The numerous square cuttings in the hill-sides and along the roads form a feature in the scenery, and by no means an unpleasing one, as the new are snowy white, and the old are generally draped with green bushes and creepers. Walls are built of the same material, and then receive, as the houses do, a coating of whitewash, which hides the seams and joinings, thus presenting a solid white mass. Over these walls, you see broad plantain leaves and flaming poinsettias; orange, lemon, and palm trees are more numerous here at St. George’s than at Hamilton, and the tropical aspect of the town extends to its inhabitants. Of labour there is little or no sign, and what there is of life is hardly worth mentioning.
As St. George’s is a garrison town—two regiments being considered necessary for the safety of Bermuda—it is probably gayer than when we saw it, which was in hot noonday, when all slept except one black man, who was shaving a white man under the shade of a tree in the square.
That evening the ‘Beta,’ from Halifax, left with us for the West Indies. Summer isles, in spite of that abused hotel, I would gladly revisit you; I carry away nought but a remembrance of white cottages and gardens, green islands, billowy masses of oleander, cedar hills, and coral rocks, and, above all, of a shining lake-like sea, as calm and restful as the happy homes which it surrounds.
CHAPTER IV.
ST. THOMAS—FORTS—BOATMEN—DIVERS—HOTEL DU COMMERCE—MAIN STREET—STABLE COMPANIONS—AMAZONS—A NEGRO POLITICIAN—DANISH RULE—A SORRY SIGHT—JUSTICE IN THE VIRGIN GROUP—A DAY’S DOINGS—KRUMM BAY—CHA-CHAS—AN OCEAN PAWNBROKER’S—LANDSLIP—ALOE—A CURE FOR LUNG DISEASES—UP THE MOUNTAIN.
Had the passengers on board the comfortable ‘Beta’ been as poetical as Childe Harold was when in his clumsy brig he sang:
“Four days are sped, but with the fifth anon
New shores descried make every bosom gay,”
they might have said something less prosy than “Thank goodness, there’s land!” when, precisely on the fifth morning after leaving Bermuda, a vision as of misty clouds grew out of the sea! Then, as the yellow flush of dawn cleared the prospect, substance was given to the hazy outlines, and as the sun rose, touching the rugged peaks with gold and purple, the island of St. Thomas lay revealed before them.