56 ISLES OF SUMMER. 
they wear, and no brains give out in the ceaseless and crazy 
struggles for wealth and power. Voluptuous idleness is the 
happy offspring of these charming isles of the sea, where frosts 
are unknown, and health and happiness float on each passing 
ware of the soft, perfumed air. 
Some of the military officials having very kindly designated a 
~ten they would show the interior of Fort Charlotte, in- 
iis extencive subterranean worl:s, to some of the hctcl 
., we were enubled through the politeness of Edward N. 
‘on, Esq., of Derby, Ct., to participate in the pleasure of 
2 excursion. 
iris fort, in its completed form, is not a hundred years old, 
and yet neither history or tradition are able to inform us positively 
when or py whom its foundations were laid. Mr. Charles Mosely, 
an old resident of Nassau, long an editor and publisher of one 
of its newspapers, says in his almanac: ‘‘It is supposed to have 
been begun by the Spaniards. It was finished about 1790, but 
the information regarding its history is very meagre and incom- 
plete.” Thus the same air that stimulates into rapid and vigor- 
ous growth the vegetable world, operates as an opiate upon ani- 
mal life, puts the Genius of History to sleep, and makes the 
Present too indolent to prepare and preserve records of the most 
important passing events. 
Fort Charlotte is upon the summit of the hill upon which 
Nassau, in a state of semi-tropical torpor, reposes. It is west of 
the city, and commands the principal or west entrance to the 
harbor. We passed a small open shore battery, and, ascending 
the hill by a winding roadway, soon reached and crossed a draw- 
bridge over a dry moat, ascended a flight of steps cut in the rock 
within the fort’s walls, to the high rocky table within the ram- 
parts, where we found our military escort waiting to receive and 
welcome us, We felt no desire to enter the fort as prisoners of 
