THE BAHAMA ISLANDS 551 



or methods employed that were objectionable. Agricultural and mechanical 

 subjects were introduced into the curriculum. An inspector of schools was 

 created.™^ The execution of these acts was beset with difficulties. At New 

 Providence conditions were more favorable than in any other part of the 

 Colony. Here the schools were most successful in operation. But there was 

 by no means a well-developed system on this, island. In the Out-islands the 

 conditions were still very discouraging. There were almost no buildings, 

 there were no competent teachers. The ignorance of the people was deplor- 

 able in an atmosphere in which children were growing up and coming to 

 maturity without even the rudiments of an education. The funds of the 

 Colony were so low that it seemed impossible to make rapid progress in improv- 

 ing conditions. A drouth cut off the crops in the summer of 1844, the debt 

 of the Colony seemed to increase rather than diminish, and, in 1848, the 

 Turks Islands, which had furnished a large portion of the revenues, were cut 

 off from the Colony. Such were the conditions against which those who were 

 trying to lift this veil of ignorance had to contend. A letter written by a 

 schoolmaster at Eock Sound, Bleuthera, gives an idea of the prevailing con- 

 ditions : " We opened school in this district on the 6th September in a house 

 hired from the Wesleyan mission in this place, as no other could be found. 

 No repairs have yet been attempted to be made on the premises, which the 

 board of education agreed to hire from Mr. Sands, and I am inclined to think 

 that nothing will be done to them. There were 85 children admitted to the 

 school when it was first opened, and I regret to say that as many more were 

 refused admission for want of room. The house we have hired is 18 by 31 

 feet, the only one we could get on the settlement for the purpose, and it is 

 far too small. We have scarce room to form a class in it. It is much to be 

 regretted that the youth of this settlement have been so long neglected. There 

 is scarcely one in twenty of the inhabitants of New Portsmouth who can read 

 and write. This is the case with man, woman and child, yet there is not a 

 finer looking set of people than the young ones of this settlement. They all 

 seem very anxious to be taught, and I have partly promised the young adults 

 to attend two or three times a week when we have a larger schoolhouse and 

 instruct them in the evening in a new and larger house on the commence- 

 ment of the new year."°°° 



""lO Vic, caps. 1 and 26. Also Mathew to Grey, No. 12. It should be ob- 

 served, that in all these schools, rates were paid by all patrons except a few poor 

 persons whom the visitors in each district designated as non-rate-payers. This 

 was the rule, the observance of it was not strict. 



™Nesbitt to Grey, No. 49 (1847). 



