274 ISLES OF SUMMER. 
In 1863 the expenses of a vessel which could carry 800 bales 
(including wages, coal, provisions, labor, repairs and agent’s com- 
missions,) were about £3000 for a round tmp, to and fro. In 
the following year the expenses were increased to £5000. The 
salary of the captain rose from £600 to £1000 for the trip, with 
the privilege of carrying ten bales of cotton on his own account. 
The purser and first officer received each £300, with the privilege 
of carrying two bales each, and the pilot received £1000, with the 
privilege of carrying five bales. 
A first class steamer would run from Charleston or Wilmington 
to Nassau, in about forty-eight hours. She could be discharged 
in twenty-four hours, the laborers working day and night. But 
three days for loading and unloading was considered good dis- 
patch. The excitement, extravagance and waste which prevailed 
under such circumstances may be easily imagined. 
During the war, had the colored people who compose about 
three-fourths of the population of the Bahamas, known that the 
question of the enfranchisement of five millions of their race was 
involved in the struggle, we should at least have had their warm 
sympathies on our side. But nearly everything relating to the 
war that was published in Nassau, so far as we have been able to 
learn, was favorable to the rebel side. This may also be fairly 
inferred from the fact that the onLY BATTLE of that war that 
the publisher of the ‘‘ Nassau Guardian” has noticed in the col- 
umns of important events inserted in his Nassau Almanac for 
1879, is that of Buti Run, July 21, 1861. 
It is charitable to conclude that the editor and compiler has 
never heard of the great Union victories that culminated in a 
restored Union, and we trust, a permanent peace between the two | 
sections of our common country. 
