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dashing mast-high up against the lighthouse. Farther on was the harbour and its little crowd of vessels; on the other side a fringe of palm-trees bent slowly and reluctantly to the breeze, their huge green fans and dry cordage rustling and creaking like the sails of a ship. Wonderful new blossoms and strangely painted leaves—the hibiscus with its cup of fire, the blood-red pomegranate, the pale foliage and scarlet festoons of the coral-tree overflowed the banks and scrambled up the trunks of the strange tropical trees on every side. Even the hedges and ditches were full of hothouse ferns, bright shields of begonias, and arrow-shaped caladiums. Over all the landscape was a veiled hazy light that softened every outline to a kind of chiaroscuro; the sea air was full of mingled freshness and languor; a cinnamon-scented breeze sometimes came in wafts from the inland forests; over all and through all other sounds floated the deep melancholy undertone of the surf as it swept over the coral reef and whitened the serrated margin of the coast for a thousand miles; even the natives seemed decked with “barbaric pomp and pearl” as they sauntered slowly past, robed in white, with hair twisted in high tortoiseshell combs, and like “mild-eyed melancholy lotus-eaters” offered for sale sap-