Page:Rowland--The Mountain of Fears.djvu/270

   and looked him up. He had a nice place, for Hayti, up at La Coupe. I sent word that I was coming the day before, and one of his servants came down the mountain on horseback with a note from Madame expressing herself as charmed. I went up the following forenoon. You know what the journey is from Port-au-Prince to La Coupe: six miles of steady upward strain by two emaciated, dying ponies, along a road which the rains have made the dry bed of a torrential cataract; a half-wrecked surrey fastened together with ropes, two of the wheels on the wrong side before, the bush turning in the hub of one of them and screaming like a soul in torment; bad sights and bad smells at every hand, and all about you scenery which seems almost as divine as the Garden of Paradise.

"When finally I arrived, feeling like the pea in a tin whistle, the Fouchères were awaiting me; and when Madame led me through the house to the verandah in the rear, whence one got the full magnificence of the view of [ 254 ]