123 ISLES OF SUMMER. 



urchins believe that the louder they scream the better they sing, 

 the extent of the disturbance and annoyance may be in some 

 small degree comprehended. This, together with an inveterate 

 habit of begging at all times and on all occasions for money — a 

 vicious practice constantly encouraged and fostered by the well- 

 meant liberality of the guests — occasionally causes some of the old 

 habitues of the hotel, when the salutary influence of the lash is 

 not brought into requisition, to hire them to go away. 



Although you have only to tickle the Bahama rocks with a 

 crowbar to make them smile with tropical and semi-tropical har- 

 vests, yet agriculture languishes and maintains but a sickly strug- 

 gle for life, the wildness of untamed nature being only here and 

 there to a very limited extent disturbed. In and near Nassau 

 many places, once made beautiful by enforced slave labor, now 

 look sadly neglected. A thick growth of bushes and small trees 

 cover the rocky fields, and many dwellings, once the hapj^y homes 

 of men who owned their workmen, have a deserted, tumble-down 

 look not at all in keeping with their natural attractions. Some 

 sugar cane is raised, and several small sugar mills are in opera- 

 tion. The cane is crushed by horse power between three small 

 cylinders, connected together at the top by projecting cogs, so 

 that while one cylinder is turned by a horse traveling in a circle 

 at the end of a long connecting arm, (as in the old-fashion 

 cider mill), the other cylinders are made to revolve. They are 

 so adjusted that the third cog gives the cane a tighter squeeze 

 than the first two. One of the receiving cylinders has either 

 vertical grooves or spaces which help to maintain and keep a hold 

 upon the cane, constantly fed to the machine by a negro seated 

 on the ground by its side. "While in operation, a steady stream 

 of saccharine caue-juicc, having a strong corn-stalk taste, runs 

 into a large tub, from which it is taken in pails to the sugar 

 house, where it is boiled in large kettles; the cane from which 



