Читать книгу Roraima and British Guiana, With a Glance at Bermuda, the West Indies, and the Spanish Main онлайн

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There is no doubt that the scenery of Bermuda improves on acquaintance. At first sight the visitor will probably be disappointed with the flat appearance of the island and the apparently few possibilities for the picturesque. But in a very short time he will discover that it is all hill and dale, on a minute scale, it is true, as the highest elevation hardly exceeds two hundred and fifty feet—but varied and even romantic. Take, for instance, the view from the Barrack Hill. Everywhere the coastland seems broken up in the most capricious manner. Deep bays, narrow promontories, and an infinite number of islands give to the sea the appearance of a series of silver lakes, which shine in the sun like the fragments of a broken mirror. The undulating country is clothed with cedar-bush, whose grey green is relieved here and there by the brilliant flush of the pink oleander and the white perpendicular walls of a stone quarry. Afar off a lighthouse is pictured against the sky, near at hand is a white fort, and a church spire shows itself above the trees. But it is the beauty of the sea rather than of the land that here takes the first place in one’s affections; and in after-time it is the memory of the molten silver sea and its green islands that clings to one longest;