196 ISLES OP SUMMEtt. 



the truthfulness of tlie tradition, we are ready to believe that 

 even ill-natured beasts would soon become amiable in the mild 

 and soothing air, and that a canine millennium might, by the 

 silent operation of natural laws, soon be established on those 

 emerald isles. Perhaps we owe an apology to the dogs of the 

 Bahamas for having stated that they are too lazy and indolent 

 to bark — it may be that Ave should have said instead, that they 

 are too amiable. The loud and persistent crowing of the roos- 

 ters, during all the hours of the night, we have been recently 

 assured is the crow of hunger, and not the genuine John Bull 

 expression of a self-satisfied sentiment of conscious superiority. 



Killing for sport, and 'Uhe pleasures of the chase," whether 

 brutal or refined, could not have been among the pastimes of 

 those who received and welcomed Columbus and his companions 

 when they first landed upon the shores of the New World. And 

 they had yet to learn the game of cruel and merciless war from 

 the more educated and cultured savages of a higher civilization. 

 In that they had no accumulated capital they Avere poor indeed, 

 but free from the fevered dream of ambition, the uufjuenchable 

 thirst of avarice, and the tortures of unsupplied and constantly 

 increasing Avants, they Avere vastly richer than any of the envied 

 millionaires of either ancient or modern times. Simple, amiable 

 and guileless children of nature, unlearned and uncultivated, 

 happy and cheerful as the birds that flaunted their gay plumage 

 in the spicy and perfumed air, they lived and loA'cd in tlieir little 

 Gardens of Eden, with no ban upon the delicious and golden 

 fruits of their uncultivated tropical orchards. 



These fruits, a limited supply of vegetables, and the fish Avhicli 

 the surrounding ocean supplied at all times in great abundance, 

 constituted their food. A vegetable and piscatory diet infused 

 no frenzied fever in the blood or brain; and Avith no Avild beasts 

 in the forests or jungles, there Avas no savagery to be transmuted. 



