[vee ees CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY ~ UMMM 3 1924 084 294 960 Cornell University Library The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924084294960 In Compliance with current copyright law, Cornell University Library produced this replacement volume on paper that meets the ANSI Standard Z39.48-1992 to replace the irreparably deteriorated original. 1998 a al Dp Cornell University Library Ithaca, New York BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME'OF THE FISKE ENDOWMENT FUND THE BEQUEST OF WILLARD FISKE LIBRARIAN OF THE UNIVERSITY 1868-1883 1905 “nossnyy fo yoog punosh ybry wou nar4 more ‘Tn ee Meg THE ISLES OF SUMMER} on Nassau and the ‘Bahamas, ut ‘tA listless climate that, where, sooth to say, No living wight could work, nor cared e'en to play." Thompson's Castle of Indolence. Pliustrated Gdition, By CHARLES IVES, M. A, 4 MEMBER OF THE NEW HAVEN BAR New FIAVEN, fONN. 2, PUBLISHED BY THE -AUTHOR: 13380. KL a ° Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1880, df ... 7. . By CHARLES IVES, 7) rN In the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. Ee ELE Hoggson & Robinson, Printers, E. B. Sheldon & Co., Electrotypers, New Haven, _~ New Haven. TO HIS WIFE, Catharine Wi. Oshoru ines, THE OOMPANION OF HIS TRAVELS, WHO GREATLY INOREASED THE PLEASURES TO WHICH NEW SOENES GAVE BIRTH, ENCOURAGED AND AIDED HIM IN HIS LITERARY LABORS, AND HELPED TO INSPIRE HIS BEST THOUGHTS, THIS BOOK IS AFFEOTIONATELY DEDICATED, BY ITS AUTHOR. PREFACE. Iv offering this book to the reading public the author of the Istzs or SUMMER is not unmindful of the maxim that ‘‘silence is golden.” But silence is often --agrave mistake, and may be acrime. The gift of speech has rendered possi- ble the intellectual development which distinguishes the human race. The different stages in the progress and perfection of language are the tide marks of civilization. Take from man the power tu express his thoughts, and you degrade him toa beast. There is a time to speak and a time to abstain from speaking. More than golden are those gems of thought which inspired genius -has in by-gone times wedded to imperishable language and given as a rich legacy'to the ages. But he is a wise man who knows how properly and when to address the great public and challenge its attention. The loud din of a -garrulity stale and insipid, is ever mingled with the elevated and ennobling notes of inspired voices. Many of the utterances that evidence man’s divine origin, to which the Present listens, broke the stillness of dim and distant ages in the morning of Civilization, while the genius of each succeeding age has imparted to the literary air vibrations of its own, that mingle with those of the past, and a great tide of melody that never ebbs, rolls grandly down to our own times. - It would seem to be sufficient for thé Present to sit at the footstool of the Past and listen. The public ear is not only filled but trained, educated and critical, so that a new voice has no more chance of being heard, than a little ripple of attracting attention when ocean’s great heart throbs with the quickening breath of a hurricane. A new book by a new author is like a new leaf amid the evergreen and varied foliage of a tropical forest. When one unknown to ‘fame, takes his first born literary child in manuscript sheets to any of the notable publishers in either of our great cities, the cordiality with which he is received is like that with which a tramp is welcomed at the front door of a "palatial dwelling. The chance that the latter isan angel in disguise, is con- - sidered equal to the probability that the former is inspired. In many cases, 6 PREFACE, probably in most, the publisher is too busy to even look at the literary bant. ling, although, for aught he knows, it is a little, live, genuine literary Moses, nestled among the reeds and bulrushes of the river of immortality, © It sometimes happens that in the firmament of letters, brilliant with the light of stars unfading and quenchless, great intellectual luminaries appear unher- alded, oe ' “* Whose sudden visitations daze the world, And flash like lightning; while they leave behind A voice that in the distance, far away, Wakens the slumbering ages,”’ and, as publisher’s are not infallible, and do not by intuition know every thing, it has occasionally happened that they have found out, when it was too late, that they have ignorantly confounded these celestial wanderers with the countless fire-flies that rise from literary meadows, and disappear with the warm summer night that gave them birth and made their short-lived existence possible. Publishers are book-brokers, or middle men, who bring producers and con- sumers together. They are the merchants of literature, and merely dispose of the brain crop. Generally indemnified against loss, theirs is the lion’s share of the profits when profits are realized.. Authors, even the most suc- cessful, receive but a very small percentage of the profits realized from the sale of their works. Great publishing houses accumulate great fortunes ; while great authors die poor, and leave to their families only a brilliant and enduring name, which is impotent to keep the wolf of hunger from their doors: But publishers are to authors a convenience if not a necessity. They supply the wings which are required to enable a new candidate for literary honors to ascend sufficiently high in the world of letters to be seen. As notable pub- lishers have at times fastened to dead weights, they have become exceedingly incredulous and cautious, and look with great suspicion upon all who have not demonstrated their ability to float and fly in the upper air of popular favor. ‘As doorkeepers they guard the entrance of that great stage upon which the new author must stand in order to be widely known, but they are so chary of their favors that only an occasional novice is allowed to tread the boards, and take his chance of being hissed or applauded y the great public whose atten- tion he presumes to challenge. As the author of the Istzs or SUMMER was well aware of these facts, and had no" atanding place i in thie great world of eniers; why did he not continue PREFACE. v4 to devote himself exclusively to the law? Why did he presume to write a book, and having written it, fossilize it with type, and coffin it in gilded covers ? These questions are legitimate, and they shall be honestly and frankly an- swered. While treading the deck of a New York and Savannah steamer, after hav- ing been a day or two at sea, and while gazing with a pleasing awe upon an ocean mysterious, restless and sky-bound, he heard, like the author of Revela-: tion, a voice saying unto him ‘‘ Write /” and without pausing to think or inquire whether the injunction came from heaven or elsewhere, he obeyed with alacrity. It did not appear to be a matter of choice, but of uncontrolable necessity. He had taken with him neither ink nor paper, but the ship’s purser kindly provided him with both and with a seat at his table. When the author’s pen was fairly started, it was like the artificial leg which an in- genious German invented—it could not be stopped; so he continued to write as he traveled, and to travel as-he wrote, and this volume is the result. Visiting for the first time ‘‘the home of summer and the sun,” the author. ‘was constantly surprised and charmed with new phases of that wondrous beauty which ever, in the vicinity of the tropics, rests like an atmosphere upon sea andland. His nerves were soothed and quieted by a climate which the Gulf Stream and trade-winds delightfully tempered and medicated. Lulled, soothed, and pleased by such novel surroundings, it was a relief to the mind to give expression to its agreeable sensations, and shed some of its thoughts. To gratify and amuse his friends at home, many of his impressions and pen- pictures were forwarded for publication in the New Haven Journal and Courier. They met with unexpected favor, and if his vanity had not, as he trusts, departed with his youth, he would have been proud, as he certainly was gratified at the warm, hearty and general commendation with which his published letters were received. Much enlarged, and to some extent re- written, they are now issued in book-form at the request, frequently and ur- gently expressed, of many of the readers of his newspaper communications. The author has the more readily yielded to these requests because he believes his book will meet an unsupplied want, there being no work in the market which gives the information it contains. A literary tent has only at long in- tervals been pitched for a few days upon the Bahamas, and the coral isles have yielded to letters very meagre though valuable harvests. Enjoying to some extent the fruits of the labors of others, the author has also cropped new fields, and while he has not exhausted or very much impaired the fertility of 8 PREFACE, the soil, he trusts his book will not only minister to the pleasure but be of some practical value to those of his fellow citizens who, for any reason, desire to avoid the severity of the weather at the north during the winter and early spring months. It is but a chance seedling, but valuable fruit is sometimes found upon trees by the wayside and in hedge-rows which no professional pomologist has planted. If in the fruit gardens of literature the Istzs oF Summer shall take root and flourish in the warm sun of popular favor, its author will be gratified; and he believes he will not be greatly troubled should it be consigned as rubbish to the brush-heap— ‘For he wrote not for moncy, nor for praise, Nor to be called a wit, nor to wear bays." : He seems to himself not so much an actor as a spectator having little inter. est in the result. The freedom of his will has in this matter, to a large de- gree, been dominated and controlled by circumstances. The movements of the pen which recorded his thoughts seem like yeaterday’s heart-beats—they left go little impression upon mind and memory. Seven of the wood cut illustrations in this book, being those which in the table of illustrations are numbered respectively 4, 5, 7, 10, 11, 13 and 14, are by permission of C. H. Mallory and Company of New York, the proprietors of the steamship line now running between New York, Nassau and Matanzas, copied from an illustrated pamphlet which they have printed for the benefit of the patrons of their line. The other wood engravings have been made for this work and are with two exceptions from photographs taken in Nassau by _Mr. J. F. Coonley of New York. The lithographic plates are from drawings - made by Mr. J. H. Emerton of New Haven, and are mostly from specimens which the author’s wife collected in the Bahamas. The author takes pleasure in acknowledging his indebtedness to Prof. A. E. Verrill, of the Sheffield Scientific School, for valuable suggestions and for the scientific names of the specimens in natural history pictured upon the lithographic plates Iveston, near New Haven, Ct. December 18, A. D., 1880. CONTENTS. Cuap. I.—Man and the Migratory Birds. An Ocean Voyage in Mid-Winter. A Wasted Snow Storm. A Modei Steamer. Savannah. The Route between the Sea-Islands and the Mainland. The Cumberland Islands. Ruins of Dungenness. St. Mary's, Fer- “‘nandina. Amelia Beach. Arrival at Jacksonville. Crossing the Gulf Stream. Arrival QUNSHSaQ: a we a ww cw PS Cuap. II.—A Break-water of Islands, Rocks, Recfs and Banks over 2,000 miles long. The Bahama Archipelago. The Gulfs, Sounds and Ship Channels that penetrate and sur- round the group. Hidden Chapters of the Earth’s Autohiography Discovered by Mod- ern Scieutists. Monumentsof Buried Lands. Ocean Thoroughfares. The Bermudas— their Gradual Subs:dence. . . eos . A . eg ane ~% - -p. 31 Caap. III —New Providence. Killarney and Cunningham Lakes, Caves and Cave Earth. The Mermaid’s Pool. Nassau—its Streets, Public and Private Buildings, and Po;mla- tion. The Poor but Happy Negroes. Fort Fincastle; its Marine Sizsmals: Graut's Town and other Suburban Villages. Fort Charlotte; its Subterranean Rooms and Charming Outlook. Lunching at the Expense of the British Queen. The Removal of the Old Barracks. Fort Montugue. A Luxuriant Growth of Titles. The Harbor and Bar of Nassau. The Breakers. Shells and Shell work. Nassau's Public Library. p. 43 Cuap. IV.—The Royal Victoria Hotel. Scenes daily witnessed in its Court. Sacred Songs of the Negroes. . . . - ae . ee p. 69 Cuap. V.—Flora of the Isles of Summer. Fertilizing Air. Large Trees on the top of Stone Walls and in Limestone Quarries. Trees that will not Die and cannot be killed. Trees Within Trees. The Moukey Tamarind, the Wild Fig, and the Ceiba or Silk Cotton Trees. Thompson's Filly. Palm Trcees—the Cocoanut, the African, the Cab-, bage and the Palmetto. The India Rubber Tree. The Singing Tree. Tamarind Trees, and Trees Valuable fur Timber, for Dyes, for their Spicy Bark, and for Medic- inal Purposes. The Natural more Wonderful tban the Supervatural,. . p. 79 Cuap. VI.—Fruits and Flowers of the Bahamas. Fruits in Bills of Fare. The Orange, _ the Pine Apple, the Sapodilla, the Cocoanut, the Hog Plum, the Shaddock, and the _ . Forbidden Fruit. Other Babama Fruits. Flowering Trees, Shrubs and Vines. p. 99 Cuap. VII.—Soothing, Languid Air; its Effects. Ambition Dies. The Bahamas not in- cluded in the Primal Curse. The Island of Indolence. Svothed Sharks. Lazy air and Lazy blood Putting Insect Plagues to Sleep. Mice and Men alike Affected. A sarge 10 CONTENTS. Fish Story. Sea Turtles Resigned to their Fate. Contented and Happy Negroes. Good Orderin Nassau. Tlowa Millenium can be Secured. Agricultural and Manu- facturing Industry not Rooted in the Rocks. Sugar making, Small Islands unfavor- able toIntellectual Development. . «© © «© «© «© «© «© «© pig Caap. VIII.—Absence of Wild Animals upon Coral Islands. Pleasures of the Chase Un- known, Diet of the Aborigines. Wow Alligatora Taste. The Guanas as a Table Luxury. They are Intoxicated with Whistling Music. Vassar Girls Charming Turtles. Mountain Crabs. ‘Ihe Hermit Craba Freebootcr. The Lizards; Cr anging their Color and Ilunting Game. Animals upon the Wes- Iudia Islands when Discov- ered. Snakes. S:a Turtles. Turtle Shells. Wow Sponges Grow and form Commu- nistic Communiiics. The Sponge Fisherics. Valuc and Quantity of Bahama Sponges Exported. 0% wa wwe ES Caar. IX.—Amusements, Small and Isolated Communities thrown upon their Own Re- sources, Visit of a Circus Company to Nassau. Jis Effect upon the Negroes, Whist and Boating Clubs. Base-b.Jl and Polo. Military and Maroles. Religion Utilizing the Idle Hours, Streets Placarded with Notices of Solemn Fasts. Absence of a Color Linein Churches. Amateur Fishing. The Boatmen Canvassing for Customers, Capt. Sampson a Fisher of Men, Ue Describes and Discusses the Sharks... . p. 143 Caar. X.—Yachting in Bahama Waters. Sampson and his Tritoa. Testing a Sail-boat. Searching Outside in a Good Wind forthe LincStorm. Sampson's Visit to New York. lis Experiences and Impressions. Reliable Wind—Delightful Views—Congenial Friends. The Log of the Vleasure Seckers. Newly Discovered Poets. The Gulf "Weeds we ce ee Oe A em a ate SPL - CHap, XI.—Nassau as a Sanitarium. Its Mild and Gencrally Salubrious Climate. Its Freedom from Cold Waves of Air and Cold Currents of Water. Its Vulnerable Points. No Absorbing and Filtering Sands. Impuritics Endangering its Water Supply and Poisoning the Air. A Tigh Degree of leat inthe Sun. Di-eases upon the Islands, Swalt but Crowded IWuman Ant Hills. The Yellow Fever in Nassau in 1880. The Pestilence in other Neighboring Cities at Other Times. The Angel of Health Rides Upon Hurricanes. Cleansing the City. Constant Vigilance and Activity of Nassau's Board of Llealth Essential toits Safety. Who may [ope for Relief and Core in Nassau. Not the Best Place in which cither to be very Sick orto Dic. Frost a Factor inthe Problem of Civilization. Iuman Development and Progress Dependent upon Ice, Sea Bathing all Winter. a a ep we ee ee ET Cuar. XII.—Corals and Coral Recfs. The Marvelous Beatty of the ‘Marine Garden.” Its Corals, Coralines, Gorgonias, Alge, Sponges and Wonderfully Colored Fishes. Water Glasses. Natural Aquariums. Coral Bowers and Grottoes. Sea Urchins, The Colored Divers. L:feinthe Rock. . . < . ee f ed ag p. 209 Cuap. XIII.—The Extent of the World of Waters and its Wonderful Fauna, Bahama Fishes. Scme Eminently Distinguished for their Brilliant Colors, aud Others for their Singularity, described. Fish that arc Poisonous. Table Fish. The Bahamas Rich in Beautiful Mollusks. They Harmonize with the other Exqusite Forms of Life CONTENTS. i1 ‘and with the Brillant Waters. The Shores Paved with Shells Wonderful in Form and Color. The Conch. P| 253 Cuap. XIV.—Moonlight and Starlight in the Bahamas. New Heavens. The Crescent and the Cross, The Starry Cross of Southern Skies. Midnight Watchings, with their Resultsiss eo we ka we ee Ee p. 241° Caap. XV.—The Coral Isles the Home of Beautiful Birds, Their Scarcity in Nassau and its Causes. The Necessity of Lecal Enactments to Protect the Birds. The Flamingo. The Bahama Mocking Bird. A Brief Account of the Visitant and Resident Birds of the Bahamas. + . 2 * we &€ & 8 © & @ o. BS Cuap, XVL—The Influence of the British Court and Aristrocracy upon the People of Nassau. The Landing of Prince Alfred upon the Island of New Providence. Nassau and the British G@ vernment During the Late War of ths Rebellion. Blockade Run- ning. Nassau Practically a Covfederate Port. International Laws Construcd and Enforced so as to Greatly Damage the United States, Fortunes Rapidly Made, Squan- dered and Lost. Wild Excitement and Great Dissipation. Great Increase of Disease and Crime in Nassau. . ose oe: SA at) % . . . & . p. 265 Cuap. XVII.—The Bahama Constitution. Opening of the Colonial Legislature. Imposing Ceremonies. The Nezroves Made Happy. The Governor and his Military Guard of Honor, ‘Parliament’ Prorogued. Martial Music and Booming Cannon. Engrossed Bills Approved and Signed. Small Annual Crops of New Laws. No Color Line in the House of Assembly. Wrecks and Wrecking in the Bahamas, Salvors and Salvage. Bahama Hurricanez, . « «© «© © «© © © © © © «. Dp. 276 Cuap. XVIII.—The Social Life of Nassau. Society Pervaded by Natural Chrystalizing Laws. English Forms and Titles well Rooted. Citizens of the GQrat Republic Am- bitious to Mix and Mingle in Iligh-toned Socicty. Social Gayeties—Picnics and Balls, Wine and Waltzing, the * Soundof Revelry at Night.” Highways Made and Repaired to Accomodate the Victims of a too Gencrous Ilospitality. A Governor who Appre- ciates the Dance, and docs not Underestimate the Value of His Titles. A Doctor of Divinity Made Happy. In What Places Hospitality isIndigenous. . . p. 287 Caap, XIX.—The First Great Voyage of Columbus. Ie Solves the Dark Problem of the Ages. His Landfall. The Whole Group Made Forever Memorable, The Spirits of Columbus and Black Beard Indclibly Impressed Upon the Islands. -Eminently Good and Bad Men Not Dead When They Die. The Natives As Culumbus Found and De- scribed Them. The West India Islands Occupied by Substantially One People. The Caribs. The Search Among the Bahamas for the Fountain of Youth, . p. 299 Cap. XX.—Spanish Perfidy and Cruelty. . The Natives by Force and Fraud are Carried to Hispaniola and Perish inits Mines, The Islands without Inhabitants. An English Captain Discovers New Providence. Geurge IIL of England makes a Royal Grant of the Bahamas to Six Proprietors, Pirates Infest the Islands. Black Beard. Ie Es- tablishes Ilimself Upon New Providence. The Early Governors, Summary Punish- ment Inflicted by the Spaniards, and by the French and Spaniards, Nassau Built and 13. CONTENTS. Named in 1694. The British Government Parchase the Proprietary Title to the fslands. Nassau is Captured and Abandoned by. the Americans Under Commodore Hopkins. In 1781 it is Captured and Garrisoned by the Spaniards. It is Re-taken by Amcrican _ Loyalists. The Abolition of Slavery, . . «© «© « « « « p.&18 Cuap. XXI.—Nassau Revisited. Lack of Confidence in the Northern. March. Missing Trunks; Man and His Clothes. The New York and Nassau Steamboat Line. The Western Texas. Notable Passengers. The Fountain of Youth on Litchfield Hill. Fernandina. Picturesque Shores. Sea-birds. The Mouthof the St.John’s. The Bar and Breakers, A Visit to St. Nicholas. Incidents and Scenes in the Gulf of Florida. “Bank Sharks.” Porpoises. Crossing the Gulf Stream. Dolphins, Sun-set Views. Arrival at Nassau. 5 7 ei o ‘ Gr ts . . @ ds < p. 327 Cuap. XXIl—Pleasant Return Voyages. Waiting in Florida the Arrival of Summer at the North. Making Apologies to a Tropical Sun. The Steamer City of Austin—Capt. Stevens. A Leaf from the Chapter of thc Captain's Nautical Experiences. Little Sankey Transported and Transplanted. Reciprocal Welcomes. . . . p. 349 . ILLUSTRATIONS. WOOD ENGRAVINGS. 1. Frontisplece—View from high ground back of Nassau. 2. Map. pp. 12-13. 3. Screw Steamer City of Savannah. pp. 16-17. 4, Glass Window at Harbour Island. pp. 22-33. 5. Fort Fincastle. pp. 50-51. 6. View in Grant’s Town. pp. 56-57, . %. View from Fort Fincastle. pp. 64-65. 8. The Royal Victoria Hotel. pp. 72-73. 9. The Ceiba or Silk Cotton Tree. pp. 90-91. 10. Shore View west of Nassau. pp. 112-113, 11. Nassau from Hog Island. pp. 160-161. 12, George Street and the Government House. pp. 288-289, 13. A Private Residence in Nassau. pp. 296-297. 14. Bay Street, west end of Nassau. pp. 312-313. ; LITHOGRAPHS. 15. Bahama Reptiles. pp. 130-131. 21, Bahama Fishes. pp. 232-293. 16. “Sponges. pp. 140-141. 22. Squid. Octopus. pp. 234-235. 17. ‘s Corals. 23. Bahama Saculs. 1¢ “—Fleaible Corate. ¢PP- 216-812. | ot Pat } pp. 287-288, 19. “© Echinoderms, pp. 224-225. 25. Flamingo. pp. 248-249. 0 06 Fishes, PP. 232-283, 26. Dolphins. pp, 344-345, CHAPTER I. Man and the Migratory Birds. An Ocean Voyage in Mid-winter. A Wasted Snow Storm. .A Model Steamer. Savannah. A Pleasant run be- tween the Sea-Islands and the Mainiand. The Cumberland Islands. Dun- genness, St. Mary. Fernandina and its Amelia Beach. Arrival at Jack- sonville. Crossing the Gulf Stream. Landing at Nassau. ‘The sails were filled, and fair the light winds blew, As pleased to waft him trom his native land..—Byron. Nature’s special favorites are the birds. With the speed of the wind, and a flight almost as noiseless, they ever follow Sum- mer where she leads, bask in her sunlight, and repose in her grateful shadows. As Winter, snow-clad and frozen, advances or retreats, they follow in his footsteps, and sport in the forests of verdure, and in the fields and bowers of bloom, that soon clothe his track of desolation with wondrous beauty. What nature denied, man has acquired for himself—a speed superior to thas of the birds and outstripping the wind. His thoughts travel with the lightning, and, practically, space is almost annihilated by his steam chariots upon iron roads. Science, meanwhile, has explored and mapped the great ocean world, sounded its profoundest depths, discovered and described its shoals and rocks and winding shores, and, wedded to mechan- ical ingenuity, has enabled man, in the glowing language of the east, to *‘take the wings of the morning and fly to the uttermost parts of the earth.” 13 8 ’ 14 ISLES OF SUMMER. Hence, after the dwellers in the north have each in his genera- tion for untold thousands of years been snow-bound and ice- anchored, their descendants in our day are able at winter’s approach, to migrate with the birds, and thus secure perfect exemption from its discomiorts. To many, suffering from dis- ease, or with blood which age has made sluggish, this is a great boon. In the winter of 1879, and again in 1880, the author influenced mainly by sanitary considerations, fled from frost to the islands of unending summer, spending sometime in Florida when going and returning in 1879, and again on his way home n 1880. The knowledge he was thus enabled to acquire, isin part contained in these pages. Most of his notes upon Florida may perhaps form the ground work of a future volume. On a clear morning in January, A. D. 1879, the author looked out of his office window upon New Ilaven’s beautiful ‘* Green,” E and saw its noble elms in their maturity, lifting their long bare brown arms towards heaven as if in supplication, while a whit ze) “and beautiful carpet of snow revealed the shadows and reflected the sunlight. Three days afterwards, he sat upon the deck of an occan steamer, in a pleasant summer atmosphere, within one -hundred and fifty miles of the city of Savannah, with nothing ‘in view but the blue dome of the sky, the restless ocean waves, ‘and some daring sea birds which hovered high in air above the steamer’s foaming track, and watched with their telescopic eyes, and waited for their share of the noon-day meal. The contrast was most striking; the change from a life of care and of continu- ed moil and toil, to a state of calm and peaceful rest, was as agreeable as it was marked and sudden. But life is full of start- ling and unexpected contrasts. There is seemingly no stability but instability, nothing constant but unrest. Change itself be- comes changeless in its unvarying mutability, A MID-WINTER OCEAN VOYAGE. 5 Friday has acquired a bad name, especially among those who have their ‘home upon the rolling deep.” But for the author, it had no terrors—particularly as he never made it a matter of conscience to keep its fasts or to dict exclusively upon its fish. He did not therefore hesitate to take passago on board the steamer Elm City for New York, on Friday evening, the 17th of January, A. D. 1879. Never in summer did he more comfortably pass over Long Island Sound, or awaken after it feeling more invigor- ated and refreshed. A short while previous the little light snow- flakes had noiselessly fallen upon the great city of New York, effectually barricaded its immense net work of streets and ave- nues, and more effectually held it in subjection than could a great and powerful army witi banners. With a feeling of great - relicf we soon exchanged its dirty and slippery sidewalks for the busy deck and laxurious saloons of the screw steamer City of Savannah, a floating palace of the sca. At about half-past three o’clock, Pp. M., on Saturday, the 18th of January, we left picr No. 43, North River, steamed down the harbor of New York, between the pleasant but then cold shores of Long Island and New Jerscy, into the broad Atlantic, . and fancied its gentle, murmuring, dancing and slightly foam- crested waves gave us a friendly grecting, and as warm a welcome as was possible at that frigid season of the year. At the mention of a winter’s voyage, before a blazing fire or near a comfortable steam radiator, one involuntarily shudders, shivers and recoils. But had we not just got to the end of a long series of storms, and fierce, cold winds? Had not the wind god of winter exhausted himself, and would he not now stop to take breath? We thought so, and soon found that we were right. Saturday afternoon and night the Atlantic was in one of its mild- est moods. Sunday the wind took us directly aft, rounded out our foresail, foretopsail and foregallant sail, billowed the water’s 16 ISLES OF SUMMER. surface just enough with snow-white crests to please the eye, but not enough to awaken feelings of danger even in timid minds. The clouds gradually thickened overhead, a few snowflakes with sceming reluctance noiselessly descended, and were instantly lost in the “mysterions depths of the ocean—for a snowflake and a steamship are alike insignificant so far as old océan is concerned. Soon we experienced the pleasure of seeing, what is not very often witnessed, a heavy snow storm off the capes of Virginia, and it seemed so queer to see the snow fall hour after hour and leave not a trace behind. No rocks, no shrubs, no evergreen trees were glorified by it, but ocean, with cold indifference, received this gift from heaven unmoved and unaffected. Earth may well _ welcome the snow storm which protects and saves its priccless floral treasures, but what is the use of wasting snow storms upon the ocean? At half-past six o’clock on the evening of J anuary i9th, the snow storm being over, we saw at a distance of some fifteen miles, the revolving light of Hatteras. Can it be, we inwardly ex- claimed, that this is the place that navigators of the sca would be so glad to avoid; the home of the strongest and most fitful winds, and of wildest storms; a place loved only by wreckers? Our steamship still spread her sails to the wind, and her rocking was so gentle that not a passenger’s scat was empty at the supper table. It was not long before spittoons commenced a game of ten-pins upon the floor of the main saloon, the wind howled and . hissed at us as it passed; the propeller uttered its cry of alarm, as, in the rolling and pitching of the vessel, it protruded out of the water; strong men staggered and reeled, while during the short momentary intervals of comparative repose, they moved from one holding-on place to another; the ladies sought refuge in their state-rooms, and, devoutly thankful that he had not broken any of his or his fellow-passengers’ bones, the author soon fol- i , eo rT €. } ‘ Me , fy ry ee) “ i | i a Hit “ y sg al l| ry Hl A MID-WINTER OCEAN VOYAGE. 