and that one long street on the level connected the three divisions.
Flights of steps, hewn out of the solid rock of that black and barren
range, led to the little palaces that crowned the cones, and there were
palms, cocoanuts, and tamarind trees to soften the brilliancy of façade
and roof. Above the town was Blackbeard's Castle; and Bluebeard's so
high on the right that its guns could have levelled the city in an hour.
Although not a hundred years old, and built by the Danes, both these
frowning towers were museums of piratical tradition, and travellers
returned to Europe with imaginations expanded.

The long street interested Alexander's practical mind more than legends
or architecture. Huge stone buildings--warehouses, stores, exchange- and
counting-houses--extended from the street to the edge of the water,
where ships were unloaded and loaded from doors at the rear. Men of
every nation and costume moved in that street; and for a day Mr.
Cruger's business was in abeyance, while the boy from the quiet Island
of St. Croix leaned against one of the heavy tamarind trees at the foot
of the first hill, and watched the restless crowd of Europeans,
Asiatics, Cubans, Puerto Ricans, North and South Americans. There were
as many national costumes as there were rival flags in the harbour.
There was the British admiral in his regimentals and powdered queue, the
Chinaman in his blouse and pigtail, the Frenchman with his earrings,
villanous Malays, solemn merchants from Boston, and negroes trundling
barrows of Spanish dollars. But it was the extraordinary assortment of
faces and the violent contrasts of temperament and character they
revealed which interested Alexander more than aught else. With all his
reading he had not imagined so great a variety of types; his mental
pictures had been the unconscious reflection of British, Danish, or
African. Beyond these he had come in contact with nothing more striking
than sailors from the neighbouring Islands, who had suggested little