We enjoyed the scene for some time longer, and then remembering we were still many miles from the capital, and the sun had almost completed his daily journey, we resumed our seats and set our faces towards home. A ride of a few more minutes brought us to a place called “Sandy Valley,” which proved not to be, like some places, a _misnomer_, for there is sand enough for any one’s taste, and fine glittering sand it is too. The sea bounds one side of the valley, and a stagnant marsh the other. Leaving this, we passed by the valley church and school, cultivated cane-pieces and neat-looking “great houses,” negro huts and provision grounds, and an open country, for we were rapidly leaving the mountains behind us. On our right, we passed a methodist settlement, and another belonging to the Moravians, and hard by a fresh-water spring; but I began to feel very tired, and consequently did not find out beauties which otherwise might have attracted my attention. A pretty sloping hill lay before us, and as we passed, the “full-orb’d moon” rose above it, and “O’er the night her silver mantle threw.” A sudden turn in the road placed her lovely face behind us, and languidly reclining in a snug corner, I mused in silence upon the beautiful scenes I had passed through in our pilgrimage, until roused by a bustle in the road, just at the entrance of the capital, where men and boys, long poles and ropes, and that very respectable quadruped, dignified by Antiguans with cognomination of “a cattle,” formed the _figurantes_. The poor creature had been landed from an American vessel that morning, at a neighbouring bay, and exhausted, I suppose, with the discomfits of its voyage, had fallen down on its way to the butcher’s. I don’t think its sufferings were of long continuance, for the next morning I heard the black bellman announcing to the public, that “A fine fat ’merican ox was slaughtered at the shambles of ‘Seizar’ James.”[65] But to conclude our adventures; we rapidly passed through the grass-market and the town, heard the jingle of many a piano and the squeak of many a flute, (I mean no disparagement to the performers,) almost ran over a pig or two, who, spite of a late prohibition, were walking out to enjoy the cool of the evening; and at length safely alighted at our residence in “Spring Gardens.” In the course of an hour or two, I willingly resigned myself to the dominion of sleep, and dreamt of mountains and thunder-storms, springs and fairies, precipices and lime-trees. ------ [62] “The highest mountains are not more than 1500 feet above the level of the sea.”