1% lowed their good example. We were steaming away from Hat- teras, when the demon of the stormy cape sent some of his specimen blasts after us. Our captain deemed it best to “lie to” awhile until that ‘little spell of weather” was over, During the night nearly all the passengers were more or less sick, and the cold was sufficient to freeze water on the deck of the steamer from stem to stern. The next day the weather was all that could be desired; the atmosphere calm, agreeably cool and bracing, while the sea was as smooth, quict and peaceful, as if it had not yet been awakened from a night of profound repose and quiet sleep. The ‘‘ City of Savannah ” is one of a line of steamers built and owned by the Georgia Central Railroad Company, for the trans- portation of passengers and freight between Savannah and New York. At an expense of one million of dollars—being one-fifth of its capital—it secured the building at Chester, Penn., of four steamers, named respectively, the “‘City of Macon,” the “ City of Columbus,” the ‘‘ Gate City,” and the * City of Savannah.” They are all substantially alike, and the last was placed upon the line in the summer or fall of 1878, and the first about a year previous. ; Our steamer was almost a novice upon the ocean, A few months before in the State of Pennsylvania, and from the west bank of the river Delaware, it first took to the water. Yet how grandly, with an air of conscious power, it made its way over the path- less, fathomless and boundless sea! When no land-marks are seen upon the horizon’s verge, and no guiding stars in the sky, it still speeds confidently and unerringly on its way over the trackless wilderness of water. ; Born to an inheritance of labor, the author experienced a new ‘sensation—he had nothing to do. He determined therefore to ‘make the acquaintance of the ship, and thus utilize some of his 18 ISLES OF SUMMER. leisure hours. No expense was apparently spared to make it in all respects first-class, and in it are embodicd the latest and best improvements and appliances of marine architecture. The length of the Savannah, measuring fifteen feet from the water line, is 260 feet; its length over all is 275 feet. It is 38 feet 6 inches beam molded. Her depth from base line to tip of spar deck is 26 feet 10 inches ; depth of hold 24 feet ; total depth below spar deck 75 feet. Her registered tonnage is 2,092.84; tons. She can carry at one time 4,000 bales of cotton. She has three decks besides the hurricane deck. The spar deck is entirely of iron; the main deck is partly of iron, and the deck frames are all of iron. She was at first brig-rigged, and could spread 5,000 yards of canvass; but the spars on the mainmast have been taken down, as it was found that they were not needed, so that now her rigging is that of a hermaphrodite brig. The dining saloon is located aft the main hatch on the main deck, and is 50 feet by 29 fect at a distance of 30 feet from the main stairway. Aft of and near the dining saloon, is the main saloon with rows of state-rooms; each state-room is ele- gantly and conveniently fitted up, and has a window looking out upon the ocean. A small saloon over the dining saloon is called ‘‘social hall,” and being so fortunate as to have a room which opened into this ‘‘ hall,” the author is able to testify that ““social hall” is decidedly the best part of the ship. There is another saloon with state-rooms aft the main hatch, but it is much less desirable than the other two. The saloons are elaborately and most beautifully finished with the choicest woods that moncy could secure. The natural grain has been preserved and the polished surfaces are as hard and smooth as glass. Cherry, mahogany, black walnut, bird’s ~ eye maple, tulip wood and amaranth are so combined as to pro- duce the best esthetic effect, and one never tires looking at and studying them, DESCRIPTION OF STEAMER. 19 Each state-room is provided with roomy berths, first-class spring matrasses, and patent wash slabs and bowls, with conve- nient fixtures,—the latter superior to any we had ever seen. Stationary chairs, with revolving backs, along the dining tables are a very desirable improvement. The engines of this great steamship are a credit to the age in which we live. As tide-marks of intellectual development and monuments of man’s dominion over matter and over the hidden and latent forces of nature, they far transcend the pyramids that have excited the wonder and admiration of the world for thous- ands of years. While propelling us through the ocean at the rate of thirteen miles an hour with a 1,650 horse power, there was almost no noise, and every part is so perfectly adjusted that the motion of the vessel was as gentle as the rocking of a cradle— indeed, more so, for the author found no more difficulty in writing at atahkle in the purser’s room, within six feet of the engines, than he would at a table in any private house. Her boilers, tubular cylindrical, are four in number, each 12 - feet 8 inches in diameter, and 10 feet 6 inches in length. The working pressure is 80 pounds to the square inch. The stroke ‘of the pistons is 54 inches. The ship has a patent condenser of 3,000 feet condensing ‘surface, by means of which her supply of Croton water taken in at New York is vaporized and condensed constantly during the voyage, thus avoiding the necessity to a great extent of using sea water, and making a very great saving of the boilers, fuel, and labor. © The propeller has a diameter of 14 feet 3 inches, and it makes ‘0 revolutions per minute. It is of the Hirsch patent, and has four blades, which are so fastened that they can be removed when necessary. It is interesting to see in how many ways steam power is brought into requisition to save labor on thisship, Two donkey 220 ISLES OF SUMMER. engines are used for clearing the bilge and for some other pur- - poses; three or four for loading and unloading cargoes; one . for the anchor and the sails; one in part for supplying water . closets with watcr; one for operating a steam steering apparatus; one for operating a newly devised governor, which so controls -and governs the propeller that it cannot make more than a cer- tain number of revolutions per minute. This last takes the place of a man who had formerly to devote all his time to this work. These engines are in addition to the main engine for pumping - out the ship. There are six water tight iron compartments in the ship, and if one should be stove in or should spring a leak . from any cause, the others would float her while the great cir- . culating pump of the condenser would be brought into requisi- -- tion, whose power.to discharge water is very great. The crew number forty-seven, and the monthly pay-roll is about $2,000. The powerful and complicated machine requires constant watchfulness and the greatest care. To lubricate it . one and one-half barrels of oil are used every trip. The aver- : age consumption of coal is 130 tons for a roundtrip. The aver- -.age length of the voyage is from fifty-five to sixty hours. The Savannah has once gone from dock to dock in fifty-two hours _ and thirty minutes. '. The regular sea route from New. York to Savannah is not _through any part of the Gulf Stream, that immense river of _ warm water, a thousand times larger than the Mississippi, which flows in a cold water bed, and helps to temper the severity of the frigid and frozen North ; but between that great and, as yet, inexplicable phenomenon of the ocean, and its beautifully wind- ing western shore, our steamer grandly plowed its way. Like the ‘‘shining shore” of the ‘better land,” we well knew, that although invisible to our material eyes, it was near at hand. :: This passing in a few hours from ice-bridged rivers with snow- SAVANNAH RIVER - 21 enshrouded banks to ficlds of perennial green, so forcibly sym- bolizes man’s passage over the river of death, that the author sometimes more than half believed that he had indeed made tha journey to that mystic realm between which and earth the travel is all one way. - We approached the bar off the mouth of the Surana river” in the morning twilight of January 21st, passing quite a number. of ships at anchor in the offing. From prudential reasons our captain so timed the steamship’s progress that we crossed tho * bar at high tide. As we entered. the river, we turned to waft - upon the mild and gentle air a silent but heartfelt blessing to ~ old ocean for having treated us so well during our voyage, and ~~ we inwardly hoped that nothing in the future would occur to make us like each other less. The color of the waters of the Savannah river closely resembles . : that of a New Haven mud-puddle, and after leaving our New - York steamer and its excellent Croton water, it was a constant. study with us how not to drink it, there being but a small and - inadequate supply of condensed water on our next steamer. .We © approached the city between low sedgy meadows, some of which : are utilized for the cultivation of rice. Forts, with their- large guns still in sight, and low mud batteries, remain to keep alive. the memory of the recent “‘ unpleasantness,” while new saw-mills, large lumber yards, spacious warehouses, bales of cotton, barrels. ~ of resin and turpentine, twenty-five or thirty first-class ships “ and three-masted schooners moored to wharves—all 4 mile below. ° the city and near the eastern terminus of a branch of the Gulf. - railroad, told of northern capital and enterprise, of the healing and healthy influences of peace, and of a growing feeling of fraternity between those so recently engaged in a life and death strugele for the mastery in the dreadful ordeal of battle on sea and land. Everything was so quict and peaceful, it was hard to 22 ISLES OF SUMMER. realize that that whole section was so recently a vast military camp, ruled and governed by a despotism such as only war necessitates and breeds. Although defeated, it must be a grateful luxury for the southern people to inhale the glorious air of free- dom once more, undisturbed by war’s alarms, and battles whose very victories were purchased at a cost of evils only equaled by their defeats. 'The few hours that intervened between the arrival of one steamer and the sailing of another, were pleasantly occupied in making a cursory examination of Georgia’s principal seaport. It is a city of parks—some twenty or more we believe, in all, great and small, so arranged that some one of them is within easy ac- cess of every citizen’s dwelling. The avenues, pleasantly shaded, turn every two blocks to the right and left, and surround emer- ald parks—reminding one of the rivers of Florida, those blue ribbons upon which the jewelled lakes are strung.. The largest and most beautiful of the parks upon Bull street, is the ‘ Pulas-. ki.” Semi-tropical trees of large size and luxuriant foliage, some festooned and draped in gray moss, gave it a very attractive ap- pearance. A large new park has been laid out and enclosed, adjoining this, called the Pulaski Extension, upon which a large and handsome confederate monument has been erected. We were pleased to see no evidence anywhere of the ruin and waste that so often mark the bloody footsteps of war. Sherman’s grand march to the sea rendered the city’s surrender without a struggle an inevitable necessity. Its forts and batteries were of no use with a large victorious army entering its back door. The tourist at Savannah, bound for Florida, can make the journey in a few hours by railroad, or go by either of two lines of ocean steamers, one of which takes the route outside the islands, and the other avoids the hazards of the open sea and the discomforts of sea sickness, by passing between the coast-islands THE INSIDE ROUTE. 23 and the mainland. As time was of little consequence to us, we concluded to take the latter. The people of the north, during the late war, were made ac- quainted with the fact that the Southern Atlantic States have their sea coast protected by a long succession of islands, between which and the main land steamers of light draft can safely pass along their whole extent, as far south as the mouth of the St. John’s in Florida. Batteries, torpedoes, shoals and tortuous and intricate channels protected this portion of the southern seaboard, so that our navy found it impossible to destroy or seriously cripple confederate communication by water along this portion of the coast. One needs to go through these inside chan- nels to fairly comprehend them. We think of the Connecticut coast shielded by Long Island, but along a portion of the coast of Georgia, instead of a Sound thirty miles wide, we have narrow and winding water-ways more like Mill river at the base of East Rock... We took the side-wheel steamer ‘‘ City of Bridgeton ” at Savannah for Jacksonville in Florida—a boat that brought to mind the steamers of the New York and New Haven line ‘‘long, long ago.” It has since been modernized and very greatly im- proved, so much so that we recognized this year very little of the old boat except its name, and even that gloried in a sort of new. birth. ; _Following the doublings and sharp curves of the inside route, aS we neared the river St. John’s the colored man at the wheel required and exercised constant vigilance and the greatest care. Much local knowledge and great practical skill were. brought into constant requisition, and only once was the bow of the boat run into the soft bank. The shores of the sedgy marshes were white with extensive beds of oyster shells, while countless beds of small oysters were everywhere to be seen as the tide receded. Occasionally we passed islands rich with tropical 24 ISLES OF SUMMER. vegétation, where nature seemed to be reveling in a perfect wil- derness of beauty, and nothing was wanting, unless perhaps an occasional. rocky bluff and mountain peak to give more variety and sublimity to the scenc. The clear sky and balmy air wero in perfect accord with the beautiful panorama that opened con- stantly before us as we glided over the quiet water. Towards the lower end of this charming route, near the close of day, the — whole blue dome of heaven, with all its rich adornment of sun- set clouds gorgeously illumined, was more perfectly reflected in the still clear water than the author ever saw it before—sare once only on the river St. John’s, in the British province of New Brunswick. That surpassed anything of the sort he had ever seen or conceived, and this, on the whole, excelled that, for soon the side-wheels of the boat caused great circling eddies of skies, frescoed and wonderfully and indescribably colored, to follow the steamer, until gradually, as the daylight vanished, this re- markable phenomenon passed away—remaining, however, indels ibly pictured upon the memory. As we neared Fernandina, we passed the Great and Little Cumberland islands. The largest is said to be from twenty-five to thirty miles long, and two to three miles wide. It abounds with game, including hundreds of deer, while fish are very abundant in the surrounding waters. In full view from Cumberland Sound, which separates it from Fernandina, still stand the roofless and windowless walls of what was once one of the most splendid residences of the Southern States and perhaps of the New World. Deserted by its owner during the war, some miscreant’s torch made it a ruin. This island has a history, and romance and poetry will un- doubtedly hereafter draw from it inspiration, It will live in deathless song and enduring story. It lies between the calm and healthy waters like an island of the blessed, and the soft. DUNGENNESS. THE AMELIA BEACH. 25 zephyrs that pass over it, born of the not distant ocean, borrow perfumes from its aromatic trees, its spicy bowers and sweet- scented flowers. The State of Georgia, as a token of gratitude to General Nathaniel Greene, of revolutionary fame and memory, conveyed to him one-half of the island. He died too soon to derive-much benefit from a gift which reflected back a pleasing lustre upon the donors. The General’s widow married a wealthy man by the name of Miller, who made the island his home and spent his money most lavishly in erecting a palatial mansion, opening splendid drives, laying out the grounds, and adorning them with all the choice trees and flowers that are found or can be made to live in the vicinity of the tropics. The place is called ‘‘ Dungenness.”” Upon the island are the remains of ‘‘ Light Horse Harry Lee,” one of the heroes of 1776, and the father of General Lee, the Commander-in-Chief of the late Confederate armies. Excursion parties visit Dungenness from Fernandina frequently, and in the future it will no doubt grow-in popular favor. We visited the island the present year but defer, for the present, a more particular description of it. The Bridgeton made a detour for the purpose of stopping at St. Mary, situated near the mouth of the river of that name which constitutes in part the dividing line between Georgia and Florida. In the palmy days of the Georgia planters St. Mary was quite a place of fashionable summer resort, and considerable money was spent upon its docks, avenues, buildings and gardens. But it suffered severely during the war, its docks and warehouses were destroyed, and not much remains to indicate what it has been. Its climate, cooled by the ocean, is said to be very fa- vorable to health. Our steamer stopped at Fernandina just long enough to enable us to ride through its streets, upon one of which we were pleased a) 26 ISLES OF SUMMER. to see the recently raised frame for one new house, as evidencing the fact that enterprise is here awakening, though very slowly, from its iong sleep. We rode a mile over a sandy road through a thicket of palmettoes and wild vines and bushes, beyond the “city,” to its famous Amelia Beach, which is one of the finest ocean beaches we have seen. Tor eighteen or twenty miles the white beach of a uniform character extended, the dip being so gentle that a wide belt was left between the sand hills and low- water mark, which the incoming ocean tides had pounded and compacted until but little impression was made upon it by the hoofs of our horses. The shoals near the shore caused the waves to break into stretches of white spray crests, and gave a pleasing variety to the ocean view. ‘The gentle waves, as they approached, rolled up as they reached the shore, and adorned the extreme edge with a beautiful white border of foam in an unbroken line of many miles. The mildness and softness of the air, and the pleasing and soothing murmur of the water, so gently rolling in upon the white sand beach, almost as far as the eye could see, caused us to prolong our stay to the very last minute of our allotted time. The hard, smooth beach of Fernandina, with its unobstructed ocean view on the one side, and sand hills on the other, as we saw it then, will ever occupy a sunny spot in our memory. It was eleven o’clock at night when we reached the Windsor Hotel, at Jacksonville upon the St. John’s river, thankful that thus far our ocean trip in midwinter had been so extremely pleas- ant, and that nothing had occurred to give us a moment’s uncasi- ness. It is true, the same kind Providence would have been over “us had we made our journey by land, but some persons who came that way, seemed more inclined to the opinion that in the con- struction and operation of southern railroads some evil genius had been permitted to have things pretty much his own way. THE GULF STREAM. 27 With the return of prosperity under the banner of peace, im- proved and more safe communication by rail will follow as a necessary consequence. After spending a few days in Florida (rendered necessary by the fact that no opportunity existed for sooner continuing our journey) we at last were able to cross over to Nassau on the side wheel steamer Secret. The passage occupied fifty-two hours, She was advertised to make the run in thirty-six hours, but the time was purposely understated in order to make the trip appear more attractive to the seckers of health and pleasure. The Secret was about fifteen years old, English built, sheathed outside with iron and was constructed somewhat after the model of a Connec- ticut river shad, being very long and very narrow. According to a Jacksonville newspaper, her length was 231 feet, and her breadth 26 feet. She was built for a blockade runner, aud was consid- ered a good sea boat. We found her state rooms and berths too small for comfort, and the approaches to the dining saloon long, narrow, unpleasant and unsavory. But we are disposed to apply the bridge rule to steamboats, and to speak well of those which carry us safely. : Before leaving home we doated on the Gulf Stream. It was our ideal salt water, and bore the same relative position to the rest of the ocean world that the Garden of Eden did to all the islands and continents outside. When the fifty separate and distinct persons on as many different occasions asked us if we were not afraid to take an ocean voyage in winter, and more especially when every newspaper was and had for some time been filled with accounts of terrific storms, accompanicd by winds before which the strongest ships were like so many egg shells, the ready reply which then so satisfied us seemed to be equally satisfactory to them; ‘‘ Oh, no; we do not fear or dread it at all, for in thirty hours from New York we will be in the Gulf Stream, where the 28 ISLES OF SUMMER. water, flowing in a stream a thousand times larger than the Mis- sissippi river, from hot equatorial regions, is always warm, and the air, loaded with ozone, saline and other health imparting ingredients, is as warm and pleasant as that which we breathe at our best seaside resorts in summer; storm-caught and ice- coated vessels run into it to thaw out.” But alas! all our ideals vanish into thin air and disappear forever the moment we at- tempt to seize them with our hands of flesh. The beautiful vision of the Gulf Stream exists for usno more. It will never return. Wehave been there. We were from eight to ten hours crossing it at an oblique angle. We rolled and tossed ‘in and over” it to the content of our hearts and the disturbance of our stomachs. As it piled up its huge waves higher than our ship, one after another of the passengers seemed to have ‘‘a call” to go somewhere else, and left the deck, first bending over the guard rail, with their faces turned mysteriously towards the angry waters, with an agonized expression, as though they had caught sight of some large sea serpent. One gentleman was asked by an innocent sympathizer if he was sick. The quick and forcible reply seemed to be perfectly satisfactory, <‘Do you think I am such a d—n fool that I am doing all this for fun?” Having personally paid unwilling tribute to Neptune, we turned our back upon the foam-crested billows and took refuge in our little sar- dine box below, where, with the port hole closed, we lay above the heaving bosom of this enchanting ocean-river. And now, ever and anon, upon all sorts of occasions, the Gulf Stream, disen- chanted, calls up the same memories and fills us with the same feelings of thankfulness and gratitude which Sancho Panza experienced whenever he thought of the blanket in which he was ingloriously tossed in the yard of the Spanish inn. The steamer in which we left New York, had carefully hugged the shores of the Atlantic States and kept out of it, and we skirted APPROACH TO NASSAT. 29 the east coast of Florida below Jacksonville for some twenty- eight hours before we turned near Jupiter Light to enter and cross it. One cannot understand the phrase “‘ A wilderness of waters” until he actually sails day after day with nothing in view but the deep below and the deep above. On the second day out from Jacksonville we first sighted, off our starboard quarter, a faint trace of curling smoke in the distance, and soon, after crossing our bow, a Havanna steamer exchanged flag salutations with the Secret. The character and disposition of people are often strikingly displayed on shipboard. Some are so kind, so considerate, so mindful of their fellow-voyagers, so forgetful of themselves. Others seem to believe that the world, and all that it contains that is worth having, was made expressly for themselves. They seem lineally descended from the man whose only prayer to God was that He would ‘¢ Bless me and my wife, My son John and his wife, Us four—and no more!” And also to be very nearly related to the individual who owned one-half of a negro, and who was accustomed to request the di- vine blessing for ‘myself, my wife, and my half of Jake.” A novel sight presented, itself as we approached the ship’s dock at Nassau. The perfectly clear and transparent water, ex- quisitely and indescribably colored; the old, weather-worn vessels at anchor; the forts and sea-walls; the white streets and white stone buildings, all of coral limestone, contrasted oddly with the crowds of persons, mostly colored, that filled all the docks, streets and standing places at and near the landing. We were 80 {SLES oF SUMMER. within several rods of the dock when a dozen nearly naked little Africans commenced the sport of diving off the dock into the deep water after the coins which the passengers threw over- board. They seemed to be amphibious and were all expert swimmers. They generally succeeded in securing the much coveted prizes before the latter reached the bottom. But little, in fact no real annoyance, aside from the delay, was experienced from the custom house officials, and we soon found ourselves at home in the Royal Victoria Hotel, one of the finest buildings of the kind in the Western world. CHAPTER II. A Break-water of Islands, Rocks, Reefs and Banks over 2,000 miles long. The Bahama Archipelago. The Gulfs, Sounds and Ship Channels that pene- trate and surround the Group. Modern Science discovering Hidden Chapters of the Earth's History. Monuments of Buried Lands. Ocean Thorough- fares, The Bermudas—their Gradual Subsidence. ‘““We sailed the sea, thick sown with clustering isles.”