Page:An Epistle to Posterity.djvu/88

Rh I have been glad since that he was not of my opinion.

We left on a little schooner for Santa Cruz in a week. It was a short sail and uneventful. Our friend the Reverend Mr. Hawley received us at the wharf with his carriage in waiting, drove us to his house, and gave us afternoon tea on a shaded veranda which looked into a garden. And afterwards we sauntered down long avenues which were thickly shaded by polished-leaved orange-trees, the Olea fragrans, and the innumerable blooming trees of this famed island. These alleys radiated in fan shape from the house. Along one, lovely scarlet pendent blossoms lighted up the green; in another, yellow tassels hung gracefully; in another, pink blossoms blushed. Down another alley white flowers gleamed like stars; the banana, the pineapple, the orange, the guava, the lemon, all planted at intervals; and over the pretty shaded portico hung the passion-flower vine, heavy with symbolic blossoms and its fruit, the queer pear-shaped papaw.

I could not express my ecstatic delight; nor was this delight ever satiated. Never, except in Italy, have I seen anything more lovely. Miss Ballin, a colored housekeeper, of excellent manners, showed me to my room, and I found no glass windows — there is not a pane of glass in Santa Cruz; a bed with one linen sheet over the hard mattress, a pillow, a mosquito-net, two chairs, a dressing-table, and a wash-stand, voilà tout! Seeing me look askance at the bed, she said, "If madame should wish another sheet I will give her a square of mosquito-netting."

And that was all I had during six weeks. It was all I needed; but the great trouble was to get a bath-tub and enough water.

The mosquitoes troubled me when I sat on the veranda, so I soon got to pass my days in a long, low,