thrown into grass during the period of depression dating from 1845.  It has not been worth while, as yet, to break them up again, though the profits of sugar-farming are now, or at least ought to be, very large.  But the soil along this line is originally poor and sandy; and it is far more profitable to break up the rich vegas, or low alluvial lands, even at the trouble of clearing them of forest.  So these paddocks are left, often with noble trees standing about in them, putting one in mind—­if it were not for the Palmistes and Bamboos and the crowd of black vultures over an occasional dead animal—­of English parks.

But few English parks have such backgrounds.  To the right, the vast southern flat, with its smoking engine-house chimneys and bright green cane-pieces, and, beyond all, the black wall of the primeval forest; and to the left, some half mile off, the steep slopes of the green northern mountains blazing in the sun, and sending down, every two or three miles, out of some charming glen, a clear pebbly brook, each winding through its narrow strip of vega.  The vega is usually a highly cultivated cane-piece, where great lizards sit in the mouths of their burrows, and watch the passer by with intense interest.  Coolies and Negroes are at work in it:  but only a few; for the strength of the hands is away at the engine-house, making sugar day and night.  There is a piece of cane in act of being cut.  The men are hewing down the giant grass with cutlasses; the women stripping off the leaves, and then piling the cane in carts drawn by mules, the leaders of which draw by rope traces two or three times as long as themselves.  You wonder why such a seeming waste of power is allowed, till you see one of the carts stick fast in a mud-hole, and discover that even in the West Indies there is a good reason for everything, and that the Creoles know their own business best.  For the wheelers, being in the slough with the cart, are powerless; but the leaders, who have scrambled through, are safe on dry land at the end of their long traces, and haul out their brethren, cart and all, amid the yells, and I am sorry to say blows, of the black gentlemen in attendance.  But cane cutting is altogether a busy, happy scene.  The heat is awful, and all limbs rain perspiration:  yet no one seems to mind the heat; all look fat and jolly; and they have cause to do so, for all, at every spare moment, are sucking sugar-cane.

You pull up, and take off your hat to the party.  The Negroes shout, ‘Marnin’, sa!’ The Coolies salaam gracefully, hand to forehead.  You return the salaam, hand to heart, which is considered the correct thing on the part of a superior in rank; whereat the Coolies look exceedingly pleased; and then the whole party, without visible reason, burst into shouts of laughter.