** PARLIAMENT ” PROROGUED. 279 
the negroes had a portion allotted to them, several of them being 
members of the lower house. 
The Governor’s speech was ably written, and effectively de- 
livered. It covered matters of practical importance, and would 
compare well with the speeches and messages of our State execu- 
tives. 
The address concluded by a suggestion that sounded very 
home-like, that the present session of the Assembly might be 
even shorter than the last, which in brevity surpassed its prede- 
cessors. 
After delivering his speech, His Excellency and his suite with- 
drew, and the members of the lower house retired to their cham- 
ber. Both houses afterwards voted replies. As the Governor 
left the building a salute was fired from three field pieces, the 
troops concluded their escort duty, and all the colored population 
of Nassau which had assembled to see the show, followed His 
Excellency’s example, satisfied and gratified with the short epi- 
sode which had broken the monotony of their every day life. 
Before we left Nassau in 1879, the Bahama Parliament was 
prorogued by the Governor with imposing formalities. At the 
appointed hour, His Excellency, accompanied by his Secretary 
and other high officials, was escorted from the Government 
House, (as his residence is called,) to the building in which the 
Senate holds its sessions, by the colored troops, while martial 
music imparted life and spirit to the indolent air. The semi- 
royal pageant was a god-send to the negroes, as it broke in pleas- 
antly upon the dull monotony of their every day life, and, in Bay 
street where the procession passed, they constituted, to the eyes 
of northern strangers, the most interesting part of the show. 
The legislative “dissolving views ” were witnessed by those only 
who had been favored with tickets which secured them a free 
pass to the Senate Chamber, and, being numbered among the 
