12 



been disciplined and trained by a race which is certainly as superior 

 to the Spanish in all that concerns common-placedness and com- 

 mon sense, as it is inferior in its natural artistic instincts. I never 

 saw anything, no not even in the Bethnal Green district of 

 London, to surpass the interiors of the Cuban cottages in unutter- 

 able disorder and general abomination. But as you pass along the 

 roads at Nassau, and glance in at the windows of the negroes' cot- 

 tages you will almost invariably perceive interiors worthy of the brush 

 of a Teniers or of a Sir David Wilkie, a floor on which you could eat 

 your dinner, neatly papered walls, with framed chromos symmetri- 

 cally arranged upon them, spotless curtains, shining brass lamps 

 and cooking utensils, and a bed covered with a counterpane as 

 white as drifted snow. If you peep in at meal times, you will note 

 a clean cloth, covered with orderly-arranged plates and dishes. I 

 am speaking of the dwellings of negroes, of those self-same coloured 

 people, who in the same climate, only a day and a half's journey 

 away in Cuba, under another race and civilization, dwell in a con- 

 dition too nasty to be described here." 



I cannot forbear here introducing an exceptionally vivid 

 description by Mr. Davey of the town of Nassau and of its 

 population, which I shall also supplement with this popular 

 writer's remarkable word-picture of the " sea garden," which 

 has been so frequently quoted on account of its graphic 

 picturesqueness. 



"As you drive," I said, "through Grant's Town, the negro 

 quarter, you see so much to gladden you that it must do more 

 real good to an invalid than many a cunningly-prepared draught. 

 Charmingly picturesque wooden huts, thatched with palmetto, and 

 as neat as you please, overshadowed by cocoa-nut trees, and 

 exquisite flowering creepers border either side of the road, and on 

 their thresholds are laughing groups of women and children of 

 every shade of black, mahogany, and ' yuUah.' Then, when the 

 shades of evening grow long and deep in the thickets of the banyan- 

 trees, coloured Pyramus courts coloured Thisbe over the wall 

 which separates their gardens, and the roads are literally swarming 



