquered by all in turn, was finally ceded to us at the treaty of Versailles. It still bristles with the remains of forts; but only one, and that comparatively modern, is worth visiting. Brimstone Hill is a wonderful piece of fortification. A perfectly isolated conical hill, it rises very steeply, and is about seven hundred and fifty feet high. The path to the top, which winds round and round, corkscrew fashion, has been cut out of the steep side of the rock, and is paved and faced with stone. Great gate ways span the road at intervals, and were guarded with cannon in the old days. The whole top of the hill is occupied by the fort, and must have been quite impregnable. There are supposed to be underground cisterns seven acres in extent; so the garrison could hardly have fallen short of water. This magnificent work, which cost the government about £4,000,000, was occupied only a short time. The troops were withdrawn about forty years ago; and since then it has been going to ruin as fast as such solid masonry can go. Among the many expeditions we made during our sojourn in the West Indies, two stand out prominently in my recollection. The first was to the little island of Nevis, where we spent one of the hottest days I can remember. Our landing was rendered unpleasant by the blacks having upset a hogshead of molasses on the jetty. Crowding round the brown, sticky pool, scooping it up in their hands, some even lying on their faces the better to imbibe the delicacy, crowds of niggers, old and young, were enjoying life hilariously. A plank was laid for us across the darksome stream, and we reached the other side in safety. There we hired a nondescript buggy, drawn by a mule and a pony, and proceeded on our way. Our Jehu took us at a hand gallop through the tiny town, the blacks cheering and waving their hats as we passed; up the long, white road, between rows of waving cane, we crept slowly on in a cloud of dust, and so at last came to our first halting-place, Figtree Church. We entered from the glare and heat of the noonday sun into the cool and dusk of the little building, a quaint, dilapidated place, with many tablets above our heads and at our feet, many flagstones setting forth in long Latin inscriptions the innumerable virtues of men long since passed away. The old colored man, clerk or sexton, produced the great treasure of the island, the register containing the entry of Nelson's marriage. He informed us that the ceremony was performed not in the church, but in the house of the lady, which stood close by, and is now in ruins. Prince William Henry, afterwards Duke of Clarence, then a lieutenant on the Boreas, was best man. More than this the watchman could not tell us; so, after another look at the yellow, tattered page, where the marriage of "Horatio Nelson, Esquire, Captain of his Majesty's ship Boreas, to Frances Herbert Nisbet, widow," stands among the entries of marriage of planters and mulattos, we turned to leave the little church. One more glance round at the dim little building, at the mouldering woodwork, at the long Latin inscriptions; one instant's pause to realize the intense repose in the dusky stillness around us a hush deep and profound, full of the nameless and powerful influence of those who had rested there for centuries- and then we passed out into the dazzling sunshine, through the tiny porch, over which a splendid creeper had thrown its great bunches of bright flowers. On and on, up the same steep white road we journeyed, until we turned through an ancient gateway, and found ourselves in the ruin of an old gardena tangled thicket of oleanders, raising glorious pink blossoms athwart the sky; a wilderness of feathery bamboos; a mass of ferns growing in every chink and cranny among the scattered stones of an old grey house, one of the substantial houses which the West Indian planters used to build; a row of tall and graceful palms whispering above us, and telling each other the histories of the ancient dwelling. will be; shut away from all disturbance, From Blackwood's Magazine. The other expedition which I remember so distinctly was in an out-of-the-way island, up a mountain, the top of which was an extinct crater. The house in which we were staying was some five or six when age, with gradual and miles from the foot of the mountain, and quiet hand, has put out the lights at the it was arranged that we should drive so feast, and, one by one, has called away the far. We started in the darkness, which guests, when we shall sit alone in the rested like a soft cloak upon the earth, twilight, waiting for the end, and our very before daybreak; but we had hardly pro-living is done (as it were) by deputy, in ceeded a mile when the sun threw level the words and in the deeds of others, rays across land and sea. Higher and then, I think, it will, after all, be a happihigher he rose, and immediately (as it ness to recall some of those sights and seemed) the stillness and silence had fled sounds of beauty which fixed themselves with the darkness, and the world was wide in our memories in the time when we too awake. The land breeze had risen; the really lived. G. BLAKE. birds were flitting to and fro; the flowers spread their bright petals to the sun; and the laughing waves sparkled on the shore. By noon we stood on the summit of the mountain, at the edge of the crater, after a tiring climb of between four and five thousand feet, now scrambling over a carpet of maidenhair fern and white begonia, now forcing our way, through brambles and