The first peep one gets of the little Danish town of St. Thomas, too well known to need more than a casual notice, is picturesque and pretty. Built on the scarp of a steep hill, its houses arranged in terraces, and all painted with bright and gaudy colours; its feathery groves of tamarind-trees; gay gardens decked with flowers, possessing a brilliancy and magnitude seen only in a hot climate; together with the showy dresses of the natives, it becomes the more impressive as contrasted with the sombre island so recently left behind. Scarcely had the ‘Parana’ steamed into the harbour—much more, by the way, like a stagnant cesspool than a rocky inlet, filled with pure sea-water—when boats of all sizes, and far too numerous to count, crowded round us. Everyone, seeming at once to forget seasickness and rough weather, scrambled into this medley fleet, and with all speed were rowed ashore—there to remain, during the transference of the mails and baggage from the English steamer to the other vessels waiting to take their departure. It has often puzzled me to imagine, why travellers in steamboats and sailing-ships invariably do the same thing. Take this very case as an instance of what I mean. Though yellow-fever was raging like a plague, still the greater number of the passengers made straight for the hotel, and there and then devoured a heavy breakfast composed of bad fish, raw vegetables (libellously called salad), unripe fruits, followed by a brown substance, in size, shape, and texture, vastly like to the heel of a boot floating in hot oil, which we are informed by the polite waiter is ‘bef steek à la Anglais’—the whole washed down with copious libations of intensely sour claret iced to the freezing-point. The next thing in the programme is the exploration of the town, during which all sorts of things are purchased at fabulous prices, that can never, by any possibility, be required. Such unusual exercise in a hilly place, exposed to the scorching heat of the sun, soon begets a feverish thirst, necessitating copious draughts of iced-water dashed with cognac, unlimited cobblers, or more cold sour poison. Raw vegetables, acid wine, cobblers, cognac, cocoanut, and other ‘comestibles’ soon produce disagreeable admonitory twinges: dread of yellow-fever immediately suggests itself—bang goes the signal-gun! A hasty scamper for the boats dispelling further alarm, all rush on board, there to compare notes, groan over their pains and stupidity, and go through precisely the same performance at the next place of landing.