Leading Articles in the Reviews. 



63 



BERMUDAS A PARADISE. 

 .%Ir. W. D. Hdwells has been spending a winter in 

 Bermuda, and writes in Harper's for December a 

 most beautiful description, illustrated with charming 

 coloured pictures, of these fortunate isles. 



FAIRER THAN ITALY. 



He declares that " there is more beauty to the 

 square foot in Bermuda than anywhere else in the 

 world": — 



In order to imagine its loveliness yon must think of several 

 islands cradled among rainbows, mostly one long, curving 

 island, and a dozen islets of different shapes, covered wilh 

 grey junipers (called cedars for convenience' sake), and at one 

 end of ihe longest island a most beautiful little white city, 

 and at the other an older city, but beautiful too, 

 with houses of Italian or Spanish-American fancy in saffron, 

 pink, and pale blue ; and everywhere snow-while roofs. One 

 of these towns is Hamilton and the other St. George's, and 

 round about, beyond and between them are white-walled and 

 white-roofed parishes, with their churches ; and farms, with 

 white-walled and white-roofed cottages, and waving with 

 bananas and bamboos and Kaster lilies and onions. Unroll 

 ribbons of white roads from point to point, up and down the 

 little heights, which, because of the fairy scale, form a nobly 

 mountainous landscape, and have lagoons of salt water 

 iridescenlly dreaming among them, and orange and purple seas 

 bathing the brown cliffs and yellow sands : then you will have 

 some image of Bermuda, which grows lovelier with closer 

 knowledge, day after day, month after month, as long as you 

 -^rc allowed to look on it. 



I used to recall Italy there, but for beauty Italy is nowhere 

 ijcbide lierinuda, and has only the advantage of being historical. 



THE PEOPLE. 



Of the people he speaks very highly. He says a 

 .•>od half of them are coloured. Lately a number of 

 Portuguese have come in from the Azores, most of 

 them Catholic, some .Seventh- Day Baptists. He has 

 no fault to find wilh any of them except that they do 

 not sing. Bermuda is almost as unsung as it is 

 unstoried, though the air invites melody as witchingly 

 IS the air of Naples : — 



.\11 the grown pi:ipplc wear shoes, and I do not believe there 



I-. a rag among them, >"ung or old. They must be poor, many 



of them, but not one 111 ihiin shows the poverty which strikes 



vou with the squalor of iis tatters, its fillh, its aggressive misery, 



!ien you gel home. 



."Vlr. Howells proceeds : " It must be owned that 

 the Bcrmudan average have better manners than 

 we have if they are white, and even if they are 

 black they have better manners than our coloured 

 people, who are the only Americans who like good 

 manners. Still, the Uermudans are more like 

 .Americans than Knglish, in face and figure and 

 bearing, and if they arc better bred, it is surely 

 not their fault. Somehow, somewhere, we have 

 slipped a cog, and have fallen behind those gentle 

 colonial or iriiperi.il English in the finer civilisation. 

 Better |K'0|)le than we are I do not think breathe, and 

 surely none kinder ; but we are rude, formless, uncouth 

 in our angelic presence. I'erha|)s we have had too 

 much room to grow up in, and have not learned the 



art of controlling the knees and elbows which more 

 restricted peoples are forced to acquire. Perhaps our 

 unmannerliness is designed by Providence ; if we 

 were as polite as we are worthy and able, we should 

 overrun the whole earth and engage the affections of 

 the other nations beyond reprieve. Doubtless it is 

 not intended that the world should be .Americanised." 



THE TOWNS. 



The two most beautiful buildings in Hamilton are 

 the cathedral, designed by an eminent Scotch architect, 

 and the opera house, built by the Bermudan negroes, 

 with labour and material which they gave without 

 cost, and fashioned after the plans of a coloured 

 carpenter and mason. The streets of Hamilton and 

 the high roads of Bermuda are as clean and smooth 

 as most .American floors. There has been little rain 

 for two years. American prices unfortunately prevail 

 in Bermuda. Americans if they stay a week become 

 of an almost Bermudan calm. " .A fortnight makes 

 them over in the image of the colonial English who 

 have been in the islands for generations." The 

 ancient capital, St. George's, is much more resorted 

 to by artists than Hamilton. 



HOW SHRIMPS ARE PREPARED FOR MARKET. 

 Mr. Frank E. Schoonover, in Harper's foi 

 December, describes the haunts of Jean Lafitte, or 

 islands which were the home of pirates in the Gulf of 

 Mexico. He says that the islands are all concerned 

 in the same industry — catching shrimp. Each island is 

 a sort of factory, where the catch is brought and 

 prepared for the world outside. The factory simply 

 consists of two huge cauldrons, in which the shrimp are 

 boiled, and an immense platform, one hundred to two 

 hundred feet square, upon which they are dried for 

 four days under the hot sun. On each of these four 

 days the men go and rake them over, so that no part 

 of the shrimp is overlooked in the drying. Once the 

 shrimp is dry 



the platform is cle-ired of the workers, who go to long 

 sheds, each man bringing ou< an affair that might be styled a 

 pusher — a piece of smooth board some three feet long, to which 

 is attached a br.iccd handle. Now they gather about the big 

 red stjuarc, separate into group*, and push the dried shrimp 

 into small circular patches. The pushers are laid aside, the 

 groups form into line of single file, and the dance commences. 

 Round and round upon the poor shrimp they dance. To 

 the chant of a Mexican Indian Ihey crunch and grind the 

 claws ami armour from the shell-fish. They slop. It is 

 enough. Large sieves are brought, and ihe masses of shells 

 and drie<l meal are thrown against these. A man pushes 

 Ihem up and down wilh the back of a rake. Soon there galhcis 

 at the bottom of the sieve a pile of broken shells and claws and 

 a pile of dried shrimp meat. Vou go over and pick up a handful 

 of this. Look closely and you lind a do«n or more dried 

 shrimps all perfectly cleaned and about half as long as your 

 finger. 



The scene changes and the final play is beneath the shelter of 

 a roof. The mass of drie<l meat is carried lo the shed and put 

 into barrels. Some of the men, with b.igs tied alM)Ut iheir feel, 

 get into these barrels anil w.ilk alioul, packing the shrimp hard 

 anil light. You are th.inkful llio packing is done wilhin the 

 shaile of the building, for ilie day burns hot and the platform 

 riUccls the heat of the tconical sun. 