— VirGIL. ‘¢These precious stones set in a silver sea.” SHAKESPEARE. Havine deterniined to visit the Bahamas, the author com- menced immediately to brush away the dust which had during a number (please excuse him from not specifying more particu- larly how many) of decades of years, covered and obliterated the geographical knowledge of his school-boy days. Learning is like wealth—not to have it is less discreditable than unfounded pre- tensions. His life would have been worth but very little had it then depended upon his ability to accurately locate and particu- larly describe Nassau and the island of New Providence, or the group of which that island forms a part. Is it too much for him to assume that his ignorance was not exceptional, and that nearly all of his readers can truthfully make a similar confession ? Let the favored few who occupy the geographical front seats excuse .the author, and grant him their kind indulgence, while, for the benefit of others, he airs a little his recently resurrected, and, to some extent, newly acquired geographical knowledge. a1 32 ISLES OF SUMMER. It will be seen upon referring to any good map of the West India Islands that an immense number of islands are distributed upon a line over two thousand miles long, which trends south- easterly from a point relatively near the coast of Florida, to the mouth of the Orinoco River in South America. Sprinkled among these are many reefs, thousands of rocks, and little islets which are called by the English keys and by the Spaniards cays. The north-westerly portion of this chain is composed of the Bahama archipelago, and embraces thirty-nine islands, six hun- dred and sixty-one keys, and two thousand three hundred and eighty-seven rocks. This Island system constitutes a vast breakwater, and shelters from the winds and waves of the wide and stormy Atlantic, the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico, which bodies of water are perfectly land-locked on their other sides. Were the ocean waters drawn off, we should have, in place of this island system, the Bahama and Caribbean mountains, a lofty range, elevatcd thousands of feet above the neighboring plains and valleys, towering high up in the air as they now do in the water, with large areas of high tableland. The location of the islands to the windward of the banks has favored the formation and growth of the latter. The Bahama group rises out of several submerged tables of a soft calcareous rock, the two largest of which are known respec- tively as the Great and Little Bahama Banks. The water upon these banks attains a maximum depth of several hundred feet. The Little Bank is the most northerly, and is only seventy miles from the coast of Florida. It embraces a superficial area of 5,560 square miles, including 1,200 square miles of islands, and. has a breadth of from thirty-five to sixty miles. Its principal islands are Great and Little Abaco and Grand Bahama. The two former are separated from each other by a narrow channel, ‘PUMPST LNOWLN ZL JD wapur4, SeDIE) THE BAHAMAS. 33 and with their numerous keys extend along the eastern edge of the Little Bahama Bank for nearly a hundred miles. At the southerly extremity of Abaco is the famous ‘‘ Hole-in-the-Wall ” —a large opening through and below the top of a ridge of calca- reous rock. Also alight house bearing the same name. A lady informed us that several years since, while sailing past Abaco, she saw the sun at its setting through this ‘‘ Hole-in-the-Wall,” and that the globe of fire, in its setting of rock, left an indelible picture of rare and exquisite beauty upon her memory. The north-west and north-east Providence Channels separate the Little from the Great Bahama Bank. The distance between the Banks varies from fifteen to forty-five miles. ““The north-east Providence Channel separates Abaco from the island of Eleuthera and the keys on its northern shore, which lie twenty-seven miles to the south-east of the Hole-in-the-Wall.” “‘The whole of the trade from North America and Europe to the Gulf of Mexico,” says Gov. Rawson, ‘‘ passes by the north of the Bahama Islands. Steamers bound to the south, stem the rapid current of the Florida Channel,” between the Banks and. Florida. Sailing vessels pass between Abaco and Eleuthera through the Providence Channels, within forty miles of Nassau, into the Gulf of Florida. <‘ All the return-bound trade to the north, whether using steam or sails, passes with the [Gulf] stream through the Florida Channel.” “From Eleuthera follow, in the same direction, south-east and then south, a succession of long narrow islands, viz. :—St. Salvador or Cat Island, Long Island, Ragged Island and its keys. * * * Outside the bank, forty-eight miles east of the south of St. Salvador, lies Watling Island, * * * and twenty-four miles from the north-east end of Long Island lies Rum Key;” between which and the island of St. Salvador, is the small island of Conception, 34 ISLES OF SUMMER. South-east of Long Island, beyond the Great Bank, and separated from it by a channel twenty-five miles wide, is Crooked Island ; then succeeds Acklin’s Island, with a very shallow con- necting channel, once reputed fordable in its narrowest part. To the north-east of Crooked Island is Sumona, or Atwood Key. Plana or French keys are east of Acklin’s Island. Then successive- ly follow in the same direction (south-east), the Caicos, the Maya- guana and the Turks Islands—the last of this inhabited chain of islands, six hundred miles in extent, which stretch from a point seventy miles from Florida to within a hundred miles of St. Domingo. The Caicos and the Turks Islands once were within the governmental jurisdiction of the Bahamas, but are now po- litically associated with Jamaica. Three smaller banks, separated by channels thirty to fifty miles wide, and called respectively Mouchoir, Carré, Silver and Navidad, extend still further to the south-east, for about one hundred and fifty miles. Nearly in the latitude of the Turks Islands, and from sixty to seventy miles south of Acklin’s Island and Mayaguana, are Great and Little Inagua or Heneagua, detached, and some sixty- five miles north of the north-western extremity of St. Domingo. Great Inagua is one of the largest and best of the Bahamas. Exuma, with its extensive chain of keys, lies upon the eastern edge of the Great Bank, and upon the western side of Exuma Sound. This Sound has an average width of forty miles, ex- tends north-westerly about one hundred miles, and breaks the continuity of the Great Bank between St. Salvador and Long Island. A very deep sound called The Tongue-of-the-Ocean is pro- jected into the Great Bank a distance of one hundred and ten miles. Major General Nelson, R. E., describes it as having the deep blue color of oceanic depths, while ‘the color of the water Rit BATTAMAS. 35 around the islands is usually that of the agua-marine of beryl.” On its western edge, and skirting the Great Bank lies Andros island, much the largest of the group, being ninety-five miles long and haying a maximum width of thirty-eight miles, The Berry islands are north-east of Andros ; they are arranged in the form of acrescent. The horns point to the cast, and are separated by a distance of some forty miles. The south-west shore of Abaco, on the opposite side of the north-west Providence Channel, is only thirty miles distant from these little islands. The Biminis are two small islands rendered famous from the fact that the Fountain of Youth was reported, in the time of Ponce de Leon, to be located upon one of them. They are twenty-five miles south of the north-western portion of the Great Bahama Bank, and are described as ‘‘small, pretty and fertile.” The Santareen and Old Bahama Channels are south of the Great Bahama Bank. West of the former is situated the Cay Sal Bank, embracing fourtcen hundred and thirty square miles, including some uninhabited Keys; while south of the latter channel is the island of Cuba. Gov. Rawson states that ‘all the trade from North America to Cuba, St. Domingo, Jamaica, the Gulf of Honduras, and the northern coast of South America passes south to the windward [é. e. east] of the group, and close to the shores of Inagua. The return trade, and all the European trade from the same countries passes north, either through the Crooked Island pas- sages, or the Inagua or Caicos Channels, These islands there- fore lie in the track of two great streams of trade, and, at times, scores of vessels pass daily by the ‘ Hole-in-the-Wall,’ and the south western point of Inagua.” New Providence, upon which Nassau is situated, is upon the northern edge of the Great Bahama Bank, fifty miles south-west 38 ISLES OF SUMMER. of the north-east extremity of the bank, at the eastern entrance of ‘“‘The Tongue-of-the-Ocean,” and is approached through either the north-west or north-east Providence Channels, the former of which connccts it with the Florida Gulf and is trav- ersed by the steamers which bring Nassau’s winter visitors from the states. The following table is copied from Gov. Rawson’s report : Extr xtreme ARES Tenet Bead Broadin, Square Miles. Miles. Miles. Milcs. 1. Andro, .ececscecetseteceeees =. 1,600 | 95 38 22 2. Abaco, Great,..../..... | 680) 776 70 17 12 “« Little,.... sn A ae - 3. Inagua, Great,... Fr 5 mee? Tittle. aoe | 60 8 7 32 4. Grand Bahama... “se 430 66 11 qT 5. Crooked Island,..... | 76) 19 8 5 6. Acklin’s Island,...............+- 120 - 204 41 10 4 7. Fortune Island, (Long Cay), 8) 10 4 a 8. Eleuthera, ..........ceceeeeeeeeees zn 164 57 iL 4 Spanish Wells,... ea ea ies a 9. St. Salvador,...... veal! dee 160 42 14 4 10. Long Island, ..............s0000- a 130 60 8} 2t 11. Exuma, Great and Little,...) ... 110 32 7 24 12. Mayaguana,............ceseeeee is 96 23 6 4 13. New Providence,...... is 85 193 7 5 14. Watling’s Island,......... a4 60 13 6 44 15. Rum Cay, «0... ceeceeeee wie 29 93 5 3 16. Biminis, North, . 3) 8h § 3t 14 4 ee South, .......... 544 77 U 3s 13 1 17. Ragged Island and Cay,......]..- 5 54 22 1g 18. Berry Island, Great, .......... 4s 6 ig z - Harbour Cay,.......... ais 19. Harbour Island, .............005 1s 3 2 Pe Total escsarsanns aostevcexsaress 4,424 The foregoing table shows proximately the length, breadth BURIED LANDS. 34 and size of the principal Bahama islands, exclusive of the keys which cluster around them. This extensive and singular group of islands, so unlike the New England that the author had left behind him, charmed by its novelty, and elicited enthusiastic admiration. ‘‘He found in all that met his eyes, The freshness of a glad surprise.” They repose in the lap of unending summer. Daring enter- prise, resistless courage, and the intense activities of busy human life, do not cross the great ocean river. No blighting and kill- ing frosts are ever found between its eastern margin and the rising sun. To all that we have been accustomed, or ever ex- perienced before, it had been practically the stream of oblivion— the river of death. The ancient scers who saw and pictured heaven dwelt in warm sunny climes. None of the streets of the New Jerusalem which they saw with spiritual vision, were paved with ice or blockaded with snow. We here found the sea so smooth, the wind so mild, the air so agreeably warm, the sky so serene, the clouds so soft and delicately tinted,,and our mind and heart were pervaded by such a spirit of resignation, content- ment and peace—of love to God and good will towards man— while the past appeared so unreal and dreamy,—we at times were almost ready to believe that our ‘“‘mortal had put on immor- tality.” But the regular periodic return of hunger, and an appetite that gave a keen relish to the gross food of earth, soon convinced us that we still inhabited our old bodies, and fly-like, adhered to the surface of one of the sun’s revolving satelites. In this new world our curiosity was awakened and greatly stimulated. What part, we inquired, have these immense banks, with their clustered isles played in the world’s history ? In what manner were they made? How many thousands of years 4 $8 {SLES OF SUMMER. were involved in their construction? What great cosmic and geological truths is this murmuring ocean endeavoring to reveal? In groping after truth, man passes over the bridge of the known to the dark and shadowy regions of the unknown. Up- ward he treads the rounds of a ladder bottomed upon earth but lost in impenetrable clouds. Yet, when considered in connec- tion with human insignificance, there is much which man has been enabled to learn, and in no department of human knowl- edge has greater progress been made than in that of geology,— a science that underlies, and, to some extent, explains the facts of physical geography. “The Egyptian priests told Herodotus that from the time of their first king, which was eleven thousand and odd years, the sun had four times altered his course; that the sea and the earth did alternately change into one another.”* New evidences of some of these changes, clear and indisputable, have been found in our own time and country. Upon the American continent, man walks and works, and muses upon mountains and plains once a portion of the ocean’s bed. Vast quantities of the skele- tons of ‘‘monsters of the deep,” and marine fauna, of families and genera and species supposed to be now extinct, are entombed in the profound depths of its rocks. Upon the low, long and narrow islands and keys composing the Bahama Archipelago, in the soft, languid and voluptuous air, we pensively muse above a continent that nature, in one of her sublime convulsions, or by a slow but no less grand process, requiring cycles of time of vast and inconceivable extent for its completion, has buried from human sight in the unfathomable depths of a wild waste of waters. There is something grand and appalling in the chapters of the earth’s autobiography as disclosed by its continents and ocean isles. Like the astronomer who discerns and translates for us * Montaigne, BURIED LANDS. 89 ‘‘the thoughts of God in the sky,” so the geologist who reads to us from the book of the rocks, seems, like Moses upon Sinai, to commune with Jehovah and to have his lips hallowed with a divine i inspit ation. To man’s inquiring thought, the ocean responds only in dirge- like harmonies. In its mystic and profound depths, during the long and silent ages, the sea has kept its secrets well. But in our own time—thanks to a Darwin, a Dana, a Marsh, and an Agassiz—the key of the known has unlocked many of the mys- teries of the unknown, and in these rocky isles we now behold the head-stones of lands that the sea engulfed ! Prof. Dana, in his work upon Corals and Coral Islands, aftcr alluding to ‘‘the northern continental upward movements which introduced the glacial era,” and stating that ‘while the earth’s crust was arching upward” at the north, ‘it may have been bending downward over the vast central area of the great ocean,” adds: “‘The changes which took place, contemporancously, in the Atlantic tropics, are very imperfectly recorded. The Bahamas show by their form and position that they cover a submerged land of large area, stretching over six hundred miles from north- west to south-east. The long line of reefs, and the Florida keys, trending far away from Southern Florida, are evidence that this Florida region participated in the downward movement, though to a less extent than the Bahamas. Again, the islands of the West Indies diminish in size to the eastward, being quite small in the long line that looks out upon the broad ocean, just as if the subsidence increased in that direction. Finally, the Atlantic beyond is water only; as if it had been made a blank by the sinking of the lands.” * * * * * * * «The peninsula of Florida, Cuba and the Bahamas, look, as 40 ISLES OF SUMMER. they lie together, as if all were once part of a greater Florida or south-eastern prolongation of the continent. The north-western and south-western trends, characterizing the great features of the American continent, run through the whole like a warp and woof structure, binding them together in one system.” To the author of this book it seems probable, from a simple examination of a good West India map, that the subsidence ex- tended in the same general direction to South America, a dis- tance of some fifteen hundred miles further. While the crust of the earth was being elevated, depressed and rolled “like a scroll,” it would have been a slight matter to have enlarged the area of disturbance to the extent supposed. In the shallow water, upon the mountain tops, the corals planted their colonies, and these islands, and banks, these coral rocks and coral sands, entirely destitute as they are of primitive or volcanic rocks, and of fossil remains, are their monuments. Geologically speaking the Bahamas arc of a very recent age. This is indicated by the fact that their hammocks and woods are almost destitute of soil, yet the growth of coral islands is excecd- ingly slow. The coral groves and bowers are individually of small extent, very unlike the ‘‘illimitable forests” of the floral world, and the limestone annually secreted seems in quantity re- latively insignificant. The vast areas of coral limestones and of coral sands, are composed only of the detritus, torn, grounded and scattered by an ocean never at rest, and often exhibiting an energy and power almost divine, and of fragments of marine shells broken, pounded and rounded in the same way. Shells of existing species are found in the rocks, and Charles Burnside, Esq., son of a late Surveyor-general of the Bahamas, informed us that in a Nassau quarry upon his grounds which we visited, a large and perfect egg was taken from the rock at a distance of sixteen feet below the rock’s surface. It is clear that ocean has BURIED LANDS. 44 been and is one of the grinding mills of the gods, and that dura- tion or extent of time is only a conception of man. It is said to require under favorable circumstances a thousand years to make five perpendicular fect of coral limestone, and that coral rock exists in the Pacific ocean two thousand feet thick. In contrast with such almost infinite durations, well may the Chinese phil- osophers and sages compare the life of man with the little insig- nificant span of the mcasuring worm. The important part taken by the Bahama shell fish in the formation of the banks and rocks of the Bahamas is indicated by their very great abundance. Major-General Nelson states that: “‘at Six Hills (Caicos Group) the mass of Conch Shells (Strombus gigas) is so great and sufficiently cemented together as to form not only a rock, but an island several hundred feet in length.” While the highest land in the Bahamas is 230 feet above the sea, generally the hills on the larger islands are much under 100 feet in height, and from 10 to 50 feet on the islets. They abound with ‘pit holes” and ‘‘rock marshes.” The water upon the lower flats is brackish and rises and falls, though not contem- poraneously with the tide, or ata uniform rate. There are many ordinary and mangrove swamps, small and shallow, morc or less connected with the-sea. So far as there is any soil it is found in the little pockets in the rocks, and is scant and fertile. There are also large arcas of ‘‘ pine barrens” where the pine and the palm flourish side by side—the north and the south to this extent meeting and mingling harmoniously in the floral world. Lakes of salt or brackish water mirror the heavens and add a new charm to the landscape upon many of the islands. Andrus alone boasts a fresh water lake and afew small out-flowing fresh water streams. The rocks are all calcareous, soft and easily worked below the surface, white and dazzling when first quar- 49 ISLES OF SUMMER. ried, but they acquire a flinty hardness of surface, and assume a subdued and darker shade (an ashen gray) when exposed to the sun and air. The Bermuda Islands are closely allied to the Bahamas, having the same formation and being surrounded by coral reefs. They are situated in the same latitude with Charleston, 8. C., and are seven hundred and eighty miles distant from Cape Hatteras, and seven hundred miles south-east of New York. Science has dis- covered, and historical records have furnished most reliable evi- dence, that this group of coral islands, since their first discovery in the early part of the sixteenth century, have been in a state of subsidence, so that they are now far less extensive than they were between three hundred and four hundred years ago. Prof. Dana says: ‘‘ Twenty miles to the south-west by west from the Bermudas there are two submerged banks, twenty to forty-seven fathoms under water, showing that the Bermudas are not com- pletely alone, and demonstrating that they cover a summit in a range of heights ; and it may have been a long range.” OHAPTER III. New Providence. Killarney and Cunningham Lakes. Caves and Cave Earth. The Mermaids Pool. Nassau—its Streets, Publicand Private Build- ings, and Population. The Poor and Happy Negroes. Fort Fincastle and its Signals. Grants Town and other Suburban Villages. Fort Charlotte— its Subterranean Rooms and Charming Out-look. Lunching at the Expense of the British Queen. Removal of the Old Barracks. Fort Montague. A Lusuriant Growth of Titles. Nassau Harbor and its Bar. Observing the Breakers. Shells and Shell-work. Nassau’s Public Library. 5 “This sceptered isle; This earth of majesty; this seat of Mars; This other Eden—demi-paradise.” —SHAKESPEARE. “The poor contents him with the care of heaven.”—Pors. THE island of New Providence, although small in size and greatly deficient in soil, far transcends in importance all the is- lands with which it is more immediately associated. Nassau, the Bahama capital, reposes in calm, quiet dignity upon the northern slope of the hill that rises to a height of ninety feet above its northern shore, bathes its feet in the sheltered sea, and lifts its municipal head above the heights that overlook Grant’s Town. Itis to the entire archipelago what Athens was to Greece and the rising sun to the old Persian fire-worshippers. << Paris is France ;”—Nassau is New Providence and the Bahamas. But for its harbor and favorable location, it never would have risen from the rocks, or reposed under the shadows of its tropical and semi-tropical trees. Its superiority as a shelter for ships, caused 43 44. ISLES OF SUMMER. it to become for these islands the seat and focus of civil, political, ecclesiastical, and military power. Without its geographical and topographical advantages, it is not probable that within its nar- row borders a Colonial Governor would ever have had his resi- dence, an Episcopal Bishop his seat, or two companies of her majesty’s colored troops their barracks. No old and rusty guns would have given to the erests ot its hills a military and warlike aspect; jurisprudence would have soug1t elsewhere room for her highest courts,.and no colonial representatives or lords would have occupied imported high-backed chairs in its legislative halls. New Providence has an extreme length of about nineteen and three-eights miles from east to west; an extreme width of about seven miles from north to south; an average width of about five miles; and embraces a total area of about eighty-five square miles. From the north shore in front of Nassau, the distance across the island is between five and six miles. With the excep- tion of a very few square miles occupied by Nassau and its sub- urbs, there is little upon the island except water and wilderness; the former brackish, and throbbing and in some places appear- ing and disappearing with the long pulsations of the sea’s diurnal tides, and the latter, to a large extent, a dense low jungle, with stretchés of pitch pine forests rising from a thick undergrowth of scrub palmettoes, all being root-fastened to the rocks and ap- parently living like Dr. Tanner during his recent forty days’ fast, exclusively upon air and water. The western extremity of New Providence is called Clifton Point, and its eastern extremity, East Point. In a south-west- erly direction from Nassau, at a distance of probably seven or eight miles, Lake Killarney is situated—a body of shallow, brack- ish water nearly three miles in length from east to west, and about two and three-fifth miles in width from north to south. LAKES AND CAVES. 45 The Blue Hill range is about seven miles long, and running cast and west, separates this lake from Lake Cunningham—a smaller body of shallow water, half a mile wide, and two and two-thirds miles in length from east to west. The negro drivers, by design or ignorance, palm off this lake upon strangers for Killarney—it being nearer and more accessible than the latter. Cunningham, with its little mangrove islands, is well worth visiting, and the drive for a mile or two through the pine woods and scrub pal- mettoes, rendered necessary to reach it, gives one an opportunity to see something of the low, wet, rough, and rocky make up of portions of the island. Wild flowers and palmetto leaves, gath- ered by the wayside, often give a gay and festive appearance to the vehicles of the excursionists upon their return near the close of day or in the edge of the evening. The Blue Hills attain an elevation of 120 feet. Caves exist in the western extremity of the hill that separates the two lakes, and there is always connected with caverns in the rocks enough of the weird and wild and mysterious to make them objects of interest. We found it so with these. Indeed their proximity to a sea so recently infested by pirates, and their loca- tion upon an island not very long ago in possession of a now vanished race of men, suggest many a question which only the dead can answer. As we followed our dusky guide and passed from one chamber to another over the rocks, disturbing and driving from their dark retreats the bats, it was not difficult to imagine that the ghosts of the cruel and reckless buccaneers, and the shades of the unfortunate and grossly wronged Indians, were peering at us in the darkness and gloom. But after building a fire in the deepest, darkest and most dismal chamber of them all, which was entered through a small opening in a partition of rock, we experienced a feeling of relief, knowing that the elfs of evil vanish with the light. 46 ISLES OF SUMMER. In quite a number of instances the ceilings of the rocky cham- bers had partially fallen in, and, through the openings, the roots of wild fig trees had made their way, dropped from ten to twenty feet to the bottom, where, entwined among and running over the rocks, they seemed in the dim light like huge anacondas, whose repose it might be dangerous to disturb. Catesby, a century ago, in writing in regard to the natural history of the Bahamas, observed, that ‘‘ many of these islands, particularly Providence, abound with deep caverns containing salt water at their bottoms. These pits, being perpendicular from their surface, are frequently so choked up and obscured by the falling of trees and rubbish, that great caution is required to prevent falling into these ‘unfathomable pits’ as the inhabit- ants call them, and it is thought that many men who never returned from hunting have perished in them.” We called the attention of an intelligent native and old resi- dent of Nassau to this passage and he assented to its truth. To this day, the island, though so small, is largely an unknown country to its people. This seems incredible, but it is none the less true. Stimulated by a crisp and frosty air, northern people fit out exploring expeditions to the North Pole and the interior of Africa; but the citizens of Nassau care not to explore the dense jungles that exist a short distance from their doors. An article appeared in the Nassau Grazette a year or two since in which a correspondent describes a natural reservoir of fresh water called ‘“‘The Mermaid’s Pool,” or “The Black Water Pool,” which seems to resemble the deep caverns or pits to which Catesby refers, except that it is filled with fresh water. This writer states that it is located in the south part of the island of New Providence, about a mile from the shore, near an extensive cocoanut plantation, then belonging to the Hon. J. 8. George, a gentleman who is since, we believe, deceased. ‘‘It isin arocky, THE MERMAID’S POOL. NASSAU. 4” wooded plain, so perfectly level that it would be difficult for a rabbit to find a hillock sufficiently high for concealment.” It is about one hundred and fifty feet in diameter, sixty-five feet in depth, and without banks. The water comes “to the very brim,” and it has ‘‘a depth of forty feet at the very edge, which is the more remarkable as the adjacent sea is so shallow that it would be necessary to go five miles from the shore or six miles from the pool, before a depth equal to that of the pool is reached.” Al- though a great natural curiosity, and but afew miles from the city, the writer says ‘it is almost unknown to the people of Nassau.”