54 I N A G U A 



in tennis shoes. 



In time we arrived at the "farm." We first saw a cluster of 

 four houses nestling in the shade of some short cocoanut palms. 

 At this point the rock bench had given place to a stretch of 

 gleaming beach, and a circular coral reef provided a rough but 

 reasonably secure anchorage. The houses were the usual thing 

 for that portion of the world, little one room huts of white 

 coral bearing brown roofs of palmetto thatching. They were 

 exceedingly picturesque and melted intangibly into the land- 

 scape. Beyond I could make out a few more huts and then a 

 long line of coast shimmering in the heat waves. 



No one was about, but the boys said that we would find 

 their parents back in the woods worldng the farm. Once again 

 we plunged into the bushes. For some minutes we walked, 

 pushing aside thorn branches, struggling with vines and thread- 

 ing between clusters of prickly pear. 



"Where's the farm?" I asked. 



The black boys looked at me with queer expressions and 

 then with a sweep of their hands indicated the thorn scrub. 

 "Heah, suh." 



It was my turn to register amazement, for all I could see was 

 a mass of tangled bushes and curling vines. But presently in all 

 the melee of vegetation I began to discover an isolated corn 

 stalk, a stand of two or three plants of some sort of grain, 

 guinea-grain probably, and close to the ground some sweet 

 potato vines. That was all. Good soil in the Bahamas is very 

 scarce and on certain islands is only to be found in eroded 

 pockets called "banana holes." Elsewhere the soil is only an 

 inch or so deep, much too shallow for row farming. So the 

 natives take advantage of every depression in which enough 

 dirt has collected to grow their vegetables. Some of the individ- 

 ual corn stalks were fifty feet apart. A garden patch that in 

 more prosperous parts of the world would cover fifty square 



