isles. It is about eighteen miles long by seven wide,
with an area of one hundred and twenty square miles,
and has a range of volcanic hills running through it
and throwing off lower ridges which sink into gentle
slopes and spread into valleys, though they sometimes
strike the coast with steep promontories and
abrupt cliffs. Many streams come down between
the slopes, their banks softening into marsh-land near
the sea. There is a central culminating peak,Mount
Maitland, 2750 feet h ig h ; and crumbling cones here
and there are vestiges of ancient craters. Doubtless
th e “ Grand E tan g ,” or “ Big Pond,’ ’ up in the
mountains, occupies a space that once belched fire
from the “ burning core below.’ ’ It is 1740 feet
above the sea-level, nearly circular, two miles and a
half in circumference, and rimmed around with waving
palm and bamboo.
The special charm of the scenery of Grenada is
in the softening of the jagged outlines made by rifts
and scars of volcanic action, a variety of form and
colour and of material in the exposed rocks, and
an exceptional richness in the thick vesture of
verdure and of bloom that covers it. Among its
forest-clad precipices are grey and red sandstone
buttresses, basaltic pillars and colonnades, slabs of
argillaceous schist and ornamental porphyries; and
in the mossy and fern-clothed glens are pure rivulets,
while sulphurous and chalybeate springs suggest
the everlasting fires below. The animal life
is mostly of the familiar tropic kind, but with no
noxious reptiles, though the scorpion and centipede
seem almost to merge from the insect to the
reptilian order. The iguana 4s rather plentiful, and
among the mountains is a wilderness of monk
e y s ,’ ’ much given to making raids upon neighbouring
plantations and often hunted as “ rare
sport ’ ’ by the unfeeling victims of their pranks.
A s in most of the Antilles, the humming-bird is
conspicuous among feathered creatures, and the
firefly shines in the insect tribe. T h e variety and
profusion of vegetation and of fruit seem almost
without limit, ranging from shore to mountain top.
It was on his third voyage in 1498 that Columbus
discovered this island, and called it Ascension,
watching the church calendar, as usual, for his
names; but the Spaniards seem to have forgotten
about it or to have considered it prudent to leave its
Carib possessors undisturbed. I t was included in
the prodigal grant to the Earl of Carlisle, but about
1650, when royal grants were out of favour in England,
the French came down from Martinique under
Governor Duparquet, a nephew of that doughty adventurer,
Captain Esnambuc, and, after getting
the good-will of the unsuspecting natives, proceeded
to their extermination in the most systematic and
cruel fashion. On the northern coast there is a
promontory called the “ Morne des Sauteurs,’ ’ or,
by the English, “ T he Caribs’ L e a p ,” where the last
of the desperate and hounded aborigines are said to
have thrown themselves into the sea. But little
progress was made until 1714, when the French
West India Company acquired property here and
established intercourse with Martinique. T he British
seized this island at the time of Rodney ’ s first