298 ISLES OF SUMMER. 



in many of the Southern States in former times. When certain 

 loyalists fled with their slaves to the Bahamas after the breaking 

 out of the American revolution of 1776 from the States of the 

 Carolinas and Georgia, they carried their hospitality with them, 

 and found that it flourished better than cotton upon those rocky 

 isles. And no doubt it still survives, but circumstances have 

 greatly changed. While retaining an allegiance to the mother 

 country that, if mistaken, challenges admiration, they did it 

 largely at the expense of their fortunes, and at Xassau the ex- 

 ercise of hospitality on a large scale, sufficient to meet the require- 

 ments of weekly boat-loads of strangers, who are willing to be 

 received with open arms and to be entertained with princely 

 liberality, would soon result in their financial auuihilation. But 

 any gentleman of respectability and of fair social position, who 

 is able and willing to take with him to Nassau a large supply of 

 the choicest wines and other liquors, will only need to let his 

 position be known in order to be surrounded with troops of high- 

 toned friends, officially and otherwise well uj) among the gentry 

 of the island. Liquors will oj)en doors better than letters, and, 

 as a social currency that will circulate everywhere, even cheek 

 must give way to champagne. 



But, as in the floral world, the shrubs that from leaf and flower 

 load the air with sweetest perfumes, seldom, if ever, spring spon- 

 taneously from the soil where trade has established her thronged 

 and busy marts, so it is in countries sparsely populated, and sel- 

 dom marked with the impress of stranger foot-steps, that the resi- 

 nous, spicy and aromatic perfumes of a free, genuine and grate- 

 ful hospitality rise like incense from censers sacred and golden. 