thickets, among the great tree ferns, above whose arched heads towered the great palms, completely sheltering us from the sun. From the lip of the crater we had to descend eight hundred feet. As the hill was nearly perpendicular, it was difficult to get down; but the vegetation helped us, and once down we were well rewarded. The sides of the crater, covered with the most glorious foliage, sloped steeply down to a lake, about two acres in extent, which completely filled the basin. Standing on the narrow strip of beach, only a yard or so in width, we gazed up at the green wall rising on all sides, almost as steeply as the sides of a well; then we looked down upon the placid water at our feet, a melancholy lake which has never been ruffled by the slightest breath of wind, nor ever THE wind, in long-drawn sighs has passed over the uplands, and died away in the hollows at the foot of the hills. Á long, low line of cloud has hung for days in the south-west, lifting slightly from time to time, to settle again as before. This belt of clouds reaches for miles. There is a break in it now and again, caused by wind rushing up fitfully from the sea, far away beyond the hills; but it is only for a short spell, then the cloud-line is continuous again. The ponies, rough and long-maned, are moving noiselessly with unshod hoofs to certain hollows well known to themselves, where they will stand sheltered and warm as if they were stabled, under the thick hollies. Roughfleeced sheep as well as ponies have taken the notion into their heads that white weather is coming. The sheep, also, are making tracks, but in a different direction from the ponies. Their food is the same - but their habits and their choice of shelter | the scuttle. Up he pokes his long, stout are very different. bill and a part of his head from the side of the ant-hill that is farthest from us, a comical bird, truly. He is listening to find out, if he can, what that suspicious rustle was that he heard just now. He is not quite satisfied, and presently he dives into the ferns at the stem of one of the old thorns, a little farther away. Being well acquainted with his antics, we look at once at the middle of the tree, and there we have him, his head twisted round the stem, looking in our direction. My glass is full on him, and he appears a most extraordinary fellow as he raises the crimson feathers of his head and lets them fall again, the head well on the slant, a redcapped, long-nosed, feathered harlequin. On examining the ant-hill on which he has been so busy, we find he has excavated into it sideways driven tunnels, in fact. There has been no waste of labor; he has gone straight for the emmets and their domestic offices. Probably the insects and their eggs have, as I have already suggested, a corrective property which is fully appreciated by the yaffle, and he means to have his fill of them before the snow comes. Wild-fowl in companies of three and two, far apart, rush overhead, high up, to certain points and back again, wild ducks they are, so far as we are able to determine from their flight. Where the mast lies in profusion the birds are very busy on and under the fallen leaves. Wood-pigeons, especially, are filling their crops in most business like fashion. There is no playing about—no rushing up to the tree-tops to spread wings and tails and to trim their feathers; all that they are bent on now is to stow away a good crop of food before the snow comes and covers it in. They will still be able to get something to eat when that happens, but it will be under difficulties, for the birds will have to plough the snow off with their broad breasts- unless it lies too thickly for them to do this and to flirt it to right and left of them in white, powdery puffs. A large number of wild pigeons marching along on the feed, under these circumstances, may fairly be compared to feathered snow-ploughs. It does not take long to clear a space wherein to forage. The jays, for a wonder, flit quietly from one tree or berry-bearing bush to On the broad roads, or rides, cleared in another, too busy to squawk unless you the beech woods, where the wind, to a cerfrighten one out of its wits by quietly com- tain extent, keeps the leaves from gathering on him from behind some clump of ing thickly, large flocks of chaffinches and bushes, as he is stocking away among the tits gather; from the great tit to the little fallen leaves. In such case he is seri- blue tit, all are busy at the fallen mast. ously alarmed, and makes a tremendous There is a continual twink! twink! twink! noise over it. The green woodpecker is As to the tits, they chide and chatter; and just as busy as the rest, only after a dif- mingled with them you will find the beauferent method. Something his instinct tiful bramblings, or bramble finches, conwe say, for want of a better term where- spicuous at once, as they fly up, by their with to describe a bird's faculties tells white tail-coverts, as well as by their scishim that after the sumptuous living he sors-grinding note. I kept a pair of these has enjoyed through the spring, summer, once for a time, but had to give them their and early part of the autumn, ants or their liberty or they would have ground us out eggs are essentially necessary to his well- of the house. One thing is very noticebeing, to tone things down a bit possibly. able about all birds that have luxuriated For the yaffle is positively plump just now. on beech-mast for a long spell, their To procure pupæ in a more or less ad- plumage