124 ISLES OF SUMMER. 
chain of her watch, it was placed in the hands of a man who 
held himself out to the world in Nassau as competent to repair 
it. He kept it some four or five weeks, and until the owner was 
on the point of leaving the island, and charged her a good price 
for his worse than useless services. She found her watch in a 
worse condition than she believed it would have been if she had 
sent it to a northern blacksmith ot average mechanical ingenuity 
and intelligence. 
While Prof. Dana concedes that a coral island is a good tem- 
porary sanitarium when well supplied with foreign stores, ‘‘in- 
cluding a good stock of ice,” and is especially attractive to those 
“‘who can draw inspiration from its mingled beauties,” he well 
says, that ‘‘even in its best condition, it is but a miserable place 
for human development, physical, mental and moral,” although 
‘there is poetry in its every feature.” ‘‘ How much,” he per- 
tinently asks, ‘‘ of the poetry and literature of Europe would be 
intelligible to persons whose ideas had expanded only to the 
limits of a coral island? What elevation in morals should be ex- 
pected upon a contracted island, so readily overstocked that 
threatened annihilation drives to infanticide, and tends to the 
cultivation of the extremest selfishness. ‘‘Assuredly,” he adds, 
‘<there is not a more unfavorable spot for moral or intellectual 
progress in the wide world than the coral island.” 
The situation of the city of Nassau, and its commercial rela- 
tions with the outside world, save its people in a measure from 
the consequences which naturally result from a location upon'a 
small island, of very limited resources, entirely destitute of 
mountains, and where neither rivers nor rivulets are seen wend- 
ing their way to the sea, to the music of their everflowing waters. 
The generosity exhibited by many of the poorest of the negroes, 
was often the subject of favorable comment by people from the 
States. 
