a 
a Trip to the West Indies. 11 
_ visited by travellers from all parts. We had lime squashes. What 
a delightful drink it is! how different from the stuff sold as lime- 
juice at home! Up in the shady verandah overlooking the busy 
_ street we found it beautifully cool, and we could sit there and see 
the life in the streets below. Girls and women carrying about 
_ baskets of fruit, bananas, oranges, &c. Large casks of sugar 
and molasses on narrow trolleys being drawn by six mules or 
_ oxen through the narrow streets ; men and women of all nation- 
_ alities, all busy selling and buying. After walking through the 
chief streets, which are narrow and badly paved, we take tram- 
ear to Hastings, a suburb about four miles out. Here is the 
_ Marine Hotel, which is a favourite meeting-place for all travellers. 
_ For the present I will leave Barbadoes, and say that we in the 
afternoon went aboard the intercolonial steamer the ‘Solent,’ 
which was lying near the ‘Trent’ (the ship that brought us), 
and about six o’clock steamed off for St. Vincent. I might 
mention it is a pretty sight to see all the intercolonial boats 
starting off in the evening. The ‘Trent’ started off first for 
Jamaica, then the ‘Hden’ for Demerara, the ‘Esk’ for the 
northern islands, and the ‘Solent’ for Trinidad. Each boat 
‘ fires coloured rockets on starting. 
At six o'clock the following morning we arrived and anchored 
- about half-a-mile from Kingstown the chief town of St. Vincent. 
Saw a booby or fishing bird (the Sula Sula). The harbour 
police officer says that they are easily tamed, that the boys 
catch them with small hooks baited with pieces of meat, and 
when they have been tamed they will fly out to the bay, feed 
“themselves, and then return home. The scenery around the 
town is very fine and mountainous, with some very sharp peaks. 
It is a pretty town from the sea and is fairly clean. As we 
walked through the charming Botanical Gardens, which lie about 
‘one mile inland from the town, we little expected to hear only 
a few weeks after of the awful volcanic disaster, which was not 
only to lay in ruins the northern part of the island, but which 
caused a layer of two feet of lava over all this beautiful vegetation. 
_ The Botanical Gardens, with the bay in the distance, are very 
beautiful. On leaving the gardens we went to the Montrose 
Arrowroot Estate, and by the kindness of the proprietor saw the 
process of arrowroot growing, washing, drying and packing for 
shipment. ‘The arrowroot is the starch obtained from the under- 
ground stem of the Maranta. The stems are put into a revolving 
drum with water, which washes away the earthy matter. It is 
then taken out and pressed against a revolving rasp; it is there 
torn to pieces, and falls into a large vat after passing through a 
“sieve which removes the fibre (which is used for food for the 
pigs, or manure); the milky liquid is allowed to settle and the 
‘water drawn off. The settlement or starch is then again stirred 
