VIEW DOWN GEORGE STREET, NASSAU.-LOOKING FROM GOVERNMENT HOUSE. [CATHEDRAL ON THE RIGHT, VENDUE HOUSE AT END OF STREET, HOG ISLAND IN THE DISTANCE.] water; there was a crowd of people on the wharf; there were one-horse barouches, driven by negroes wearing red vests and dreadfully battered high silk hats, and altogether the scene was lively and promising. The town was larger than I had expected to see it, but it ought to be a good-sized place, for nearly all of the people of the island of New Providence live there, and they number some eleven or twelve thousand. Columbus named this island Fernandina, which was a good name, but the poor man never had much luck in christening the lands he discovered. The town is certainly very well placedall the passengers agreed to that. It lies on the northern edge of Ferna- of New Providence, and in front of it, less than a mile away, stretches a long, narrow piece of in a picturesque way, helps to inclose an admirable harbor for Nassau. There is no lack of islands and islets in what might be called the Bahamian Archipelago, which stretches some six hundred miles from San Domingo nearly to Florida. The collection comprises, according to official count, twenty-nine islands, six hundred and sixty-one cays, and two thousand three hundred and eighty-seven rocks,assorted sizes. New Providence is the most important member of this collection, but like many other most important things, it is by no means the biggest, being only twenty-one miles long and seven broad, while the Great Bahama, Abaco, Eleuthera, Andros, and some of the other islands, are very many times larger, some of them being a hundred that Nassau is almost a town without chimneys. In looking over the place, from some of the high piazzas of the Royal Victoria, scarcely a chimney could be seen on a miles long. But New Providence has the | need fires for warmth. We found, in fact, brains, the other islands have merely size. The health-officer came on board, and we were soon free to go ashore. We found that, like ourselves, nearly all our fellow-passengers were going to the Royal Victoria Hotel. We speedily secured one of the one-horse barouches; the red-vested driver pulled his silk hat a little tighter on his head, cracked his whip and away we went. As we rode through the town we noticed that the streets were very hard and smooth, and white and narrow, and that there was a great preponderance of wall in every direction; and in about two minutes we noticed that we were at the hotel. The hotel made quite an impression upon us, even before we entered it. It stands high, spreads wide, and looks large, and cool, and solid. It is a hotel of which Her Majesty need not be ashamed. In front of the main door-way, which is level with the ground, is an inclosed and covered court. In the sides of this are arched gate-ways through which the carriage-road passes, and in the front wall are four or five door-ways. The spaceand there is a good deal of it-between the carriage-way and the house is paved and is generally pretty well covered with arm-chairs, for this court, as we soon found, is the favorite resort of the guests. The sun can get no entrance here, while through the numerous door-ways cut in the massive walls the breezes come from nearly every direction. The interior of the house is also arranged with a view to coolness and shade. There is not a fire-place or a chimney in the whole structure. The cooking is done in a separate building, and in Nassau the people do not VOL. XV.-2. "GIVE US A SMALL COPPER, BOSS." A LITTLE BOY IN FULL DRESS. dwelling-house, and those on the little outside kitchens were so covered up by foliage that they were not easily perceived. We went to breakfast with hopeful hearts. It was a good breakfast. In addition to the fare which one would expect at a firstclass and well-kept hotel, we had fresh fruit, radishes, lettuce, sliced tomatoes, and other little matters of the kind to which we were not accustomed in winter-time. The very first thing I did after breakfast was to go and buy a straw hat. I always wear a straw hat in sliced tomato time. I saw a little of the town while I was buying my hat, but I did not look at it much, for I did not wish to take an unfair advantage of my wife; and, as soon as possible, we started out together to see the town. It was certainly a novel experience to walk through the streets of Nassau. At first it seemed to us as if the whole place-streets, houses and walls-had been cut out of one solid block of the whitest lime-stone, for the material in all appeared to be the same. There are very few sidewalks, and these are generally not so good to walk on as the middle of the street. The houses are wide and low, and generally have piazzas around them on every story. Nearly every house has a garden,-sometimes quite a large one, surrounded, not by a fence, but by a high stone-wall. It is these walls, over which you see the broad leaves of bananas, or the beautiful tops of cocoa-nut-trees, with other rich and unfamiliar foliage, which, more than anything else, give the town its southern, and, to us, its entirely foreign, appearance. The gardens, and all the spaces about the houses, are crowded with trees, bushes and flowers. Roses were in bloom everywhere, and oleanders, twenty feet high, waved their pink blossoms over the street. We walked down Parliament street, which leads from the high ground on which the hotel stands to Bay street, which is the principal thoroughfare and business avenue of the town. This street runs along the water-front, and on one side for some dis A NASSAU MANSION. tance there is a succession of shops and business places of various kinds. On the water side of the street are the wharfs, the market, the Vendue House, the barracks, and quite a number of stores and countinghouses. And all these, taken in the aggregate, give Bay street quite a busy appearance. And here we began to understand what is meant by the statement that there are negroes in Nassau. If I should say that the whole surface of the ground as far as the eye could reach, up or down the street, was covered with darkeys of every possible age, sex, size and condition in life, I should say what is not exactly true. It is difficult, however, to erase that impression from the mind,-for there they were strolling along the sidewalks (this street boasts those conveniences), standing in groups, laughing, talking, arguing, sitting on stones and door-steps, and by gate-ways, selling bananas, short pieces of sugar-cane, roots, and nuts; running hither and thither, flirting, begging, loafing, doing anything but working. Down by the market they swarmed like bees, some selling, some looking on, a few buying, and all jabbering away right and left. When we next took a walk, we rambled to the south of the town, to the suburbs, where these darkeys live. We went down a long street, or lane, bordered on each side by little gardens, in which stood thatched