gets the gloss of satin on it, vanced stage of development, he leaves doubtless owing to the great amount of this belt of silver-grey beech woods and oil in the nuts. A woodland friend brought frequents the outskirts, where are open me a couple once for preserving; they spaces covered with fine grass and ant- were skinned with the greatest difficulty. hills, well studded with gnarled old thorn- In fact, the bird-preserver told me that if trees, both black and white thorn, covered I had not been a special friend of his, he with moss and lichens. You will be pretty would have thrown up the job. The man certain to find him, if you know how to who brought the bramblings informed me look for him, scuttling round some ant-"they bramblings hed bin a middlin' good hill; no deserted one, thoughthing for him, fur a real gentleman as he better than that. knowed on took all he could ketch; he said they wus as good as some birds as he'd eat in furrin parts. I made bold," said he, “to ask what they birds might ha' - he knows There he is the yellow patch on the lower part of his back betrayed him as he scuttled round, and he is continually on been, an' he told me they wus ortlins. Queer names they has fur critters in furrin parts." mouth, eating the pulp and dropping the seed. Just as he is reaching out for another berry, two song-thrushes dash down on to his branch. He gives one look of amazement at the intruders, then makes a dash at them. This they by no means appreciate, for they know that if they once get into the clutch of the squirrel it will go hard with them. He belongs to the gnawers; but, like the rest of that family, or at any rate most of them, he indulges at times in other diet than a strictly vegetable one. These sights are most interesting, but the inside of a bush is not quite so comfortable as the outside of it. I burst out suddenly. Master Squirrel chatters and is off. All I see of him is his tail. As to the birds, there is a flutter like that about a pigeon-cot, so great is the number that fly from those old yew-trees. Missel-thrushes, song - thrushes, and blackbirds flock to the yew-trees for their luscious berries; so do other birds, but the thrush family contrive to keep a monopoly of the yews. We have been taught by some theologians that “birds in their little nests agree; they certainly do not do so when feeding. I have been standing hidden in the middle of a bush close to some yew-trees, and have witnessed a scene of scolding, wrangling, and some battlesroyal, not to be surpassed in human life. The scarlet-vermilion berries are in profusion on the trees, and they cover the ground below in spots over which a more than usually energetic struggle has been taking place. Where the boughs have had most light and warmth there is, of course, more fruit, and the largest and ripest, and the birds feed there voraciously. The perfection of bird-diet they find it. On one heavily berried branch three missel-thrushes settle; one fine fellow screams defiance at the other two, who will not see the matter in the same light. So a conflict ensues; at it they go, feathers flying and floating away in all directions. It ends in the fine bully having the bough all to himself, but minus quite half the berries, which have been threshed off in the scuffle. He does not long enjoy his position unmolested, for as he raises his head to take a look round before feeding, showing a beautiful spotted breast, a couple of robins, the fighters of the wood-places for snails or worms. Instead of lands, make a dash at him, knocking him off his spray of yew. And so the game goes on from morn till eve, screechings, cluckings, chirpings, and flutterings amongst those yew-trees. The squirrel also appreciates the berries highly. I have just seen one of the prettiest sights possible, a squirrel feeding on them in most dainty fashion. The pulp is of a sweet, glutinous nature very sticky, in fact. To see the way the little fellow glided over the thick dark foliage until he found a branch just to his liking was a treat. Then he sat up, his fine brush-tail well up to the back of his head, ear-tufts erect, and those bright eyes glancing in all directions to make sure that all was right, before he indulged in this luxury. Very neatly he picks off a fine berry with his fore hands, in spite of the information one of our critics solemnly volunteers us that squirrels do not possess hands, I cannot bring myself to call them feet,- places the fruit in his Snow is certainly about; one or two small flakes have been seen; now some larger ones fall. We shall not be long without more, for the flakes cease falling just as suddenly as they began. The air is too cold yet for it to come down. As the daylight begins to get low, lurid streaks show, low down beneath the long line of cloud-belt. There is a murky light above that gets darker in tone, for the belt is moving and appears to rise. The winds moan as though heavily laden, and complaining about all they had to carry and drive before them. Beside the hedgerows the blackbirds are busy, tossing the leaves from side to side, peering under hollow their usual shriek of alarm they give only a half-smothered cry as they slip through the hedge, to get away from you. The hedge-sparrow, that beautiful singer when other songsters are still, glides in and out of the hedge, flirts and shuffles with his wings, justifying one of our local names for him, that of "shuffle-wing." He is silent now, however, for he knows that he, with others, will have to hunt