124 ISLES OF SUMMEK. 



chain of her watch, it was placed in the hands of a man who 

 held himself out to the world in Nassau as competent to repair 

 it. He kept it some four or five weeks, and until the owner was 

 on the point of leaving the island, and charged her a good price 

 for his worse than useless services. She found her watch in a 

 worse condition than she believed it would have been if she had 

 sent it to a northern blacksmith ol average mechanical ingenuity 

 and intelligence. 



While Prof. Dana concedes that a coral island is a good tem- 

 porary sanitarium when well supplied witli foreign stores, "in- 

 cluding a good stock of ice," and is especially attractive to those 

 "who can draw inspiration from its mingled beauties," he well 

 says, that "even in its best condition, it is but a miserable place 

 for human development, physical, mental and moral," although 

 "there is poetry in its every feature." " How much," he per- 

 tinently asks, " of the poetry and literature of Europe would be 

 intelligible to persons whose ideas had expanded only to the 

 limits of a coral island? What elevation in morals should be ex- 

 pected upon a contracted island, so readily overstocked that 

 threatened annihilation drives to infanticide, and tends to the 

 cultivation of the extremest selfishness. "Assuredly," he adds, 

 " there is not a more unfavorable spot for moral or intellectual 

 progress in the wide world than the coral island." 



The situation of the city of Nassau, and its commercial rela- 

 tions with the outside world, save its people in a measure from 

 the consequences which naturally result from a location upon a 

 small island, of very limited resources, entirely destitute of 

 mountains, and where neither rivers nor rivulets are seen wend- 

 ing their way to the sea, to the music of their everflowing waters. 

 The generosity exhibited by many of the poorest of the negroes, 

 was often the subject of favorable comment by people from the 

 States. 



