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

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Hitherto the clearness of the atmosphere had brought the island views strangely close, without a distance, and with a monotone of tint most unpaintable, but here there was cloud and mist enough to have satisfied Corot himself. It was pleasant to feel that there was a beyond that we could clothe with our own fanciful colours, and that our gaze did not enfold the entire landscape.

Basseterre, the capital, where we stopped for an hour, looked very bright and sunny. Red roofs, peering out of thick green foliage, a gleam of white among the palm trees, and a picturesque church-tower, formed the foreground to a valley of rustling cane, extending the circle of hills, whose links are here of a less elevation than in the other parts of the chain. To us, it looked a quiet, fertile little place, and, no doubt, uncommonly dull. Of its native products we only saw some very good white grapes, and some very indifferent cigars which were brought for sale. St. Kitts is the only one of the Leeward[11] Islands that can be said to pay its way; the others seem to retrograde year by year. Now, however, that the constitution of the islands has been changed to the Crown Colony system, an improvement may be expected, and the same progress looked forward to as in the Windward group.