? He gives the substance of a wild, romantic legend concerning this ‘‘Mermaid’s Pool,” in which a dusky island princess and a foreign shipwrecked prince act prominent parts. Strange noises are heard there at night, and in the form of a mermaid the princess at times emerges from the dark pool in the dim moonlight, seizes any unfortunate damsel who happens to be in the vicinity, and carries her a prisoner to her watery home in the rock. “The Bahamas yield a ‘‘ cave earth” composed of phosphates of lime and some ammonia. It is a kind of guano, and has suf- ficient value as a fertilizer to cause it to be exported to other countries, principally to the United States. The total value of this guano exported has often been about $20,000 a year, at about fifteen dollars a ton. It is not used in the colony. Nassau is situated in latitude 25° 51’ north, and longitude 77° 21’ west. The rock upon which it is situated has furnished the materials for the outer-walls of all its public and many of its private buildings. Nature seems to have had regard ‘to the fact that the people who were to live in this enervating air would never voluntarily quarry granite or any similar stone, and there- fore she has provided them with a rock that is soft below the surface and easily worked, but hardens when exposed to the air. 48 ISLES OF SUMMER. Many gardens, orchards, and ornamental grounds are enclosed with high walls made of this rock. These walls are stuccoed, and covered on top with fragments of glass embedded in mortar, all which impresses one with the conviction that petty larceny is an offence not unknown upon this happy and innocent-looking isle. Very many of the houses have large, heavy blinds on the sides exposed to the street and the sun, which enclose spacious piazzas, and thus secure cool air and seclusion. The blinds, in connec- tion with the garden walls, give them, to northern eyes, some- thing of the appearance of Turkish harems, and the impression is deepened by the additional fact that one seldom gets even a glance at the beautiful ladies who are supposed to occupy these pleasant homes. ‘We are unable to give accurately the population of Nassau. In 1861, the population of the Bahamas was 35,287, of which number 11,503 were upon the island of New Providence, and, according to Gov. Rawson, “‘of these, upwards of 10,000 lived in Nassau and its suburbs;” and as Grant’s town and Bain’s town, two. of the suburbs, then contained a population, the first of 2,398 and the second of 1,315, it left only 6,287 for Nassau. The population of the Bahamas in 1871, according to Moseley’s Al- manac, was 39,162, an increase of a little less than 4,000. If we allow Nassau and its suburbs their proportionate share of this increase (one-third) und add an equal number for the increase since 1871, it will make the present population of Nassau and its suburbs between 12,600 and 12,700. There is, however, nothing to indicute.that there has been much addition to the white pop- ulation of Nassan. Bay street monopolizes nearly all the business of the city, and is its principal thoroughfare. It skirts the harbor, is shaded by rows of almond trees, stretches east and west for several miles Looking down George st. from the Government House. Statue of Columbus in the foreground. The Cathedral on the right. The Vendue House at the foot of the street. The Harbor, Barrier Island, and Ocean north of the city. NASSAU. 49 beyond the limits of the city, and is made lively and attractive by trade and travel. The docks and landings, the public market, the stone barracks with their iron framed and stone-paved ver- andas, Fleming Square and the officers’ quarters, the airy unin- closed Vendue House, numerous stores and dwellings, a few small hotels and private boarding houses, the eastern Parade Ground, and an old cemetery still further to the east—all give tone, char- acter and importance to the street, and confer upon it a very great pre-eminence over all the other streets of the city. For several miles, during all parts of the day, Bay street is thronged with people, almost exclusively colored. Many of them are women and children, merchants in a very small way, bearing their stock in trade upon their heads. Idlers abound. No one isin any hurry. ‘‘How are you to-day, massa ?”’—‘‘ God bless you, massa ”—‘‘Can’t you give me a penny, boss?” are among the common salutations. The elderly colored women, when in- formed that we feel pretty well to-day, with much gravity of look and a devout expression, ejaculate ‘‘ Thank God!” and pass along. The diminutive black vocalists remember our interest in ’ their sacred songs, and have another song which they are anxious to sing to us. Nothing so impressed us with the evident poverty of the colored people of Nassau as a class, and of the difficulty they experience in getting a good and honest living, as the large number of colored women and children to be constantly seen during every business day upon Bay street bearing in their hands, or, (when walking,) upon their heads, their little stocks in trade—here a few pennies worth of candy, and there a little trifle of cake; some with small quantities of peanuts, and others having small supplies of flowers or fruit—the appearance of the latter often suggesting the thought that it had been prematurely picked to meet wants that were pressing, and would not wait. A capital of twenty-five 5 50 ISLES OF SUMMER. cents appeared amply sufficient to enable most of these street or curb-stone merchants to have a good start in life. The good nature and generosity of the colored people as a class was very marked. They freely gave to each other from their lit- tle stores, and never seemed to either fret, fume, worry or hurry. Truly blessed are these destitute children of the sun, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven—if heaven is the state or condition of being contented and happy—or if it is a country where nothing that makes a man rich in this ever enters. It is worth a journey to Nassau to learn the extent of man’s artificial wants. The streets of Nassau are to a large extent made in and upon the surface rock, the paving having been previously done when the shell and coral sands were hardened into stone. By filling up the hollows with broken stone, the roads are easily kept in good repair, as the rains soon dissolve the lime in the rock sufficiently to form a cement which makesall compact and solid. Prisoners in small squads, ornamented and secured by chain and ball, are daily seen working upon the roads—sitting sometimes, while working with their hammers, unshielded from the hot sun, in the dazzling light reflected from the white surface, while the thermometer registers from 140° to 150°. Sherley street runs next south of and parallel with Bay street, and is the second street in extent and importance. East Hill street runs for a short distance back (south) of the Royal Vic- toria Hotel. A few cross streets extend southerly from Bay street—most of them but a short distance. The principal of these are: Ist, Market street, leading to Grant’s Town, the north terminus of which is atthe City Market; 2d, George street, which, commencing at the Vendue House, passes in front of the “Cathedral” or Christ’s Church, and extends to the foot of a long flight of steps leading to the Government House or residence Fort Fincastle, FORT FINCASTLE—ITS SIGNALS. 51 of the Governor of the colony; 3d, Frederick street, upon which is the Wesleyan Trinity Church, and St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church; 4th, Parliament street, on the east side of which, at its northerly terminus, are the legislative and judicial buildings, while the Victoria Hotel is on the same side at its southerly ter- minus; 5th, East street, which, passing the hotel, leads to Fort Fincastle, on the crest of the hill. This fort commands a good view of the ocean and is utilized as a signal station. Whenever any vessel approaches either en- trance to the harbor of Nassau, the direction from which it comes and its character are indicated by flags hoisted upon its flag staff. It is a queer looking affair, running at one end toa point, and looking like some old sharp-bowed ante-diluvian water craft, ossified and turned into stone, which from the bot- tom of the sea had been pushed up into the air and the sun-light when the rock upon which it rests was elevated. Little negro cabins cluster around and cling to its side like so many large barnacles. SIGNALS UPON FORT FINCASTLE. Flags at mast-head denote the description of approaching ves- sels. Small quarter flags at the point of the yard arm indicate the number of approaching vessels. Four halyards attached to the yard arm are thus used;—one on the first halyard signifies one vessel; on the sccond, two vessels; and so on. Tf more than eight vessels are approaching from one quarter, the fleet flag is hoisted at the mast-head, and the quarter flags at the point of the yard arm. A Mail Packet Steamer is indicated by a Red Pendant at the yard arm, over the quarter flag. ” When the mail steamer anchors, a Union Jack is hoisted on 52 ISLES OF SUMMER. the Public Abutment; when the mails are landed it is hauled down. A Red Pendant is hoisted at the mast-head of the fort when a vessel of war approaches; and should the Union be flying from the fort, the Red Pendant is hoisted under it. A Large Union is hoisted on Sundays, all public days, and whenever the royal standard is unfurled at Government House. It is kept flying, except in bad weather, from eight o’clock A. M. until sunset. A Small Union hoisted at mast-hcad over the signal which de- notes the description of the vesscl approaching, indicates that the Governor is on board, and is kept flying until the vessel an- chors. His excellency is evidently the Queen Bee of the little hive. MAST-HEAD SIGNALS, Red and yellow (vertical bars), steamer. Red and white cross, brig. Red, ship or barque. White with red cross, brigantine. Blue with white cross, fore and aft schooner. Blue, top-sail schooner. Blue and yellow (horizontal), fleet. White and blue (horizontal), distress. YARD ARM SIGNALS—(QUARTER FLAGS.) Yellow, west. Blue and yellow (vertical), north-west. Blue, north. Blue and red, north-east. Red, east. Very near to its north wall a deep cut has been made in the SUBURBAN VILLAGES, 53 rock through the hill, as if for the purpose of obstructing by an artificial chasm the approach to the fort by a hostile land force from the north. In this deep gorge there is a long high flight of stone steps, which are dignified by the name of ‘‘ The Queen’s Staircase.” It is an interesting spot and much visited. Back of Nassau, over the hill, towards the west is Delancy’s Town—a suburb of the city occupied by colored people ; Grant’s Town and Buine’s Town lie also back of the city below and beyond the crest of the hill, but are further to the east. These suburban villages are inhabited largely by manumitted slaves and the descendants of those who have been enfranchised. Some, it is said, still use their native African dialects, and har- bor some of their old superstitions. We frequently visited these suburbs, and were always much interested in their teeming popu- lation, huddled together around their humble dwellings, sit- ting upon the rocks, or leaning upon the rude division and front walls of their village lots. With no corroding cares, no trouble- some anxicties about to-morrow, and no wants not easily supplied, they seemed more to be envied than many of the tired toilers in colder climes. Excepting the divers, we saw none of the “‘nearly naked negroes ” that others have described. Once while sailing before a good breeze, a boat passed that was sculled by a small boy, whose costume consisted only of a shirt, or, as a lady very forcibly expressed it, ‘‘ two sheets in the wind, or one flying.” His diminutive size, ebony complexion and comical attitude, self-satisfied air and ‘‘ ascension robe,” contrasted strikingly with the size of his boat, the dignity and gravity of his passengers, the clear and exquisitely beautiful water, and the green back- ground of Hog Island, whose southern shore he was approaching. But little money is, however, spent for dry goods, and many are barefooted, while the poor apologies for shoes which others have, make it impossible for them to walk except with a noisy, shuffling 54 ISLES OF SUMMER. gait, which equally grates upon the ear and offends the eye of people from the States. Those whom we have seen Sundays have been well and neatly but not expensively dressed. The streets of these suburbs are narrow and cross each other at right angles. Building lots have been laid out upon them, upon which there is usually a small one-story house, and some- times two or more, embowered in orange, tamarind, cocoanut, banana, sapodilla and other trees, and with flowering shrubs and vines. Here, as elsewhere generally upon the island, so far as we have seen it, the trees rise up out of the bare and naked rocks. Gov. Rawson in his report for 1864, speaking of this locality, says: ‘‘ Fruit trees of various kinds are crowded around the dwellings and cottages, growing luxuriantly, but planted without order, unselected, unpruned, and unimproved, often finding a place and nourishment for their roots in crannies and fissures in the rocks into which it would appear impossible for them to penetrate.” One can hardly believe his own eyes in looking at them. The plow and the spade, the harrow and the cultivator, the scythe and the reaper would be as much out of place here as snowballs in a baker’s oven. The only implements of husbandry that can be made available are the pick and the crowbar. By prying up the end of astone, or finding a crevice or making one in the rock, a place is found for slip, root, or seed, and when thus utilized, small rootlets start out, follow all the minute inequalities of the porous limestone, penetrate all the little pockets in the rock, run over and down ledges ten to twenty feet high, searching for fis- sures and crevices in the hard bottom of stone below, as if guided by intelligence, and impelled onward by a strong and most tena- cious love of life, while, at the same time, buds and twigs and stems and branches push upwards, enlarge and multiply, draw- ing rich supplies of food from a hot sun that warms but never GRANT'S TOWN. 55 wilts, and from the dews and showers that come down from heaven for their sustenance, until a dense and seemingly impen- etrable forest, fast anchored to the rocks, and a wild tangle of vines and bushes, blushing with flowers that perfume the air, cover all the apparent sterility of nature with a beauty which seems like childhood’s dreams of fairy land. The houses of the negroes are built mostly of wood, but some have limestone walls, while the roofs are covered—some with shingles and others with a thatching of palmetto leaves. It is rare to see a house with glass windows—board shutters take the place of sashes, and fire-places and chimneys are unknown. A little fire out doors, for cooking, made of dead wood gathered in the forest or thickets, which is transported in little bundles upon the heads of women and children, is all that is required in this warm climate. The walls are not sheathed or plastered, and the furniture of the houses is of the rudest and most simple kind. The colored people in the day time live out of doors in the open _ air, so that in riding through these suburbs, the whole popula- tion comes under review. Nobody appears to be at work. In sunshine or shadow, having nothing and wanting nothing, taking no thought for to-morrow, they live on like the birds from day to day, not needing to take lessons of the ant nor of any other of the world’s greedy and grasping toilers. All are merry, light- hearted and joyous; nobody frets or scolds; not a child cries; and the dogs, crouching beside their indolent masters, are literally too lazy to bark. All the thieving is of the petty kind—it would be too much like work to plan and execute robbery on a large scale—and what is the use of committing burglaries and grand larcenies when a little sugar-cane or a handful of fruit fills to overflowing the measure of their wants! There are no trades- unions, no commercial revulsions, and no strikes for higher wages. No heads ache from the pressing weight of the crowns 56 ISLES OF SUMMER. they wear, and no brains give out in the ceaseless and crazy struggles for wealth and power. Voluptuous idleness is the happy offspring of these charming isles of the sea, where frosts are unknown, and health and happiness float on each passing ware of the soft, perfumed air. Some of the military officials having very kindly designated a ~ten they would show the interior of Fort Charlotte, in- iis extencive subterranean worl:s, to some of the hctcl ., we were enubled through the politeness of Edward N. ‘on, Esq., of Derby, Ct., to participate in the pleasure of 2 excursion. iris fort, in its completed form, is not a hundred years old, and yet neither history or tradition are able to inform us positively when or py whom its foundations were laid. Mr. Charles Mosely, an old resident of Nassau, long an editor and publisher of one of its newspapers, says in his almanac: ‘‘It is supposed to have been begun by the Spaniards. It was finished about 1790, but the information regarding its history is very meagre and incom- plete.” Thus the same air that stimulates into rapid and vigor- ous growth the vegetable world, operates as an opiate upon ani- mal life, puts the Genius of History to sleep, and makes the Present too indolent to prepare and preserve records of the most important passing events. Fort Charlotte is upon the summit of the hill upon which Nassau, in a state of semi-tropical torpor, reposes. It is west of the city, and commands the principal or west entrance to the harbor. We passed a small open shore battery, and, ascending the hill by a winding roadway, soon reached and crossed a draw- bridge over a dry moat, ascended a flight of steps cut in the rock within the fort’s walls, to the high rocky table within the ram- parts, where we found our military escort waiting to receive and welcome us, We felt no desire to enter the fort as prisoners of ‘unoy sgunip fo quod v fo ner4 FORT CHARLOTTE. 5Y war, and no ambition to take possession of it for and in the name of the Great Republic, although, if somewhat reduced in size, and safely floated over the ocean, it might add a pleasing interest to some great American Museum or Inter-national Exposition. We were well satisfied to enter it as willing captives of British and Bahama hospitality. To our civilian eyes its armament did not appear formidable. Its old and rusty ordinance seemed little better than Quaker guns. No doubt, however, they exert as salutary a moral influence upon Nassau’s suburban colored inhabitants as would the best rifled and breech-loading peacemakers of modern times. To us the fort had a special value by reason of the extensive and picturesque views it affords. In front, and far away to the right and left, were the strings of beaded keys with which the shores of New Providence are exquisitely jewelled. Numberless rocks and reefs, lying in ambush in the shallows of the sea, were revealed by the white, foaming breakers that dashed over them. The iris colored and ribboned waters, with their settings of islands and keys, constituted a lovely sun embroidered border for the dark, deep blue dress of the ocean, which, in wide and waving folds, brushed against thesky. Turning to the opposite side, the contrast was most striking. The hill upon which we stood, Prospect Hill to the right, and the Blue Hills in the distance, are densely wooded banks and water sheds of a low, wet wilder- ness. We were very near to a colonial capital in which we had witnessed, in rather a small way, something of the pride and pomp and glory of this world. From our commanding positions we were able to observe its ‘‘ back country,” and to see no small portion of the island, yet we looked in vain for green pastures and flowery meads, for villages and farm houses, for orchards and gardens. The glassy surface of a small, salt and shallow lake alone broke the continuity of the low, thick, impenetrable 58 ISLES OF SUMMER. jungle. There was much to please the eye, but not a little of the beauty was eliminated when we paused to muse and meditate. Before we had an opportunity to do much of the latter, we were invited by our military friends to explore that portion of the fort which exists below the surface, in the very bowels of the limestone hill. Colored subordinates attended with lanterns, while the military officials devoted themselves to their guests, and, with a gallantry characteristic of military men, personally aided the ladies in treading the dark and dismal corridors, and exploring the windowless rooms which have been excavated in the rock. We entered the mouth of a small, round, deep well hole, and descended a long flight of spiral stairs cut in the rock. We traversed slowly and carefully in the darkness, one after the other, the small convolutions of this long, perpendicular, immov- able, excavated stone cork-screw. Our memory of this artificial military cave is not clear cut. It partakes somewhat of the dark- ness of the caverns we explored. The rooms and corridors, with their sides, and floors, and ceilings of stone, were no doubt made after some deeply cogitated and wise plan, but the most we rec- ollect is that they were dark and dismal dungeons. Here and there we remember to have seen loop holes, through which, from safe coverts, musketeers might shoot the men who should succeed in scaling the walls. If the reader desires, in a cheap and comparatively easy way, to experience the delightful sensations which a visit to Fort Charlotte’s subterranean rooms is so well calculated to produce, he has only to go into some large deep cellar and follow a negro with a lantern for half an hour in the darkness, and his curiosity, if he is a reasonable man, will be fully gratified. Not far from our first landing place at the foot of the spiral stairs, we remember endeavoring to peer into the darkness of a well hole in the rock which had been sunk to the foundations of THE QUEEN'S CHAMBER. ; 59 the hill, and to have drank some cool and pleasant-tasted water which was drawn from it. Nor would we if we could forget ‘“‘The Queen’s Chamber,” where, for the first time in our lives, we ate and drank at the expense of the British Government. With cheese and crackers and wine, the darkness was in a measure dispelled, and the re- presentatives of the old and new worlds there assembled, in those artificial Bahama caverns, drove a few nails into the great inter- national Platform of Peace. After drinking to the health of the British Queen, and to the prosperity and speedy and rapid promotion of the military gen- tlemen who had so kindly given us their time and attention, we ascended into the sunlight, and soon, resuming our carriages, returned to our hotel. The military barracks formerly occupied at Nassau an eleva- ted position on the grounds of Fort Charlotte. They were com- menced in 1790, and finished in 1794, and cost the home govern- ment about $150,000. After being used for between forty and fifty years, they were condemned as unhealthy, and taken down. An obelisque has been erected upon their site, which is utilized as a land-mark by vessels entering the harbor. Some of the Nassau people, we were told, claim that this removal was accom- plished under a false pretext; that it was ‘“‘a put up job;” that the military officers desired to be nearer to Nassau while doomed upon the island of New Providence to play the part of Napoleon Bonaparte at St. Helena. The sickness complained of they allege, was caused by imprudence; some of the soldiers, after spending an evening in the city, were too heavily loaded with liquor to get back to their barracks without lying down to rest and sleep in the damp night air. Hence the fevers from which they suffered. But as the prevailing winds swept over the low wet lands of the island before they reached the old barracks, it 60 : ISLES OF SUMMER. is quite probable that, at least during the wet rainy season, they were unhealthy. Little Fort Montague has been keeping watch and guard at the eastern entrance of Nassau harbor for a little less than a century and a-half. It was finished in 1742. Lieut. Bruce, who planned it, and superintended its construction, had suffi- cient skill as an engineer, and talent as an author, to ensure its transmission to our own times doubly preserved. Its walls re- main intact, and the pen of its engineer secured for it an abiding place in letters. It is only as a relict and reminder of the by-gones that it has a present value. It is not garrisoned, but its old and rusty guns, in appearance at least, continue to guard Nassau’s back door. Although we never entered its walls, it always calls up pleasant memories, as we often passed near it during the forenoon sails and afternoon rides that did so much to fill our cup of pleasure at Nassau. The Governor of these islands, while we were in Nassau, sent a written message to the Bahama legislative assembly, signed by himself, in which he asked for an appropriation of £50 (about two hundred dollars) to “‘ His Excellency in Council, to cause to be collected and printed the judicial decisions of the Superior Court of this colony during the last quarter of a century.” Does this not indicate a great amount of legal business? What an opening exists in this extensive group of islands, keys, rocks, and banks for young and aspiring members of the legal pro- fession! Only £50 wanted to collect and print all the deci- sions of all the Bahama Superior Courts for twenty-five years! And two dollars will purchase sugar cane enough to support a man and keep him fat and healthy for three months. Observe also how the Governor regards the maxim that ‘‘ A man cannot expect others to think any better of him than he thinks of him- LUXURIANT GROWTH Of TITLES. 