258 SUNSHINE AND SPORT IN 



Beyond the welcome change of a day ashore, 

 Port of Spain has not many attractions for so brief 

 a visit, though I was much interested in the curio 

 store opposite the wharf, and I ate, lunching at the 

 delightful club with Mr Skinner, a pastel, the name 

 of which, with sundry other dreams of the table, 

 will be found graven on my heart when the College 

 of Surgeons acquires that much-broken organ. 



The Queen's Park Hotel possesses one of the 

 most remarkable billiard-tables that I ever played 

 on. My game is so fluky as to be no game at all, 

 but I defy Lovejoy himself to come off on the 

 Queen's Park table, and I imagine that the balls 

 would run just as true in the savannah. 



Bridgetown, the next and last port of call, is, 

 climatically and otherwise, the antithesis of Port of 

 Spain. Barbados is the most windward of all the 

 Windward Islands, and the invigorating trade-winds 

 blow there morning and evening, and sometimes 

 afternoon and night as well. Like Jamaica, this is 

 an island of blacks, who must number four to every 

 white, and as it has 200,000 human beings to its 166 

 square miles, it is only less crowded than London 

 or Pekin. No other island, no other country, no 

 other continent is so packed for its size. The death, 

 some time ago, of Theodore Paleologos, Emperor, at 

 Barbados, lends a retrospective distinction in con- 

 trast with the otherwise homely interest of the place. 



One memory of Bridgetown survives over and 

 above its picturesque bridge, its truculent though 

 merry niggers, and its sugar-cane, and that is a dish 

 of fried flying-fish that I ate at lunch at the club 

 the day I was ashore there. A dish, did I say ? 

 A shoal ! I have eaten many kinds of fish from 



