The whole of the surbazes and wooden work about the windows and doors were of well-polished and solid mahogany, of the most costly description. These rooms were all fitted with glass sashes, that opened into the piazzas--long galleries, about fourteen feet wide, that enclosed the whole house; with white pillars and green blinds, fitted between them like those of a tanwork, but smaller, which, when open, with the feather edges of the blades towards you, as you looked at the fabric from a distance, gave it the appearance of a Brobdingnag bird-cage; and indeed, so far as the complexion of the majority of the male figurantes on the present occasion went, it might be said to be well filled with canaries. The roof was composed of what are called _shingles_ in the United States--pieces of cypress splinters, about eighteen inches long by four broad, and half an inch thick, which are nailed on, overlapping like slates; indeed, when weatherstained, at a distance you cannot distinguish the difference, excepting as in the present case, when they are covered with brown paint to preserve them. From this peculiarity in the covering of the roof of a West Indian house, it often happens, when the rains set in suddenly after a long drought, that the water finds its way down, in consequence of the warping of the wood, in rather uncomfortable quantities; insomuch, that when you go to bed, the rooms in the houses in the country being often unceiled, an umbrella may be as necessary as a nightcap. However, after the _seasons_, as they are called, have continued a few days, the cypress or cedar swells, and a very indifferent roof becomes perfectly water tight. To return. No sooner did the shower abate, than a whole crowd of negroes, male and female, once more clustered round the door, and scrambled up on the trees round the house, to get a peep at the company through the open windows and blinds. "Do you admire our West India fruits, Mr Brail?" quoth Twig, cocking his eye at the blackies aloft. I was exceedingly struck by the profuse and tasteful display of flowers and green branches with which the rooms were decorated; many of the latter loaded with the most luxuriant bunches and clusters of fruits--oranges, star-apples, citrons, and a whole array of others, which as yet were nameless luxuries to me. There was a golden pine-apple on a silver salver, on a side-table, eighteen inches high, by nine in diameter, that absolutely saturated the whole air of the room with perfume.