“Yes, I told you you would be pleased! And see over yonder, beyond the town, on that sort of promontory as it looks from here, that is the New Hotel, where we are all going. It looks a little bare from here, but the garden is a wilderness of flowers when we get there. It is the most homelike hotel I was ever in, and I have had a good many experiences. Yes, those boats are to take us off. We cannot get very close inshore. The harbourage is not good, and in rough weather the mails have to stand a good way out, and I have known passengers swung on board in baskets by the steam-crane. But that is quite exceptional. Generally it is like to-day, calm and quiet, and the boats take us off without any trouble. Mr. Reid will come out in one, and take all trouble off our hands. We just give him our keys and tell him the number of our boxes, and he passes it through the Customs and brings it up, and we have no sort of trouble at all.” Mrs. Cossart was very much relieved to find how easily everything was done when once the kindly hotel proprietor came on board. She was able to give her undivided care to Effie, whilst Sheila was running about saying good-bye to captain, officers, and such passengers as were going on to the Cape or the Canaries, and in the end found herself left behind by that boat, and had to go ashore under Miss Adene’s wing, which, however, troubled her no whit. “A bullock-cart! Oof! How perfectly delicious!” she cried, as they were shown the conveyance in which they were to be carried to the hotel. “Oh, you dear creatures! What sweet faces they have! Oh, I hope they are kind to you! Miss Adene, isn’t it lovely to go in a bullock-cart? Oh, I hope it is a long way!” “It takes about twenty minutes. You see, the bullies do not go very fast,” laughed Miss Adene, as she took her place. “This is what we call a carro; it has runners like a sledge instead of wheels. You see, all the streets are paved with cobble-stones, so that the runners slide easily along them; and it is the same everywhere in the island right up into the hills; nothing but these paved roads for bullock carros, and running carros, and sleds for carrying goods. But the mountain carros are much lighter than these that they use in the town, or they could not get them up the steep, steep roads.” Sheila was in an ecstasy as they went jogging along through the quaint little town. She exclaimed with delight at everything she saw, the little brown-legged, dark-eyed children, the women with shawls over their heads, the little boys running with strange calls at the heads of the bullocks, and, above all, at the gorgeous masses of the flowering creepers which draped the walls of the houses and fell in great curtains over the outside mirantes. Deep orange bignonia, bougainvillia, purple and scarlet, delicate plumbago, with roses and heliotrope in such masses that the eye was dazzled and the air heavy with perfume.