Cacao  plants,  too,  are  piled  up  the  steeps  on  either  side  of  the  roaring
river,  for  Dominica  has  that  constant  humidity  and  more  than  frequent
rainfall  they  love  so  well. The  unbroken  density  of  the  greenery  is
one,  perhaps  the  chief,  charm  of  the  valley,  as  of  all  the  island. No-
where in  all  the  climb  does  the  eye  make  out  the  suggestion  of  a  clear-


THE  CARIBBEE  ISLANDS  349

ing. Where  man  has  not  pitched  his  lime  or  cacao  orchards,  or  planted
his  tiny  garden  patch,  nature  forces  the  fertile  black  soil  to  produce
to  its  utmost  capacity. It  is  an  un-American  density,  as  of  an  Oriental
jungle,  all  but  completely  concealing  the  miserable  little  huts  tucked
away  in  it  all  over  the  lower  hillsides;  it  makes  up  for  the  constant
succession  of  heavy  showers  that  belie  the  sunny  promises  of  the  town
and  harbor  below. For  the  mountains  of  Dominica  have  an  annual
rainfall  of  three  hundred  inches,  twenty-five  feet  of  water  a  year !

There  are  forty  automobiles  on  the  island  of  lemons,  but  they  do  not
venture  far  from  home. The  highway  up  the  valley  lasts  a  bare  three
.niles  before  it  dwindles  to  a  mountain  trail  that  struggles  constantly
upward,  now  steeply  along  the  brink  of  the  river  far  below,  now  in
stony  zig-zags  that  make  no  real  progress,  for  all  their  pretense,  except
in  altitude. One  has  a  curiously  shut-in  feeling,  as  if  there  were  no
escape  from  the  mighty  ravine  except  by  the  narrow,  slippery  path
underfoot,  which  is,  indeed,  the  case. Not  even  the  jet  black  in-
habitants inured  to  mountain-climbing  from  birth,  have  attempted  to
scale  the  heights  by  more  direct  paths  than  this  zigzag  trail  up  the  roof-
steep  bottom  of  the  gorge. They  speak  among  themselves  a  "  Creole  "
as  incomprehensible,  even  to  one  familiar  with  French,  as  that  of  Haiti,
though  they  babbled  a  bit  of  English  that  seemed  to  grow  less  fluent
and  extensive  with  every  mile  away  from  the  capital. There  the  white
stranger  was  subjected  to  an  insolence  and  clamoring  at  his  heels  in-
ferior only  in  volume  to  that  of  St. 