61 self,”—and styles himself ‘His Excellency!” The more we study the royal institutions of the Bahamas, the more satisfied we become that our boasted republic is a failure, popular gov- ernments a mistake, and that it is about time to give some of our most skillful artists a liberal order for crowns, scepters, thrones, and all the gilded trappings necessary to set up one of those lofty imperial governments which are ‘‘ ordained of God.” Perhaps it mav be well to start one first upon the ‘‘ Thimble Islands,” that our people may see with their own eyes how beauti- fully the thing works. In a newspaper which is issued there semi-weekly, entitled “The Nassau Guardian,” &c., we find under date of February 24th, 1879, a letter of welcome to the newly elected Bishop of the diocese from the rector, wardens and vestry of a church up- on Harbour Island (one of the Bahamas) upon his first visit to that island, and the bishop’s reply. The correspondence has no particular interest to the outside world except as it shows how great, windy titles thrive when transplanted upon these wonder- fully productive calcareous rocks. The Harbour Island church officials addressed this successor of poor and humble apostles as follows: ; “The Right Reverend Dr. Francis A. Cranmer-Roberts, Lord Bishop of Nassau, Reverend Father in God.” The Bishop in his reply concluded as follows: ** Believe me to remain, “Your affectionate Father in God, “Pranors-Nassav.” Now if these little rocky isles of the ocean can sport ‘‘ Fathers in God,” “Lord Bishops,” and other high ecclesiastical digni- 6 62 ISLES OF SUMMER. taries, in addition to a Governor and lords temporal enough to stock a great empire, isn’t it about time for the people of the states to wake up anddosomething? Haven’t we all the materials necessary for the manufacture of whole regiments of “lords temporal” and ‘Fathers in God,” and why shouldn’t we have our share? Nassau harbor is about one and one-half miles long, and two- fifths of amile wide. Potter’s Key runs mid-way down the har- bor from the east, and separates the eastern half into two parts. The quays and landing places are on the south side of the harbor, opposite the east end of Hog Island. The shipping occupy the south side of the channel, which is separated from the north side by a bank having fifteen feet of water. The ordinary tides rise from two to three feet. It is not generally practicable for vessels to enter the harbor from the east which draw over nine feet of water. Old wrecks and storm-worn and condemned vessels abound, and suggest to a stranger Nassau’s importance as aseaport. Her back door is open .only to small vessels, while her front door is barred. That the bar at the main entrance to Nassau harbor is often a very scrious obstruction to navigation, is evident from the fact that the authorities have established the following bar signals: “Tf the harbor is approached with a northerly wind, and there is an uncertainty as to the state of the bar, should it be danger- ous to cross, a red flag will be hoisted on the signal staff near the lighthouse. * * Should it be possible, but too dangerous to get out, a white flag will be hoisted, and the pilot-boat will be seen in waiting just within the breakers, showing a flag red and white horizontally,” &c. The Governor in his report for 1878, stated that in September of that year, for six successive days, no vessel was able to cross THE HARBOR AND BAR. 63 the bar, on account of the disturbed state of the water, caused by the high winds and storms which had prevailed outside. Also that the harbor had not before been thus closed for so long a period within the memory of the oldest inhabitants. One can easily understand the danger of crossing at such times who has watched the high breakers, with foaming crests, leap along the bar from the back of Hog Island. It is often a pleasant and ex- citing pastime to approach this bar in a yacht, and watch the high waves as they approach, getting near enough to them to realize their power, and be baptised in their spray. How grandly they approach, with their high and foaming crests, ‘white as carded. wool,” oran Alpine torrent! The waves seem marshalled for the onset. Like the measured tread of an army, they roll in upon the honey-combed and trembling isle at short and regular intervals. Here and there a daring column of assault leaps over a depression in the rocks, but the main body, baffled in its pur- pose, rolls and foams along the rocky rim of the shore, envelopes the lighthouse in a mantle of spray, traverses the whole length of Nassau bar, and spends itself at last upon the white shore of Silver Key. Like the heavy roll of distant thunder, but with more exultant tones, loud voices from the troubled ocean mingle with the hoarser and louder reverberations that arise from the long line where sea and shore meet and struggle for the mastery. Following the first great breaker there is alwaysa second, which in turn 1s succeeded by a third, at short and regular intervals. All travel the same path, and, like swift moving snow-clad rail- road trains, glide rapidly across the bar. It was easy to believe them strange monsters of the sea, they sampled so well its mys- tery and power. ; A short lull occurs after the third breaker, of sufficient length to enable waiting vessels to cross the bar. This novel race by high mettled, spray-enveloped ocean steeds, with their long white 64 ISLES OF SUMMER. foaming trains, always secures a high degree of pleasurable ex- citement. We always welcomed the showers of glistening pearls that on such occasions greeted, enveloped and followed us, as a holy baptism from Neptune’s sacred but unseen altars. The inscription upon a coraline monument which occupies a conspicuous position upon the sea bank opposite the western or main entrance to the harbor, is strongly suggestive of the danger which attends the crossing of the bar on some occasions. Below the names of five men is the following testimonial. “‘Who perished on the bar of Nassau harbor, February 26th, 1861, while gallantly volunteering their services in the effort to save two men belonging to the pilot boat, which had been upset by a heavy sea. This monument is erected by the legislature of the Bahamas, to commemorate their gallant conduct and self- sacrificing heroism.” Thus does this monumental stone serve a double purpose. It honors not only the dead but the living, for the men who, in this substantial manner, recognized the noble virtues that ani- mated and inspired these obscure heroes in humble life, and thus caused them to inculcate a lesson of selt-sacrifice to every passer by, at the same time, all unconsciously, provided a memorial of their own justice, goodness and practical wisdom. On the first day of March, 1879, aided by a good glass, we witnessed a grand and extensive display of breakers from the cupola of the Victoria Hotel. The reefs, rocks, shoals, and out- lying keys were all marked and enlivened with the constant dash and play of the foaming breakers. The plucky resistance of Hog Island to the angry and impetuous assaults of the sea,. chal- lenged our admiration. The light house, which rises from that island’s eastern terminus, a spindle of limestone sixty-eight feet high, had its top obscured with the spray of high breakers that threatened to sweep it into the sea. Wecould not but muse and iy Ces View from Fort Fincastle. THE BREAKERS. SHELLS AND SHELL-WORK. 65 meditate upon the question of its desirableness as a summer resi- dence, with a cyclone outside traveling at the rate of one hundred miles an hour. For we well knew that at times, not only ‘“¢The startled waves leap over it; the storm Smites it with all the scourges of the rain, But steadily against its solid form Press the great shoulders of the hurricane.” As we saw it on that occasion, we realized more than ever be- fore its great importance, and the beneficence of its mission. We seemed to hear its hopeful and inspiring voice above the roar of the angry breakers. ‘¢ (Sail on!’ it said, ‘sail on, ye stately ships,’ And with your floating bridge the ocean span, Be mine to guard this light from all eclipse, Be yours to bring man nearer unto man!” The Bahamas offer special attractions to the conchologist. Their waters abound with a great variety of handsome shell-fish, and the shells, profusely scattered along the shores of the islands and keys, as the tides ebb, are exquisitely beautiful in form and color. They are mostly small, and so delicate and varied that with them the natives have long been accustomed to make vari- ous articles for the adornment of persons and parlors. They display much ingenuity and taste, and are said to be, if not su- perior, at least unsurpassed in this department of industrial esthetics. Some of the products of their skill, as well as shells that have been simply gathered from the beach and cured, are most always to be found for sale in the court of the hotel. Also delicate ornaments ingeniously made from the small scales of fish. In this connection, the conchs deserve special notice, as in the 66 _ IsLEs OF SUMMER. past they furnished to the natives a most important article of diet, while the conch shells have been in demand in other coun- tries for their beauty, and have also to a considerable extent, been utilized in the manufacture of various articles of personal adornment. The conch also often secretes a pearl of considerable value. The exportation of conch shells for five years, from 1856 to 1860 inclusive, aggregated $75,230, and for the next four years, (during the war of the rebellion), only $15,445. In the Governor’s report for 1878 no mention is made of this item of trade, and I infer the value of conchs exported that year must have been very small. The conch is obtained by diving, and sometimes has been found in very extensive beds. This may be inferred from a passage on page 204 of McKinnen’s Tour, A. D. 1803, in which he says—that the day after they passed Exuma, they ‘‘steered towards a passage named Conch Cut, from a pro- digious quantity of conch shells which have been rolled from the [Great Bahama] bank or adjoining shores, and thrown together near this narrow pass.” At the time of the American revolution of 1776, the Bahama people relied far more upon the water than the land for their support. Its fruitage of fish and wrecks never failed. They had no more occasion than the birds to sow and reap. At that time they acquired the sobriquet of Conchs. A writer from the Bahamas in 1824, states that many persons of the highest respectability were then distinguished by that name, and that they appeared to be not very proud of it,—which is not to be wondered at, as one might be expected to be equally pleased to be called an oyster or aclam. The wreckers of Key West, Fla., whose ancestors came from the Bahamas, are,we are informed by an old sea captain, to this day also called conchs. The surfaces of the inner spiral convolutions of the shell of the conch are highly polished, and have a most beautiful pink color, which suggested to our mind the inquiry whether the living oc- NASSAUWS PUBLIC LIBRARY. 67 cupant of this little but exquisitely furnished tenement is itself conscious of the gracefulness and beauty of the inner chambers of the house it occupies upon the submerged shelf of the ocean. Tt was a very pleasant surprise to find at Nassau a well selected Public Library of over seven thousand yolumes. It does much credit to the government which established and sustains it, and evidences wise statesmanship. Some of the other islands it is said, are similarly favored. A person, entitled to draw books, is permitted to take out five volumes at a time—a very liberal num- ber, and probably more than could be allowed if its patrons were more numerous. Isolated as New Providence is from the great world beyond the sea, the stranger, with the works of his favorite authors before him, is lonely no more. He is in the midst of a congenial world—the great world of letters—and no longer a stranger in a strange land. His mind is enriched and seeded with the great thoughts of the world’s greatest thinkers, present and past. Philosophers unlock the secrets of nature, and spread her most profound and subtle laws at his feet. Romance lays bare for him the mysteries (to some extent distorted and too highly colored) of the human heart, and the lights and shadows of all phases of human life. History, with graphic pen, dipped alike in truth and fable, portrays the rise, the decadence, and the fall of states and empires, and points, out the deep-seated causes that make and ruin nations, Divines cluster around him, and, while some fora greater or less fee permit him to look through their little pieces of smoked glass at the invisible world, others, with lips hallowed with celestial fire from God’s own altar, discourse eloquently upon the mysteries of life, death and immortality. While the poet, in soothing numbers, sings in- spired songs, conducts him on fancy’s wings through all space, and opens for him alike grim purgatorial doors and the golden gates of the celestial city. 68. ISLES OF SUMMER. Even in the drowsy air of the Bahamas a studious man is not satisfied or happy if withdrawn entirely from the world of letters. He must wander at will in what to him is the very garden of the gods—those literary fields where is found the choicest fruitage of the most gifted and cultivated minds. Inthe mild climate of Italy, the great Cicero found coveted rest and repose, not in list- less idleness, but in a change of literary work. Mind, equally with muscle, is toned up and strengthened by exercise, and soft- ens in voluptuous repose. The tired intellectual worker who seeks in Nassau rest, may, therefore, in moderation avail himself of the benefits of its library. With leisure and a library, his mind will not become flabby while his body grows fat. The building uscd for a library is of octagon form, built of stone, and was formerly a prison. Each of its eight alcoves has a window, so that it is well supplied with light and air. Con- nected with the library there is a newspaper and magazine de- partment, which adds materially to its value. A beginning (a small nest egg) has also been made for a museum of natural history. CHAPTER IV. The Royal Victoria Hotel. Scenes daily witnessed in its Court. Sacred Songs of the Negroes. ““Whoe’er has traveled life’s dull round, Where’er his stages may have been, May sigh to think he still has found The warmest welcome at an inn.”—SHENSTONE. THE words above quoted need to be qualified, for a landlord’s welcome is purchased by his guest’s money, and disappears the moment that gives out. The destitute traveler is not presumed to be a disguised angel, and the doors of few public or private houses swing open at his approach, except for the purpose of letting the dogs loose on him. Hotels are not kept for tramps, and the latter receive but a cold welcome even in poor houses which the public maintain in part for their benefit. We were much pleased with the Royal Victoria Hotel, and re- ceived many little attentions and kindnesses at the hands of its proprietor, (Mr. J. M. Morton), which it is a pleasure to ac- knowledge, but the visitors from the states must remember that Nassau’s justly celebrated hostelry is conducted on business prin- ciples, and that plenty of money or a good letter of credit is an essential requisite of “the warmest welcome” of which the poet Shenstone sung. In a subsequent chapter, reference is made to the object for which this hotel was built by the Bahama government, and to the important part it played in the blockade running business 69 70 ISLES OF SUMMER. during the late American war. It is so essential to the health and comfort of invalids and tourists visiting Nassau, that we add such other facts concerning 1t as strangers proposing to visit the place will naturally desire to know. This hotel stands upon high ground, a little below the crest of the hill upon which Nassau is built. Three-fourths of the square enclosed by Sherley, East, East Hill, and Parliament streets, is occupied as a site for the hotel and for hotel purposes. It faces the north, and commands, from all its front windows and piazzas, a very fine view of the harbor, its sheltering island, some neigh- boring keys, and the out-lying ocean. It overlooks the judicial, legislative and library buildings, and many private buildings with their embowering trees. Its elevation and exposure to the full force of the prevailing winds, secures for it the full benefit of those from the ocean, which, freighted with refreshment and health, seldom cease to blow. The hotel proper is two hundred feet in length, four stories high, and is well and substantially built of coralline lime- stone, and is surmounted by an observatory which commands a very extensive and fine view. Piazzas ten feet wide surround each of the three upper stories, upon which the windows, gen- erally reaching to the floor, open; thus furnishing convenient places for promenades and sittings in the outside air, though interfering somewhat at times, with the much to be desired quiet and privacy of the adjacent rooms. Projecting from the center of the building, directly over and of the same size with the main parlor, there is a piazza in the third story, open on the east, north and south sides, which affords an extensive view greatly diversified and charmingly beautiful. Spacious halls extend through the center of each story of the long build- ing, with tiers of rooms upon each side. The old King’s College School building constitutes a part of the hotel. It is in a line THE ROYAL VICTORIA HOTEL. 71 with the new hotel building, and is connected with it by large heavy blinds. It has stone stuccoed columns in front, its prin- cipal rooms are large and well lighted, and admit of more privacy and quiet than most of the rooms in the new building. The dining room occupies all of the first floor north of the central portion of the hotel, and large windows surround it upon three sides. It has three tiers of tables, and ig unusually light, airy and pleasant. A refreshing sea-breeze seldom failed to make it agreeably cool in the middle of the hottest days, and in no in- ' stance while we were there was it at night too cool or hot for comfort. Hotel parties, and occasional evening entertainments were given in the dining room, and when its walls were adorned with palmetto leaves, and decorated with English and American flags, it did not need the gay dance, sweet music and the land- lord’s generous and bountiful entertainment to make it attractive even to the mere looker-on. The parlors are smaller than those of large hotels at the north, but the climate is so mild the parlors are less frequented. The hotel is neatly furnished and well kept. The meats, many canned vegetables, and the smaller fruits and other sup- plies for the establishment, are imported from New York. Packed in ice, in large refrigerators, every steamer brings large additions to the landlord’s stores. A very superior class of colored waiters, uncommonly intelligent, and efficient, materially add to the com- fort and happiness of the guests. A gentleman well qualified to judge in such matters expressed to us the opinion, founded on his personal knowledge, that there is no hotel in the West In- dies equal to the Victoria, though some have cost more money. We were informed by some of the visitors at Nassau, that this fine hotel has not always been well kept, and that its patrons have some times fared badly, and been the victims of extortion. With an incompetent landlord in charge, and no other suitable 2 ISLES OF SUMMER. house to go to, Nassau would be far less desirable as a winter resort than we found it. For the invalid especially a good tem- porary home is essential to both health and comfort. We re- member to have heard only one complaint of its management while we were there, and that was because the breakfast and dinner tables were for only a portion of the season supplied with oranges, many deeming that fruit almost a necessary of life in Florida and the Bahamas. Bath rooms, supplied with hot and cold water, constitute a part of the establishment, and accommodate those who do not indulge in the luxury of a bath in the sea, there being nothing in the temperature of the air or water to prevent sea bathing at Nassau every dayin the year. The price of board is three dollars a day, and while for many it is a large sum to pay, yet persons who had boarded for a while at some of the cheaper houses in- formed us that they obtained more for their money at the Royal Victoria than any where else. Washing is an extra, the charge being seventy-five cents per dozen. A small building at the west entrance of the hotel grounds is used as a barber shop, and for drinking and billiard purposes. North of it is the hotel garden. The court in front of the principal north entrance of the Royal Victoria Hotei is entered on three sides through eight large, high archways, and its ceiling separates it from the main parlor of the hotel, which is projected out from the main building. Being large, airy, and shaded at all times, it is a favorite place of resort by the guests of the house. As a consequence, the colored yacht- men, including the smooth-tongued, experienced and skillful Captain Sampson, and the good-natured, capable, but less showy Captains Johnson and Mitchell, when not on the water, were ever, during the pleasant days, to be seen arranging for marine exploring parties. The varied attractions of the adjacent waters, ~ Sy ee) s & P| i) : ny Sy , x a a ih E ‘ ( : : { it ; I | | | | vi At -p re 2 4 { j * i un i THE HOTEL COURT. %3 islands and keys were portrayed with a fervid eloquence which never ceased to interest. Near by were numerous carriages for hire, which were much patronized. This court is also a great bazaar, to which the colored people of all ages and of both sexes who have anything to sell, resort in large numbers to dispose of their wares. Here, therefore, is offered an excellent opportunity to study the products of these rocky islands and of the adjacent waters, which is much improved and enjoyed. Many kinds of fruits, flowers and other vegetable products, corals in great variety, sugar cane and candies, sponges of all sizes and qualities, shells exquisitely shaped and beautifully colored, shell-work of unsurpassed excellence, canes of the orange, lignum vite, ebony, satin and other woods, and many other articles make up their stock in trade. Here also the colored boys came to scramble, - in the most laughable manner, for pennies, thrown to them for that purpose upon the hard pavements of lime-stone and brick. When down, and struggling for the prize, in a wild tangle of arms and legs, they seemed a hideous, writhing mass of black and ragged reptiles of the most lively kind. When up, with faces beaming with fun and frolic, their eager calls for ‘‘ massa” to “‘trow a penny dis way” soon dispelled the delusion. In these contests, as well as on other occasions, their good nature and amiability are pre-eminently exemplified. For some days after we first arrived at the Royal Victoria, young Africa gave frequent vocal entertainments in the court of the hotel. The voices of some were soft and musical, and they sang the religious songs which they had learned in ‘‘ the shouting meetings,” with perfect abandon, and with afervor and zeal that glorified their dusky faces, swayed their bodies, and extended down their arms to the tips of their fingers. A sacred waltz was sometimes performed by ‘‘ Sankey ” and his cousin, two little dots of children, in the most cunning and comical manner imaginable, vd "4 ISLES OF SUMMER. while they sang to the rhythm of the dance, “O it will be joy- ful,” &c. When the miniature boy and girl near the close sepa- rated a little, alternately approached each other and withdrew, ogling, twisting, bowing and coquetting, while they continued to sing with many repetitions—‘‘ Meet to part no more; meet to part no more,” the gravity of the audience was sure to give way in laughter and applause. The songs sung on these occasions probably have never been printed or reduced to writing. Having taken some of them down, we subjoin them for the benefit of those of our readers who may have a curiosity to know something in regard to their character, although the words alone give only a faint representa- tion of their merits when wedded by these uncultured people to music, and sung with a fervid enthusiasm, born of a native love of melody and of genuine devotional feelings. A prominent member of the choir is Charley, the basket boy merchant—a smart, bright, wide-awake little fellow, who ever has a sharp eye to business. : ; A marked feature in the following was the rendering of the - Oh’s,” the notes ascending and descending the scale in a very lively manner, and the musical expression and richness of tone added greatly to the effect. 1. I'd rather pray my life away, Oh! oh! oh! oh! Than go to hell and burn away. Cuorts. Save me Lord from sinking down, Oh! oh! oh! oh! Save me Lord from sinking down, SACRED SONGS OF THE NEGROES. 2. I had a book—’twas given to me,— Save me Lord from sinking down, In every line was victory. Corus. Save me, &c. 3. J had a book—'twas given to me,— In every line was victory ; I had a book—’twas given to me, . And every line convicted me. CnHorus. Save me, &c. 4. Satan made a catch at me, He miss my soul and he catch my sins. Corus. Save me, &c. WRESTLING WITH THE ANGELS. Tell me Lord, shall I be there now, To sit on Zion’s hill; To wrestle with the angels all night, Until the break of day. Ill wrestle with the angels *Till the break of day. Tell me Lord, shall I be there To sit on Zion’s hill all night, And take a wrestle with the angels, All night! allnight! Until the break of day? 46 . . ISLES OF SUMMER. O tell me God, shall I be there now, O tell me God, shall I be there now, O tell me God, shall I be there now, To sit on Zion’s hill, To wrestle with the angels All night! All night! Till the break of day. To an uncultivated, excitable people, strongly imbued with a taste for music, there is something grand and inspiring in the great volumes of melody which issue from the organ, when its keys are skillfully manipulated. Thrilled by the great tidal waves of harmony, no wonder that it serves them as a symbol of the ravishing music with which all the arches and domes of heaven are supposed to resound. Hence the following: Unbelievers—hear the organ roll! Hear the organ roll! Hear the organ roll! Don’t you hear the organ roll, On Mount Calvary! Hear the organ roll! Street strollers—hear the organ roll Hear the organ roll! Hear the organ roll! Don’t you hear the organ roll! On Mount Calvary! In the next verse ‘‘Rum Drinkers” and afterwards ‘ Back- sliders” and others are each in like manner called upon to ‘‘ Hear the organ roll,” and the enthusiasm and power of musical ex- pression of the vocalists seemed to increase until all appeared at last to have reached the very top of Mount Calvary,—a moun- tain they evidently believe exists somewhere in the happy land which lies just over the river of death. SACRED SONGS Of THT NHAROKS. vid The following is indicative of the fact that to some extent the negro mind in Nassau has been affected by its contact with Ro- man Catholicism here, or upon some of the Spanish islands, Go and carry the news, Go and carry the news to Mary, I’m bound down to Glory! Go and carry the news to Mary, Go and carry the news to Mary, I’m bound down to glory! When Satan says I need not fear, He'll have my soul in the judgment day ; I'd rather pray my life away, Than go to hell and spend one day; Go and carry the news to Mary, Go and carry the news to Mary, I’m bound down to glory! Carry the news, Go and carry the news! Sister—carry, carry the news! I'm bound down to glory. Go and carry the news! Go and carry the news! Go and carry the news! I’m bound down to glory! Here is a sacred song which is particularly adapted to the ‘in- dolent habits of life of this idle people. A heaven which neces- sitated labor would have very little attraction for them: Come along my sister, come along, Come along my sister, come along, For the angels say there’s nothing to do But to ring the charming bell. We are almost gone, we are almost gone, But the angels say there’s nothing to do 3 ISLES Of Stf‘MMER. But to ring that charming bell. Come along my sister, come along, For the angels say there’s nothing to do But to ring that charming bell. The following little piece is said to have been composed by a colored girlashort time before her death. In the ringing of heaven’s bells, the singing of the angels, and mounting the hill of Zion, her vivid imagination anticipated and had a foretaste of the happiness that awaited her in the other world. It certainly produced a cheery, comforting effect when musically and spirit- edly rendered by the dusky vocalists: The heavenly bells are ringing, Archangels singing, The heavenly bells are ringing, — O rise loving sister, Let us go to Zion’s hill! Let us go to Zion's hill! The heavenly bells are ringing, Archangels singing, The heavenly bells are ringing, In the morning. At last the penny scramblers and the sweet singers of Nassau caused so much noise, and sucha disturbance of the quiet which usually prevades these dreamy shores, that a man with a long unsentimental whip was sent, whenever they assembled, to drive them away. Still, however, they occasionally appeared,. and, for the base coins of the strangers, exercised those gifts divine, which, like milk in a cocoanut, one, from outward appearance, would never for a moment suppose to exist. CHAPTER V. Flora of the Isles of Summer. The Fertilizing Air. Large Trees from Stone Quarries, and upon the Tops of Stone Walls. Trees that will not Die and cannot be Killed. Trees Within Trees. The Monkey Tamarind, the Wild Fig, and the Ceiba or Silk Cotton Trees. Thompson's Folly. Palin Trees—the Cocoanut, the African, the Cabbage and the Palmetto. The India Rubber Tree. The Singing Tree. The Tamarind Trees, and Trees Valuable for Timber, for Dyes, for their Spicy Bark, and for Medicinal Purposes. The Natural more Wonderful than the Supernatural. “And all the broad leaves over me Clapped their little hands in glee, With one continued sound, — A slumbrous sound, a sound that brings SES The feeling of a dream.” WHEN visiting for the first time the isles of unending summer, one cannot fail to be deeply impressed by their new, diversified, and curious forms of vegetable life. It matters not that he is not a close observer of nature, or an educated and trained botan- ist. Perhaps if he were he could not, by reason of his profound technical learning, so well communicate to common minds, the impressions and thoughts which such scenes make and inspire. The learning of some seems to make them useful only to scholars. Upon the island of New Providence we trod what was to us a new world, and every climbing vine and flowering shrub, and branching tree ministered to our happiness. We seemed to our- selves to be a newly made Adam first introduced to his garden, 79 80 ISLES OF SUMMER. fortunately relieved, however, from all obligation to ‘‘ dress and keep it.” If we had the learning of an old and experienced botanist, we should have seen too much. As it was, we saw as much as, untrained and unpracticed, we could well master, or describe in a single chapter. A few pen-photographs of some of the more striking floral scenes and pictures which we witnessed, may communicate to our readers something of the interest and pleasure which the reality produced upon the mind of the author. The first impression was one of astonishment at finding upon such almost naked rocks anything above lichens and the smaller and simpler forms of vegetable life. But nature is never as un- just or partial as she often appears to the casual observer. When she withholds with one hand, she, with the other, is busy dispensing lavishly her gifts. The principle of compensation exists everywhere throughout her wide domain. Human life and human experience teem with evidences of this great and universal truth, while the material world, in all its varied and wondrous forms, is permeated with the same great principle. Upon the Bahama islands it is manifested on every hand. The want of soil to cover the nakedness of the rocks finds material, though not full compensation, in a climate so happily constitu- ted that life exists and thrives largely upon air. Mr. Charles Burnside (whose kind and obliging ere we are glad of this opportunity to gratefully acknowledge) took us to the coral limestone quarry upon his premises, to which we have already referred, from which, for a hundred years or more, stone has been taken for building purposes—including stone for the Royal Victoria Hotel. On the floor of that quarry, bottomed upon rock, and upon nothing else, we saw in full and lusty vigor, a wild fig tree, a species of the banyan, which in forty years had attained a great size, its many large branches towering high up in the air with a lateral spread of ‘about eighty feet. It was full WILD FIG TREES. 