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

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It was late in the afternoon when we anchored off St. Pierre—the chief town in Martinique. The character of the island had not seemed quite so broken and romantic as Dominica, there was more low table-land and more cultivation, but the mountain range, with its grand pitons looking out over the clouds, gave promise to the expectant imagination of many beautiful scenes.

From the roadstead, we saw in front of us houses thickly massed together and extending round the bay. Close behind the town, on the eastern side, rose a precipitous hill, crowned with waving sugar-cane, and its deep-wooded side dotted with white villas. Towards the north, a broad ravine, through which a river ran, divided the town into two parts, and beyond rose the soft uplands, green with cane, and stretching to the delicately coloured hills which reached the high mountains in the background. On our right, the coast line was varied with rock, hill, and valley, and on one summit a large white statue stood out conspicuously against the green foliage; on our left, the palm-fringed shore, with here a solitary house, and there a little white village, ran northwards in a gently undulating line.