122 ISLES OF SUMMER. 
urchins believe that the louder they scream the better they sing, 
the extent of the disturbance and annoyance may be in some 
small degree comprehended. This, together with an inveterate 
habit of begging at all times and on all occasions for money—a 
vicious practice constantly encouraged and fostered by the well- 
meant liberality of the guests—occasionally causes some of the old 
habitues of the hotel, when the salutary influence of the lash is 
not brought into requisition, to hire them to go away. 
Although you have only to tickle the Bahama rocks with a 
crowbar to make them smile with tropical and semi-tropical har- 
vests, yet agriculture languishes and maintains but a sickly strug- 
gle for life, the wildness of untamed nature being only here and 
there to a very limited extent disturbed. In and near Nassau 
many places, once made beautiful by enforced slave labor, now 
look sadly neglected. A thick growth of bushes and small trees 
cover the rocky fields, and many dwellings, once the happy homes 
of men who owned their workmen, have a deserted, tumble-down 
look not at all in keeping with their natural attractions. Some 
sugar cane is raised, and several small sugar mills are in opera- 
tion... The cane is crushed by horse power between three small 
cylinders, connected together at the top by projecting cogs, so 
that while one cylinder is turned by a horse traveling in a circle 
at the end of a long connecting arm, (as in the old-fashion 
cider mill), the other cylinders are made to revolve. They are 
so adjusted that the third cog gives the cane a tighter squeeze 
than the first two. One of the receiving cylinders has either 
vertical grooves or spaces which help to maintain and keep ahold 
upon the cane, constantly fed to the machine by a negro seated 
on the ground by its side. While in operation, a steady stream 
of saccharine cane-juice, having a strong corn-stalk taste, runs 
into a large tub, from which it is taken in pails to the sugar 
house, where it is boiled in large kettles; the cane from which 