81 of fruit in every stage of development, the ripened figs being of the size of the end of one’s little finger, but as perfect in their parts as the larger figs of commerce. Little lizards, like embryo monkeys, were here and there seen through the green foliage, while below, sheep were browsing, and eating the fallen fruit, docile and happy, growing for the shearer their wool, and fattening their carcasses for the butcher. These figs are to the taste sweet and pleasant, and, though so small, their immense number make them valuable. Children eat them, and upon them hogs are fattened. Under this tree, the top of the rocky floor was covered with a net work of its roots, one of which pene- trated the cellar of Mr. Burnside, some three hundred feet distant. We saw two of the same species of banyan tree that had ob- tained a large growth from seed blown by the wind or depos- ited by birds on top of a stone wall. This wall was composed of irregular fragments, and was two and a-half feet wide at the top and about four feet high. The seed there germinated, pushed out their little fibrous roots, which crept down each side of the stone wall, and fastened to and extended among the rocks in the fields which the wall in part inclosed. These rootlets enlarged with the growth of the trees, while from the top of the wall stems pushed up into the air. One of the trees had five stems whose diameters varied from six to twelve inches. On the top of astone wall within the grounds of the Victoria Hotel, there is the stump of a tree a foot in diameter, which unquestionably grew there, as its roots are still seen where they entered and pushed out from among the stones of the wall. Having had some experience in setting out, manuring, watching and water- ing trees in Connecticut, the pluck, enterprise, persistence and independence of these wild Bahama trees challenged our warm- est admiration. Mr. Burnside also called our attention to a banyan tree upon 82 ISLES OF SUMMER. his grounds near his front gateway, having a spread of about one hundred feet, inside the body of which there is the dead and decayed body of a Pride of India tree. Mr. Burnside is about thirty-five years of age, and when a boy, as he said, he ‘often went all through the Pride of India tree, and there was nothing of the banyan tree to be seen.” A banyan seed in some way— perhaps as the result of one of the experiments in raising trees of some bold and intelligent bird—found lodgment where the branches of the old tree diverged from its stem, from ten to fifteen feet from the ground, and, no way dismayed at the dis- couraging prospect, it did not repine at its hard destiny, or arraign the goodness of Providence, but concluded to make a bold and heroic struggle for existence. Its little, minute fibrous rootlets started out upon a seemingly hopeless mission. To the Pride of India, with its graceful branches, beautiful foliage, and large and fragrant clusters of flowers, they were like so many gossamer threads. But the days and months and years rolled on. The rootlets noiselessly and stealthily passed down upon all sides of the trunk that was giving them a support, fastened into the rocks, and the doom of the Pride of India was forever sealed. The law of ‘‘the survival of the fittest” was exemplified. The little rootlets around the trunk enlarged into stems, perfectly encircled the old tree with a living wall of a tree of a most rampant habit of growth, and now, only by aclose and critical inspection, can a stranger ascertain that this immense banyan tree perfectly encloses the dead body of a victim, whose life it has, anaconda fashion, crushed out. Mr. C. Waterton in his ‘‘ Wanderings,” states that in Demerara, 8. A., the wild fig tree in a similar manner often “rears itself from one of the thick branches of the top of the mora,” feeds upon the juices of the latter, and in turn is taken possession of by vines, and doomed to contribute a portion of its juices towards TENACITY OF TREE-LIFH. 83 their support and growth, so that ‘ with their usurpation of the resources of the fig tree, and the fig tree of the mora, the mora, unable to support a charge which nature never intended it should, dies under its burden, and then the fig tree and its usurping pro- geny of vines, receiving no more succor from their late foster parent, drop and perish in their turn.” The piratical fig tree we have described appeared to be receiving all its nourishment from the rocks to which its net-work of roots were fastened, and from the air that enveloped its wide spreading and lusty branches. No usurping vines imperilled its hfe. In the destructive hurricane of 1866, some six or seven large trees were torn up by the roots in one of Mr. Burnside’s lots. One tree which was completely prostrated, still adhered to the rocks by a few of its unsevered roots, and we saw it green and growing still, as if nothing unusual or adverse had happened. A large Jamaica tamarind tree, four or five feet in diameter at its base, was at the same time also prostrated, and it had thus far resisted all the efforts of the father of Mr. Burnside during his life, and of his son since his death, to kill and get rid of it. Fires were built around it, but it was too full of sap to burn, and the baffled fires went out. They ‘‘ hacked it” as they had time and opportunity, but the wounds soon healed and were covered with new bark. It was in the way, but they had thus far been unable to wholly abate the nuisance. Atone time a large section of the trunk was detached and afterwards removed with very great difficulty by piece-meal. After more than twelve years, some six or seven feet in length of the butt remains. It is fas- tened to the rocks by a very small number of the old, and by large re-inforcements of new roots, which this butt end of the old trunk has pluckily and persistently formed and tied to the under-lying rocks. Every wound it has during all these years received, has been perfectly healed, and over the whole of the part from which 84 tstls OF SUMMER. the section was detached—a circle not far from four feet in diameter—a new and healthy bark has grown, while small new _ sprouts have'in different places made their appearance. Such tenacity of life and recuperative energy we had not supposed ex- isted anywhere. Were theclimate of the Bahamas as stimulating to mind as it is to matter in some of its forms, its inhabitants would intellectually far excel all other people past or present. Notwithstanding the “never say die” pluck of this memento of the great hurricane of ’66, its continuance for many years is also in part traceable to the absence of proper tools and appliances for its removal. The mechanic arts are there still ina state of rude and primitive simplicity. Aside from the building of small ves- sels of not exceeding a hundred tons, and at rare intervals a new store or dwelling, there is little skilled labor, and an official re- port states that their only manufactures are ropes, baskets and palmetto hats. Two or three small sugar mills run by horse power, and a grind stone in the rear of the hotel, rotated by hand, were the only labor-saving machines we saw upon the island. The pine trees are cut down often, and perhaps generally, with long knives. They are not very large, and the swinging of an ax would require too great an exertion in this climate to suit the taste of its ami- able, good-natured and politically free negroes. The Jamaica tamarind tree is sometimes called the Monkey Tamarind, from the fact that occasionally in Jamaica a monkey will insert its paw, when open and extended, through the end of the large, hard, woody pod, which the tree produces, for the purpose of obtaining the seeds which it contains. Grasping _ these, his paw, when closed, is too large for the hole, and either because he is too stubborn and willful to open his paw, or because | he has not sufficient intelligence and presence of mind to do so, he holds on and pulls, and pulls and holds on, until one very THE BANYAN TRES. 85 much his inferior in climbing trees discovers and captures him. Though higher in the scale of life, and rounding out a larger and more showy link, man, in ways equally stubborn and stupid, often rushes upon and invites his own destruction. Let us there- fore, pity these unfortunates, and not laugh at them. A specimen of the Ficus Indica, or banyan tree of India, is erroneously supposed to exist near Nassau, and strangers often leave that city firmly convinced that they have added to their new and pleasant experiences a personal acquaintance with that famous tree of the Orient. An intelligent native merchant of Nassau, who is officially connected with our own Government, informed us that the (so-called) banyan tree near Nassau had been imported—that it bore no fruit, and that it is the only gen- uine India banyan tree upon the island of New Providence. He did not intentionally misrepresent, and would generally be * considered good authority, but he was mistaken. Confident that we had seen little figs growing upon the tree in question, we visited it again, examined it more critically, and severed and carried away from it branches of wild figs in every stage of de- velopment. It is aspecies of the Ficus, has the same habit of growth with the Ficus Indica, but is identical in kind with the other wild fig trees upon the island of New Providence, and ex- hibits far more strikingly than any of the others those peculiar- ities which have made the banyan tree of India so famous. An intelligent and pleasing correspondent of the Troy Budget (the Hon. 0. L. McArthur) writes concerning the Nassau ban- yan tree, that ‘after its main limbs have grown out from its trunk some twenty or thirty feet, the branches turn down to the earth, taking root, and forming a column of support for its pa- rent branch, as well as another tree of itself.” ‘It is a very curious tree, furnishing friendly shade, ever extending by new trunks, ever widening its circle by ts top striking down and 8 86 ISLES OF SUMMER. taking root, and every new growth and stem being still a part of the parent tree to which it is ligamented as were the Siamese twins.” No doubt Mr. McArthur visited the tree he has under- taken to describe, and being a man of ability and literary culture, his testimony is that of a credible witness—and yet, he is con- tradicted by the facts. He was, as all are who see it, astonished and delighted to find a tree possessing such a peculiar habit of growth, and multiplying itself into a large grove or small forest. But he failed to make such a close and critical examination as was necessary in order to enable him to enlighten his readers in regard to the method by which the singular result is produced. Had he done so, he would have discovered that the branches do not ‘‘turn down to the earth and take root,” nor does “its top strike down and take root,” but from the outstretching branches, at various distances from the stem or trunk, roots de- scend a distance of from ten to fifteen feet through the air, fasten to the rocky bottom, enlarge from ycar to year, and thus by sin- ~ gle and clustered living columns support the immense branches from which as roots they descended. These roots thicken and enlarge as they grow, and we saw some on their way to the sur- face rocks from one to three inches in: diameter, bearded at the end with a long hairy fibrous covering, which, we presume, ab- sorb nutriment from the surrounding air. Milton makes a similar mistake, and if he did not originate the error he has given it a wide circulation. He refers to the Ficus Indica, but this tree also is extended by means of roots which the lateral branches send down to the ground from an elevation above it of a number of yards. In the following lines in Paradise Lost he has, in describing it, drawn in this respect upon his imagination: s THE BANYAN TREE. 84 “The fig tree, not that kind for fruit renowned, But such, as at this day to Indians known In Malabar or Decan, spreads her arms, Branching so broad and long, that in the ground The bended twigs take root, and daughters grow About the mother tree, a pillar’d shade, High o’er arched, and echoing walks between.” These roots grow and become important columns of support to the wide and ever extending branches, many of them being multiform or clustered, forming “ Huge trunks—and each particular trunk a growth Of intertwisted fibres serpentine, Up-coiling, and inveterately convolved— * 4 * * * * ga pillar’d shade.” Some of these root trunks are not only singularly entwined and twisted, but they have looped upon and attached to them small aerial rootlets which add a new feature unlike anything we had observed. Evidently little roots, in dropping down from the nearly horizontal branches, stopped on the way at different dis- tances, varying from a few inches to a foot or more, to rest and establish new bases of supply, and fastening, by a living growth, to one of the root columns of support, they have pushed out again into the air, and after making a further growth of a few inches, they have again stopped for a similar purpose, fastened to the same column in the same way, then pushed out again, re- peating the process until either the rocks are reached or they are absorbed and lost in the older and larger growth to which they have in different places adhered. Thig tree is situated upon a clearing a little to the east of Nas- sau, and a few rods from the highway which skirts the harbor. It is near a dwelling house known as ‘‘Thompson’s Folly”—a 88 ISLES OF SUMMER. tall wooden building, unsheltered, and so exposed to the wind that the natives believed that it would fall an easy prey to the first hurricane that should visit Nassau after its erection. They therefore gave it the name which it still bears. But the evil prophets of Nassau seem to have been uninspired, and, as if to discredit and confound them, the fearful and most destructive hurricane of 1866, while it turned many a solid and costly struc- ture into a ruin, left this house intact and unharmed. Although it survived the hurricane, it has been ruined by a bad name. There it stands, gloomy and solitary—treeless, unprotected, and unoccupied. Commanding a fine view, cooled by the trade winds, fanned by every breeze that ruffles the surface of the neighboring ocean, stately as an English official, seemingly in a good state of repair, and having a very famous and curious tree for its nearest neighbor, it has been rendered absolutely worthless, good for _ nothing but for fire-wood in a place where fires are a nuisance, because some meddlesome people have given it a bad name. Thus has it often happened that Slander has given to Innocence a name which has ever after remained like the brand of the divine displeasure upon the forehead of Cain.* A low terrace has at some time been made under this tree out ~ of small fragments of coral limestone, thereby securing a more level surface for those who might repose or have picnics in its cool and grateful shade. This isnow thickly covered with a net- work of roots, and the branches and roots have extended far be- yond its limits. Springing out of the rocks under the tree there ‘* Since this was written, and during the time of our second visit to Nassau, “The Folly ” was temporarily occupied by a medical gentleman and his fami- ly, who, it was currently reported, for prudential reasons, left their more central city residence, (located not far from our hotel,) which a malignant disease had invaded. In a subsequent chapter this disease will be more par- ticularly mentioned and considered. BLACK BEARD’S TREE. AIR PLANTS. 89 ts growing a species of cactus, wild coffee bushes, and vines and shrubs with which we were not familiar. The top of the tree towards the harbor, being more exposed to the wind, was evi- dently rudely trimmed and dismembered by the hurricane, and the growth and development appear to have been mostly on the opposite side. It was under a wild fig or banyan tree that Black Beard, the noted pirate, in the early history of Nassau, ‘‘used to sit in council amongst his banditti, concerting or promulgating his plans and exercising the authority of a magistrate.” The trunk of it existed and was seen by McKinnen nearly a hundred years afterwards, in 1804, as he states in his “Tour through the West Indies.” The author of ‘‘ Letters from the Bahama Islands, written in 1823-4,” states that ‘‘the remains of an immense tree are to be seen on which itis said the renowned Black Beard hung his prisoners, and it is supposed by many that large treasures were buried near it by the pirates.” A recent Nassau magazine writer states that ‘‘Black Beard’s tree” used to stand at the north-west corner of the eastern parade ground. Some of the highway fences in the outskirts of Nassau furnish strong evidences of the favorable influence of this climate upon vegetable life and growth. The posts in a green state, unhewn and unmorticed, having in some ingenious manner been made to assume an upright position, are pushing out and developing branches, apparently unconscious that from some tree in the forest they have been dismembered. There are upon the island many species of air plants, and one of these being suspended upon the wall of our room, obtained nutriment enough from the surrounding air alone to make it an object of attraction to a vegetable parasite, and a beautiful and delicate little vine was soon discovered feeding upon its juices, which grew, budded, blossomed and flourished, until the poor 50 ISLES OF SUMMER. little air plant, tired of keeping boarders while only living upon air, turned yellow and died. A most remarkable specimen of the ceiba or silk cotton tree may be seen in the rear of the central one of a collection of pub- lic buildings which form three sides of a quadrangle at the south- west corner of Bay and Parliament streets. It has a spread of one hundred and sixteen feet from east to west, and of ninety feet in the opposite directions. Its trunk isimmense. Around and forming part of it are huge leaves or partitions of wood some five or six inches thick, which are more or less twisted; these start from a point from ten to fifteen feet from the gr ound and, reaching the earth at an angle of something like forty-five degrees, form around the tree half-a-dozen large openings or chambers resembling somewhat horse-stalls. There are a number of silk cotton trees upon the grounds of the Royal Victoria Hotel, and being deciduous, and developing their leaves at different times, we were much interested in observing the rapidity with which they fully leaved out after their buds commenced toswell. One of these is very large, many of its huge branches are almost hori- zontal, and a spacious platform, with seats for the accommoda- tion of musicians and others, erected in the tree, is reached by a wide wooden railed stairway. These trees have large seed pods, which are packed with cotton of a soft silky texture. The long large roots, like huge.anacondas, traverse the surface of the limestone rock, and fasten the trees down with innumerable liv- ing clamps and threads. As if aware of the fact that they have been brought by man from a land of comparative meteorlogical quiet and repose, to an island that lies in the favorite track of the hurricane, it does not, like the cypress of Florida, the pines of the North-west, or the elms of New England, proudly push its branches high up in the air, but with more modesty and prudence than elegance, abruptly stops the upward growth of its limbs, 2 one os SS a = wk Cotton Tree, THE CEIBA, OR SILK COTTON TREE. 91 and makes up in lateral spread what it lacks in elevation. The _ first mentioned silk cotton tree is believed by an apparently well informed Nassau writer, whom we have heretofore quoted, to have been brought from South Carolina, and, as he thinks, all the others upon the island have been derived from it. None of the latter that we saw, exhibit the wonderful formation of booths around and constituting a portion of the stem which characterizes and makes famous their ‘‘ ancestral tree.” “ ISLES OF SUMMER. branch, having its own marked and widely dissimilar charac- teristics and qualities, fasten to the same common rock and eliminate and perfect their juices out of the same scanty and most unpromising materials. So also with the flowering shrubs and vines,—a world of itself, teeming with blooms in unending variety, radiant with every shade of color, and redolent with unnumbered perfumes of marvelous sweetness,—upon the outer margins of which we stand appalled, and lay down our descrip-. tive pen, conscious that we cannot do it justice. - How such wondrous growths are rendered possible upon islands so destitute of the rich fertilizing elements which are deemed. necessary for the proper development of vegetable life at the North, it is difficult to understand or conceive, and we are com- pelled to fall back upon that Divine fiat, whose faint murmurs, recorded in Genesis, come to us through the dim shadows of & peat that shroud the mysterious beginnings of time. . CHAPTER VI. Fruits and Flowers of the Bahamas. Fruit in the Bills of Fare. Special Notice of the Orange, the Banana, the Pine Apple, the Sapodilla, the Cocoa- nut, the Hog Plum, the Shaddock, and the Forbidden Fruit. The Flowering Trees, Shrubs and Vines. ‘Pomona bore me to her citron groves, To where the lemon and the piercing lime, With the deep orange glowing through the green, Their varied glories blend.”—THompson. ‘Gorgeous flowrets in the sunlight shining, Blossoms flaunting in the eye of day, Tremulous leaves, with soft and silver lining, Buds that open only to decay.” WHETHER we adopt the theory that nature has stocked the earth with luscious fruits for man’s benefit, or created man for the benefit of the fruit, and to secure its more perfect development from the sour, crabbed, wild, unseemly, primitive condition, in which, when uncultivated, it exists, we must admit that fruit is an important, if not an essential factor, in the problem of the health and happiness of the human race. At all stages, and in all conditions of life, man craves and requires the ripened fruits in their season. One of the pleasures incident to visiting foreign lands arises from the opportunity which is thus afforded to pluck and eat them in their freshness and maturity. In these days of rapid transit by sea and land, when the ends and distant corners of the earth are brought together, and space is almost annihilated, 8 100 ISLES OF SUMMER. so that oranges in our cities are nearly as cheap and plenty as apples, it is less necessary to visit the lands where they are indig- enous, or in which they have become naturalized, in order to enjoy their beauty of color, delicious fragrance, and exquisite flavor. But some fruits are too delicate and destitute of keeping qualities to admit of exportation to distant lands. Others are taken from the trees before they are fully ripe, and never acquire on shipboard or in northern markets the perfection which only the tropical sun and air can impart. Besides, a tropical orchard loaded with fruit, some in all stages of development from flower to fruit, isa most charming sight, and alone compensates for the discomforts and fatigues of along journey. Hach member of the whole-citrus family must be seen at its home to be fully ap- preciated. Boxes, barrels and baskets are a very poor substitute for the waxen and varnished leaves in which the golden balls nestle by thousands in the closely compacted tree tops. Im Nassau, as well as in Florida, oranges and bananas and other tropical fruits have a prominent place, in their season, in the breakfast and dinner bills of fare. Every morning at the Victoria Hotel, with some few exceptions, as soon as we had taken our seats at the breakfast table, there was placed before - us a large fruit dish filled with oranges and bananas, together with a bill of fare, a pencil and a slip of paper. After making out and giving to our neatly dressed, polite, and generally effi- cient table servant, our breakfast order, the fruit, regaled and con- soled us while our breakfast was being prepared. With the fruit dish before us, there was no limit to our indulgence except that which appetite and a wise discretion imposed. We found the Bahama oranges of good size, and excellent flavor, a trifle sweeter than those of Florida, owing, we conclude, to the fact that they matured and ripened in a warmer climate. The bananas were of a superior quality. After the long fast of the night, the rich, ORANGES AND BANANAS. 