hard and to little purpose before long. near. Chack-chack!" muttered out overhead, tells us that fieldfares are There they go, a flock of them, to roost on the ground in the "forey" grass like larks. A few redwings detach themselves from the company, and with feeble clucks make for some plashy hollows that are wooded and well sheltered, there to find food with the woodcocks that frequent the same locality. "Peewit, weet, weet peewit!" Here come the green plovers from the large open fields of the upland farms. They wheel and flap, and twist and wheel again. We think that they have decided at last to go, but we are mistaken. They make once more for the fields they had left, set tle, run about, and then rise, calling most mournfully, as they pass over us, a flapping company of black and white, making for the sheltered coombe, close to the old farm where they have had their haunts and homes "frum beyon' recknin'." The wind sinks as we reach the foot of the upland; flakes of snow come on us; more fall, and we hurry on, for a blinding storm of snow at night, in a rough, wooded district, is a serious matter, fearfully misleading even to those who know the country well. Rooks are sagacious birds they have the faculty of self-preservation very fully developed; but I have known them all at sea in a snowstorm, and completely helpless in one of the thick, white fogs that are so very prevalent in the woodlands, after a heavy fall, and a half turn of the wind to the southward for a few hours. In such case they will drop in the first trees they come to, or even on to the tops of hedges, flapping, fluttering, croaking, and quarking in a most unearthly manner, unable to reach their rookery until the fog lifts. Their instinct, or reckoning faculties, fail them, just as man's will fail him under similar circumstances. The leadings of instinct are by no means so unerring as some would have us believe. I have known a kingfisher come to his death by plunging down on to the roof of a low greenhouse, mistaking the glitter of the glass through the shrubs for water. Insects are continually fluttering against the top-lights from inside, especially butterflies, and birds will attempt their capture from without. Wild creatures often make fatal mistakes, and catastrophes occur at times that exterminate hosts of animals and birds together. After heavy snows the remains of unfortunate creatures such as do not of their own accord associate together - have been found involved in one common ruin. Before we reached home the snow had fallen so thickly that the footsteps of those who passed were noiseless. On the morning following we find the ground covered a foot deep in some places. Travelling over it in one of my usual rambles, I find that the birds are not affected by it. That is because there is no frost. Snow may lie for weeks, if it does not freeze, without wild creatures being punished through it. The robin, as we pass him, looks at us with his bold, dark eyes, warbling a cheery song, as if he thought the wintry weather most seasonable and enjoyable. There was never a snowstorm yet that completely covered all places; go where you will, countless spots of possible shelter will catch your eye in every direction. The snow may be lying on the hedges, where it has drifted in such heavy masses as to bend them over to leeward, but the banks below will be free from it. And as nearly all hedges have water-runs on one side of them or the other, the ground is soft, and so everything that lives in the banks can be got at by the birds that live on snails, slugs, worms, and the many various forms of insect life in a torpid state, mature or immature. The berry-eating species keep more to the tops of the hedges. These are in the best of spirits, for their food gleams out in the midst of the snow in the most tempting fashion. Crimson hips and the berries of the hawthorn are in pro fusion. Fieldfares have gathered here, chacking and chattering, as they cling with their strong feet to the heavily laden twigs; the snow flies off all round and about them. The bullfinches that are feeding on the privet-berries look like roses as you catch sight of their brilliant breasts, while they cling and flutter and pipe within a few yards of you. Wild fruit is in the pink of condition when the cold weather sets in; it becomes sweet and smooth, instead of being acrid and rough as it was. If by some rare chance any of the clustered berries of the mountain-ash are left, they will be fiercely fought for. The ring. ousel, the blackbird of the moors, will be sure to have his share of them if he be in the district. So partial is he to this fruit, that I have known him stay his flight and come close to houses near Dorking town, where some of the mountain-ash trees have been grown as ornamental objects on either side of the entrance-gates. This was very late in the season. ring-ousels are about during the winter months I have had most convincing proof, having seen some that had been shot by men when out blackbird shooting. That It is the frost that punishes and kills our wild creatures - unless they are extremely hard to kill not the snow, which protects and keeps them warm. The bare that sits in her form of dry, tussocky grass and dead ferns, roofed over with stout trailing brambles, which the weight of snow actually makes to touch the ground' just in front, is snug and warm. Her food is close within reach, and, so far, she has nothing to fear from the weather. It is very enjoyable walking across large, un. |