The appearance of the place to-day is not attractive. The blackened ruin of a rich city lies on the surface of the land like an unwholesome scar. The people have not yet recovered from the shock of that terrible visitation. And at the summit of the dread volcano the gathering mists always suggest new disaster. The colonists have lost faith in a land in which life is held at the mercy of a live volcano. They seem to feel that they are sitting at the feet of a fearful death. Martinique is a land of high mountains; it is a rugged, picturesque, wild country, menacing rather than alluring--a fit resting-place for the giant Mont Pelee. So the island appears to-day, as you view it from the deck of an ocean liner. Two years ago the place was a laughing, wooded, sunlit isle; St. Pierre was the capital of West Indian gaiety. The French trained natives, gayer and more brilliant than the British blacks, laughed in the little shaded paths about the foot of Pelee. And the reflection of the twinkling lights of St. Pierre danced on the surface of the captive waters of the bay. It should not be understood that I suggest that Pelee’s lava-cascade destroyed the whole of Martinique. Pierre was but a corner of the island. Fort de France and the other towns remain. The few thousand souls that perished left behind a population which still numbers over one hundred and fifty thousand people. The fruit trees and the plantations, the factories and nutmeg groves, remain. But the ashes of St. Pierre remain also, and above the ashes the giant crater of Mont Pelee still frowns beneath her crown of lowering mists. Dominica is British. Though of volcanic formation the island is not possessed of a Mont Pelee. A marvellously productive country is Dominica, happy in the possession of plantations richly productive of limes, cocoa, sugar, and coffee. It is another land of wood and water. Hundreds of tiny, rushing streams flow down from the mountains through the rich valleys into the sea. And all the mountain sides and deep ravines are clothed in verdant forest trees. Roseau is the capital--a picturesque if somewhat dilapidated city bearing unmistakable evidence of its French foundation. The roofed market-place is near the sea-shore, and the cool sea breeze makes the place endurable even in the hottest hour of a crowded day. Among the bush-land of the interior a few Carib families still remain--shy, inoffensive people, who do not readily mix with the more vigorous negroes. The climate of the island is rather humid but most salubrious. If there is one island in the rich West Indian group of fertile countries whose soil is worthy of the title richest, that isle is Dominica. As a fruit-producing country the little land of high mountains and hot springs is destined to become pre-eminent. [Illustration: AN OLD MAN, ST. THOMAS]