101 sub-acid juices of the former were particularly agreeable and grate- ful. They soothed and gratified the nerves of taste, took away the rough edges of appetite, and prepared the stomach for the heavier work it was soon to be called upon to perform, At din- ner the same thing was repeated, except that the order was re- versed, and the tempting dish of golden and yellow fruit came to stimulate the appetite after it had been subjected to the tempt- Ing influences of along and varied bill of fare. It does not take a great while for hese agreeable customs to become deeply and firmly rooted. Oranges to daily break our fast in the morning, and delightfully crown our afternoon meal, are felt to be a neces- sity. Without them the most elaborate feast fails to satisfy. New Providence relics upon Abaco for a very material part of the oranges which its market requires, and in the spring of 1879 our landlord imported some from Florida, and yet the island abounds with wild, waste land and idle people. The banana resembles the pear in this, that its quality is im- proved when it ripens dissevered. The long stem, thickly covered with fruit in various stages of development, hangs pen- dent, with a large purple terminal bud, which constantly ma- tures rings of fruit blogsoms as it grows and gravitates towards the earth, with its leaves—narrow, very long, green and grace- fully drooping,—rising from a green sheath, is beautiful to behold, and its novelty never wore off, so that almost daily we had to stop and admire it. Our readers are all familiar with this fruit, for it is in New York and in other northern cities what it is in and near the tropics; its habit of growth, aside from its large and beautiful terminal bud, is readily seen in the bunches so extensively exhibited wherever at the north southern’ fruits are offered for sale. The opinion we heard frequently expressed that the banana is unhealthy. Some assured us that it always distressed them when 102 IsLES OF SUMMER. they ate it. Others indulged in its use freely and with apparent impunity. We were at first very incredulous when stories reached us seriously reflecting upon it asa disguised enemy of the human stomach and constitution. We gave it our confidence, and also room very near to our hearts. We defended it to the best of our ability, with zeal if not with knowledge. We said it was an impeachment of Divine Providence to allege that its golden links of most delicious sweetness—so tempting to the four senses— sight, touch, taste and smell—were indigestible, health-destroy- ing, deceitful and bad. But we began finally, to have doubts, and at last thought we perceived after eating them, an unpleas- ant sensation right in the center of one of our seats of happiness. We inquired concerning it of physicians, and found, as in other cases where experts testify, that they widely and materially dif- fered. Very reluctantly and with some misgivings, we are com- pelled to admit, that, being plucked when quite green, for that or some other reason, it does not agree with all, and in many cases is injurious to health, yet the banana is said to be ‘‘ exten- sively used for food, and in many of the Pacific islands it is the staple on which the natives depend. In its immature condition, it contains much starch which on ripening changes into sugar. * * * Brom the unripe fruit, dried in the sun, a useful and nutri- tious flour is prepared.” —[ British Encyclopedia.] It would seem from the published analysis of the fruit, and of the flour made from it, that it must generally bea healthy article of diet for healthy people, and our advice, if asked, would be that once given to us by a skillful and experienced physician—‘“ eat of it, if you like, until you ascertain by your personal experience that to you it is hurtful.” The banana is an herbaceous plant, and, after fruiting, its top dies, but it annually sprouts again from its roots. It attains a height of from fifteen to twenty feet, and its curved and droop- ing leaves have a width of from one to two feet. -PINE APPLES. © 103 Among the tropical fruits that we were always pleased to give house room in the frozen north, was the pine apple, and now that we were upon one of its native rocks, or upon rocks where it had become thoroughly naturalized, we had a desire to see for our- selves the manner of its cultivation, and the processes and stages of its growth and development. Our curiosity was gratified in the following manner: In going to the caves in the Blue Hills we took the shore road, or the extension of Bay street to the west, and skirted for several miles Delaport Bay—a body of water which Silver, Long, and North Keys, with their connecting submerged reefs, shelter from the ocean, and which as you approach Nassau, after cross- ing its bar, stretches away to the right. Passing the caves nearest to the highway, we ascended a little hill, turned abruptly to the left, followed for a few rods a carriage road through the dense low woods, and, leaving our carriages near some small negro cabins, and following our very dusky guides, started on a foot- path for the more extensive caverns which hide in the hill from half to three-quarters of a mile further to the east. The trail led us through the center of a pine apple field which covered fifteen acres. It was termed an “orchard,” but there was no- _thing in its appearance suggestive of such a name. We found it humble, lowly and modest. It put on no airs, and evidently had no ambition to occupy a conspicuous position and make a show in the world. This West India ‘‘ apple” does not grow in clusters like the cocoanut, nor upon high, wide branching trees like its northern namesake—but singly upon plants which attain an average height of about one and a-half feet. The lowly plant has long narrow leaves or fronds, hard, thick, coarse, bayonet- shaped, and with sharp serreted edges. A single fruit stem pushes up from the center of the root, blossoms, and in about eighteen months from the time of planting matures a single 104 _.. ISLES OF SUMMER. apple. One plant, producing one apple at a time, will continue ‘to yield an annual crop for three or four years. There are three varieties; the Sugar Loaf, which is juicy, of excellent flavor, and excels the others in keeping qualities; the Cuba, which is of larger size, firmer texture, and less sweet than the sugar loaf and commands a higher price; the Bird's-eye, the cultivation ‘of which has been pretty much abandoned because of the de- struction of the crop by rats and land-crabs. Gov. Rawson states that of a forty acre field of the sugar loaf variety, the rats de- stroyed 6000 dozen, or one-third of an annual crop. Land- crabs, he says, “‘like locusts elsewhere, march straight through a field and consume all the fruit in their course.” It is raised from slips—2000 dozen of the sugar loaf, and 1600 dozen of the Cuba to an acre. In the “orchard” we crossed, the cocoanut had been planted among the pines so as to insure a cocoanut grove when the pines ceased bearing. The rocky sur- face was covered and concealed by the pines, and in ‘clearing ” the plantation, (they evidently could not if they would hoe it), it is said ‘‘ the laborers are obliged to wear canvas leggings and -gauntlets to protect them from the spines of the leaves.” Gov. Rawson says, the fields are ‘‘ or ought to be cleaned six times in the year.” He states also that the average weight of the sugar loaf is three pounds, that it yields one-third of the quantity planted, and lasts five years; that the Cuba has an average weight of three and a-half pounds, yields one-half of the quan- tity planted, lasts only three years, and will thrive upon soil considered unsuited for the other varieties ; also that the Cuba is preferred in the United States, and that the sugar loaf, by reason of its superior keeping qualities, is preferred for the English market; that. it is uncertain whether the pine apple is a native of the Bahama Islands, or has been introduced from the Windward Islands or Cuba; that the value of 229,226 dozen PINE APPLES. SAPODILLAS. 105 exported in 1864 was £21,299—which makes them average about four cents a piece; that in shipping the pine to the United States it is stripped of every thing but its head, while the whole plant was formerly sent to England, the leaves and shoots being wrapped round the fruit to keep it fresh, but that since 1858 only the shoots are left on the stalks; that the fruit is arranged in tiers, great attention being paid to ventilation; the hatches are left open during the voyage ; serious losses often occur on ship- board arising from exceptionally bad weather and long voyages, as well as from other causes. The shoots are used for new plan- tations, and as these are sent with the apples to England the price is for that reason increased. There are two annual cut- tings: the Cuba is cut early in May and late in June, and the sugar loaf from the 1st to the 20th of June, and in July and August. As in 1879 and also in 1880 we left the Bahamas in April, much to our regret we were unable to test the quality of pine apples fully ripened in the field. - The sapodilla is very abundant and cheap in Nassau. The tree is large and is a good bearer. The fruit is of a uniform dull dark brown color, and almost unpromising in its outward ap- pearance asa cocoanut. Its skin is very thin,-its flesh yellow, soft and sweet, its shape oval, and its diameter from two to three inches. mlets where a few negroes have their humble homes. Hence the aliiost entire absence of the thousand and one enter- tainments that compete for a portion of the time and money of the people in al! the cities of the Union. These, with us, are largely due to our facilities for inter-communication. They mul- tiply as ovr steam commercial marine increases, and with every enlargement of our railroad system. Theatrical exhibitions, menageries, concerts by companies of eminent musicians, lectures 143 1:4 ISLES OF SUMMER, from famous and gifted men, and great gatherings of represen- tative men in science, religion and politics, and for moral reforms, must inevitably be as rare in the Bahamas as skating rinks. During the wild excitement that prevailed in Nassau when, during the late rebellion, it was practically a confederate port, under the protection of the flag of Great Britain, a stone building was erected for theatrical exhibitions. The astonished winds immediately blew its roof off and otherwise damaged it, so that its bare monumental walls alone remain to commemorate the important part which Nassau played in the great war of the Southern rebellion. But no inference can properly be drawn from the fact of its destruction by the angry elements, that the theatre was especially objectionable to the spirit that rides upon the whirlwind and directs the storm, because churches as well as other public and many private buildings were blown down at the same time. We have no doubt that the Bahama governnient, in these calm sober days, would prefer as a paying investment, warm- ing pans to theatres. Nassau and its surroundings have much to interest a stran- ger, especially if he has spent his life in more northern latitudes; but to her own citizens, it must be a very dull place notwith- standing an occasional hurricane and frequent wrecks, In the winter of 1878, 79, a traveling circus company chartered a steam- boat and visited some of the West India Islands. Their arrival in Nassau produced a deep and profound sensation. “The landing of Columbus and his followers upon a neighboring ‘sland nearly four centuries before, with gilded cross and emblzoned banner, was not a greater surprise or productive of half the pleasure. No alloy of fear marred the happiness which the arrival of the acrobats occasioned. Heralded from afar, ancaccompanied in their grand march through the streets of Nassau by musicians who made the soft and languid air vibrate with a melody it never A CIRCUS. GOVERNMENTAL SHOWS. 145 had before experienced, richly aaa in costumes, striped, bespan- ~‘gled and radiant with burnished silver and shining gold, they seemed to many an unlettered and untraveled looker-on, four- fold more the children of the sun than did the Spanish discoverers of 1492. The new Jerusalem, as seen in the fervid -dreanis of Nassau’s dusky, religious devotees, surely cannot boast: so gorgeous a chariot, nor do horses of equal grace and beauty tread the golden and jewelled streets of their celestial city. 4 Ae Qa.m. | 9a.M. hours. | 37. ™ aa = rs 33 Sislee Ta 76.5 61.0 | 140.0] 73.3 §.15 16 1.10 larvae access 78.0 62.5 | 146.0] 73.9 7.05 11 2.00 March,..........+ 82.5 65.2 | 149.5 | 76.7 2.36 q 1.05 April,..... 82.2 70.0 | 150.2 | 80.4 8.19 8 1.00 May, .....2.ss000 86.5 75.6 | 156.5] 81.8 7.28 7 2.40. June,.... 89.8 71.0| 154.0] 840 6.56 19 1.60 July,. des 89.5 74.5! 159.0] 85.8 6.05 20 1.88 ‘Augu . 88.8 78.8 | 157.91 85.8 9.25 18 2.13 Septemb: 87.2 78.0 | 153.0] 84.2 7.15 24 1.60 October, ........] 83.5 75.5 | 153.0] 81.1 7.37 12 4.50 November,.....| 79.0 71.0} 157.5] 76.1 2.84 10 1.21 December,...... 17.5 65.8 | 155.0] 73.8 1.38 q 0.55 Sums, ..........6+ 1001.0 | 848.8 | 1830.7 | 956.9 | 65.64 159 21.02 Means,........... 83.5 70.7 | 152.6 | 79.7 5.47 13 1.75 METEOROLOGICAL. AV? METEOROLOGICAL TABLE FOR 1879. THERMOMETER. RAINFALL. Max.in] Min. in|Max.in| Minin] 2, | © | wax. | | Months. Me |e ange | ae |e a [ina | 3 9a.m.[9a.m./ hours. | 3p. a. | 68 e3 hours. | © 61.0 | 145.0] 73.6 | 0.92 6 0.41 | 23 64.2 | 148.0} 74.4] 1.29 8 0.95 | 11 69.5 | 153.5] 75.6 | 2.84 6 2.45 | 14 73.5 |154.0} 78.8 | 0.42 5 0.20 3 70.5 | 155.5} 805 | 38.85 13 0.90 9 74.0 | 155.0) 82.4 {12.77} 14 5.37 | 26 71.2 | 157.0] 85.3 | 7.48] 18 1.80 | 30 77.0 | 157.0] 86.4) 9.85 13 8.11 | 16 700 |153.5| 84.6 | 8.02 20 227 | 12 74.5 |15380} 81.9] 6.50} 183] 1.60] 25 66 5 | 148.0] 77.2] 7.98 6 7.41 q 67.0 | 150.5] 76.6 | 1.60 11 0.95 L 839.1 | 183.0 | 957.3 | 63.47 | 1383 | 27.42 69.9 | 152.5 | 79.8 | 5.29] 11 2.28 Gov. Robinson vouches for the correctness of these tables by inserting them in his reports for the colonial Blue Books. The weather was so charming when we were at Nassau in 1879, the thermometer at 7 a. M., week after week, marking sub- stantially the same temperature, with no storms, and only an occasional shower, that Capt. Fox believed that we were favored with weather exceptionally good, and through the kindness of the librarian of the Nassau public library, he obtained from the Nassau military observatory the following table, showing the highest and lowest temperature and the rainfall at the end of every week, for six months, from November to April, both in- clusive, for the years 1878 and 1879. 178 ISLES OF SUMMER. 1877. 1878. Thermometer. Thermometer. Week Ending | Rainfall. Week Ending | Rainfall. Deg. | Deg. Deg. | Deg. Nov. 38 12 90 72 Nov. 2 54 87 71 10 3.98 99 71 9 19 81 67 17 49 84 65 16 2.44 82 64 24 24 82 66 23 11 82 65 Dec. 1 -80 85 61 30 10 85 66 8 19 85 67 Dec. 7 -68 82 62 15 00 78 65 14 65 81 65 22 20 78 67 21 13 82 65 29 1.26 83 61 28 02 82 63 1878. 1879. Jan. 6 *~ 00 80 56 Jan. 4 -00 83 62 12 1.50 82 61 11 03 81 62 19 2.12 84 59 18 05 85 62 26 32 82 69 25 84 83 58 Feb. 2 1.18 81 59 Feb. 1 -00 4 vel 9 1.00 8L 69 8 03 94 64 16 2.19 85 62. 15 1.09 74 68 23 1.44 83 60 22 . 02 76 66 Mar. 2 2.42 84 61 29 15 75 66 9 -40 83 63 Mar. 8 -10 72 69 16 04 89 66 15 2.50 15 7 23 1.87 84 64 22 24 76 3 30 05 89 63 | 29 00 78 76 April 6 56 89 62 April 5 20 80 74 1.20 83 61 12 00 79 74 20 81 86 65 19 15 83 %4 27 22 85 67 £ 02 8 73 There are serious discrepancies between the tabulated reports which we are unable to reconcile or explain, and we give them to our readers as we find them. It appears that the temperature at Nassau from November, 1877, to May, 1878, was not very dif- METHOROLOGICAL. 149 ferent from that of the same months in 1878 and ’79; but the rainfall during the same months in 1878 and 79, aggregated only 10.18 inches, while during the corresponding period in 1877 and °78, it amounted to 24,05 inches. Indeed, during our visit in 1879, there was so little rain that a consequent failure of the fruit crop was apprehended. The average rainfall for the ten years covered by Gov. Rawson’s summarized meteorological table, during corresponding montis, is 16.9 inches. It thus appears that the Nassau weather from November, 1877,«to May, 1878, was very exceptionally wet, while during the next following cor- responding period the weather was exceptionally dry. While at Nassau in 1879, we were accustomed to daily observe the thermometer and barometer, and a pencil meteorological record upon the white wall of the hotel court was made by a very intelligent and reliable gentleman from Canada, every morning at 7 o’clock. The unvarying steadiness of the temperature and atmospheric pressure, seemed so incredible to some of the guests, that, half in earnest and half in jest, they declared that the ther- mometer and barometer had been “‘fixed up and doctored.” I give the state of the thermometer at 7 a. M., for each day, from February 1st, to March 12th, inclusive: 1879—68, 67, 63, 64, 66, 68, 72, 77, 70, 70, 71, 70, 71, 70, 69, 68, 69, 71, 70, 69, 65, 65, 68, 70, 69, 70, 72, 72, 70, 69, 68, 69, 70, 69, 70, 70, 70, 70, 70, 71 degrees, For the four last days, at two Pp. M., the thermometer stood at 75, 74, 74, 75 degrees, and generally the difference between seven A. M. and two P. M. was very small in the shade. The barometer varied but a trifle from thirty inches. But in the noon-day sun, especially in the narrow streets lead- up from the water, over the hard, white limestone, and between the high white-washed stone walls, the heat is very excessive, and, but for the breeze that constantly blows from off the water, ‘180 istts or striae. it would be too much for any but salamanders and Congo negroes. This side of the picture is seldom given to the public. The tables I have copied from Gov. Robinson’s reports are a marked exception in this particular, to which the reader is referred. It is easy, however, to avoid exposure at mid-day, and to take one’s rides or walks in the morning or in the latter part of the after- noon. While yachting, little inconvenience is experienced from this cause, as it is customary to take along a supply of umbrellas to assist the sails in throwing shadows upon the passengers. The water is, without exception, of a most agrecable temperature, and the tireless wind, that with remarkable constancy, ruffles its surface, while leaving a tawny and enduring impress of its most welcome caresses, is freighted with the grateful benisons, uttered or unexpressed, of all who feel its cooling and rejuvenating in- fluences. The simile, ‘‘as fickle as the wind,” scemed there to have little applicability. Writing from beneath the shade of one of her noble moss draped live oaks, at Mandarin, upon the right bank of the St. John’s river, in Florida, the gifted author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, speak- ‘ing of Florida, says in her ‘‘ Palm Leaves:” “‘Sudden changes from heat to cold are the besetting sin of this fallen world. It is probably one of the consequences of -Adam’s fall, which we are not to get rid of till we get to the land of pure delights. It may, however, comfort the heart of visitors -to Florida to know that if the climate here is not in this respect just what they would have, it is about the best there is going.” If the word ‘‘about,” in the last sentence quoted, is used in the sense of ‘‘ near to,” then it is strictly correct, for the climate of Florida is “‘ near to,” (being only two days sail from) that of ‘the Bahamas. Whatever may be said to the discredit of these ‘islands, they are certainly not chargeable with that “besetting ‘sin of this fallen world” to which Mrs, Stowe refers, - UNIFORM TEMPERATURE. 181 While no one can be any more sure in Nassau than he is at home, or anywhere else, of escaping an exceptionally wet, and to that extent disagreeable, winter, he can rely with great confi- dence upon having there, night and day, an atmosphere of a pleasant and uniform summer temperature. It is difficult for a native and untraveled Bahamian to appre- ciate what is written at the north about “the domestic hearth,” and “cheerful fire-side.” As poets do not confine themselves exclusively to the truth, but use their <‘ poetic license,” the Ba- hamians naturally deem Longfellow’s lines the out-cropping of a wild fancy when he sings: “Hach man’s chimney is his golden milestone ; Is the central point from which he measures every distance, Through the gateways of the world around him.” Certain it is, there are few such “ milestones” in Nassau. Persons who, for any reason, find it necessary to avoid the cold, damp winds and storms of the North, will find at Nassau a climate that fully fills the measure of their wants from the middle of November to the middle of April. But temperature and clear skies are not the only points to be considered in deter- mining the question of the importance of Nassau as “a great sanitarium,” and we have therefore extended our observations and pushed our inquiries in other directions. The drinking water, the drainage, the existence and observance of sanitary regulations, the topography and condition of the ad- jacent back country, as well as the quality and direction of the winds that pass over it, are all important factors in the problem of health, and should be carefully examined and critically con- sidered. It is just here that Nassau’s most vulnerable points are discov- ered, and, but for the superior sanitary arrangements of the Royal 14 182 ISLES OF SUMMER. Victoria Hotel, they would be much more damaging to the place as a health resort. Wells and cisterns, in the absence of sand, are sunk in the soft, porous, limestone rock, in the vicinity of cesspools and privy vaults, so that the water they contain can hardly fail to become more or less unwholesome. In many wells the water is said to rise and fall with the tide, but whether its quality is impaired by sea water we are not informed. There being no gencral sewerage system, the surface rock is likely to become saturated with the waste and effete matter that is suffered to accumulate around human habitations where the climate dis- inclines to exertion, and exhalations may be expected to arise therefrom, which will jeopardise health and life. The colored people who are crowded together in the suburbs of Nassau, pay little, if any regard to nature’s sanitary laws, and apparently conform to few of the conditions of healthy human existence. While they live in the open air during the day, they at night are crowded together in the one or two rooms of. their little cabins, from which the outside air is religiously excluded by closed doors and wooden shutters. Perhaps they have learned by experience the necessity of thus excluding the damp and poisoned air that rests upon the low, wet lands of the interior of this island. Their poverty denies to them the advantages of a generous diet of varied food which is everywhere within the reach of honest labor in the States. That the seeds of disease, at least during the night, float in the air above the swamps and lagoons of the central portions of the island of New Providence, is apparent to any thoughtful ob- server who either crosses it or sees it from any of the neighboring hills. The germs of sickness existing there are never destroyed or rendered torpid by frost. In the mild, soft, damp air, disease is present, and often dispenses his fevers with a liberal hand, as the official records and statistics clearly demonstrate, Consump- UNSANITARY CONDITIONS. 183 tion also, upon a galloping steed, rides in the suburbs of Nassau with an unchecked rein to his goal—the portal of death. It is possible for leprosy to lurk in the dense chaparral of low lands, and under the thick mangro groves that, with living arches and festoons, beautify and adorn the miniature islands that rise out of the shallow waters of the brackish and stagnant lakes. The city of Nassau, as we have shown, is, in a sanitary point of view, very favorably situated. Bottomed upon a rock of a porous nature, which dips towards the harbor, and speedily ab- sorbs or carries off the heaviest rain-falls, facing the north and skirting the sea, having within its limits no low and wet lands, the prevailing winds come to it directly from the ocean laden with refreshment and health. We examined the annual medical reports of the surgeon connected with the military department at Nassau for eleven years, from 1867 to 1878. Only that of 1873 gave statistics of the wind. From that report it appeared that during the year 1873 the wind. blew from the south at nine o’clock A. M. only three times—once in June and twice in Novem- ber—and at three o’clock P. M. only once during the entire year, and that was in November. The report states that in 1873 the wind blew from the north-east on 175 days, at nine a. M., and from the south-east 111 days, and that at three P. M. it was north- east 185 days, and south-east 121 days; while it blew from the west only two days. During the ten years covered by Gov. Raw- son’s table, which we have quoted, the wind from the south is stated to have averaged eleven days inahundred. The wind was from the south very rarely while we were at Nassau in 1879, but it atoned for its long intervals of absence by being very sul- try, debilitating, and exceedingly disagreeable. As it sweeps over the low, wet surface of the center of the island, we believe it unfavorable to health, although the distance is measured by a very few miles. While we were at Nassau in 1880, the wind was 184 ISLES OF SUMMER. more frequently from the south and the weather was, as in the States, exceptionally hot, and for that reason Nassau was much less attractive. The Royal Victoria Hotel is provided with tanks for the stor- ing of rain-water, which are said to have a capacity of 300,000 gallons. The water is exclusively used for drinking and culi- nary purposes, and it always appeared to be of most excellent quality. Ice, from the state of Maine, is procured under a con- tract which the government made for the supply of the city, of which there was always an abundance at the hotel. The water of the hotel is therefore most excellent and unexceptional provided proper care and vigilance are exercised in cleaning the tanks, and guarding and keeping them from impurities. During the latter part of the hotel season of 1878-9, after a long protracted drouth, dysenteric complaints were alarm- ingly prevalent at the Victoria Hotel, and, although physicians were numbered among its guests, no one seemed able to dis- cover their cause. There was nothing disclosed in the taste, color or smell of the drinking water which indicated that it had anything to do with the trouble. The more we pondered upon the cause, the more we were puzzled. Before leaving Nassau we read the “‘ Brief Auto-biography” of the former rector of one of the churches in Nassau, the late Rev. Wm. Strachan, D. D., who, ‘in 1822, established a church and was for sometime its rector upon one of the Turks Islands. The latter part of the following extract from the little book (p. 58) excited in us some incredulity: “I found no wells in the island, and learned that the only water to be had, either for drinking or cooking purposes, was the rain which drops from the clouds, and is received into capa- cious tanks attached to the several houses. A stranger must be cautious how, and in what quantities, he imbibes the rain-water -at first, as it is liable to produce a severe dysenteric attack.”. DYSINTERIC COMPLAINTS. 185 In calling the attention of one of the military officials at Nas- sau to this subject, and to the paragraph we have quoted, he said : “Soon after my first arrival in Nassau, I was, in common with some other officers of the garrison, troubled with severe griping pains in the bowels, which I suspected was caused by impure water, and I caused the water in the cisterns to be drawn off. At the bottom I found a dark colored, dirty deposit, two to three inches thick. I had the cisterns thoroughly cleaned, and the result was the griping pains disappeared.” When in April, 1879, we returned to Jacksonville, Fla., we learned that dysenteric complaints had made their appearance among the guests of the St. James Hotel, that the water in the cisterns of the hotel was discovered to be very impure, and offen- sive to the taste and smell. In Jacksonville as well as at Nassau there had been a long season of dry weather, so that the cisterns were drawn down low, and the dirt at the bottom no doubt in both places poisoned the water—hence the sickness that followed its use. Upon our return to the north we sent the substance of the foregoing facts to the proprietor of the Royal Victoria Hotel, and he promised to have the cisterns of his hotel emptied and cleaned. | Thus disease and death sometimes lurk, and wait, and watch for victims, where they are looked for least. While at Nassau, in 1880, we had no evidence of the existence of any of the dysen- teric troubles that existed in 1879. Spring water is utilized at the hotel for some purposes, and a bountiful supply is carried to tanks elevated over the water-closets by means of a steam pump, ‘and a suspicion existed when the bowel: complaints made their appearance, that some of it had been used for cooking purposes, The hotel officials, however, denied that it had been so used. - 186 ISLES OF SUMMER. The dews at Nassau are often very heavy, and it is prudent to follow the poet’s advice, and “The dews of the evening most carefully shun, Those tears of the sky for the loss of the sun.” Some old residents of Nassau informed us that they considered the evening air in Nassau prejudicial to health. One of them— a lady—said that she was obliged to exclude herself from it to avoid lung discase. But when night after night so many bright stars call to us from a cloudless sky to come out and look up— and especially when the moon rides in great splendor across the bluest of heavens on purpose to be seen, it seems hardly courteous or creditable to ignobly ensconce ourselves under mosquito bars, and be content with indolent repose or oblivious sleep. When we occasionally accepted of the invitation, it was only to be over- whelmed with the magnificence of the display, as was Moses on Sinai. _The official Bahama mortuary statistics which we examined, failed to discriminate between the races, and to so localize the results that a comparison can be made between Nassau and its suburbs. The medical reports of the military department de- scribe the colored troops as being very licentious, and a large portion of them suffer from venereal diseases. These complaints are said to have been introduced into Grant’s Town by French troops, when, upon the breaking up of Maxamillian’s Government in Mexico, the vessels which were transporting them to France stopped on their way at Nassau. As a matter more of curiosity than of practical utility, we sub- join an abstract of the reported causes of death in all the Bahama islands in 1864. It is taken from Gov. Rawson’s report for that year. NIGHT AYR. MORTUARY STATYSTYCS. 