A Midsummer Trip to the Tropics.
27
and tremble with a metallic shimmering in the blue light.
Up through a ponderous thickness of tamarind rises the
spire of the church ; a skeleton of open stone-work, with-
out glasses or lattices or shutters of any sort for its naked
apertures : it is all open to the winds of heaven ; it seems
to be gasping with all its granite mouths for breath—
panting in this azure heat. In the bay the water looks
greener than ever: it is so clear that the light passes un-
der every boat and ship to the very bottom ; the vessels
only cast very thin green shadows,—so transparent that
fish can be distinctly seen passing through from sun-
light to sunlight.
The sunset offers a splendid spectacle of pure color;
there is only an immense yellow glow in the west,—a
lemon-colored blaze; but when it melts into the blue
there is-an exquisite green light. . . . We leave to-morrow.
. . . Morning : the green hills are looming in a bluish
vapor : the long faint-yellow slope of beach to the left of
the town, under the mangoes and tamarinds, is already
thronged with bathers,—all men or boys, and all naked:
black, brown, yellow, and white. The white bathers are
Danish soldiers from the barracks ; the Northern bright-
ness of their skins forms an almost startling contrast
with the deep colors of the nature about them, and with
the dark complexions of the natives. Some very slender,
graceful brown lads are bathing with them,—lightly built
as deer : these are probably créoles. Some of the black
bathers are clumsy-looking, and have astonishingly long
legs. . . . Then little boys come down, leading horses ;—
they strip, leap naked on the animals' backs, and ride
¦into the sea,—yelling, screaming, splashing, in the morn-
ing light. Some are a fine brown color, like old bronze.
Nothing could be more statuesque than the unconscious
attitudes of these bronze bodies in leaping, wrestling, run-
ning, pitching shells. Their simple grace is in admi-
rable harmony with  that of Nature's  green   creations