A bustle upon the deck, the trampling of many feet, the rattling of ropes, and the sound of strange voices, and a stranger dialect, announced the arrival of the pilot; and unable any longer to suppress the longing desire I had to behold Antigua from a more eligible situation than my peep-hole, I hastily tied on my bonnet, and spite of the increasing heat, sought my companion upon the deck. Seated upon a hen-coop, which had been arrayed in all the glories of bright green paint, I prepared to look about me; when suddenly I felt a peculiar sensation, which told me, that, like “Achilles,” I was anything but invulnerable in my heel. A “booby,” or gannet, an aquatic bird, which had been captured the night before, and placed in “durance vile” within the self-same coop, was bidding me welcome to her native clime, by unceremoniously inserting her bill into that very susceptible part; and as I was not stoic enough to receive such favours unmoved, she expressed her displeasure by a doleful unharmonious scream. “Well,” thought I, “this is not the pleasantest welcome possible,” and turning my eyes towards the land, “nor this the most interesting looking island in the world.” In fact, it looked dull and dreary; its mountains appeared barren and sunburnt; and the distance prevented me from seeing the valleys and dingles which in some degree redeem it from insipidity. Our gallant vessel, however, still kept on her way, and— “Walk’d the waters like a thing of life;” and as we approached the land, the scene changed for the better. Bright green patches of the sugar-cane appeared amid the brown of the foremost mountains; while the more distant of the chain presented that harmonious blending of a thousand dyes, which poets love to sing, and painters love to study. As it happened to be that season of the year when the sugar harvest was in progress, the white sails of the various mills glittered in the sunbeams, and upon the eminences the manager’s house (or in the language of the country, the “great house”) looked down upon its little hamlet of negro huts, picturesquely embosomed in trees. On, on we glided; the merry breeze piping in our ears, and the snow-white foam curling and writhing around our prow, until at length we came so near that we could see and almost count the waves as they dashed upon the silver sands of the surrounding bays. In one part a number of tall cocoa-nut trees stretched their long arms to the blast, whilst upon every side of us the light skiffs of the fishermen danced like cockle-shells upon the buoyant waters, and their dusky masters intently pursued their trade of entrapping the finny race.