PREFACE. v4 
to devote himself exclusively to the law? Why did he presume to write a 
book, and having written it, fossilize it with type, and coffin it in gilded 
covers ? 
These questions are legitimate, and they shall be honestly and frankly an- 
swered. 
While treading the deck of a New York and Savannah steamer, after hav- 
ing been a day or two at sea, and while gazing with a pleasing awe upon an 
ocean mysterious, restless and sky-bound, he heard, like the author of Revela-: 
tion, a voice saying unto him ‘‘ Write /” and without pausing to think or 
inquire whether the injunction came from heaven or elsewhere, he obeyed 
with alacrity. It did not appear to be a matter of choice, but of uncontrolable 
necessity. He had taken with him neither ink nor paper, but the ship’s 
purser kindly provided him with both and with a seat at his table. When 
the author’s pen was fairly started, it was like the artificial leg which an in- 
genious German invented—it could not be stopped; so he continued to write 
as he traveled, and to travel as-he wrote, and this volume is the result. 
Visiting for the first time ‘‘the home of summer and the sun,” the author. 
‘was constantly surprised and charmed with new phases of that wondrous 
beauty which ever, in the vicinity of the tropics, rests like an atmosphere upon 
sea andland. His nerves were soothed and quieted by a climate which the 
Gulf Stream and trade-winds delightfully tempered and medicated. Lulled, 
soothed, and pleased by such novel surroundings, it was a relief to the mind 
to give expression to its agreeable sensations, and shed some of its thoughts. 
To gratify and amuse his friends at home, many of his impressions and pen- 
pictures were forwarded for publication in the New Haven Journal and 
Courier. They met with unexpected favor, and if his vanity had not, as he 
trusts, departed with his youth, he would have been proud, as he certainly 
was gratified at the warm, hearty and general commendation with which his 
published letters were received. Much enlarged, and to some extent re- 
written, they are now issued in book-form at the request, frequently and ur- 
gently expressed, of many of the readers of his newspaper communications. 
The author has the more readily yielded to these requests because he believes 
his book will meet an unsupplied want, there being no work in the market 
which gives the information it contains. A literary tent has only at long in- 
tervals been pitched for a few days upon the Bahamas, and the coral isles 
have yielded to letters very meagre though valuable harvests. Enjoying to 
some extent the fruits of the labors of others, the author has also cropped new 
fields, and while he has not exhausted or very much impaired the fertility of 
