I know not why only the decorators
of drop-curtains are inspired to create landscapes of such strange
enchantment, of a beauty which not alone beguiles the senses--I
speak from the standpoint of the ten-year-old--but throws wide to
fancy the gate of dreams. Directly I was seated--in the body--and
had had my hat taken off and been told not to wriggle, I vaulted
airily over the unconscious audience, over an orchestra engaged in
tuning up, and was lost in the marvelous landscape of the
drop-curtain. The adventures which I had there put to shame any
which the raising of the curtain permitted to be seen upon the
stage.
I had never hoped to recover in this prosaic world my long-lost
paradise of the drop-curtain, but morning revealed it to me here on
Leeward Island. Here was the feathery foliage, the gushing
springs, the gorgeous flowers of that enchanted land. And here
were the soft and intoxicating perfumes that I had imagined in my
curtain landscape.
Leeward Island measures roughly four miles across from east to west
by three from north to south. The core of the island is the peak,
rising to a height of nearly three thousand feet. At its base on
three sides lies a plateau, its edges gnawed away by the sea to the
underlying rocky skeleton. On the southeastern quarter the peak
drops by a series of great precipices straight into the sea.
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