interpreted “ highland ” and “ lowland ” ; and Basse-
Terre is still the name of the capital, which the E ng lish
perversely call ‘ ‘ Bar Star, ’ ’ while retaining the
French orthography. It is on a sheltered bay on
the west side, near where the spoon handle starts
toward Nevis, and is quite picturesque with its white
houses and red roofs, its ranks of cocoahut and
cabbage palms, its groves of mango and orange, its
gardens of various fruits and flowers spreading up
the slopes. In the days when sugar plantations
were enriching their owners,— the good old days
before emancipation and beet-root subsidies,— there
was a broad belt of fields of waving cane on the
slopes all around the island, with the tall chimneys
of the mills sticking up here and there. The belt of
fertile field is still there, but not flourishing as of
yore, and at the foot of the slopes all around the
island is a fine road lined with tropical trees, shrubs,
and varied vegetation.
Out of the verdant slopes back of Basse-Terre rises
Monkey Hill, and behind the sharp ridge towers the
awful form of Mount Misery, 4330 feet high. A s a
side elevation near the west coast, less than eight
hundred feet high, is Brimstone Hill, once crowned
with a citadel, and called the “ Gibraltar of the West
Indies.” Mount Misery is said to have been so
named from its occasional habit of sending down
floods and torrents which swept away houses and
overwhelmed plantations. It was peculiarly profuse
and reckless with one of these in 1880. This hoary
old volcano has lost the vigour of its early days and
has been very quiet for a century or tw o ; but there