BENEATH TROPIC SEAS 



nuts, oranges, and bread-fruit within reach from 

 the verandah, with a lofty range of cloud-flecked 

 mountains rising just at the back, and the great 

 emerald and cobalt Gulf of Gonave before me; 

 with books and swimming pools at hand, and all 

 the other tools for the joy of mind and body. 



And now let us walk down the rose-bordered 

 path to the front gate and watch the unending 

 stream of countryfolk coming into the city with 

 their merchandise. Algernon Blackwood would 

 enjoy them for they are centaurs of sorts — lowly 

 ones, if you will — yet we cannot laugh at them for 

 riding on asses — for that was the method of travel 

 of a certain man of Galilee. If we wonder why 

 there are only women centaurs the answer is, habit, 

 for up to a year or two ago no countryman dared 

 come to the city for fear of being shanghaied into 

 the native army, without pay and with death 

 imminent. 



The first to pass is a finely -built woman, almost 

 buried in great bundles of grass on her burro. 

 Freed from her dirty calico gown, and with her 

 facial character and carriage, she might be the wife 

 of a Zulu chieftain. To her the alphabet is only 

 hieroglyphics which unreasonably and endlessly 

 besmirch good paper; politics, geography, styles, 

 prohibition, worry, responsibility, — all these, to her 

 mind, are not even nebulous. And yet it would be 

 difficult for my excellent host or myself to match 

 her in happiness and contentment. She has been 

 two days and perhaps nights on the march; in the 



8 



