84 tstls OF SUMMER. 
the section was detached—a circle not far from four feet in 
diameter—a new and healthy bark has grown, while small new 
_ sprouts have'in different places made their appearance. Such 
tenacity of life and recuperative energy we had not supposed ex- 
isted anywhere. Were theclimate of the Bahamas as stimulating 
to mind as it is to matter in some of its forms, its inhabitants 
would intellectually far excel all other people past or present. 
Notwithstanding the “never say die” pluck of this memento of 
the great hurricane of ’66, its continuance for many years is also 
in part traceable to the absence of proper tools and appliances for 
its removal. The mechanic arts are there still ina state of rude 
and primitive simplicity. Aside from the building of small ves- 
sels of not exceeding a hundred tons, and at rare intervals a new 
store or dwelling, there is little skilled labor, and an official re- 
port states that their only manufactures are ropes, baskets and 
palmetto hats. 
Two or three small sugar mills run by horse power, and a grind 
stone in the rear of the hotel, rotated by hand, were the only 
labor-saving machines we saw upon the island. The pine trees 
are cut down often, and perhaps generally, with long knives. 
They are not very large, and the swinging of an ax would require 
too great an exertion in this climate to suit the taste of its ami- 
able, good-natured and politically free negroes. 
The Jamaica tamarind tree is sometimes called the Monkey 
Tamarind, from the fact that occasionally in Jamaica a monkey 
will insert its paw, when open and extended, through the end 
of the large, hard, woody pod, which the tree produces, for the 
purpose of obtaining the seeds which it contains. Grasping 
_ these, his paw, when closed, is too large for the hole, and either 
because he is too stubborn and willful to open his paw, or because | 
he has not sufficient intelligence and presence of mind to do so, 
he holds on and pulls, and pulls and holds on, until one very 
