298 ISLES OF SUMMER. 
in many of the Southern States in former times. When certain 
loyalists fled with their slaves to the Bahamas after the breaking 
out of the American revolution of 1776 from the States of the 
Carolinas and Georgia, they carried their hospitality with them, 
and found that it flourished better than cotton upon those rocky 
isles. And no doubt it still survives, but circumstances have 
greatly changed. While retaining an allegiance to the mother 
country that, if mistaken, challenges admiration, they did it 
largely at the expense of their fortunes, and at Nassau the ex- 
ercise of hospitality on a large scale, sufficient to meet the require- 
ments of weekly boat-loads of strangers, who are willing to be 
received with open arms and to be entertained with princely 
liberality, would soon result in their financial annihilation. But 
any gentleman of respectability and of fair social position, who 
is able and willing to take with him to Nassau a large supply of 
the choicest wines and other liquors, will only need to let his 
position be known in order to be surrounded with troops of high- 
toned friends, officially and otherwise well up among the gentry 
of the island. Liquors will open doors better than letters, and, 
as a social currency that will circulate everywhere, even cheek 
must give way to champagne. 
But, asin the floral world, the shrubs that from leaf and flower 
load the air with sweetest perfumes, seldom, if ever, spring spon- 
taneously from the soil where trade has established her thronged 
and busy marts, so it is in countries sparsely populated, and sel- 
dom marked with the impréss of stranger foot-steps, that the resi- 
nous, spicy and aromatic perfumes of a free, genuine and gr ate- 
ful hospitality rise like incense from censers sacred and golden, 