cottages and small low houses of various kinds, all in the most picturesque state of dilapidation, and surrounded, covered, embraced, sheltered and fondled by every kind of bush, tree and vine that will grow without the help of man; and, as nearly all the vegetation in Nassau will do that, bananas, cocoa-nuts, oranges and tamarinds clustered around these contented-looking little huts in masses of every shade of green, picked out with the golden hues of oranges, and the colors of every blossom that grows. Looking down the lane, the view was lovely. The tall cocoanuts, with their tufts of long, magnificent leaves, waved on each side, until in the distance they seemed to touch across the white street that ran down through the all this for nothing. They are true lotuseaters, these negroes, but they need not sail away to distant isles to eat and dream. Their lotos grows on every cocoa-nut-tree, and on every banana; it oozes out with the juice of their sugar-cane, and they bake it in their yams. From out of the huts and gardens the brown, black and yellow little girls came with roses and bunches of orange-blossoms. We first bought of one and then of another, until, if we had not suddenly stopped, we should have ruined ourselves. The prices they asked were but little more than the flowers would have cost in the hot-house of a New York florist, but I soon found that If colored people feel lazy in the Bahamas, it is not to be wondered at. Everything feels lazy, even the mercury in the thermometers. It is exceedingly difficult to get it to move. While we were there, it was always at, or about, seventy-four degrees, once rising to eighty degrees, but soon subsiding again to the old spot. For myself, I like mercury that is content to dwell at seventy-four degrees. There is no better spot on the whole surface of the thermometer. And why should people toil and sweat in this happy island? The trees and vines and vegetables do not ask it of them. Things grow in Nassau for the love of growing; they do not have to be coaxed. In the negro suburbs we saw very little cultivation. The trees and plants did not even seem to care about soil to any great extent. We saw large trees growing, apparently, right out of the stones and rocks. Of course, there was some earth in the crevices, but there was precious little of it anywhere. The whole island is of coral origin, and is now like a great lime-stone rock, covered with a very thin layer of rich soil. But this thin layer suffices for the luxuriant vegetation of the Bahamas, although I think that one of the long carrots of our country would find it very difficult to grow at Nassau, unless it were furnished with a rock-drill at the extremity of its root. There is a fine, large jail here, a very cool and well-arranged edifice. The inmates are almost exclusively negroes. There was one white man there when I saw the place, but he was a sailor from a foreign ship in port, who did not know, perhaps, that it was not a custom of the country for white folks to get themselves put in prison. When a negro enters this jail,-and he generally goes in for petty larceny or a similar crime, -his habits undergo a complete revolution. He has to work hard. Dressed in white shirt, trowsers and cap (for here white is the color that does not show dirt), with bare feet and a long chain running from each ankle to a belt at his waist, he marches in military order with a company of his fellows to sweep the streets, mend the pavements and work in the public grounds. He also labors in the jail and learns to despise, from the bottom of his soul, the temporary, but deplorable, weakness of Adam. But it must not be supposed that these criminals are the only negroes who are industrious. There are colored people in Nassau who have found out that it pays to work,-moderately, and so have arrived at positions of ease and comparative independence. The policemen here, with one or two exceptions, are black men. They wear handsome blue uniforms, and walk slower and put on greater airs of dignity and authority than any other body of police officers that I have ever met. The government of the Bahamas appears to be highly satisfactory to all parties concerned. As a colony of Great Britain, the islands have a colonial governor, who is assisted in his governmental duties by Her Majesty's executive council and Her Majesty's legislative council. The people at large have also a voice in the matter through the representatives they send to the House of Assembly, a body of about thirty members. The currency in use is a curious mixture of American and English money, with occasional additions of the coins of other climes. Our greenbacks are readily received at par, and our silver half and quarter dollars at a slight discount, but the smaller money in use with us will not pass current. The small change is principally English coin,eight, six, four and three-penny pieces, a small silver coin called a "check," worth a penny and a half, and copper pennies and halfpence. Among the latter we met with a great many friends of other days in the shape of our old-fashioned copper cents. One or two of the guests at the hotel, who were coin collectors, found prizes among the coppers. The negroes gave, in change, not only rare United States cents, passing for halfpence, but copper coins of the same general size, from various parts of the world. It quite recalled the feelings of my youth to get change for a quarter, and go about with a lot of heavy coppers jingling in my pocket. But there is no difficulty at all in getting rid of this weighty change. An opportunity is afforded twice a day at the main entrance of the hotel, where, after breakfast and after dinner, will be found on every week-day a regular fair or market. The negroes come with the greatest variety of commodities for sale, and range themselves around the inside of the inclosure, some sitting down by the walls with their baskets before them, others standing about with their wares in their hands, while others, more enterprising, circulate among the ladies and gentlemen, who are taking their after-meal rest in the numerous arm-chairs on each side of the door. It would be impossible to name everything which may be bought in this market, for new and unique commodities are continually turning up. Flowers and fruit of every kind that grows here, sponges, shells of almost every imaginable variety, canes and hats of native manufacture, star-fish, berries, conchs, sugar-cane, sea-beans of all kinds and colors, and all sorts of ornaments made of tortoise-shell and other shells. One day a boy brought a little dog; a girl had a live bird, which she would either sell or liberate on the payment of a small sum by any humane person. A big black man brought a tarantula spider in a bottle, and you can always get centipedes if you want them. Many things-sponges, for instance-can be bought at very low prices by people who are willing to bargain a little. |