187 velar ianteely Percentage Proportion. Cavazs. = 3 38 23 g 8 8 z ; Pelcs|>a|ee|28]2]8] SS/E2/=2/83)¢1/6/6)¢ Se l<_> [Rel os] 5 a/OA|#/a}s} 8 Fevers: Ordinary, ......csccscseeceeee 32] 38 | 63 | 58 | 16.6/19.7 | 23.0 | 25.4 Yellow, sssesccasersacsoasaeese 1; 5| 85] 14] .4] 24/127] 61 _ Scarlet Eruptive, &.,..... 14) 6] 12 7.3] 29} 44] 3.7 Diseases of Lungs and Heart,...| 84 / 38 | 55] 26 |17.8/19.8/20.1]11.5 se ‘© Bowels and Liver,.| 14 | 22 | 26] 19 | 7.3]11.4] 9.4] 8.5 Dropsies, .........cceseceeeseeseeceeees 7) 5} 6 7! 3.6) 26] 21) 3.1 Diseases of Brain and Nerves: Apoplexy and Palsy,...... 6] 4] 38 Gj} 3.1) 21] 1.1] 26 Convulsions and Spasms, | 24] 14] 21 | 27 |12.6] 7.4) 7.5)/12.0 Sudden and Violent, 10; 10 vi 9] 5.0] 5.0] 2.7) 41 Stillborn, weiss cescesvessensees ial (2 e 2 2 1/12) .7| .6] .6 Childbirth, .......... 2.00006 on 21 81 8 5 | 1.0] 1.3] 1.2] 2.4 Other Causes, ..........cseccseeeeeeees 45 | 47 | 42 | 46 |24.1)24.7]15.2/ 20.0 Total cevsssivervecdacss eens 192 | 192 | 2'74 | 230 |100.0/100.0}100.0/100.6 Gov. Rawson says, ‘The inferences to be drawn from this table are that the latter half of the year is much more fatal 'to the population, to the extent of nearly one-third, and that this is owing chiefly to the prevalence of fevers, including yellow fever, which contributed one-third to the excess.” “These islands are, without exception, remarkably healthy. They are free from, and are seldom visited by epidemic diseases. Intermittent fevers, which prevail to so great an extent on the neighboring continent, are comparatively infrequent here, and usually assume a mild form. During the last thirty-five years, Nassau has been visited by the cholera but once, viz.: in 1852; by small-pox in 1845 and 1860, when it was introduced in both 188 ng ISLES OF SUMMER. instances from St. Domingo; and by the yellow fever at distant intervals, and attended with very slight mortality, viz.: in 1829, 1845 and 1853, until 1861-2, when from transient circumstances it assumed a more malignant form, and carried off a greater num- ber of victims, including the first bishop of the diocese. It re- peated its visits in 1863-4. “«The inhabitants are, for the most part, a hardy, robust race. They consume little animal food, and live chiefly on Indian and Guinea corn, vegetables, fish and shell-fish. Many of the petty cultivators on the Windward Islands, who cling to their small plots, and refuse to seek employments as hired laborers in their own or other islands, are often reduced to much distress when their meagre crops of corn fail them through drought or other causes; and these are in the course of deterioration, both physi- cal and mental, enervated, indifferent to improvement, and bring- ing up their families in ignorance and sloth. ‘Nassau is usually very healthy and free from disease. In 1862-64, during the height of the blockade-running trade, when the town was filled with strangers, the lodging houses were over- crowded, and the elements of disease were festering in the heart of the city, it is not surprising that the yellow fever, whether introduced by vessels coming from infected ports, or engendered by the unusual condition of the city, should have broken out. But it was confined to strangers and to unacclimated persons, and was not by any means fatal as compared with other places. “The Board of Health, a body constituted under a local Act, with large powers for the protection of the health of the colony, reported that in 1861-62, about 400 persons were attacked, and ninety-five died, in a population numbering in 1861, 11,503; and that in 1864, out of a population estimated at 15,000, the num- ber of cases was 700, and of deaths 137. Of these, 153 cases resulting in forty-five deaths, were admitted into the Quarantine Hospital from the shipping and lodging houses,” : SANITARY CONDITION. 189 It should be considered that in the settlements upon some of : the islands, the population is very.much crowded, and that the - health of the people suffers in consequence. Gov. Rawson, in his report for 1864, estimated that the population of Dunmore Town, upon the island of Eleuthera, was 2,500, and that the. density was ‘‘ about forty persons to the acre, or 124 square yards - to each individual, which is nearly six times the average of the: 781 principal towns in England” in 1861. He adds, ‘‘the con- sequence is that for the last two or three years the place has been - very sickly, and typhoid fever has committed considerable rava- ges among the inhabitants. Upon a little key at the extreme north-west point of Eleu:- thera, and about:-five miles from Harbour Island, the settlement. of Spanish Wells is situated. Gov. Rawson states in his report of 1864, that the inhabitants of Spanish Wells ‘‘ have continued - to divide and sub-divide their lots among their children, so that. the houses almost touch each other, and in some places the (so- called) street is not over three or four feet in width. The area of the settlement does not exceed three acres; so that the popu- lation is upwards of 150 to the acre.” He adds, ‘‘ they are un- cleanly in their habits, and all attempts to introduce sanitary rules among them have hitherto failed. ee apes typhoid fever has lingered here, too, for the last three years.’ Gov. Rawson also speaks of another settlement upon Elen. thera, called Governor’s Harbor, where, he says, ‘‘the density of the population equals, if it does not exceed that of Spanish Wells.” He says it is situated upon a rock, about 300 yards. long, by 100 yards wide, which is connected with the main land by 2 narrow neck of land, and that this rock is ‘in miniature, very like the Rock of Gibraltar.” He also states that ‘‘the people at Devil’s Point, upon St. Salvador, have the worst reputation of any upon that island,” 190 ISLES OF SUMMER. and of “‘being.not-only lazy, but addicted to the most vicious and immoral habits,” Also, that.upon Acklin’s Island, ‘the commonest comforts and the ordinary necessaries of life are evi- dently wanting,” which he attributes in part to the indolent. habits of the peqple. He says that upon Fortune Island, the people (numbering 470) ‘are all poor and unable even to repair their own dwellings, and that but for the fish, conchs and crabs, they would absolutely suffer and perish from want of the com- monest necessaries of life, for they are too indolent and inactive to go where their labor would be useful to themselves and others.” We give these facts, not as fairly indicating the average char- acter and condition of the people living upon the Bahama islands, but as illustrating, Ist, that no air, however pure and delight- fully tempered and medicated it may be in its normal condition, will save a people from diseases of a malignant type when laws of health are disregarded; and 2d, that very elaborate health tables are of little value if they fail to discriminate between places where the sanitary conditions and habits of life of the people are very unlike—although they have some degree of geographical and political unity. ’ We did not learn of any cases of yellow fever, cholera or small- pox, from 1864 to 1879. In Gov. Robinson’s report for 1878, he states that ‘‘an epidemic of whooping cough prevailed for sev- eral months, causing much distress and some mortality amongst the children of the laboring classes.” One would suppose that in such a climate, if whooping cough made its appearance at all, - it would have been of a very mild type. It seems to have been. otherwise in 1878. . During the winter and spring of 1880, a malignant fever re- sulted in quite a number of deaths at Nassau, and it is our belief that it was yellow fever, and we will state the evidence upon which our opinion is predicated. THE YELLOW FEVER. 191° Upon the morning of the day the steamer left New York, on which we had engaged our passage out, a gentleman startled us a little by announcing that ‘‘ Nassau had got a black eye.” He said it had been reported in the States that the yellow fever had broken out in Nassau, but that the Governor of the Bahamas and the foreign consuls at Nassau had published cards denying the truth of the report. Our steamer stopped at Fernandina, and a gentleman there told us that a physician, recently from Nassau, and then at the Egremont Hotel, in Fernandina, stated that be-- fore he left there had been in Nassau two deaths from that dis- ease. The steamer City of Austin had then just arrived at Fer- nandina from Nassau, and one of its passengers assured us that there was not any yellow fever in Nassau when he left. None of our passengers were alarmed sufficiently to alter their plans, and when upon the day of our arrival in Nassau we entered the dining room of the Victoria Hotel, and saw how merry and healthy and hungry everybody seemed to be, the last vestige of . the yellow fever scare disappeared. For some days no allusion was made to “‘ Yellow Jack,” but after a while pretty well authen- ticated reports reached us of quite a number of cases of sickness and death within the city limits, but outside of the hotel. It appears that the disease attacked at first the children of. the natives, some twenty or more of whom died. It was said that’ it could not be yellow fever, first, because it was confined.to the: children, and second, because none but children belonging in Nassau had been attacked; whereas unacclimated adults were the first to be stricken down when yellow fever prevails. After which we learned of a few cases of alarming ‘sickness among the visitors from the States and elsewhere, several of which resulted in death. One of the latter was the wife of Dr. Aiken. She was previously a healthy woman, but the doctor was an in- valid. They had been boarding with a Nassau gentleman who 192 ISLES OF SUMMER. held the office of Assistant United States Consul. This case oc- curred in a house situated upon high ground very near to the hotel, which the owner and his family thereupon, for prudential reasons, vacated. Dr. Aiken then came to the Victoria Hotel to board, and he was afterwards our fellow passenger when we left Nassau for Florida. He told us that the disease was yellow fever, and that the sanitary conditions of the Vice-Consul’s premises outside of and close to his dwelling house were very offensive and bad. Our young friend from Vermont, Mr. Phelps, arrived at Nas- sdu in November with his invalid mother. He had the fever, . but his mother escaped, although she took care of him night and - day, with the exception of two nights, when, by advice of a local physician, she entrusted her son, while convalescent, to the care - of anurse whom the doctor recommended. This nurse got drunk, + neglected the sick man, who took cold in consequence, and had arelapse. His life was then despaired of by the physicians, but . he was saved at last by an experiment which the mother had the sagacity and courage to make upon her own responsibility, and without the knowledge of the medical attendants. She admin-. istered, in connection with the prescribed medicines, some kind of salts, (we have forgotten what kind,) first insmall but frequent . doses, watching him closely all the while, and had the great sat- isfaction of seeing the fever gradually give way, and finally dis- . appear. The doses were increased as the salutary operation of the medicine was developed. When she afterwards told. the. doctors what she had been doing, they were (as she represented to us) offended, although she had apparently saved the life. of her son after they had announced that he could not recover. With the exception of keeping a little piece of camphor gum in her month, she did nothing to escape the contagion of the dis- ease. One of the attending physicians, who was accustomed to REASONS FOR LEAVING. 193 sit upon the bed of the sick man, she believed carried the disease to his own home, for two of his daughters thereafter had the fever and died. He then abandoned his house upon East Hill street, within a block or block and a-half of our hotel, and moved with the remainder of his family to ‘‘ Thompson’s Folly,” where he was sure of the best kind of Bahama air, and a plenty of it, although he took the chance of being blown some day half across the Atlantic ocean by a hurricane. The disease was not pesti- lential but sporadic, and although it was near to, it did not enter the hotel. It was evidently a very undesirable fever to have, whether entitled to be called yellow or not. Two outof three of the resident physicians persistently denied that it was yellow fever, while the third one, who was in Nassau when the yellow fever prevailed at the time of our late American war, differed with them on this point. A gentleman on familiar terms with the prominent men of Nassau, informed us before we left, that it was not at first believed to be yellow fever, simply because it was confined to children, and especially to the children of natives, “but now,” said he, ‘‘ that it has attacked adult strangers, they admit it to be yellow fever.” These admissions were not publicly made or generally known. Our attention was occasionally attracted by consultations, pri- vate and mysterious, of persons who traveled in company. A growing and constantly increasing desire to speedily return to the land of the starry flag was discernable, and we learned, after a while, that the state-rooms in the Nassau steamers for their return trips had been secured for sometime in advance by certain © wise and thoughtful ones—among whom we, alas, were not numbered. There was no panic, but only a quiet and commend- ‘able exhibition of prudence. So far as we could learn, no cases of fever had occurred at our hotel, and nothing was observed in its immediate vicinity calculated to generate or invite disease. 1% 194 ISLES OF SUMMER. Unfavorable rumors floated more or less loosely in the soft and silky air, but, notwithstanding, the wings of fear were kept wonderfully well clipped. Nor did we permit ourselves to be made unhappy by unfavorable possibilities. We knew that bor- rowed troubles are worse than real ones; but still the fact was too patent to be overlooked or ignored, that only a single floating bridge, of limited capacity, connected us with Florida’s wet and flowery land, and that if it, for any cause should give way, as several of its predecessor’s had done, it might be some weeks be- fore its owners in New York would learn of the disaster, and span the Florida gulf with a substitute. Nor did we feel any strong desire, personally, to “‘lie down to pleasant dreams” in the white coraline rock of ‘‘ the greatest sanitarium of the western world,” even though a colonial capital should in consequence thereof be beautified and made forever famous by our monument. After a while our turn to depart came, and a feeling of great satisfaction—not to say relief—came over us when we bade adieu to the great sanitarium, and the charming picture of jewelled _isles in a turquoise sea disappeared from view. Proudly our steamer skimmed the smooth, untroubled and tranquil world of waters, slowly and grandly the day god “Steeped His fiery face in billows of the west,” while the night was made glorious with its canopy of brilliant stars. It spoke well for our ship, and for the hotel in which we ‘had spent so many happy hours, that in neither of them had there been a single case of serious sickness of any kind. Mr. Phelps and his mother, and Dr. Aiken, were our fellow- passengers, so that it seemed—especially while they detailed to us their sad experiences—that we were brought almost into the very presence of the much to be dreaded fever itself. Buta kind and A CROWDED STEAMER. 195 merciful Providence so ordered it, that we escaped entirely unharmed the perils of sickness and of the sea, and as our steamer had a clear bill of health, we were saved from numbering among our experiences, a practical acquaintance with the inde- scribable attractions of the quarantine system in southern ports in very warm weather. About four wecks afterwards we took passage in the screw steamer City of Austin, at Fernandina, for New York. She had just arrived from Nassau with a large number of passengers, in- cluding Mr. Morton, the proprictor of the Royal Victoria Hotel, together with his principal assistants. The children of the American Consul were also on board, and we learned that the Consul and his wife designed to follow them so soonas his official duties would admit of his leaving. We had also the Episcopal Bishop and his children. ‘The Bishop’s wife was one of the vic- tims of the fever, and we had no doubt he had left Nassau because he was not willing to incur the hazards incident to a residence there during the warm and wet season of the year. We could ‘not but deeply sympathise with him in his great affliction, and half regret that we had allowed ourselves to be amused at the high sounding titles which, upon his arrival the year previous, helped so much to inspire the Bahamians with reverence, if not with awe. Upon ship-board there were certain peculiarities in his every day costume, as striking as a Chinaman’s pig-tail, which were well calculated to attract attention. They were strongly suggestive of the fact that the man whom they adorned was not an ordinary individual. But in the shadow of his great bereave- ment, surrounded, as he was, with his pretty but motherless little ones, we were not disposed to unfavorably criticise or inwardly smile at the peculiarities of his costume. We did not make the Bishop’s acquaintance, but he was dignified without seeming vain and conceited, and his intelligent, amiable and good natured countenance quite prepossessed us in his favor. 196 ISLES OF SUMMER. Our ship was very much crowded, and some passengers slept upon the floor of the main saloon, but being favored by pleasant weather, and no pestilential or other diseases having made their appearance, little inconvenience wasexperienced. We ought not, perhaps, to omit one instance of sickness which occurred on board, and was said to have occasioned at first some uneasiness. The sick man was employed upon the steamer, and a physician, after looking him over, and making a thorough diagnosis of his case, reported that his patient had only an attack of ‘‘ whiskey fever,” and that he would be all right in the morning. As we made our way up the beautiful harbor of New York in the early morning of a charming day, and felt the thrilling and exquisite pleasure incident to a safe return to our native shores, we almost forgot that a malignant disease had recently thrown unpleasant occasional shadows over us upon one of the isles of summer, and had almost brushed against us with the hem of its garment as it passed by. Mr. Phelps has written us that he has, since his return, received letters from Nassau, and his mother has entertained several per- sons who reside in Nassau, at her house in Vermont; that his Nassau corespondents stated that at the time of their writing, the yellow fever prevailed extensively in Nassau, and that it had occasioned many deaths; that the wife and two children of the Wesleyan minister at Nassau, Major Simpson and two of his children, and a lady visitor from Ontario, Canada, were numbered among its victims. Also, that the local physicians there now admit that Mr. Phelps had ‘“‘the genuine yellow fever.” Another gentleman, whose sources of information through correspondents in Nassau are at least equally good, though less disinterested, writes us as follows: ‘‘The fever has shown itself spasmodically at Nassau this summer, but to very little extent. YELLOW FEVER IN SOUTHERN CITIES. ~ 1097 The town has been very thoroughly cleansed, and if the recent hurricane has visited Nassau, as it probably has, the germs of the disease will be destroyed.” It is, therefore, now altogether probable, that the sickness which occurred in Nassau in the win- ter and spring of 1880, was of the yellow fever type. That it did not more generally prevail, is no doubt due to the fact that Nassau is so well ventilated with ocean winds. In certain locali- ties there existed conditions favorable to its spread, and in these the fever germs took root, so that the disease was sporadic and not pestilential, and the result of local causes. The fact should in this connection be stated, as a matter of justice to Nassau, that all the cities of the Southern States and of the West India Islands, have been occasionally subject to the same disease. An apparently intelligent and well-informed correspondent of “¢ The Semi-Tropical,”—a monthly magazine formerly published in Jacksonville, Florida—in the December number of that peri- odical for 1877, gives some instances of the prevalence of this disease which are worthy of consideration. He says: ‘‘In 1857, Jacksonville was visited by a fatal epidemic, generated by the opening of the railroad through a swamp hole in the heart of a little hamlet during the warm season, when the exhalations were foetid with miasma. It was confined at first to those resid- ing in the immediate vicinity of this swamp, and radiated from that center, but did not cross the river. It was as destructive as yellow fever, though in many respects, it lacked some of the essential features of that disease. It proved fatal to an alarming degree, but more from the impossibility of securing nurses and proper assistance, than from any necessity of the disease.” He adds that before that, yellow fever cases from the West Indies had not spread. He also refers to ‘‘a few fatal cases of what is termed in the : 198 ISLES OF SUMMER. West Indies, butcher’s fever, which occurred two years sinde, [1875,] in Jacksonville, Fla., about the market.” Under date of November 20, 1877, while his article was part- ly in type, he adds—‘‘ Yellow fever has been proclaimed in Jack- sonville, and in such a manner as to cause the most false ideas and groundless apprehensions abroad.” He adds that “not more than five cases have occurred, and in regard to these, some of our most experienced physicians express the greatest doubt.” But it seems to be consistent with the code of medical ethics, to doubt and deny if thereby the spread of disease may be prevented or checked. The materia medica includes moral as well as physi- cal poisons, experience having shown that they are the antidotes of fear. A medical man from Boston, told us in Nassau that Dr. of Nassau, could not be much of a physician, for if he was, he would not say that yellow fever existed there, even if it, did in fact. The magazine writer refers to the exemption of St. Augustine from yellow fever for fifty years during its occupancy by the Spanish and British authorities, and to its prevalence in 1821. We were assured that cases of this disease occurred in St. Augus- tine a few winters since, and some cases are occasionally to be expected perhaps in all cities not favored with frost. He says that ‘‘in 1822, the yellow fever was introduced into Pensacola, by a cargo of spoilt fish being cast upon the wharf.” ‘That, ‘when the yellow fever prevailed in the town of St. Mary’s, Ga., about 1808—a place of great general health—such, he was informed, was the state of the atmosphere, that beef, twenty-four hours killed, fell from the hook by putrifaction, and water drawn from the well in the evening, was in a state of mu- cilage next morning.” In 1878, the yellow fever prevailed at Port Royal, and we were there told, that fifty persons died of the disease. And yet, the YELLOW FEVER IN SOUTHERN CITIES. 199 place is quite small. The fever is supposed to have been caused by digging up the ground to make certain improvements which * the railroad’s freighting business demanded. The city of Fernandina in Florida, is pleasantly situated on a rise of ground upon Amelia Island. Its vicinity to the ocean, whose winds and the tides that flow through the spacious water- ways that lead to it, would seem to secure for it immunity from malignant diseases, although there are.low and wet savannahs in its immediate neighborhood. It is something of a health resort in winter. We learned while there, from some of its residents, that the yellow fever scourged the city in the summer of 1877. The magazine writer whom we have quoted, refers to it in’ his article, and says that in a population of 3000 there were 1000 cases of yellow fever, which resulted in 100 deaths. He states that it was caused by opening ditches through wet lands in hot weather, and by the discharging of a large amount of ballast from a vessel with yellow fever on board, ‘‘ into the heart of the town, and in the midst of this reclaimed swamp;” and that, ‘‘ accord- ing to a well established law, the introduction of a quick, viru- lent disease will drive out or characterize all local diseases, and become epidemic.” Notwithstanding the grave and serious importance of the sub- ject, one can hardly refrain from smiling when he sees the in- habitants of a fever-stricken city looking toa hurricane for their deliverance, as travelers and pioneers upon the great western prairies sometimes fight fire with fire. Destructive cyclones have commissions of mercy and beneficence to execute, and God not only makes ‘‘the wrath of man,” but the angry winds ‘‘to praise him.” The blessed angel of health, when driven out of its strong-holds in the cities of the South, and upon the beautiful coral isles, harnesses itself to a hurricane and returns, driving out, scattering and destroying its enemy. | Incidentally huge 200 ISLES OF SUMMER. trees are torn up by the roots, houses blown down, and some lives « « destroyed, but health and happiness pitch their tents upon the ruins. Since the great hurricane of 1866, and until the year 1880, the yellow fever, so far as we have been able to learn, though domiciled in Havana, has been a stranger in the Bahamas. We trust Nassau will for many years to come be free from its visitations. Although Nassau’s sanitary character has not always been un- sullied, and it has occasionally suffered a ‘‘fall from grace,” its reputation as a sanitarium has generally been not only good but well deserved. It never has been and never will be safe, espec- ially in countries where frosts are unknown, to violate the laws of health which nature has imposed. The operation of these laws, and the enforcement of their penalties, is as sure and silent as the revolutions of the stars. Disease and death sleeplessly watch from their coverts at the gates of every stronghold of health. Eternal vigilance is the price of safety.