With this view, I conducted him to the inhabited heights of
Williams, which he had never visited, and where agriculture and commerce
ever occasioned much bustle and variety. A crowd of carpenters were
employed in hewing down the trees, while others were sawing planks.
Carriages were passing and repassing on the roads. Numerous herds of oxen
and troops of horses were feeding on those ample meadows, over which a
number of habitations were scattered. On many spots the elevation of the
soil was favourable to the culture of European trees: ripe corn waved its
yellow sheaves upon the plains: strawberry plants flourished in the
openings of the woods, and hedges of rose bushes along the roads. The
freshness of the air, by giving a tension to the nerves, was favourable to
the Europeans. From those heights, situated near the middle of the island,
and surrounded by extensive forests, you could neither discern Port Louis,
the church of the Shaddock Grove, nor any other object which could recall
to Paul the remembrance of Virginia. Even the mountains, which appear of
various shapes on the side of Port Louis, present nothing to the eye from
those plains but a long promontory, stretching itself in a straight and
perpendicular line, from whence arise lofty pyramids of rocks, on the
summits of which the clouds repose.
"To those scenes I conducted Paul, and kept him continually in action,
walking with him in rain and sunshine, night and day, and contriving that
he should lose himself in the depths of forests, leading him over untilled
grounds, and endeavouring, by violent fatigue, to divert his mind from its
gloomy meditations, and change the course of his reflections, by his
ignorance of the paths where we wandered.
Pages:
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135